万物简史 第298期:地下的烈火(6)

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　　this zone has been known ever since as the Mohorovicic discontinuity, or Moho for short. 此后，这个区域后来一直被称之为莫霍洛维契奇不连续面，简称莫霍面。

　　We were beginning to get a vague idea of the Earth's layered interior—though it really was only vague. 我们开始对地球内部的层次有了个模糊的概念——虽然的确仅仅是模糊的。

　　Not until 1936 did a Danish scientist named Inge Lehmann, studying seismographs of earthquakes in New Zealand, discover that there were two cores, 1936年，丹麦科学家英·莱曼在研究新西兰地震的地震仪读数的过程中，发现有两个地核，

　　an inner one that we now believe to be solid and an outer one (the one that Oldham had detected) that is thought to be liquid and the seat of magnetism². 一个内核和一个外核。内核我们现在认为是坚硬的；外核被认为是液态的，是产生磁力的地方。

　　At just about the time that Lehmann was refining our basic understanding of the Earth's interior by studying the seismic³ waves of earthquakes, 就在莱曼通过研究地震波，提高我们对地球内部的基本认识的时候，

　　two geologists⁴ at Caltech in California were devising a way to make comparisons between one earthquake and the next. 加州理工学院的两位地质学家发明了一种把前一次地震和后一次地震进行比较的方法。

　　They were Charles Richter and Beno Gutenberg, 他们是查尔斯·里克特和贝诺·古滕堡。

　　though for reasons that have nothing to do with fairness the scale became known almost at once as Richter's alone. 由于与公平毫不相干的原因，震级的名称几乎马上只被称之为里氏震级。

　　(It has nothing to do with Richter either. （这些原因与里克特本人也毫不相干。

　　A modest fellow, he never referred to the scale by his own name, but always called it "the Magnitude Scale.") 里克特是个很谦逊的人，从来不在震级前面加上自己的名字，总是只叫“震级”。）

　　The Richter scale has always been widely misunderstood by nonscientists, though perhaps a little less so now 许多非科学家对里氏震级一直存在误解，虽然现在的情况也许有所改善。

　　than in its early days when visitors to Richter's office often asked to see his celebrated⁵ scale, thinking it was some kind of machine.  早年，参观里克特办公室的人往往要求看一眼他的杰作，以为那是一台机器。

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