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科学美国人60秒 SSS 摧毁地球的小行星并没有那么容易

时间:2019-09-29 02:15:09

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(单词翻译)

Busting1 Earth-Bound Asteroids3 Bigger Job Than We Thought

In the movie Armageddon, an asteroid2 the size of Texas is hurtling towards Earth. All seems lost, but then Bruce Willis sacrifices his own life to detonate a thermonuclear bomb on the asteroid. Then you hear this from mission control:

在电影《世界末日》中,一颗德克萨斯州大小的小行星正冲向地球。一切似乎都失去了,但随后布鲁斯·威利斯牺牲了自己的生命,在小行星上引爆了一枚热核炸弹。然后从任务控制中心可以听到:

Breaking a rock that big into two halves, that somehow miraculously4 dodge5 the Earth? A bit of Hollywood magic. But scientists are studying what would really happen in such a scenario6.

把这么大的石头砸成两半,奇迹般地躲过了地球?似乎有点好莱坞的魔力。但是科学家们正在研究在这种情况下会发生什么。

"A big part of what we do is looking at how things break. Smashing things together and what happens after that." Charles El Mir is a mechanical engineer who studies planetary science at Johns Hopkins University.

我们所做的很大一部分工作就是观察事物是如何破裂的。物体撞击,然后会发生什么。”查尔斯·埃尔米尔是约翰·霍普金斯大学研究行星科学的机械工程师。

He and his colleagues modeled what might happen if you smashed up a 15-mile-wide asteroid, made of basalt. They started by assuming the asteroid has some tiny cracks already running through it, based on studies of real rock. Then, they struck the hypothetical space rock with another, smaller rock—just a mile wide—hurtling towards the asteroid at more than 11,000 miles per hour. When it hit, they tracked how stress waves propagated through the asteroid, and expanded the network of cracks.

他和同事们模拟了如果粉碎一颗由玄武岩构成的15英里宽的小行星会发生什么。根据对真实岩石的研究,他们首先假设这颗小行星已经有了一些微小的裂缝。然后,他们用另一块只有1英里宽的更小的岩石以每小时11000多英里的速度撞击假设中的太空岩石.当它撞击地球时,他们追踪了应力波是如何在小行星上传播的并扩展裂缝网。

Previous impact models predicted that an impact like that would completely pulverize7 the asteroid, basically turning it to sand. But not this new model. "What we're seeing, after the impact you have this big chunk8 of rock that was still held together, still not completely broken down, and this piece of rock creates its own gravitational field which attracts the particles that were ejected from it, and they start re-accumulating over it."

之前的撞击模型预测,这样的撞击会彻底粉碎小行星,基本上把它变成沙子。但这个新模型的结果不是这样。“我们看到的是,在撞击之后,这大块岩石仍然被绑在一起,还没有完全分解,这片岩石产生了自己的引力场,吸引着从岩石中喷射出来的粒子,它们开始在上面重新积累。

The scientists describe the model in the journal Icarus.

科学家们在《伊卡洛斯》杂志上描述了这个模型。

The work suggests asteroids might actually be harder to smash than we thought, meaning: "We might need to have a faster impactor, larger mass of impactor coming in, to be able to deflect9 it efficiently10."

这项研究表明,实际上小行星可能比我们想象的更难撞碎,这意味着:“我们可能需要一个更快、更大质量的撞击器,才能有效地使其偏转。”

In 2022 NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission, or DART11, will attempt to put all this knowledge to the test, by shoving a near-Earth asteroid off its path. No Bruce Willis required.

在2022年,美国宇航局的“双小行星重定向测试任务”(简称DART)将试图通过将一颗近地小行星推离其轨道,来测试所有这些知识。不需要布鲁斯·威利斯的理论。


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点击收听单词发音收听单词发音  

1 busting 88d2f3c005eecd70faf8139b696e48c7     
打破,打碎( bust的现在分词 ); 突击搜查(或搜捕); (使)降级,降低军阶
参考例句:
  • Jim and his wife were busting up again yesterday. 吉姆和他的妻子昨天又吵架了。
  • He figured she was busting his chops, but it was all true. 他以为她在捉弄他,其实完全是真的。
2 asteroid uo1yD     
n.小行星;海盘车(动物)
参考例句:
  • Astronomers have yet to witness an asteroid impact with another planet.天文学家还没有目击过小行星撞击其它行星。
  • It's very unlikely that an asteroid will crash into Earth but the danger exists.小行星撞地球的可能性很小,但这样的危险还是存在的。
3 asteroids d02ebba086eb60b6155b94e12649ff84     
n.小行星( asteroid的名词复数 );海盘车,海星
参考例句:
  • Asteroids,also known as "minor planets",are numerous in the outer space. 小行星,亦称为“小型行星”,在外太空中不计其数。
  • Most stars probably have their quota of planets, meteorids, comets, and asteroids. 多数恒星也许还拥有若干行星、流星、彗星和小行星。
4 miraculously unQzzE     
ad.奇迹般地
参考例句:
  • He had been miraculously saved from almost certain death. 他奇迹般地从死亡线上获救。
  • A schoolboy miraculously survived a 25 000-volt electric shock. 一名男学生在遭受2.5 万伏的电击后奇迹般地活了下来。
5 dodge q83yo     
v.闪开,躲开,避开;n.妙计,诡计
参考例句:
  • A dodge behind a tree kept her from being run over.她向树后一闪,才没被车从身上辗过。
  • The dodge was coopered by the police.诡计被警察粉碎了。
6 scenario lZoxm     
n.剧本,脚本;概要
参考例句:
  • But the birth scenario is not completely accurate.然而分娩脚本并非完全准确的。
  • This is a totally different scenario.这是完全不同的剧本。
7 pulverize gCayx     
v.研磨成粉;摧毁
参考例句:
  • A factory making armaments had been bombed the night before and a residential area not far away had been pulverized.前天晚上,一家兵工厂被炸,不远处的居民区也被夷为平地。
  • He is set to pulverise his two opponents in the race for the presidency.他决心在总统竞选中彻底击垮他的两个对手。
8 chunk Kqwzz     
n.厚片,大块,相当大的部分(数量)
参考例句:
  • They had to be careful of floating chunks of ice.他们必须当心大块浮冰。
  • The company owns a chunk of farmland near Gatwick Airport.该公司拥有盖特威克机场周边的大片农田。
9 deflect RxvxG     
v.(使)偏斜,(使)偏离,(使)转向
参考例句:
  • Never let a little problem deflect you.决不要因一点小问题就半途而废。
  • They decided to deflect from the original plan.他们决定改变原计划。
10 efficiently ZuTzXQ     
adv.高效率地,有能力地
参考例句:
  • The worker oils the machine to operate it more efficiently.工人给机器上油以使机器运转更有效。
  • Local authorities have to learn to allocate resources efficiently.地方政府必须学会有效地分配资源。
11 dart oydxK     
v.猛冲,投掷;n.飞镖,猛冲
参考例句:
  • The child made a sudden dart across the road.那小孩突然冲过马路。
  • Markov died after being struck by a poison dart.马尔科夫身中毒镖而亡。

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