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Kepler's World
開普勒的世界
Much has been made of the 400th anniversary this year of Galileo pointing a telescope at the moon and jotting down what he saw.
400年前伽利略用望遠鏡觀測月球并簡要記錄了觀測結果，400年后的今天我們很隆重地紀念了這一歷史性事件。
But 2009 is also the 400th anniversary of the publication by Johannes Kepler,a German mathematician and astronomer,of "Astronomia Nova".
不過，2009年也是德國數學家和天文學家約翰尼斯?開普勒發表《新天文學》400周年。
This was a book that contained an account of his discovery of how the planets move around the sun,correcting Copernicus's own more famous but incorrectly formulated description of the solar system.
這部著作論述了他發現的行星圍繞太陽運行的規律，從而修正了哥白尼給太陽系作的錯誤描述，盡管哥白尼的論述更加廣為人知。
And it established the laws for planetary motion on which Isaac Newton based his work.
另外，該著作還創立了行星運行定律，為艾薩克?牛頓的發現奠定了基礎。
Four centuries ago the received wisdom was that of Aristotle,who asserted that the Earth was the centre of the universe,
四個世紀以前，人們普遍接受的是亞里斯多德的觀點。他認為地球是宇宙的中心，
and that it was encircled by the spheres of the moon,the sun, the planets and the stars beyond them.
月球、太陽以及其他所有的行星和恒星都繞著地球旋轉。
Copernicus had noticed inconsistencies in this theory and had placed the sun at the centre,with the Earth and the other planets travelling around the sun.
但是，哥白尼注意到這個理論的一些觀點自相矛盾，他認為太陽才是宇宙的中心，地球和其他星球都繞著太陽運行。
Some six decades later when Kepler tackled the motion of Mars,he proposed a number of geometric models,checking his results against the position of the planet as recorded by his boss.
大約60年后，開普勒為研究火星運行軌跡假設了大量的幾何模型，但是根據這些模型預測出的結果和他上司記錄的火星位置不一致。
Kepler repeatedly found that his model failed to predict the correct position of the planet.
當開普勒反復發現他的模型無法正確預測火星的位置時，他決定對它進行改造。
He altered it and, in so doing,created first egg-shaped "orbits" and,finally, an ellipse with the sun placed at one focus.
開普勒先是建立了一個蛋型“軌道”，并在此基礎上提出了橢圓軌道的模型，在這個模型中，太陽位于橢圓軌道的其中一個焦點上。
Kepler went on to show that an elliptical orbit is sufficient to explain the movement of the other planets and to devise the laws of planetary motion that Newton built on.
接著，開普勒又證明橢圓軌道模型同樣適用于解釋其他行星的運行軌跡，并且依此模型足以歸納出行星運行定律，而這些定律日后成為了牛頓的理論基礎。
A.E.L. Davis this week told astronomers and historians that it was the rotation of the sun that provided Kepler with what he thought was one of the causes of the planetary motion that his laws described,although his reasoning would today be considered entirely wrong.
A．E.L. Davis在這周告訴天文學家和歷史學家說，正是太陽自轉現象讓開普勒得到啟發，從而得出他在行星運行定律中所描述的引起行星運動的其中一個原因，盡管他的論證過程在現在看來是完全錯誤的。
In 1609 astronomy and astrology were seen as intimately related;mathematics and natural philosophy,meanwhile, were quite separate areas of endeavor;however, Kepler sought physical mechanisms to explain his mathematical result.
1609年，天文學和星象學被視為聯系緊密的兩個學科．而數學和物理學則是完全獨立的兩個研究領域．但開著勒卻試圖以物理機制來驗證數學結墨。
He wanted to know how it could be that the planets orbited the sun.
他想弄清楚行星怎么會沿一定的軌跡繞太陽運行。
Once he learned that the sun rotated,he comforted himself with the thought that the sun's rays must somehow sweep the planets around it while some magnetism accounted for the exact elliptical path.
當他得知太陽存在自轉現象時，他就自欺欺人地認為太陽的光線無論如何一定會照射到周圍的行星，而某種磁力使堡這些行星沿著規則的橢圓軌道運行。
As today's astronomers struggle to determine whether they can learn from the past,Kepler's tale provides a salutary reminder that only some explanations stand the test of time.
現在的天文學家們極力想知道他們是否能從歷史中得到一些啟示，而開普勒的故事的積極意義在于：它提醒我們并不是所有理論都經得起時間的考驗。
