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So if Pluto really is a planet, it is certainly an odd one. It is very tiny: just one-quarter of 1 percent as massive as Earth. If you set it down on top of the United States, it would cover not quite half the lower forty-eight states.
因此，如果冥王星真是一顆行星，那肯定是一顆很怪的行星。它很小，只有地球的四百分之一大。假如你把它蓋在美國上面，它還蓋不住美國本土48州的一半面積。
This alone makes it extremely anomalous; it means that our planetary system consists of four rocky inner planets, four gassy outer giants, and a tiny, solitary iceball. Moreover, there is every reason to suppose that we may soon begin to find other even larger icy spheres in the same portion of space.
光這一點就使它顯得極其反常，這說明，我們的行星系統是由4顆穩固的內行星、4顆氣態的外行星和1顆孤獨的小冰球組成的。
Then we will have problems. After Christy spotted Pluto's moon, astronomers began to regard that section of the cosmos more attentively and as of early December 2002 had found over six hundred additional Trans-Neptunian Objects, or Plutinos as they are alternatively called. One, dubbed Varuna, is nearly as big as Pluto's moon.
接著，問題又來了。克里斯蒂發現冥王星的衛星以后，天文學家開始更加仔細地觀察宇宙的這一部分，截至2002年12月初止，又在天王星以外發現了600多個物體，其中一顆被命名為伐樓拿星，差不多和冥王星的衛星一般大小。
Astronomers now think there may be billions of these objects. The difficulty is that many of them are awfully dark. Typically they have an albedo, or reflectiveness, of just 4 percent, about the same as a lump of charcoal—and of course these lumps of charcoal are about four billion miles away.
天文學家現在認為，也許存在幾十億個這類物體。困難在于，它們當中有許多暗淡無光。一般來說，它們的反射度只有4％，大約相當于一塊木炭的反射度--當然，這些"木炭"是在60多億公里以外。
