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The Real Final Frontier
真正的邊界
Don: You know what amazes me? Voyager!
你知道是什么東西讓我大開眼界嗎？Voyager！
Yaël: Me too! Did you see the one were seventh of nine gets a face-lift?
我也是呢。你看到被做了大幅度改造的那一期了嗎？
D: I don't mean that TV show. I mean the real thing—the Voyager spacecraft launched by NASA twenty-six years ago. For years this probe sent back amazing pictures of the outer planets in our solar system before sailing off into space. Now, Voyager is ninety times as far from the sun as we are, and is about to reach the Termination Shock.
我說的不是電視節目，是真的東西——美國航空航天局（NASA）26年前發射的旅行者號探測器。在飛出太陽系之前，數年來，旅行者號不斷地傳回太陽系內讓人嘆為觀止的圖片。現在，旅行者號距離地球非常遙遠，相當于地球與太陽距離的90倍，快要達到太陽系的終點（Termination Shock）了。
Y: The Termination Shock? You sure this isn't a sci-fi?
極限？你確定這不是在講科幻故事？
D: Not at all. The Termination Shock is one of two proposed boundaries to our solar system. You can say that the solar system ends with Pluto. Astrophysicists, however, think of the solar system as extending farther out to include two less obvious, but just as real, outer edges.
完全不是。Termination Shock是人類提出的太陽系的兩個邊界點之一。你可以說太陽系的邊界是冥王星。然而，我們的天文物理學家們認為，太陽系不斷向外外延伸至兩個不是很明顯但是確確實實存在的邊界點。
One is the Termination Shock, where the charged particles blown out by the sun—and known as the "solar wind"—slow down abruptly, thanks to the pressure from other charged particles coming from deep space. Beyond that is the edge of the Heliosphere, which is where the solar wind finally ends.
一個就是我們的Termination Shock，由于深層空間內射出的帶電粒子流所形成的氣壓的作用，太陽所射出的離子體帶電粒子流——也就是我們所熟知的“太陽風”——在這里驟然減速。除此之外，另外一個就是日光層的的邊緣，太陽風最終會在這里完全停下來。
The Voyager probe is just now crossing the Termination Shock. In another fifteen years or so it will pass the outer edge of the Heliosphere—a human-made object moving for the first time in history into true interstellar space. It's an awesome thought.
旅行者號探測器現在正在穿越Termination Shock。再過15年左右，旅行者號將會穿過更外圍的日光層，成為史上首個進入星際空間的人造物體。這真的太讓人驚嘆了！
Y: That is cool!
真的很酷呢！
