In his book Cosmos, the late scientist Carl Sagan talks about the way in which the earth is regularly struck by material from outer space. These collisions with space debris can be minor–as in a shooting star on a summer night–or amazingly destructive, as in the collision that probably killed off the dinosaurs. Thankfully, the biggies are extremely rare.
已故科學家卡爾·薩根在著作《宇宙》中敘述了外太空物體如何有規律和地球發生碰撞。太空垃圾和地球碰撞的機率很小，就像夏夜劃過流星，破\壞性卻很大，這種碰撞可以令恐龍滅絕。值得慶幸的是，這種機率太渺茫了。
Sagan makes the point that the most dangerous collision facing us now, however, is one that might be mistaken for something else: a nuclear attack. He warned that thinking an asteroid is actually an ICBM could result in the worst possible destruction–an unintended war.
薩根闡述的觀點是目前我們面臨的最危險的是碰撞而非人們誤解的核戰。他提醒人們，事實上，行星就像洲際彈道導彈，可能產生意料外破壞性極大的戰爭后果。
Was this just paranoid thinking? Unfortunately, no. Carl Sagan is no longer with us, but in testimony before congress just last year, a United States Air Force brigadier general warned that just such a thing almost happened in June of two thousand and two. That’s when a meteoroid entered the earth’s atmosphere over the Mediterranean and was picked up by U.S. early-warning satellites on the lookout for high-altitude explosions and incoming missiles.
這僅僅是偏執思維嗎？不幸地是，無獨有偶。去年（本文發表于2003年），一位美過空軍準將在國會的一份證詞中稱類似的事情發生在2002年6月。美國預警衛星在監測高空爆炸物和來襲導彈時發現一顆流星穿破地球大氣層，降落在地中海地區。
The alarming object falling from the sky was recognized for what it was, this time. The generals’ point, though, was that we never know where space junk will fall. Turn the globe by just a few hours earlier on that day in June and the meteoroid would have been over the border of Pakistan and India–exactly where everyone was fearing a nuclear attack.
而這次人們確認從天而降令人惶恐的物體究竟是什么。準將指出我們無法確定太空垃圾降落在什么地方。如果六月的這天，地球轉動退回到幾小時前，流星降落的地方就正好是巴基斯坦和印度的交界處，世人唯恐發生核戰的交界地。
We’ve been lucky so far. But Carl Sagan’s warning came perilously close to becoming a prophecy and a harmless natural event in the sky, to triggering a terrible event here on earth.
迄今為止，我們都還很幸運。但是，卡爾·薩根的提醒很可能是可怕的預言，本來平常的天空自然事件很可能引發地球災難。
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