評(píng)論
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Narrator:Listen to part of a lecture in an astronomy class.
獨(dú)白:聽(tīng)下面一段的天文學(xué)課程。
Professor:We are going to start a study of sunspots today, and I think you'll find it rather interesting.
教授:今天我們將要學(xué)習(xí)的主要內(nèi)容是太陽(yáng)黑子，我覺(jué)得你們應(yīng)該會(huì)覺(jué)得這非常有趣吧！
Now I'm going to assume that you know that sunspots, in the most basic terms, are dark spots on the Sun's surface.
接下來(lái)我將會(huì)假定你們對(duì)太陽(yáng)黑子的認(rèn)識(shí)，說(shuō)得通俗些，就是太陽(yáng)臉上的黑斑。
That will do for now.
這個(gè)理解現(xiàn)在還說(shuō)得通。
The ancient Chinese were the first to record observations of sunspots as early as the year 165.
早在公元 165 年，中國(guó)人就第一個(gè)觀測(cè)并記錄了太陽(yáng)黑子的活動(dòng)。
When later European astronomers wrote about sunspots, they didn't believe that the spots were actually on the Sun.
等到后來(lái)歐洲天文學(xué)家談?wù)撎?yáng)黑子的時(shí)候，他們不敢相信，這些斑點(diǎn)真的就在太陽(yáng)上。
That's because of their belief at the time that the heavenly bodies, the Sun, Moon, Stars, and Planets, were perfect, without any flaws or blemishes.
那是因?yàn)椋?dāng)時(shí)他們認(rèn)為，天上飄動(dòng)的天體，包括太陽(yáng)、月亮、行星，是完美的，沒(méi)有任何缺點(diǎn)和污漬。
So the opinion was the spots were actually something else, like shadows of planets crossing the Sun's face.
所以，當(dāng)時(shí)他們的看法是，那些黑點(diǎn)肯定是別的什么東西，比如其他行星經(jīng)過(guò)太陽(yáng)時(shí)留下的陰影。
And this was the thinking of European astronomers until the introduction of the telescope, which brings us to our old friend, Galileo.
并且，當(dāng)時(shí)歐洲的天文學(xué)家們大部分都這么認(rèn)為。直到望遠(yuǎn)鏡引入—這讓我們想到了我們的老朋友伽利略—之后才發(fā)生變化。
In the early 1600s, based on his observations of sunspots.
在公元 1600 年早期，在伽利略長(zhǎng)期對(duì)太陽(yáng)黑子的觀測(cè)經(jīng)驗(yàn)的基礎(chǔ)上，
Galileo proposed a new hypothesis.
他提出了一項(xiàng)新的假設(shè)。
He pointed out that the shape of sunspots, well, the sunspots weren't circular.
他指出，太陽(yáng)黑子的形狀并不是正圓的。
If they were shadows of the planets, they would be circular, right?
但如果它們真的是行星的投影的話，它們當(dāng)然應(yīng)該是正圓形的，不是嗎？
So that was a problem for the prevailing view.
所以這個(gè)問(wèn)題，對(duì)先前的認(rèn)識(shí)提出了挑戰(zhàn)。
And he also noticed that the shape of the sunspots changed as they seemed to move across the Sun's surface.
并且，伽利略還指出，太陽(yáng)黑子似乎在太陽(yáng)表面移動(dòng)，
Maybe a particular sunspot was sort of square, then later it would become more lopsided, then later something else.
而且在移動(dòng)中形狀不斷發(fā)生變化。
So there is another problem with the shadow hypothesis, because the shape of a planet doesn't change.
這個(gè)觀點(diǎn)，對(duì)太陽(yáng)黑子為投影說(shuō)又提出了另一個(gè)問(wèn)題，因?yàn)橐粋€(gè)行星的形狀是不變的，它影子的形狀也似乎不變的。
What Galileo proposed was that sunspots were indeed a feature of the Sun, but he didn't know what kind of feature.
不過(guò)，伽利略提出的理論，總體上把太陽(yáng)黑子歸結(jié)于太陽(yáng)自身的特征；他自己并不知道這個(gè)特征到底是什么。
He proposed that they might be clouds in the atmosphere, the solar atmosphere, especially because they seemed to change shape and there was no predicting the changes, at least nothing Galileo could figure out.
所以，他又認(rèn)為，太陽(yáng)可能有大氣，而且大氣中可能存在云層。他這項(xiàng)假設(shè)特別重要的根據(jù)是太陽(yáng)黑子的形狀是變化的，變化方式是不可預(yù)計(jì)的，或者說(shuō)，這種變化的模式至少是伽利略觀測(cè)不出來(lái)的。
That random shape changing would be consistent with the spots being clouds.
伽利略認(rèn)為，太陽(yáng)黑子的隨機(jī)性變化與它們作為太陽(yáng)大氣云層這一假設(shè)是一致的。
Over the next couple hundred years, a lot of hypotheses were tossed around.
之后的幾百年里，又有一大批理論被提出來(lái)。
The spots were mountains or holes in the solar atmosphere through which the dark surface of the Sun could be seen.
透過(guò)太陽(yáng)暗色的表面，人們觀測(cè)到了太陽(yáng)黑子是太陽(yáng)大氣中的山或者洞穴。
Then in 1843, astronomer named Heinrich Schwabe made an interesting claim, Trobe had been watching the Sun every day that it was visible for 17 years, looking for evidence of a new planet.
然后，在 1843 年，一個(gè)叫海因里希舒華的天文學(xué)家提出了一個(gè)有趣的假設(shè)。卓伯在能夠觀測(cè)到太陽(yáng)的期間，連續(xù)觀測(cè)了太陽(yáng) 17 年，本來(lái)他這種努力，是想要尋找一顆新的行星。
And he started keeping tracks of sunspots, mapping them, so he wouldn't confuse them, so he wouldn't confuse them with any potential new planet.
之后，他開(kāi)始追蹤太陽(yáng)黑子的變化，并記錄它們的變化軌跡，這樣一來(lái)，他就能把太陽(yáng)黑子一顆一顆認(rèn)出來(lái)，不會(huì)把它們誤認(rèn)為是新的行星。
In the end, there was no planet, but there was evidence that the number of sunspots increased and decreased in a pattern, a pattern that began repeating after 10 years, and that was a huge breakthrough.
最后，他沒(méi)有觀測(cè)到行星，但他發(fā)現(xiàn)，太陽(yáng)黑子消長(zhǎng)是非常有規(guī)律的，以 10 年為一個(gè)重復(fù)周期，這項(xiàng)發(fā)現(xiàn)無(wú)疑是一個(gè)非常重大的突破。
Another astronomer named Wolf kept track of the Sun for an even longer period, 40 years actually.
另一位叫做沃爾夫的天文學(xué)家觀測(cè)太陽(yáng)的時(shí)間更長(zhǎng)，達(dá)到了驚人的 40 年。
So Wolf did 40 years of research, and Trobe did 17 years of research. I think there is a lesson there.
沃爾夫觀測(cè)了 40 年，卓伯觀測(cè)了 17 年，我覺(jué)得這對(duì)我們來(lái)說(shuō)，是一個(gè)模范。
Anyway, Wolf went through all records from various observatories in Europe and put together a history of sunspot observations going back about 100 years.
沃爾夫查看了歐洲各種觀測(cè)記錄，綜合了他之前 100 年到他生活時(shí)代的材料中關(guān)于太陽(yáng)黑子的運(yùn)動(dòng)歷史，
From this information, he was able to confirm the existence of a pattern, a repeating cycle but Wolf detected an 11-year cycle not a 10-year cycle.
得出了一個(gè)新的運(yùn)動(dòng)周期，和卓伯不同，沃爾夫把這個(gè)周期定為11年而非10年，
11-year cycles? Does that sound familiar to anyone?
11年的周期？這你們聽(tīng)上去熟悉嗎？
No? Well, geomagnetic activity, the natural variations in Earth's magnetic field, it fluctuates in 11-year cycles.
不熟悉？嗯，地磁運(yùn)動(dòng)，即地球磁場(chǎng)的自然運(yùn)動(dòng)，它的周期就是11 年。
Well, we'll cover this later in this semester, but for now, well, scientists in the late 19th century were aware of geomagnetic cycles, so when they heard that the sunspots' cycle was also 11 years, well, they just had to find out what was going on.
嗯，這個(gè)部分的內(nèi)容我們會(huì)在這學(xué)期講到，現(xiàn)在我們就稍微簡(jiǎn)單的提一下吧！嗯，19 世紀(jì)的科學(xué)家們已經(jīng)知道了地磁圈的存在，所以，當(dāng)他們聽(tīng)到太陽(yáng)黑子的運(yùn)動(dòng)周期是 11 年時(shí)，他們就必須要知道背后的事實(shí)是什么。
Suddenly, everyone was doing studies of the possible relationship between the Sun and the Earth.
一時(shí)間，幾乎所有人都把目光放到了太陽(yáng)和地球之間的關(guān)系上:
Did the sunspots cause the geomagnetic fields or did the geomagnetic fields cause the sunspots?
是太陽(yáng)黑子引發(fā)了地球磁場(chǎng)，還是地球磁場(chǎng)引發(fā)了太陽(yáng)黑子？
Or is there some other thing that caused both?
或者，有第三者的存在，它同時(shí)引發(fā)了地球磁場(chǎng)和太陽(yáng)黑子？
And astronomers did eventually figure out what sunspots had to do with magnetic fields.Actually they are magnetic fields.
最終，天文學(xué)家發(fā)現(xiàn)了太陽(yáng)黑子與地球磁場(chǎng)之間的關(guān)系。實(shí)際上它們就是地球磁場(chǎng)。
And the fact that sunspots are magnetic fields accounts for their dark appearance.
事實(shí)是，太陽(yáng)黑子解釋了為何太陽(yáng)表面在觀測(cè)中呈現(xiàn)出深黑色，
That's because magnetic fields reduce the pressure exerted on the gases inside of them, making the spots cooler than the rest of the Sun's surface.
原因是太陽(yáng)地磁場(chǎng)減輕了它們內(nèi)部的氣體施加的壓力，使得太陽(yáng)表面的黑子比其余地方的溫度低。
And inside they are cooler, they are darker.
當(dāng)然，溫度越低，在觀測(cè)中顏色也就越深。
