外研版选修四册第六单元阅读讲解

Unit 6 Space and beyond

第62页阅读讲解

The Call of the Challenger
“挑战者”的呼唤

1 Ever since Neil Armstrong first set foot on the Moon back on 20 July 1969, people have become accustomed to the notion of space travel. Millions watched that first lunar landing on black and white television sets, their hearts in their mouths, aware of how arduous and hazardous an undertaking it was, and of the many things that could go wrong. With Armstrong's now famous words “That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”, what had once been considered impossible had now been achieved. Guided by a computer that was much less powerful than the ones used by today's average school students, all three astronauts of the Apollo 11 mission made it safely back to Earth.
自从1969年7月20日尼尔·阿姆斯特朗首次登月以来，人们已习惯于太空旅行这个概念。数百万人在黑白电视机前观看了首次登月，为此激动得心都跳到了嗓子眼儿，因为大家都明白这是一项多么艰难、多么危险的任务，许多地方都可能出错。伴随着阿姆斯特朗说出那句名言——“这是个人的一小步，却是人类的一大步”，曾被认为是不可能的事情如今已经实现了。执行“阿波罗11”号任务的三位宇航员在一台计算机的指导下都安全返回地球，这台计算机远不如当今普通学校的学生使用的计算机功能强大。

2 Following the Moon landings, space travel rapidly became unexceptional to the public, as innovations succeeded each other. By the early 1980s, the great rockets previously used in the American space programme had been replaced by the space shuttle. When the Challenger space shuttle took off on 28 January 1986, the world seemed to have lost its wonder at the amazing achievements of the astronauts involved. But this was going to be no ordinary excursion, and millions of people tuned in to witness the take-off on TV. It was special because Christa McAuliffe aged 37, an ordinary teacher and mother, was about to become the first civilian in space. She planned to give two 15-minute lessons from orbit: the first to demonstrate the controls of the spacecraft and explain how gravity worked, and the second to describe the objectives of the Challenger programme. Christa hoped to communicate a sense of excitement and rekindle interest in the space programme. With the eyes of students across the nation upon her, she might have inspired an entirely new generation of astronauts and space scientists.
登月后，随着新事物接连出现，宇宙航行迅速成为公众眼中的寻常之事。20世纪80年代早期，美国太空计划中使用的大型火箭已被航天飞机所代替。当“挑战者”号航天飞机于1986年1月28日发射时，对于字航员所获得的令人惊叹的成就，全世界似乎已经失去了新鲜感。然而这将不是一次普通的航行，数百万人打开电视，共同见证这次发射。这次航行的特殊之处在于一位37岁名为克丽斯塔·麦考利夫的普通教师兼母亲将会成为第一位到访太空的普通公民。她计划在“挑战者”号沿轨道运行时讲两节课，每节15分钟。第一节课要展示航天器的操控装置，并解释一下引力是如何发挥作用的；第二节课要讲述“挑战者”号太空计划的目的。克丽斯塔希望借此传达她的激动之情，重新燃起人们对太空计划的兴趣。当全国学生的目光都聚集在她身上时，她或许能激发他们成为新一代字航员和太空科学家的理想。

3 Tragically, she never returned to her classroom as the shuttle exploded just over a minute after taking off in Florida, and all seven astronauts on board were killed. The world went into shock, most people having assumed that this space flight would be no more dangerous than travelling in an aeroplane. How wrong they had been! Instantaneously, excitement and optimism turned into terror and failure. It was the most disastrous space accident ever, and it cast a shadow on people's hearts.
令人悲痛的是，她再也没能回到她的课堂。航天飞机在佛罗里达州发射仅一分多钟后就发生了爆炸，机上七名宇航员全部牺牲。全世界都震惊了！大多数人本以为这次太空航行不会比乘飞机旅行更加危险，但是所有人都大错特错了！激动和乐观瞬间化为恐惧和挫败，这是有史以来最惨烈的航天事故，给人们心里蒙上了阴影。

4 “I can remember that day so clearly, watching the take-off on TV at school,” said one student. “There was an ordinary teacher on the Challenger, and we were all very excited. We didn't have much patience waiting for the launch. We had seen the smiling faces of the astronauts waving to the world as they stepped into the shuttle. Then, little more than a minute after take-off, we saw a strange red and orange light in the sky, followed by a cloud of white smoke. The Challenger had exploded in mid-air and we all started screaming.”
一个学生回忆道：“我非常清楚地记得那天，我在学校通过电视观看发射场景。有位普通教师在“挑战者，号上，我们都非常激动，迫不及待地等着发射。我们看到宇航员笑容满面，向世界挥手致意，步入航天飞机。然后，发射仅仅一分多钟后，我们就着到空中奇异的红色和橙色的光芒，紧接着是一大团白烟。"挑战者，号在半空中爆炸了，我们都开始尖叫。”

5 Following the shock of the Challenger disaster, space shuttle flights were suspended for nearly three years while the cause of the disaster was investigated, and some of the shuttle's components were redesigned. But there was never any doubt that manned flights would continue, and on 29 September 1988, the space shuttle programme resumed with the successful launch of Discovery.
“挑战者”号令人震惊的灾难发生后，航天飞机航行中止了近三年时间，同时调查事故原因，重新设计飞行器的部分零件。但是毫无疑问，载人飞行绝不会就此停止。1988年9月29日，随着“发现”号的成功发射，航天飞机项目重新启动。

6 It has now been over 30 years since the loss of Challenger and although the lives of its crew were cut tragically short, they take their place alongside the other heroes of space exploration, such as Gagarin, Tereshkova, Armstrong and Yang Liwei. The memory of those seven will live forever, written in the stars, inspiring us to join them in humanity's greatest journey of exploration and discovery. The sacrifice of the Challenger calls to us, reminding us that we must continue to reach for the stars, no matter how distant they might seem.
“挑战者”号失事至今已有30多年了。虽然“挑战者”号的机组人员英年早逝，但他们与加加林、捷列什科娃、阿姆斯特朗和杨利伟等进行太空探索的英雄们一道，都在历史上占有一席之地。他们七位的事迹将永存于世，书写在漫天星辰中，激励我们加入他们，共向致力于人类最伟大的探索发现之旅。“挑战者”号的牺牲召唤着、提醒着我们，不管星空看起来多么遥不可及，我们都要持之以恒地去探索。

第68页阅读讲解

EYES UPON THE NIGHT
眺望夜空的眼睛

1 The night sky has been an endless source of fascination since the start of human history. For example, the mysterious large-eyed, bronze statues of the ancient Shu Kingdom, discovered at the Chinese archeological site at Sanxingdui, were believed to have been able to look across great distances into the stars. In reality, humans can see very little of the night sky with the naked eye. And, for a long while, people were unable to understand what they could see. Not knowing what the stars were, people in ancient times used their imaginations to create a world in the sky.
从人类有史以来，夜空就一直是让人浮想联翩的不竭源头。例如在中国考古遗址三星堆发掘的古蜀国神秘的巨目铜像，古时的人们认为它能够看到遥远的星空。事实上，人类仅凭肉眼只能看到夜空很小的一部分。并且在很长一段时间里，人们都无法理解他们所看到的事物。古时的人们并不知道星星到底是什么，所以他们便凭着想象去创造了一个空中世界。

2 Our power to investigate and thus understand space changed dramatically when the first telescope was angled at the night sky, increasing as it did the power of the human eye and enabling us to understand that the universe is far larger than was previously imaginable. The planets were seen to be worlds similar to our own, many of them even having their own moons. Soon, it was understood that the Sun was just one star among billions in the galaxy we call the Milky Way. Some 300 years later, we learnt that the Milky Way itself was just one galaxy among billions of others, spread across the blackness of space like great islands of light and matter floating in a vast cosmic ocean.
当第一台望远镜对准夜空时，我们探索进而理解太空的能力就发生了巨大变化，它不仅增强了人类肉眼观测的能力，而且也让我们明白宇宙要比之前想象的大得多。每个行星都可以被视为和我们地球类似的星球，其中许多行星甚至有它们自己的卫星。很快，我们明白太阳只不过是银河系中数十亿计的恒星中的一个。大约300年后，我们又得知，银河系只是数十亿个散落在黑色太空中的星系之一，就像漂浮在宇宙汪洋中的一座光与物质组成的大型岛屿。

3 Almost 400 years after the first Earth-based telescope was invented, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched into orbit, giving astronomers – indeed all of us – the first breathtakingly beautiful images of our universe taken from beyond Earth. Nothing in history has allowed us to see so much over such great distances, from enormous clouds of gas where stars are being born, to huge black holes, and even to new planets where we might conceivably find life. Not only that – it has also helped us to work out the age and nature of the universe, and discover the incredible fact that the universe is expanding at an ever-increasing speed.
第一个地基望远镜问世将近400年之后，哈勃空间望远镜发射入轨，不仅让宇航员，事实上还让我们所有人，都看见了来自地球之外令人叹为观止的宇宙美景。它让我们史无前例地看到了如此遥远的景观—从星体诞生的巨大气体云团，到巨型黑洞，甚至到可能会发现生命迹象的新行星。不仅如此，它还帮助我们测算宇宙的年龄并分析宇宙的本质，且发现了惊人的事实——宇宙正在以不断增加的速度扩大。

4 To see even further into the universe, many countries are now engaged in building ever more advanced telescopes. Currently, China operates the world's largest and most powerful radio telescope, the FAST telescope, completed in 2016. The 500-metre dish of the “Eye of Heaven”, as it is known, is being used in the search for dark matter, thought to be composed of subatomic particles invisible to ordinary telescopes. This vast dish also has the ability to explore regions of space billions of light years away, right at the edge of the visible universe.
为了能更加深入地观察宇宙，很多国家开始投入研发更先进的望远镜。近来，中国研发了世界最大、功能最强的射电望远镜——FAST望远镜，于2016年建成。众所周知，这个被称为“天眼”的500米口径巨盘用于探寻暗物质。暗物质被认为由亚原子粒子组成，一般望远镜是观测不到的。这个巨盘还能探索数十亿光年之外的太空领域，那里是看得到的字宙的边界。

5 The Hubble and the space telescopes constructed after it will allow us to see further and further into space. We will view stars and galaxies billions of light years away and look back at a past that was billions of years ago. Using ever-larger radio telescopes as our eyes, we will one day be able to look back to a time in the very early universe, before the existence of light. But the human quest for knowledge reaches even beyond that. So much of the universe remains unexplored that we are still close to the start of this incredible journey of discovery.
哈勃望远镜以及在它之后建成的太空望远镜将使我们能看见更加遥远的太空。我们将能观察几十亿光年外的星体和星系，回看数十亿年之前的过去。终将有一天，我们会使用更巨大的射电望远镜，当作人类之眼，回看在光产生之前的字宙的最早时期。但人类对知识的渴望不止于此。宇宙还有很多的未知领域，我们才刚刚接近这段奇幻发现之旅的起点。