英語聽力文摘 UFO來襲！
“飛碟”來襲
June.Nineteen sixty-nine, not one airliner but two, plus the pilot of an Air National Guard fighter plane, report being harassed by a team of UFOs. One man estimates the glowing ships have come within a few hundred feet. The pilot of the fighter plane even declares a near-collision.
What were these UFOs really? It turned out they were fragments of a meteor coming apart in the upper atmosphere. Now here's the most interesting part: the meteor fragments were at least one hundred and twenty five miles from the planes. How could you possibly think something over a hundred miles away was about to hit you?
Objects in the sky confuse our perceptual abilities. With no visual cues to help calculate distance, our brains rely on size and speed instead. How? By using a simple fact: far-away things look like they are going slower than close-up things.
You may have noticed this when driving: those distant phone poles pass sluggishly while the ones on the road go zooming by. In a blank white sky, our brains default to a simple strategy: the bigger it looks and the faster it goes, the closer it probably is.
This is a smart way to proceed, and it generally works. Still, our perception can be fouled by rare situations in which we find ourselves looking at something far away that nevertheless moves extremely fast, such as an incoming meteor.
At thousands of miles an hour, that flaming object speeds across your field of vision, and your brain can easily conclude it must be much closer than it is,maybe even about to abduct you.
“1969年6月”、“兩架飛機”、“外加一駕駛戰(zhàn)斗機的空軍國民警衛(wèi)隊飛行員”-----一群不明飛行物讓人們覺得很困擾!有人估測那些發(fā)光的飛船已經來到了距離他們數百英尺以內。戰(zhàn)斗機的飛行員甚至還宣稱跟它有近距離碰觸。
這些不明飛行物真正是什么呢?事實證明，它們是流星在高層大氣瓦解后的碎片。最不可思議的是：流星的碎片距離飛機至少有125公里，那么人怎么可能會覺得在100多公里以外的東西會碰撞他呢?
天空中的物體會混淆我們的感知能力。沒有視覺提示的幫助，我們的大腦就會依賴于(該物體的)大小的速度來計算距離。怎么來計算呢? 通過一個很簡單的道理：遠處的東西運動起來看起比近處的東西慢。
你或許會在開車時有這種感覺：遠處的電線桿移動的很慢，而路邊的電線桿則移動的很快。在空曠的白色天空中，我們的大腦默認了一個簡單的道理：看起來越大、運動的越快的東西，距離我們就越近。
這是一個很聰明的方法，而且它通常都會起到作用。然而，在少有的情況下，我們的感知也會出錯。例如，我們在看到一些距離很遠但移動極快的東西的時候,如一顆靠近的流星。
發(fā)光的流星以一小時數千公里的速度穿過你的視野，你的大腦很容易覺得它離你比實際距離要近得多?；蛟S它是來綁架你的!
注釋：
UFO：不明飛行物(俗稱飛碟)，Unidentified Flying Object的縮寫
upper atmosphere: 高層大氣,指距地面85 km以上的大氣層
phone pole: 電線桿，同telephone pole
