英語聽力文摘490 最遙遠的距離

對于外太空,親,你知道多少呢?旅行者號,你知道嗎?太陽風(fēng),你知道嗎……如果你的答案是no,那我們都是一樣的哦,宇宙太奇妙,需要一代代人不斷去探索.今天我們就來講講我們的太陽系……

The Real Final Frontier

Don: You know what amazes me? Voyager!

Yaël: Me too! Did you see the one were seventh of nine gets a face-lift?

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.

Y: The Termination Shock? You sure this isn't a sci-fi?

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.

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.

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.

Y: That is cool!

真正的邊界

Don: 你知道是什么東西讓我大開眼界嗎?Voyager!

Yaël: 我也是呢。你看到被做了大幅度改造的那一期了嗎?

D: 我說的不是電視節(jié)目，是真的東西——美國航空航天局(NASA)26年前發(fā)射的旅行者號探測器。在飛出太陽系之前，數(shù)年來，旅行者號不斷地傳回太陽系內(nèi)讓人嘆為觀止的圖片?，F(xiàn)在，旅行者號距離地球非常遙遠，相當(dāng)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: 極限?你確定這不是在講科幻故事?

D: 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(xué)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。

一個就是我們的Termination Shock，由于深層空間內(nèi)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(fēng)”——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(fēng)最終會在這里完全停下來。

旅行者號探測器現(xiàn)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: 真的很酷呢!