英文名称:Voyager To the Final Frontier
年代:2012
推荐:千部英美剧台词本阅读
时间 | 英文 | 中文 |
---|---|---|
[00:09] | The instinct to explore is one of the qualities that defines us | 探索世界的本能 |
[00:13] | as human beings. | 是人类独具的特质 |
[00:14] | It’s propelled us across vast oceans | 它激励我们穿越广阔无垠的海洋 |
[00:18] | and to every corner of every continent. | 踏遍每块大陆的每个角落 |
[00:22] | But far, far away from these shores, two tiny spacecraft | 在距海岸非常遥远的地方 两个小小的航天器 |
[00:27] | are lifting this spirit of exploration to extraordinary levels. | 将探索精神发挥到了极致 |
[00:32] | For three and a half decades, | 它们连续35年 |
[00:34] | they’ve been investigating the outer reaches of our solar system. | 探测太阳系空间外缘地区 |
[00:39] | They are the Voyagers. | 这就是旅行者号 |
[00:43] | Voyager was the right spacecraft at the right time, | 它们生逢其时 |
[00:48] | when a huge amount of stuff was waiting to be discovered | 当宇宙中有极多未知之物 有待发现之时 |
[00:51] | and Voyager was capable of discovering it. | 旅行者号恰能满足这一需求 |
[00:54] | Voyager was the seminal mission of the past 50 years. | 旅行者号是过去50年里 最具创意的太空任务 |
[00:58] | It represents the golden age of space exploration. | 是太空探索黄金时代的象征 |
[01:01] | The Voyager journey has been driven | 人类竭尽全力,用最卓越的成就 |
[01:05] | by remarkable human endeavour and achievement. | 推动着旅行者号的旅程 |
[01:09] | They’ve been a window into worlds almost beyond imagination. | 它们是通向超乎想象世界的窗口 |
[01:16] | And they’ve have helped unlock the secrets of our solar system. | 太阳系的许多奥秘已由它们揭开 |
[01:24] | For many of us, they’re probably best known for carrying | 旅行者号最著名之处在于 |
[01:26] | a kind of message in a bottle. | 它携带了一种瓶中信 |
[01:29] | A record of humanity here on Earth, | 一张存放地球上人类信息的唱片 |
[01:31] | meant for any extra terrestrial civilisation that may find them. | 用于向可能发现它们的外星文明 提供信息 |
[01:34] | Each spacecraft carries a golden disc. | 每艘探测器携带一张金盘 |
[01:38] | It holds a snapshot of humanity, a dispatch to the stars. | 它携带着人类的剪影 是派向星空的信使 |
[01:43] | ‘Hello from the children of planet Earth.’ | 来自地球之子的问候 |
[01:48] | And now the Voyager mission is about to cross the final frontier. | 旅行者号即将穿越最终边界 |
[01:52] | They are the first objects built by humans | 这是人类制造的首批 |
[01:56] | ever to pass beyond the solar system and into the galaxy beyond. | 能冲出太阳系 进入银河系的航天器 |
[02:01] | This is the tale of the two most intrepid explorers | 本片将讲述有史以来 |
[02:03] | in our planet’s history. | 地球上最彪悍的 两个探测器的传奇故事 |
[02:08] | This is the Voyager story. | 旅行者号的故事 |
[02:14] | 旅行者号探测器 冲出太阳系 | |
[02:27] | Right, here we go. 1977, | 好,让我们开始吧 |
[02:28] | a good year for music. | 1977年,正是音乐的黄金年代 |
[02:32] | The question is, what do you start with? | 那么,从哪里开始呢? |
[02:36] | Do you go with a crowd pleaser or do you go with your favourite track? | 你是喜欢追星 还是愿意听你喜欢的唱片? |
[02:41] | MUSIC: “Never Going Back Again” by Fleetwood Mac | 音乐:弗利特伍德.马克 永不归来 注:弗利特伍德.马克乐团是美国加州 最具代表性的摇滚乐团之一 以明亮、轻快的加州摇滚风著名 |
[02:46] | Brilliant. | 太棒了 |
[02:51] | # She broke down and let me in… # | 歌词:她屈服了,让我进来… |
[02:54] | It’s 1977, and Fleetwood Mac have just released Rumours. | 1977年,弗利特伍德・马克刚刚 发行了《谣言》专辑 |
[02:59] | The world feels like a different place. | 世界好象变得和以前不一样了 |
[03:02] | ..of the United States… | 在美国 |
[03:04] | Jimmy Carter is the new American president. | 吉米・卡特成了美国新总统 |
[03:09] | And Elvis has just died. | 猫王刚死 |
[03:11] | The cause of death is cardiac arrhythmia. | 死因是心律失常 |
[03:15] | And technologically, it’s a million miles from today. | 当时的技术水平和今天比 差了十万八千里 |
[03:20] | A new company called Apple Computers has just been founded. | 苹果电脑公司刚成立 |
[03:26] | # I was strolling on the moon one day. # | 某天,我在月亮上散步 注:原歌名The Fountain in the Park 作者Ed Haley。阿波罗17登月时, NASA宇航员哈里森.施密特带头唱 这句词,其它人跟着唱 |
[03:30] | And it’s not long since the final Apollo mission landed on the moon. | 最后一次阿波罗登月计划刚刚结束 |
[03:33] | ‘One of the most proud moments of my life.’ | 我生命中最值得骄傲的时刻 |
[03:35] | And this new technological confidence has fuelled | 对新技术发展的强烈自信 还带来了副产品 |
[03:38] | something else – a renewed interest in science fiction. | 大家对科幻片重燃热情 |
[03:41] | The public has gone crazy for films like Star Wars | 公众狂热追捧电影《星球大战》 |
[03:45] | and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. | 《第三类接触》等 |
[03:49] | And this combination of breakthrough technology and exciting | 技术上的突破以及够刺激的科幻片 |
[03:55] | science fiction has helped to inspire a surprising project. | 使一份让人啧啧称奇的计划出了炉 |
[04:05] | Because in August 1977, NASA began one of the greatest adventures | 1977年,NASA启动了太空飞行史上 |
[04:09] | in the history of spaceflight. | 最伟大的冒险 |
[04:11] | “Three, two, one, zero.” | 三、二、一、零 |
[04:18] | Here were two unmanned space probes, | 两艘无人驾驶太空探测器 升入太空执行任务 |
[04:20] | attempting something straight out of an Arthur C Clarke story. | 这和阿瑟・C・克拉克的太空科幻 小说描述的情景几乎如出一辙 |
[04:33] | Their mission – to explore the outer planets of the solar system… | 它们的任务是- 探索太阳系远端空间 |
[04:39] | ..Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. | 木星、土星、天王星、海王星 |
[04:44] | Their first encounter with Jupiter would be two years | 它们首先到达的是木星 需要花两年 |
[04:48] | and half a billion miles away. | 得飞行五亿英里 |
[04:52] | The two spacecraft were now heading on their epic journey. | 它们的传奇旅程正在展开 |
[04:57] | But the story of the Voyager mission began almost 20 years earlier. | 旅行者号的故事开始于约此前20年 |
[05:09] | To uncover its origins, I’ve come to California, | 为了追根溯源 我赶到了加利福尼亚 |
[05:12] | to find out how it all started. | 开始了解所有这一切如何开始 |
[05:20] | Today, it’s really easy to take the successes of these remarkable | 以现在的眼光看 旅行号大获成功理所应当 |
[05:23] | missions for granted. But in the years preceding Voyager, | 不过在旅行者号计划 开始之前的那些年里 |
[05:26] | simply getting to the outer planets was thought to be impossible. | 大家认为要到达外行星 都是不可能的 |
[05:35] | The first object launched into orbit was Sputnik 1. | 第一个发射入轨的航天器 是斯普特尼克一号 (苏联于1957年发射) |
[05:43] | And from then on, space scientists became obsessed with journeying | 从那时起,太空科学家们就越发 喜欢让航天器飞得更远 |
[05:46] | ever further from Earth, exploring the far reaches of our solar system. | 探索太阳系的边远地区 |
[05:53] | Yet no spacecraft could get much further than Mars… | 然而,还没有航天器能飞到比 火星更远的地方 |
[05:57] | and even that was a struggle. | 飞到火星本身就很是艰难 |
[05:59] | The simple fact was we just didn’t have a rocket | 原因很简单,我们的火箭推力较小 |
[06:02] | that was powerful enough to actually to be able | 不足以使航天器摆脱太阳引力 |
[06:04] | to escape the gravitational pull | 逃离太阳系 |
[06:06] | of the sun and be able to get to the outer solar system. | 从而进入外太阳系范围 |
[06:09] | And even if we did, the vast distances involved would mean | 即使有了大推力火箭 要飞越极远的距离到达海王星 |
[06:14] | that a trip to Neptune would take half a lifetime – 30 or 40 years. | 仍需要花半辈子时间 也就是30或40年 |
[06:19] | The outer planets were simply out of reach. | 外行星简直是可望而不可及 |
[06:26] | But back in 1961, here in California, | 时光回到1961年的加里福尼亚 |
[06:30] | one man thought he might know how to bring these planets into reach. | 有人认为,他可能知道到达这些 行星的方法 |
[06:35] | He was a brilliant maths graduate, and his name was Michael Minovitch. | 他是个出色的数学研究生 名叫迈克尔・米诺维奇 |
[06:42] | My father taught me how to do arithmetic | 大约在我四、五年级的时候 |
[06:45] | when I was like in 4th or 5th grade. | 我爸爸就教我如何做算术题 |
[06:47] | And then I learned the language – the secret of science. | 然后我就了解了这一语言 -科学的秘密 |
[06:52] | And the secret of science is mathematics. | 科学的秘密就是数学 |
[06:57] | At the age of only 25, while he was still studying | 在他年仅25岁的时,他还是 加州大学洛杉矶分校的一名博士生 |
[07:01] | for his PhD at UCLA, Minovitch set himself the challenge | 米诺维奇给了自己一个挑战 |
[07:05] | of solving the most difficult problem in space exploration. | 他要搞定太空探索中最难的难题 |
[07:11] | It was a puzzle that had stumped the world’s greatest | 数个世纪以来,这个老难题 把世界上的 |
[07:14] | mathematicians for centuries. | 数学巨擎们都难住了 |
[07:17] | It’s called the “three-body problem” – | 它叫三天体问题 |
[07:19] | body one, body two and body three. | 物体一,物体二,物体三 |
[07:25] | And it involves the fiendishly complicated task of trying | 它包含一个巨复杂的任务 |
[07:28] | to plot the trajectory of a small object, | 即要为一个小型目标 例如一个航天器 |
[07:31] | i.e. a spacecraft, as it moves throughout the solar system, | 规划它在太阳系中穿行的飞行轨道 |
[07:36] | whilst at the same time being deflected by the gravitational pull | 它在飞行时会受 |
[07:40] | of two much more massive objects, | 两个大得多的物体的引力影响 |
[07:42] | i.e. the sun and a planet. | 例如太阳和某个行星 从而发生偏航 |
[07:47] | A solution to the three-body problem, | 要解决三天体问题 |
[07:50] | the ability to predict exactly how a spacecraft passing a planet | 就得精确预测航天器在飞过 某行星之时 |
[07:54] | would have its path affected, was still beyond science… | 路径会受何种影响,不过当时的 科学水平,还解决不了此问题 |
[07:59] | until, that is, the young Minovitch came along. | 然后,年轻的米诺维奇出现了 |
[08:04] | It would have been regarded as impossibility | 我在1961年所做的事情 |
[08:07] | prior to what I did in 1961. | 之前大家都认为是不可能做到的 |
[08:16] | I was gifted being at a university that had | 我能在一所有7090型计算机 的大学工作 |
[08:20] | the 7090 computer, so that was the key. | 实在很幸福,这很关键 |
[08:24] | UCLA’s state-of-the-art IBM computer | 加州大学洛杉矶分校里的 IBM计算机顶尖设备 |
[08:27] | was the fastest on Earth at the time, | 是当时世界最快的计算机 |
[08:30] | and Minovitch put it to good use. | 米诺维奇很好地利用了 |
[08:33] | He began calculating thousands of alternative directions | 这台设备来求解此问题 |
[08:37] | and speeds, in an attempt to home-in on the solution. | 他尝试对上千个可能的方向 以及速度数据进行运算 |
[08:42] | It was a long shot – not only for the young student | 这无论对学校来说 还是对这个年轻学生而言 |
[08:45] | but also the university. | 都需要付出长久的努力 |
[08:49] | Working on a 7090 was costing 1,000 dollars an hour, | 一台7090机开机一小时 就要花1000美元 |
[08:54] | so they were dumping bushels of money into a fantastic belief | 为了一种不可思议的信任 他们砸下大把的钞票 |
[09:00] | and what was the belief? | 他们相信什么? |
[09:02] | Belief that a person that hadn’t got his PhD | 就是相信一个博士还没毕业的家伙 |
[09:05] | solved the problem that all the most advanced mathematicians in history | 能解决历史上所有数学大牛人 |
[09:11] | couldn’t solve. That meant pressure on me, and so I thought to myself, | 解决不了的问题 我有时候在想 |
[09:15] | “How could I…? | 我怎么能…? |
[09:16] | “I can’t live with myself, given this gift, knowing that there’s | 大家对我如此信任 万一算出的轨道很可能是错的 |
[09:21] | “a very strong possibility that my trajectories were not correct.” | 我会感到极其内疚 |
[09:31] | Minovitch went to the people with the most accurate data on the solar system at the time – | 米诺维奇来到位于加州萨迪纳的 国家航空航天局喷气推进实验室 |
[09:36] | NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. | 拜访拥有当时太阳系 最精确数据的专家们 |
[09:42] | They would decide if he had solved the three-body problem | 由他们来确认他到底是解决了 三天体问题 |
[09:45] | or just wasted a lot of the university’s money. | 还只是浪费了学校许多钱 |
[09:50] | They ran the tests, | 他们进行了多项测试 |
[09:51] | about four or five different trajectories types, different encounters, | 约四到五种轨道类型 多次太空相遇 |
[09:55] | and found every single one converged to the exact solution. | 实验结果是每个问题都得以 完美解决 |
[10:07] | It was a beautiful moment in mathematics. | 这真是数学的美妙时刻 |
[10:10] | By solving the three-body problem, Minovitch had discovered a way | 解决三体问题后,米诺维奇发现 |
[10:14] | to use gravity to propel a spacecraft further and faster than ever before. | 利用引力可给航天器更有力的推动 使其飞得前所未有地快 |
[10:22] | What Minovitch realised was, | 米诺维奇发现 |
[10:24] | as a spacecraft approaches the planet, | 当航天器接近行星时 |
[10:27] | it gets pulled in by its gravity, | 会被其引力吸入 |
[10:29] | and as long as it doesn’t crash into the planet, | 由于行星正以每小时上万公里 的速度沿轨道绕太阳飞行 |
[10:32] | because the planet is orbiting the sun at tens of thousands of kilometres an hour, | 因此,只要航天器不坠入行星 |
[10:39] | that spacecraft can take some of that energy and use it to get | 它就能利用这一能量获得加速 |
[10:43] | catapulted out at an increased speed further out into the solar system. | 以抛射方式离开行星并进入太阳系 |
[10:52] | With his new slingshot technique, | 米诺维奇运用引力弹弓效应 |
[10:54] | Minovitch had opened a gateway | 至少在理论上打开了 |
[10:56] | to the outer planets, at least theoretically. | 通向外行星之门 |
[11:02] | He identified hundreds of possible missions | 他负责鉴定了数百次 飞向行星的相关任务 |
[11:05] | to the planets, meticulously drawing them up in his notebooks. | 在笔记本上绘制了细致的草图 |
[11:10] | The concept that I invented, | 这是我发明的思想 |
[11:13] | and I can show you the printout, if you look here, | 我给你看这些资料 |
[11:17] | you’ll see there was no limit. I could have a sequence that was a 100 planets long, | 航天器从地球发射 一个星球接一个星球连续飞行 |
[11:22] | nonstop, planet to planet to planet, launched from Earth. | 构成的序列可长达100颗行星 且长度并无上限 |
[11:26] | And then you come to Jupiter. Jupiter, you get a nice big bounce | 航天器一路飞向木星,在木星附近 航天器能获得强大的推力 |
[11:30] | and you use that to propel yourself to Saturn, and then Saturn is | 它能借此飞向土星 |
[11:35] | a pretty darn big planet, and that will catapult you out to Pluto. | 土星实在是大得要命 它推动航天器抛离并飞向冥王星 |
[11:39] | This concept could be used to explore the whole solar system | 若用这个办法探索整个太阳系 |
[11:44] | with one launch vehicle at one time | 仅需一次发射单枚运载火箭 |
[11:46] | without any rocket propulsion at all. | 之后再不需要任何火箭推力 |
[11:53] | But buried amongst those hundreds of theoretical | 在百余条理论飞行轨道中 |
[11:56] | flight paths was one very special trajectory. | 有一条轨道很特别 |
[12:03] | And no-one, not even Minovitch, noticed its significance. | 没人注意到其重要性 即使米诺维奇也没注意到 |
[12:09] | In the summer of 1965, | 1965年夏天 |
[12:11] | right here at NASA’s JPL, another vacation student was hired | NASA(国家航空航天局) 喷气推进实验室雇了个假期学生 |
[12:15] | to number-crunch the options for a mission to the outer planets. | 他的工作是清点到达 外行星的可能线路 |
[12:19] | And his name was Gary Flandro. | 他叫加里・弗兰德罗 |
[12:23] | I was a summer student working on my degree at the time, | 我是个正攻读学位的夏季学生 |
[12:27] | so when I was given the job of looking at the outer planets, | 找到这份观察外行星工作后 |
[12:31] | I thought that was kind of make-work project – | 我感觉这是份闲差 |
[12:34] | I was being kind of kept out of the way. | 感觉自己被晾在了一边 |
[12:39] | Flandro was a young engineer, grounded in the hard realities | 弗兰得罗是位十分注重太空飞行 实际情况的脚踏实地的年轻工程师 |
[12:43] | of spaceflight, and he began to look at whether | 他开始关注三天体问题的 |
[12:46] | a solution to the three-body problem could be put to practical use. | 解决方案是否能真正付诸实施 |
[12:57] | Obviously, the first thing is to determine | 首先要确定的是 |
[12:59] | when the planets are going to be in positions where we could reach them. | 行星何时能出现 在航天器能到达的位置上 |
[13:04] | So I drew very careful maps of where the planets would be, | 我很仔细地画了一系列行星 可能出现的位置图 |
[13:09] | and one of the most important drawings was one in which | 其中最重要的一张 |
[13:11] | I drew the positions of the planets versus the date. | 是我画的和日期相关的 行星位置图 |
[13:15] | And the thing that caught my attention immediately was | 我立刻注意到 |
[13:19] | that the lines for Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune | 木星、土星、天王星 和海王星的轨道 |
[13:22] | all crossed in about the 1975-76 time period. | 在1975-76年期间会同时交叉 |
[13:27] | In other words, those four major planets were on the same side of the sun | 换句话说就是四颗主要行星同时 出现在太阳的同一侧 |
[13:31] | and in the same general position at the same time. | 并且同时出现在 大致相同的位置上 |
[13:34] | So it gave me the idea immediately that we could do | 我马上想到 |
[13:37] | all of those planets with one flight. | 通过一次飞行就能遍历 所有这些行星 |
[13:41] | This narrow window – to slingshot from one planet straight | 通过引力弹弓助推实现 行星间飞行的窗口很小 |
[13:45] | to the next – would not open again for another 176 years. | 下一个飞行窗口要隔176年 才能打开 |
[13:50] | It was too good an opportunity to miss. | 良机不可失 |
[13:59] | And so was born the idea of a Grand Tour, | 于是,当时最雄心勃勃的太空 |
[14:01] | the most ambitious space mission of its time. | 飞行任务-大旅行应运而生 注:历史上英国贵族子女有游遍 欧洲大陆的传统,称Grand Tour |
[14:05] | It would send two identical space probes to all four | 本次飞行路线相对较短 有两艘同样的航天探测器 |
[14:08] | of the solar system’s outer planets in one relatively short flight. | 飞向太阳系的四颗外行星 |
[14:14] | Such encounters promised spectacular views of these distant worlds, | 和行星的相遇使我们能 观察遥远行星上的惊人美景 |
[14:17] | planets we only knew as blurry objects through telescopes. | 之前我们只能通过望远镜看个大概 |
[14:22] | The half billion miles to Jupiter would take two years. | 到达木星要花两年时间 飞行50万英里 |
[14:27] | Then another two years to Saturn… | 另外花两年到土星 |
[14:32] | ..five more to Uranus | 再花五年多到天王星 |
[14:34] | and a final three to reach Neptune. | 最后用三年飞到冥王星 |
[14:41] | It meant the Voyagers would need to function for at least 12 years. | 也就是说,旅行者号要至少 工作12年 |
[14:46] | Yet NASA had never built a spacecraft guaranteed to last | NASA还从没造过工作寿命 |
[14:51] | longer than a few months. | 超过几个月的航天器 |
[14:53] | It was their biggest challenge yet. | 这是个巨大的挑战 |
[14:58] | Hi, John, how are you? | 你好,约翰,你怎么样? |
[15:00] | Oh, Dallas, I’m fine. Thanks for coming. | 噢,达拉斯 ,我很好,欢迎光临 |
[15:03] | And it was one which fell to a young engineer called John Casani. | 这个任务落到了一个 叫约翰・卡萨尼的年轻工程师头上 |
[15:10] | The issue was the time. It takes time to cover that distance. | 主要问题是时间 飞行这么远的距离要花时间 |
[15:13] | You’re going a long ways, and that takes time, | 长长的旅程会耗费不少时间 |
[15:16] | and the time is…can you make all these machines operate | 时间是…你能否在无人工干预 和调整的前提下 |
[15:18] | without human intervention or adjustment? | 让这些设备保持正常工作? |
[15:20] | Well, I mean… | 嗯,我的意思是 |
[15:22] | At that point in time, that was a mind-blowing thought – | 此时,有个令人兴奋的想法 |
[15:25] | how you build a spacecraft that can survive failures | 如何打造一艘能容错并能 |
[15:29] | and still keep on chugging? | 连续工作的航天器? |
[15:32] | Five years of testing and redesigning followed, | 在紧接着的五年里 |
[15:35] | as NASA’s engineers grappled with the task of building | NASA的工程师们排险克难 不断进行测试和重构 |
[15:39] | a spacecraft capable of the job. | 全力以赴打造胜任能此项 任务的航天器 |
[15:41] | And they needed to do it before 1977, | 工作必须在1977年前完成 |
[15:46] | when the launch window for this Grand Tour would close… | 否则大旅行的发射窗口就会关闭 |
[15:49] | at least for another 176 years. | 新窗口要至少再等176年 |
[15:52] | The thing that was scary was that it was going to be based | 这一任务使用了大量新技术 实现了 |
[15:56] | on a lot of new technology, so it was a technological leap. | 技术上的飞跃,这点有些令人担心 |
[16:03] | We thought we could do it – nobody else did. | 只有我们才能做到,别人完成不了 |
[16:09] | They’d cracked the mathematics, | 他们已经解决了数学问题 |
[16:12] | they were confident tackling the technology, | 他们也有信心搞定技术问题 |
[16:13] | but there was one more thing they needed – money. | 可是他们还需要样东西,就是钱 |
[16:18] | NASA still lacked the funding to support the mission beyond Saturn. | NASA没有足够的资金支持 超越土星的太空飞行计划 |
[16:21] | To ensure further funding, the public and Congress would need | 为得到进一步的资金支持 |
[16:26] | regular reminders of their achievements. | 他们需要向国会和大众定期 发布研究成果 |
[16:30] | The Voyagers needed a voice, someone who could turn their saga | 旅行者号需要有一个发言人 将它的传奇式 |
[16:33] | of celestial exploration into something that all Americans could share. | 太空探索历程转述给全体美国人民 |
[16:37] | They turned to a young member of the Voyager team | 他们找到了旅行者号开发团队中 |
[16:41] | with a passion for storytelling – | 一位特别爱讲故事的小伙子 |
[16:43] | his name was Carl Sagan. | 他叫卡尔・萨根 |
[16:45] | Wouldn’t it be lovely | 如果能和独立产生和 |
[16:48] | to make contact with another civilisation | 进化的其它文明进行接触 |
[16:51] | that has arisen and evolved independently? | 不是很有意思么? |
[16:54] | Aware that the Voyagers would head away from us forever, | 旅行者号将永远离我们而去 |
[16:57] | Sagan proposed an extraordinary idea. | 萨根有一个非同寻常的主意 |
[17:02] | On board each spacecraft, he suggested placing | 他建议在每艘航天器上 |
[17:04] | a message from Earth – | 放置来自地球的信息 |
[17:07] | an idea which would capture public imagination. | 以此博取公众的关注 激发公众的想象 |
[17:10] | Attached to each spacecraft is a fairly elaborate message | 每艘航天器上都搭载了精心挑选的 |
[17:16] | in the form of a phonograph record and instructions for playing. | 唱片及播放指南 |
[17:19] | It was a gold-plated copper record – | 这是一张镀金铜唱片 |
[17:22] | a gift of recordings and greetings | 一份地球居民赠给 |
[17:25] | from the inhabitants of this planet to those of some other. | 其它文明的录音和问候 |
[17:30] | ‘Bonjour, tout le monde…’ | 法语:你好,全世界 |
[17:32] | GREETINGS IN JAPANESE AND RUSSIAN | 日语和俄语的问候语 |
[17:35] | Each disc contained a combination of sounds | 每张唱片都有声音和 |
[17:39] | and pictures and above all music – | 图片,特别是还有音乐 |
[17:42] | from Chuck Berry to Azerbaijani bagpipes and Johann Sebastian Bach. | 有查克・贝里的音乐,阿塞拜疆 风笛音乐以及巴赫的古典音乐 注:查克・贝里是“原始”的摇滚 音乐家之一,其音乐风格是将 布鲁斯和乡村音乐相结合 |
[17:48] | Sagan argued that sometime, somewhere, | 萨根说,某时某地 |
[17:52] | another civilisation may find one of the Voyagers. | 其它文明有可能找到某艘旅行者号 |
[17:56] | The record’s purpose was to tell them | 这张唱片用于让他们了解 |
[17:58] | what kind of creatures had sent it. | 唱片发送者的情况 |
[18:01] | How much will they know about us, what we’re really like? | 他们对我们有何了解? 我们究竟像什么? |
[18:06] | To communicate that, music is a way of expression of human feelings, | 音乐能表达人类的情感、欲望 |
[18:11] | desires, passions, hopes. | 激情和希望,正适于沟通 |
[18:14] | In some sense, all the performers | 从某种程度来看 这张唱片收录的所有作曲者 |
[18:16] | and composers on this record will live forever. | 和演奏者都将永生 |
[18:20] | With their golden records on board, | 金唱片登上旅行者号的消息 |
[18:22] | and the public’s imagination fired up, the Grand Tour was underway. | 使公众为之激动不已 大旅行已然开始上路 |
[18:27] | But no-one could know if the mission was going to deliver results | 旅行者号到达首个行星 |
[18:31] | until the Voyagers reached their first planet, | 要用两年时间 |
[18:34] | and that would take two long years. | 在此之前没人知道本次任务 能否将探测结果回传 |
[18:51] | April 1979, and two years after launch, | 1979年4月 旅行者号发射后第二年 |
[18:55] | Mission Control was steering the Voyagers towards their first rendezvous. | 控制中心正将旅行者号 导向第一个会合点 |
[19:00] | It was with the largest planet in our solar system – Jupiter. | 它就是木星,太阳系的最大行星 |
[19:09] | Before Voyager, the best images astronomers had of Jupiter and its moons | 在旅行者号飞临之前 天文学家只有一些木星 |
[19:13] | were fuzzy photographs. | 及其卫星的模糊照片 |
[19:16] | Could the Voyagers change all that? | 旅行者号能改变这一切吗? |
[19:19] | I think we all felt that we were in the tradition of Galileo, | 我觉得我们正追寻着伽利略的传统 |
[19:22] | who was the first to see the moons of Jupiter, | 他是首位发现木星卫星的天文学家 |
[19:25] | and the first to apply an instrument | 也是首位使用仪器 |
[19:28] | to increase our ability to observe the universe. | 增进人类观察宇宙能力的科学家 |
[19:31] | Voyager was just the latest tool which we, as a civilisation, | 旅行者号是人类文明 |
[19:35] | had managed to devise. | 发明的最新工具 |
[19:37] | And, of course, the tool was so powerful that we saw things | 这一工具非常先进 |
[19:40] | nobody had seen before and that nobody had imagined we would see. | 我们能看到无人见过的景象 也没人能想象我们能见到什么 |
[19:45] | For the man who’d first proposed the mission, it was a thrilling moment. | 对最先提议执行此任务的人而言 现在真是一个令人兴奋的时刻 |
[19:49] | That first encounter with Jupiter was a marvellous… | 对我来说 首次和木星相遇,感觉太棒了 |
[19:53] | time for me, especially the approach shots showing the planet | 尤其是通过近距离拍摄的照片 我们可以观察到土星的旋转 |
[19:56] | revolving and watching the great red spot revolving getting closer | 逐步接近并观察 那些巨大的旋转红斑 |
[20:00] | and closer till finally we could see that indeed this was | 最后我们发现 |
[20:04] | the top of a large storm. | 它们是大型风暴的顶部 |
[20:06] | As a child, I had studied that and wondered if that was a storm | 我小时候就在想 那些有可能是风暴 |
[20:10] | or was that an island floating in an ocean – it was very difficult to know – | 也可能是海中飘浮的岛屿 不过很难知道确切答案 |
[20:14] | and, finally, the answers were there before our eyes. | 终于,答案就在眼前 |
[20:19] | At the time, Voyager scientist Andy Ingersoll revealed | 旅行者号团队的科学家安迪 英格索尔将此发现告诉了 |
[20:22] | these discoveries to a BBC Horizon crew. | BBC地平线纪录片摄制组 |
[20:25] | The movie here shows pictures of Jupiter taken every 10 hours. | 我们每10小时拍摄一张木星照片 并用它们合成一部短片 |
[20:30] | The shutter was snapped, then this is played in a sequence over and over again | 先拍好照片,然后将照片 顺序循环播放 |
[20:34] | so you can see motion. | 然后你就能看到运动画面了 |
[20:36] | And this rapid mixing makes the existence of permanent | 不同的化学特性会固定表现出 |
[20:39] | different-coloured, different chemical features | 不同的色彩 在进行快速视频合成后 |
[20:42] | even more mysterious. | 它们使木星看上去更为神秘莫测 |
[20:48] | See, I’m a weather man, I’m an atmospheric scientist, | 我是一名天气预报员 也是一位大气科学家 |
[20:52] | and we knew about the 300-year-old storms, the great red spot, | 我们都知道,在地球上任何人都 能观测到的大红斑 |
[20:56] | because everyone had been looking at it from Earth, | 其实是已存在了300年的风暴 |
[20:59] | and for me the surprise was, when we got up close, | 抵近观察的时候,我觉得很奇怪 |
[21:01] | we saw that the atmosphere was just churning and turbulent, | 大气层一片汹涌,并不断搅动 |
[21:04] | and it made this 300-year-old storm all the more mysterious, | 这一现象让已经存在300年的 风暴显得更加神秘 |
[21:10] | cos how could it go on in the midst of all this turbulence? | 在这样的乱流之中 风暴究竟如何一直维持到现在? |
[21:16] | We all approached Jupiter with great expectation and we all had our grandiose theories | 当旅行者号飞近木星时,大家都 对此抱有热望,都有不同的高论 |
[21:22] | about what we were going to see, but, of course, Jupiter fooled us all. | 都在预测我们即将看到的景象 当然,木星把大家都愚弄了 |
[21:26] | There was some bizarre behaviour. | 木星的状况很怪异 |
[21:28] | Little clouds moving along and being swept up in the great red spot | 小块的云在空中飘荡 被大红斑吞噬 |
[21:32] | and then being… | 然后 |
[21:33] | it would spit them out again. | 它又会把云重新吐出来 |
[21:37] | Other clouds would roll along next to one another, | 还有一些云飘来飘去,彼此接近 |
[21:40] | coalesce into a single cloud and then break apart again. | 合成一块云,然后再次分开 |
[21:48] | Voyager’s pictures suggested that Jupiter’s wildly churning atmosphere | 从旅行者拍摄的照片可以看出 木星的大气疯狂搅动 |
[21:52] | seemed to be driven by heat from deep within the planet. | 其能量来源也许是 来自行星深处的热量 |
[21:57] | Scientists speculated that it was came from a hot, | 科学家们猜测,能量来自于 木星高温、高压的 |
[22:00] | high-pressure core of metallic hydrogen. | 液态金属态氢内核 |
[22:05] | Such a centre also seemed to be powering an immense magnetic field, | 木星内核拥有强大的磁场 |
[22:10] | 10,000 times stronger than Earth’s. | 是地球的一万倍 注:木星表面磁场强度3~14高斯2013/2/10 |
[22:13] | And for the Voyagers, that was a problem. | 对旅行者号来说,这有点麻烦 |
[22:17] | Because this magnetism creates lethal radiation belts, | 因为磁场产生了致命的辐射带 |
[22:21] | which can scramble the computers of any spacecraft that gets too close. | 任何航天器如何靠得过近 其电脑就会工作失常 |
[22:31] | Yet getting close was exactly what was needed. | 不过大家恰恰希望旅行者号 能靠得再近些 |
[22:34] | The Voyager team wanted to send Voyager 1 to explore Io, | 旅行者号团队想要让它探测 |
[22:37] | one of Jupiter’s four largest moons. | 木星的四大卫星之一:木卫一伊俄 注:木卫一别名Io,来自希腊 神话中的水泽神女伊俄 |
[22:41] | And it was the nearest of all of them to the planet. | 木卫一是几个卫星中离木星最近的 |
[22:45] | The spacecraft was designed to withstand | 根据设计,航天器 能承受一定剂量的辐射 |
[22:47] | a certain total dose of radiation, and fully 50% of that expected dose | 在旅行者号接近并 飞越木卫一时 |
[22:52] | was going to occur as we approached and flew by Io. | 其所承受的辐射是 额定剂量的50% |
[23:02] | As Voyager 1 approached, | 在旅行者一号飞近时 |
[23:04] | it sent back recordings of the radio signal generated by the radiation. | 它将由辐射产生的无线电信号 录音发回地球 |
[23:09] | LOUD, DISTORTED WHISTLES | 乱七八糟的啸叫声 |
[23:14] | These are the real sounds of the onslaught. | 货真价实的辐射袭击声 |
[23:23] | Back at JPL, the Voyager team worried whether it could withstand | 回到喷气推进实验室,旅行者团队 忧心仲仲,不清楚它能否承受 |
[23:27] | such an assault, and whether the gamble would pay off. | 如此规模的辐射袭击 这场赌博能否有回报 |
[23:35] | Voyager navigation engineer Linda Hyder was the first to find out. | 旅行者号的导航工程师琳达・海德 首先看到了结果 |
[23:41] | I came in about nine o’clock that morning to the navigation area, | 我在当天早晨9点到达导航区 |
[23:45] | and the tape with the pictures the spacecraft had taken | 前一天航天器拍摄的照片磁带 |
[23:48] | the day before was on my desk. | 放在我桌子上 |
[23:50] | I put them on the computer system and I displayed them. | 我把磁带放入计算机并显示图片 |
[23:53] | And I could see that Io, the moon of Io, was a crescent, | 看到了木卫一伊俄 |
[23:57] | as very often our own moon is a crescent in the night sky, | 和夜空中的月亮一样,呈新月状 |
[24:00] | and I went and enhanced the brightness, | 我把图像加亮了些 |
[24:03] | and there appeared beside Io an object, a huge object, | 我发现在伊俄边上有一个巨大物体 |
[24:06] | and completely captured my attention. | 非常引人注目 |
[24:12] | It looked like another moon peeking out from behind Io. | 它看上去像是在伊俄后面 探出头来的另一颗卫星 |
[24:20] | But there was no other moon… and no fault in the camera. | 不过这不是另一颗卫星 照相机也工作正常 |
[24:24] | Linda decided this object had to be part of Io. | 琳达判断它是伊俄的一部分 |
[24:28] | And, in fact, that was very hard to accept, | 这个物体尺寸巨大 |
[24:32] | because the size of this object was enormous. | 很难让人相信它是木卫一的一部分 |
[24:44] | And when I explored it, | 我仔细研究了一下 |
[24:46] | I was able to find that this large, strange object, | 我发现这个巨大的怪东西 |
[24:50] | it was exactly coincident and fell over a heart-shaped feature on Io. | 完全是巧合,它正好落在 木卫一上的一块心形区内 |
[24:55] | What I had discovered was the huge plume of a volcanic eruption, | 在木卫一表面 巨大的羽毛状火山喷出物 |
[24:59] | arising 270km over the surface of Io and raining back down onto it. | 喷射高度高达270公里 然后像雨点一样落回卫星表面 |
[25:08] | So I had discovered the first ever volcanic eruption ever seen | 我在地球之外的另一个地方 |
[25:12] | on another world besides the Earth. | 首次发现了火山喷发 |
[25:21] | The gamble of being exposed to such radiation had paid off. | 让旅行者一号暴露于辐射下 的这场赌博有了回报 |
[25:26] | Voyager 1 had revealed that Io, the closest of Jupiter’s large moons, | 旅行者一号发现 木星的最大卫星木卫一 |
[25:32] | was more geologically active than the Earth. | 从地质学角度看比地球更为活跃 |
[25:35] | Jupiter’s enormous gravity stretches and squeezes the moon, | 木星巨大的引力时而拉伸它 时而挤压它 |
[25:40] | forcing its core to heat up and its interior to stay molten. | 使其内核升温,卫星内部呈液态 |
[25:44] | We found that Io had eight active volcanoes on it, | 木卫一上有八个活动的火山 |
[25:47] | the most volcanically active body in the solar system, | 是太阳系中拥有 最活跃活火山的天体 |
[25:50] | and it’s just a small moon, and that was so unexpected. | 出乎意料的是 它只是一颗小卫星而已 |
[25:55] | And it was such a shift in our paradigm | 这使我们对太阳系外层空间模式 |
[25:58] | about what was going on in the outer solar system | 的认识有了重大改变 |
[26:00] | where it’s very cold and, presumably, we thought very dead. | 原来我们推测那里极冷 并且一片死寂 |
[26:04] | So in that sense, it characterised for us | 从这个意义上看,当我们看见那些 |
[26:07] | the sense of seeing things that we hadn’t really thought about, | 当我们看见那些连想都没想过的 东西时,感觉就是如此不同 |
[26:11] | and that was in fact very characteristic | 本次飞行任务的其它部分 |
[26:13] | of the rest of the mission. | 同样非同寻常 |
[26:19] | And that wasn’t all. | 这还不是全部 |
[26:21] | As the Voyagers flew by Jupiter’s other moons, | 当旅行者号飞过木星的其它卫星时 |
[26:24] | more discoveries began pouring in. | 新的观测结果不断涌现 |
[26:27] | These exotic satellite worlds of rock and ice needed | 这些独特的卫星由岩石和冰构成 |
[26:31] | a new expertise to interpret them. | 要了解它们、解析它们 需要到全新的专业技术知识 |
[26:34] | The Voyager team had to react quickly, | 旅行者团队迅速作出了反应 |
[26:37] | bringing on board more planetary geologists. | 邀请了部分行星地质学家加入 |
[26:40] | There’s a twin, a pair there, and then there’s… | 那里有两个,那里有一对 那里有… |
[26:43] | What about the relief from the cracks? Shouldn’t the cracks… | 裂缝处的地形如何? 裂缝不是应该… |
[26:46] | In order for there… | 为了那里… |
[26:48] | ‘All of the scientists, with the exception | 这里除了我之外 |
[26:50] | ‘of me, were atmospheric scientists and astronomers.’ | 其它都是大气科学家和天文学家 |
[26:53] | And, in fact, it wasn’t until we really recognised the exotic variety | 我们意识到这些卫星具有 |
[26:58] | and diversity of the satellites, | 独特的多样性和差异性 |
[27:00] | that geologists were really added to the Voyager team. | 于是地质学家加入了旅行者号团队 |
[27:05] | And in fact the satellites, in my view, | 在我看来 |
[27:07] | became the star of the whole Voyager experience. | 卫星是旅行者号整个旅程中的明星 |
[27:16] | Voyager’s encounter with Jupiter was a triumph, | 旅行号和木星的相遇大获成功 |
[27:19] | and Carl Sagan hosted a televised evening to celebrate. | 卡尔・萨根主持了一场 电视直播的庆功晚会 |
[27:24] | It’s impossible to look at these pictures with only | 我们不能仅以科学家的 思维方式去观察 |
[27:28] | a scientific cast of mind, because they are simply exquisite. | 这些精致无比的照片 |
[27:32] | And this is part of the remarkable historical transition, | 它们是二十世纪末发生的 |
[27:36] | which is happening in the late 20th century in which we are, | 重大历史转折的见证 |
[27:40] | for the first time, learning the realities, not the myths, | 以前,我们只能根据神话进行想象 |
[27:44] | of our little swimming hole in space. | 现在,我们了解的是太空中 这个小小游泳水塘的真实情况 |
[27:47] | On a night like tonight, our eyes, our minds, our souls, | 今晚,我们的全部身心 |
[27:53] | our blood are moving out through the universe. | 在浩瀚的宇宙中驰骋 |
[27:57] | We’re part of history, | 我们正在创造历史 |
[27:59] | and that means that we have to replace the old myths with new ones. | 崭新的传奇将替代古老的神话 |
[28:06] | With Jupiter behind them, the two Voyager spacecraft headed | 两搜旅行者号探测器告别了木星 |
[28:09] | further out into inter-planetary space. | 向着更远的行星际空间飞去 |
[28:15] | It would be more than two years | 在本次大旅行期间 |
[28:17] | before they reached the next destination | 它们会在两年多之后到达 |
[28:19] | on their Grand Tour – the planet Saturn, almost a billion miles away. | 下一个目的地,十亿英里外的土星 |
[28:26] | The technology and engineering needed to accomplish such long-distance, | 用于实现如此长距离、长时间 |
[28:32] | long-duration spaceflight, was truly remarkable. | 太空飞行任务的工程技术非常先进 |
[28:36] | The spacecraft needed to be designed to cope with anything | 航天器将飞行数十亿英里 |
[28:39] | their multi-billion-mile journey would throw at them. | 它必须能对付旅程中 遇到的任何问题 |
[28:44] | Luckily, you don’t need to travel 11 billion miles to get up close and personal | 幸运的是,你不必飞行110亿英里 |
[28:49] | and really appreciate the extraordinary engineering of Voyager, | 去近距离亲身体会旅行者号非 凡的工程技术 |
[28:52] | because there’s another one a little bit closer to home. | 另外有一个“旅行者号”离家不远 |
[28:57] | When JPL built the Voyagers, | 喷气推进实验室 在建造旅行者号之时 |
[28:59] | they also assembled a couple of extra models from flight spares, | 他们用飞行备件组装了 几个额外模块 |
[29:03] | as an Earth-bound reminder of their visionary 1970s technology. | 将其留在地球上,作为七十年代 技术的实样纪念品 |
[29:23] | Dominating the entire structure is this great communications dish | 在旅行者号整体结构顶部是一个 巨大的碟形通讯天线 |
[29:28] | that’s beaming back to Earth all that data that the Voyager spacecrafts collect | 负责将旅行者号飞行期间收集的 所有数据向太空发送 |
[29:32] | across billions of miles of empty space. | 信号在穿越数十亿英里的 广阔空间后最终传回地球 |
[29:35] | Incredibly, the power of this signal was designed to be a mere 20 watts – | 不可思议的是 这个信号功率仅20瓦 |
[29:41] | about the same as a fridge light bulb. | 和一只冰箱灯泡功率一样 |
[29:44] | And situated on this arm, quite sensibly far away from the spacecraft, | 旅行者号的电源放在这根支架上 |
[29:48] | is Voyager’s power supply. | 故意远离航天器本体 |
[29:50] | It’s a plutonium-fuelled generator that can power the spacecraft in deep space | 当时太阳能技术仍不实用 就靠这套钚动力电池 |
[29:55] | when solar power just isn’t an option. | 为深空中的航天器供电 |
[29:59] | And over on the other side, sticking out on another boom, | 另一端的支架上突出来的是 |
[30:02] | perhaps most excitingly, this is Voyager’s eyes. | 是最独特旅行者之眼 |
[30:05] | This great collection of cameras that revealed new worlds for the first time, | 这组相机为我们展现了 一个崭新的世界 |
[30:10] | and let us see the solar system with greater clarity than ever before. | 首次让我们以前所未有的 清晰度观察太阳系 |
[30:21] | 1981, and two years on from the stunning images of Jupiter, | 1981年,距离旅行者号拍摄 到极美的木星照片之时已有两年 |
[30:25] | the public were queuing up to get their first clear views | 大家正在排队观看首次发布的 |
[30:29] | of the mysterious ringed planet, Saturn. | 带光环的行星,土星的清晰照片 |
[30:32] | MUSIC: “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey | 音乐:一定要相信 演唱者朱尼 |
[30:38] | The Voyager team had prepared in meticulous detail for the encounter, | 旅行者团队为本次相遇 进行了精心准备 |
[30:42] | as they knew they had just a tiny window to get it right. | 他们明白这次的时间窗口极小 |
[30:46] | Each spacecraft would fly by so quickly, | 航天器在近距离接近行星时 会高速飞掠而过 |
[30:49] | on such a close approach, there was almost no time to gather data. | 搜集数据的时间极其紧张 |
[30:55] | The closest approach fly-by sequences are a matter of hours. | 低空飞越接近点的行动 需要用数个小时 |
[31:00] | Really, the tightest closest approach activity is within a 12-hour span. | 最为紧凑的接近点活动 集中于一个12小时的时间段 |
[31:09] | In particular, the team needed to decide where to point the cameras. | 他们还得决定将照相机指向何方 |
[31:14] | The scan platform, which included the cameras | 观测平台上装有 |
[31:17] | and spectrometers, am I going to point it at the moon | 照相机和分光计 我是否要将它指向卫星? |
[31:20] | and which moon, or am I going to point it at the planet? | 指向哪个卫星?还是要指向土星? |
[31:23] | Which way am I going to point it? | 我应该如何调整它的指向? |
[31:25] | And so you have to argue with your colleagues. | 这就得和同事们好好讨论了 |
[31:29] | Blue-ish. Blue-er than grey. | 青色的,比灰色的更兰 |
[31:35] | But it was the rings of Saturn which stole the show. | 最终获得关注的是土星环 |
[31:39] | We thought we knew it all, | 不过,我想我们都明白, |
[31:42] | but, once again, we were looking at a very, very complex situation. | 我们又一次面临极其复杂的状况 |
[31:46] | The rings were broken up into mini-rings. | 土星环分裂成许多小环 |
[31:48] | There were gaps in there, | 它们之间有缝隙 |
[31:51] | there were all sorts of dynamical phenomena that we didn’t understand. | 那里我们所不了解的各种 动力学现象都可能发生 |
[32:07] | When I began my work, I had suggested that one thing | 开始我认为,要完成这项 |
[32:09] | we could do with this particular mission was | 特别任务的办法就是 |
[32:13] | to fly between the planet and the rings, | 在土星和土星环之间飞过 |
[32:15] | and, very fortunately, we didn’t do that, | 不过还好,我们不会这么做 |
[32:17] | because, as we approached Saturn, | 因为当我们接近土星时 |
[32:19] | we saw that the region there we would have had to flown through with the spacecraft | 我们发现航天器准备飞越的区域 |
[32:23] | was filled with more rings. | 还有许多环存在 |
[32:25] | There was no question that spacecraft would not have survived | 如果航天器要从缝隙中飞过 |
[32:28] | trying to go through that gap. | 那它必死无疑 |
[32:33] | The imaging team could barely cope with all the new data. | 图像小组几乎来不及处理 这些新来的数据 |
[32:40] | What I remember…it wasn’t really stressful, | 我记得压力不是很大 |
[32:45] | but it was just chaotic and hectic and exciting. | 不过当时现场有点乱,闹哄哄的 大家都挺激动 |
[32:47] | Right in the few days around the encounter, trying to keep up | 相遇的前几天,大家都在做准备 |
[32:51] | with the discoveries as they poured in. | 保证当观测数据大量涌入的时候 能及时应对 |
[32:55] | Eventually, no-one got any sleep, | 大家都对观测到的新东西 |
[32:58] | because we were just overwhelmed with new stuff. | 无比激动,最后没人睡觉 |
[33:04] | Voyager revealed delicate rings that were intertwined | 旅行者号显示了缠绕在一起的 精巧的多个环 |
[33:08] | and rings that were held in place by tiny moons they called shepherds. | 另一些小环是 由一些所谓牧羊犬卫星保持位置的 |
[33:13] | There were strange features called spokes, | 土星环有一种叫辅条的特殊现象 |
[33:17] | patches of dust particles, slightly raised above the rings. | 空间尘埃碎片在环上微微凸出 |
[33:21] | These caught the eye of one young graduate student in particular. | 这引起了一位年轻 研究生的特别注意 |
[33:27] | I got involved in the study of the spokes, | 我参与了对辅条的研究 |
[33:30] | which were these ghostly features that were seen to come and go, | 可以观察到 这些幽灵般的东西移来移去 |
[33:34] | and it just came to my head to kind of categorise the pictures. | 当时我就想到将这些照片分类 |
[33:38] | Into one pile, I put all those images that seemed to have | 我把看上去有许多辅条的 |
[33:41] | a lot of spokes in them, | 照片放在一起 |
[33:42] | and into another pile, I put those images | 把另一些几乎没有辅条的照片 |
[33:44] | that seemed to have virtually no spokes at all. | 堆到另一边 |
[33:47] | And I made an intermediate category. | 然后做了一个中间分类 |
[33:49] | And, of course, each image was tagged with a time, | 照片都加上了时间标签 |
[33:53] | and I basically did an analysis on the computer of this | 计算机分析结果表明 |
[33:57] | and found that the spokes actually weren’t just sporadic but, in fact, | 辅条并非零星随机出现 |
[34:02] | they came and went with a certain period. | 它们有固定的运动周期 |
[34:15] | Remarkably, Carolyn Porco had discovered that the spokes | 卡萝琳`普尔科发现辅条明显是在 |
[34:18] | followed Saturn’s magnetic field as it rotated with the planet. | 在土星磁场作用下绕土星旋转 |
[34:24] | I made my very first scientific discovery, and just knowing that | 这是我的第一个科学发现 |
[34:30] | I had found something that nobody else on the face of the planet knew at that time | 当时除了我,世界上没有其他 任何人了解这一现象 |
[34:35] | was just such an exhilarating experience. | 这太让人激动了 |
[34:43] | Well, I think Saturn has not disappointed us. | 好吧,我想土星没让我们失望 |
[34:45] | I really expected that since we had such a rudimentary… | 我们对土星系统仅有一些基本了解 |
[34:47] | knowledge of Saturn system that we would be seeing many surprises, | 观测结果会让我们啧啧称奇 |
[34:52] | but, as usual, our imaginations were not nearly up to what nature provided. | 正如我们所知,自然界的神奇 永远超乎人类的想象 |
[35:01] | Four years since launch, the Voyagers had, | 在发射四年以来 |
[35:05] | so far, been a wild success. | 旅行号取得了异乎寻常的成功 |
[35:08] | But now came the mission planner’s biggest gamble. | 不过现在,任务决策者们 得赌上一把 |
[35:11] | Here at Saturn, the twin spacecraft would part company. | 这两个小小的航天器将在土星 分道扬镳 |
[35:17] | Voyager 1 would be diverted towards Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. | 旅行者一号将转向土星 最大的卫星泰坦 |
[35:23] | It was an enticing target. | 它魅力无穷 |
[35:26] | It was clear that the composition of Titan’s atmosphere | 泰坦的大气层构成 |
[35:30] | makes it kind of an analogue with the Earth, | 和地球相似 |
[35:32] | which is terribly surprising, because no-one expected years ago | 这太让人惊讶了 之前没人觉得会在 |
[35:36] | you’d find an analogue of the Earth out at the distance of Saturn. | 土星这么远的地方 发现和地球相似的星球 |
[35:40] | With an atmosphere of similar density to Earth’s, | 泰坦的大气密度和地球很接近 |
[35:44] | it was believed Titan might even harbour primitive life. | 普遍认为泰坦上可能隐藏 有原始形态的生命 |
[35:50] | But the manoeuvre came at great cost. | 不过,这次飞行控制 需要付出巨大代价 |
[35:52] | To fly past Titan, Voyager 1’s Grand Tour | 如果要飞越泰坦 |
[35:56] | would have to be sacrificed. | 就得牺牲旅行者一号的 大旅行计划 |
[35:58] | To visit this intriguing moon, | 为了访问这颗迷人的卫星 |
[36:00] | it needed to be put on a different path, | 必须改变旅行者一号的轨道 |
[36:03] | throwing it up at an angle, out of the plane of the solar system. | 将其朝向调整到指向太阳系 平面之外 |
[36:08] | Beyond Titan, there would be no more planetary encounters for Voyager 1. | 旅行者一号飞越泰坦后 就不再会遭遇行星 |
[36:18] | In the end, the Titan fly-by was a disappointment. | 飞越泰坦的最终结果令人失望 |
[36:22] | Voyager 1’s cameras couldn’t penetrate its atmosphere | 由于旅行者一号的相机不能 穿透泰坦的大气层 |
[36:26] | to offer further clues to whether life might lie beneath. | 因此无法得知星球上 到底有无生命迹象 |
[36:31] | Titan was the first major setback for the Voyager team. | 泰坦是旅行者计划经历的首次 严重挫折 |
[36:40] | It meant Voyager 1 had been sacrificed for very little | 旅行者一号作出些许牺牲 |
[36:44] | and was now speeding away from the solar system. | 目前正加速飞离太阳系 |
[36:52] | The rest of the Grand Tour would have to rely on one single spacecraft – | 大旅行计划未完成部分的 重担自然就落到了 |
[36:57] | Voyager 2. | 旅行者2号身上 |
[36:59] | Now on its own, it was heading across the solar system | 目前它正穿越太阳系 |
[37:02] | towards the outermost planets. | 朝着最远处的行星飞去 |
[37:09] | But then, just as it left Saturn, another setback – | 在飞离土星时,旅行者号计划 又遭遇了另一次挫折 |
[37:12] | the team noticed Voyager 2’s camera platform had started to jam. | 旅行者2号的照相机平台 开始有点卡住 |
[37:18] | Without the crucial ability to pan its cameras, | 如果相机最关键的 摇摄功能失灵 |
[37:21] | there would be few pictures of the other outer planets. | 旅行者号就拍不了 多少张外行星照片了 |
[37:25] | It was a potential disaster, and the team struggled to find the cause. | 这弄不好可能是一场祸 工作组赶紧开始找原因 |
[37:32] | In the case of the stuck scan platform, the expectation | 大家觉得观测平台被卡住 |
[37:36] | was that there was a piece of debris, which is not likely. | 可能是由碎片引起的 问题是这又不太可能 |
[37:39] | I mean, we’re so careful when we put these machines together. | 我们组装机器的时候,真的很当心 |
[37:45] | So then it goes down to, well, maybe it’s the lubricant, | 嗯,可能是润滑油的原因 |
[37:49] | the way the lubricant has distributed itself. | 润滑油供给可能出了问题 |
[37:55] | So how do you fix a spacecraft that’s over a billion miles away? | 一艘远在10亿英里之外的 航天器该怎么修呢? |
[38:02] | What we decided to do was to exercise it very carefully, | 我们的办法是非常当心 地活动一下故障平台 |
[38:05] | moving the gears train back and forth slowly over this spot. | 在这个位置慢慢前后移动齿轮 传动链 |
[38:10] | We could see that we were making progress and we said, | 采取的措施初见成效 |
[38:13] | “OK this is it. We can work through it”. | 好的,就这样,我们能解决问题 |
[38:16] | But without any target to focus the cameras on, | 由于没有目标可以对焦 |
[38:19] | they had no way to know if their fix was successful. | 相机是否修好也就无从知晓 |
[38:23] | They’d only know that when Voyager 2 reached its next destination – | 只有旅行者二号到达下一个目标 天王星时 |
[38:28] | Uranus. | 才能知道 |
[38:30] | Even travelling at 50,000 miles an hour, | 旅行者2号的飞行速度 高达每小时五万英里 |
[38:33] | this encounter was five years away. | 要完成此次相遇还是要花五年时间 |
[38:39] | Half a decade of uncertainty and anxiety. | 五年里各种忐忑和焦虑 |
[38:50] | Well, just about two minutes ago, | 好的,两分钟前 |
[38:53] | Voyager 2 passed through its closest approach to Uranus. | 旅行者2号刚刚飞过天王星 的最接近点 |
[39:04] | Despite their fix to the scan platform, | 探测平台已然修好 |
[39:07] | with the limited light this far from the sun, | 不过这里离太阳很远,没什么光亮 |
[39:10] | the Voyager team knew their cameras would struggle. | 相机工作起来会很困难 |
[39:13] | Voyager was planned to operate at 1 billion miles at Saturn. | 旅行者2号在到达距地球10亿 英里的土星时,启动并进行探测 |
[39:17] | It was now being asked to operate at 2 billion miles at Uranus, | 天王星距地球20亿英里 此处阳光极为微弱 |
[39:20] | where the sun was very dim. And we had to do several things. | 旅行者2号到达后也将在此 进行探测,我们得先做些准备工作 |
[39:23] | For instance, you have to have much longer exposures on the camera, | 相机的曝光时间要久一些 |
[39:27] | and, if you have too long an exposure, | 问题是航天器正快速飞行 |
[39:28] | the spacecraft’s moving very rapidly, things become smeared. | 如果曝光时间过长,照片就会糊掉 |
[39:31] | So we had to learn how to program the spacecraft | 得想个办法为航天器重新编程 |
[39:35] | to turn at just the right rate, | 将其快门速度调到适当的值 |
[39:36] | so that it would compensate for the motion of the spacecraft. | 用于补偿航天器运动对拍摄 造成的影响 |
[39:45] | They had to basically re-program the brains of the spacecraft. | 也就是说,要为航天器的 大脑-计算机重新编程 |
[39:49] | It didn’t have very many brains by today’s standards, | 以今天的标准来看 尽管当时的电脑功能很差 |
[39:52] | but they had to re-program it. Those were fantastic achievements. | 不过还得进行重编程 最终他们取得了神奇的成果 |
[39:59] | As the first images of Uranus arrived back on Earth, | 工程师们巧手回天 旅行者号传回了清晰的王天星照片 |
[40:03] | it became clear the engineers’ ingenuity had once again paid off. | 工程师们的努力又一次得到了回报 |
[40:08] | But the extraordinary, pin-sharp pictures of this distant planet, | 这些摄于离地球20亿英里远的照片 |
[40:12] | two billion miles from Earth, revealed tantalisingly little. | 异常清晰锐利,看上去颇为诱人 |
[40:18] | After all the waiting, it was a reminder that with Voyager, | 在经过长久等待之后 旅行者号再次提醒我们 |
[40:23] | nothing could be taken for granted. | 宇宙里变数太多,无法预料 |
[40:25] | Uranus is different than Jupiter and Saturn | 和木星及土星不同的是 |
[40:27] | in the sense that it has no internal heat source. | 天王星没有内部热源 |
[40:31] | Both Jupiter and Saturn are radiating more energy | 木星及土星向外辐射的能量 |
[40:33] | than they receive from the sun, | 比它们从太阳吸收的要多 |
[40:35] | because there’s still heat inside those planets. | 原因是它们内部有热源 |
[40:37] | For a reason, at Uranus, that heat had been shut down | 王天星的热源由于某种原因 已然冷却 |
[40:40] | and was not driving the atmosphere, so the atmosphere was much blander. | 大气层没有这些能量的驱动 显得份外平静 |
[40:48] | Check… | 确认… |
[40:53] | If Uranus itself was something of a disappointment, | 天王星多少有点令人失望 |
[40:57] | once again, the team found plenty of surprises in its moons. | 不过其卫星却给我们带来许多惊喜 |
[41:03] | Most striking of all was the tiny moon, Miranda. | 最引人注目的当属其 最小的卫星:米兰达 |
[41:09] | Miranda looks like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. | 它看上去像个立体七巧板 |
[41:12] | We see regions looking like giant, complex racetracks, | 那里像是有许多又大又复杂的赛道 |
[41:16] | almost as if it’s put together by a committee. | 被组委会拼到了一起 |
[41:19] | There are pieces stuck on the surface | 表面上的突起部分 |
[41:21] | that look like they belong to different planets, | 看似来自其它星球 |
[41:23] | and one idea was that it was busted apart and these core pieces stayed intact, | 一种观点认为,卫星先是 发生了碎裂,但核心还保持完整 |
[41:30] | and then they were glued back together, | 然后碎裂部分又贴了回来 |
[41:32] | and so you get this hodge-podge. | 最终形成这样一个大杂烩 |
[41:45] | From Uranus, Voyager 2 faced it’s final challenge – | 飞过天王星后,旅行者二号 将面临最后一个挑战 |
[41:48] | the journey to Neptune, over a billion miles further out | 再坚持飞三年,10亿英里 |
[41:53] | and three years more space travel to survive. | 到达海王星 |
[41:57] | The last major planet in the solar system, | 海王星是太阳系中最大的行星 |
[42:01] | this most mysterious world had resisted investigation | 即使用最强大的望远镜 |
[42:04] | from even the most powerful telescopes. | 也很难看清那里的神秘世界 |
[42:11] | To maintain it’s trajectory, | 根据轨道要求 |
[42:13] | Voyager 2 needed to make a low pass over Neptune’s north pole. | 旅行者2号要在海王星北极上空 低空掠过 |
[42:19] | But this brought its own problems. | 这样做会带来一些问题 |
[42:21] | Because of increased speed and approach angle, | 由于飞行倾角以及 高速飞行问题的存在 |
[42:24] | Voyager 2’s window of opportunity would be the narrowest yet. | 旅行者2号的观测窗口 会前所未有地窄 |
[42:32] | The challenge at Neptune was the most difficult one we had. | 我们将在海王星面临最大的挑战 |
[42:36] | We had to know, within one second, | 实际情况是这样的 |
[42:38] | when we were going to fly over the north pole of Neptune. | 飞越海王星北极上空仅需一秒钟 |
[42:42] | That was a major navigational challenge – | 这对导航系统是个巨大的挑战 |
[42:45] | we had never delivered that kind of accuracy before. | 之前我们从没达到过如此精度 |
[42:48] | If we were right, it worked. | 如果做对了,那一切都好 |
[42:50] | If we were wrong, we had no second chance. | 如果做错,就再没有第二次机会了 |
[42:55] | Not only did the team need to position a spacecraft | 工作小组需要将一艘 |
[42:59] | to within a second of accuracy, after a flight of 12 years, | 已经飞行了12年的航天器 以秒级精度导航定位 |
[43:04] | but to ensure scientific success, they also had to forecast | 以保证科学探测正常进行 他们还得为这个离地球 |
[43:07] | the weather on a planet three billion miles away from Earth. | 30亿英里的行星发布天气预报 |
[43:12] | We had to forecast where to point the cameras, | 我们得提前两周 |
[43:17] | two weeks in advance, | 确定照相机的指向区域 |
[43:19] | where those interesting features were going to be. | 确保拍摄到我们感兴趣的内容 |
[43:23] | And we said, “Well, they’re moving around. | 好的,它们正四处移动 |
[43:25] | “There are storms in the atmosphere of Neptune.” | 那是海王星大气中的风暴 |
[43:28] | And this was August of 1989, | 1989年8月 |
[43:30] | and there was a big hurricane off the coast of Florida. | 佛罗里达沿岸来了大飓风 |
[43:34] | And weather forecasters here were saying, | 天气预报员说 |
[43:36] | “Well, 12 hours from now, we think it’s going to veer right | 未来12小时内,它会右转 |
[43:40] | “or we think it’s going to go left, but we’re not sure.” | 也可能会左转,我们也不确定 |
[43:43] | It may be starting to turn a little bit more towards the northwest or west-northwest… | 它可能会稍稍转向西北 或者西北偏西方向 |
[43:46] | And, meanwhile, we were confidently issuing weather forecasts | 同时,我们却满怀信心 提前两周发布海王星的天气预报 |
[43:50] | for Neptune two weeks in advance and telling the engineers, | 告诉工程师们 |
[43:53] | “OK, two weeks from now, | 好的,从现在起两周内 |
[43:55] | “point your camera there and there will be a storm there.” | 将照相机指向那儿 那里会有一场风暴发生 |
[43:57] | And we were right. It was glorious! | 我们是正确的,这太棒了! |
[44:01] | The fly-by was approaching. | 飞越的时间即将到来 |
[44:05] | Would the software rewrites and running repairs hold together | 软件已经重写,修理已经完成 |
[44:09] | to give humanity its only close encounter with Neptune? | 人类和海王星的唯一 一次近距离相遇能否成功完成? |
[44:12] | There was nothing more to do but wait and hope. | 能做的只有等待和希望 |
[44:22] | After 12 years of flight, and decades of anticipation, | 经过12年飞行和数十年的期望 |
[44:26] | the giant blue planet began to loom in Voyager 2’s lenses. | 这个巨大的蓝色行星赫然 出现在旅行者2号的镜头里 |
[44:47] | On the 25th August 1989, the spacecraft passed | 1989年8月12日 旅行者2号在海王星 |
[44:52] | within 3,000 miles of Neptune’s north pole. | 北极3000英里附近飞过 |
[45:00] | The craft had survived the three billion mile journey to the edge of the solar system. | 航天器经历了30亿英里艰难的旅程 到达了太阳系的边缘 |
[45:07] | The final encounter I was able to witness, | 我和我的小儿子在喷气推进实验室 |
[45:11] | here at JPL with my youngest son, | 见证了这最后一次相遇 |
[45:15] | and we watched with fascination as the pictures of Neptune unfolded. | 我们津津有味地观看 海王星的展示图片 |
[45:20] | Suddenly things that no-one had imagined were there. | 突然, 我们看到一个 没人能想象到的东西 |
[45:24] | Here was a planet that was vibrant with life. | 这是一个有生命气息的星球 |
[45:28] | It had its own great spot, a dark spot in this case, | 它本身存在大斑点 在这种情况下是个大黑斑 |
[45:31] | white clouds floating in its atmosphere, | 白云在大气层内飘荡 |
[45:34] | and these things unfolded before our very eyes. | 这一切公开展示在我们面前 |
[45:36] | What a wonderful surprise. | 多美妙的惊喜 |
[45:39] | Neptune, for me, was a great surprise. | 对我来说,海王星是个巨大的惊喜 |
[45:47] | There was something strange and eerie about Neptune, | 海王星是一个奇异的星球 |
[45:50] | because here, the last planet, the sentinel at the outer edge | 这颗最后的行星 |
[45:55] | of our solar system, looks like Earth, | 太阳系外缘的哨兵 看起来与地球类似 |
[45:59] | with its beautiful deep blue colour | 它带着漂亮的深蓝色 |
[46:01] | and its white clouds floating in the atmosphere. | 白云飘荡在大气层中 |
[46:10] | We were back with a really exciting planet again at Neptune. | 我们再次回到了一个真正 令人兴奋的星球-海王星 |
[46:14] | There were fast-moving clouds, clouds that moved in different directions, | 那里有快速移动的云 向不同方向移动的云 |
[46:19] | some of them almost at sonic speeds. | 有些的云的速度接近音速 |
[46:21] | The complexity of the planet’s atmosphere was far beyond our expectations. | 它的大气的复杂程度 远超我们的预料 |
[46:31] | The Grand Tour was almost over, | 大旅行已经接近尾声 |
[46:35] | but Voyager 2 had one more surprise in store. | 不过旅行者2号将会给我们 带来更多惊喜 |
[46:44] | Neptune’s moon, Triton. | 海王星的卫星,察东 注:就是海卫一 1880年卡米伊・弗拉马利翁命名 希腊海神名字叫察东 |
[47:00] | This is too much… too much to believe. | 太好了…让人无法相信 |
[47:09] | Look at the tyre tracks. Yeah. | 瞧这些胎痕 |
[47:11] | Tyre tracks. | 胎痕 |
[47:16] | Triton was a world unlike any we had seen before. | 察东和我们之前见到的世界不一样 |
[47:19] | It was the coldest surface we had seen in the solar system, | 它的表面温度在太阳系中是最低的 |
[47:22] | 40 degrees above absolute zero. | 绝对零度之上40度 (约-233.15摄氏度) |
[47:24] | So cold that nitrogen, which forms most of the atmosphere on Earth, | 那里实在太冷了 构成大气的主要成分-氮 |
[47:29] | is frozen, solid ice, | 冻结成了固态氮 |
[47:31] | and the polar caps on Triton are frozen nitrogen, not frozen water. | 察东的极盖由冻结氮 而不是冰构成 |
[47:37] | Even so, we found geysers on the surface of Triton, | 尽管如此,在察东表面还发现 了间歇喷泉 |
[47:42] | nitrogen geysers miles high. | 氮的喷发高度达几英里 |
[47:44] | So even at the very deepest part of our solar system, | 因此即使是在太阳系的极深处 |
[47:48] | there is geologic activity. It is everywhere. | 仍有活跃的地质活动发生 它无处不在 |
[47:51] | The solar system is alive, evolving, | 太阳系充满活力并不断演化 |
[47:53] | and that’s what makes it so exciting. | 这正是太阳系令人激动的地方 |
[47:56] | And makes it so much to learn. | 这非常值得我们去了解 |
[48:01] | Voyager 2 had survived to reach the extremes of the solar system. | 旅行者2号艰难地到达了 太阳系的极限 |
[48:06] | It had revealed not just the planets themselves | 它揭示的不仅仅是行星本身 |
[48:09] | but whole systems of rings and moons unlike anything we’d imagined. | 而是包括环和卫星在内的整体系统 和我们以往的想象任何东西都不同 |
[48:15] | Suzanne Dodd captured a final image from the flight. | 苏珊・多德拿到了本次飞行 期间的最后一幅图像 |
[48:20] | One of the images I took and helped design | 我拿到并帮着绘制的一幅图像 |
[48:23] | was the one where you have… it’s actually one taken | 是一张在…实际上是一张 |
[48:25] | when you’re going away. | 在离开时拍的照片 |
[48:26] | You have Neptune, the crescent of Neptune, | 这里是海王星 海王星的月牙 |
[48:30] | and then you have the crescent of Neptune’s moon, Triton, | 然后可以在背景中看到 海王星的卫星 |
[48:33] | in the background, | 察东的月牙 |
[48:34] | and you’re taking that as the spacecraft is travelling out of the solar system. | 这张照片是在航天器 飞出太阳系时所拍摄 |
[48:38] | That’s the last image that Voyager 2 is going to take, | 这是旅行者2号 要拍的最后一张照片 |
[48:43] | and that’s the last image that spacecraft is going to remember of those planets. | 照片留下了它对这些 行星的最后记忆 |
[48:58] | Voyager 2 delivered its final images in 1989. | 旅行者2号在1989年传回了其 最后一张照片 |
[49:04] | More data on the outer planets had been collected by the two Voyager spacecraft | 这两艘旅行者航天器收集的 外行星数据量 |
[49:09] | than in the rest of human history. | 是人类历史上最多的 |
[49:29] | But let’s not forget Voyager 1, | 我们也不能忘记旅行者一号 |
[49:31] | heading out of the plane of the solar system. | 它正向太阳系平面之外飞去 |
[49:34] | Although it hadn’t been able to have any more encounters with planets, | 尽管它已不再能和任何行星相遇 |
[49:39] | there was one last, special task its makers asked of it. | 它的制造者们还要求它完成最后 一项特殊任务 |
[49:45] | Because it was high above the solar system rather than in its plane, | 它高高地位于太阳系平面之上 |
[49:50] | Voyager 1 had a view of all the planets that its twin could never have. | 旅行者一号能观察到所有行星 而它的孪生兄弟不可能做到 |
[49:56] | Carl Sagan and Carolyn Porco began discussing an idea. | 卡尔・萨根和卡萝琳・浦科 正在讨论一个想法 |
[50:03] | Voyager was going to be in a location | 旅行者号行将到达一个 |
[50:07] | that no other spacecraft had been before, equipped with, | 其它航天器都从没到过位置 |
[50:12] | you know, sophisticated instrumentation | 它携带有复杂的仪器 |
[50:15] | so that it could turn around and take a picture | 它有能力转个身 |
[50:18] | of all the planets in the solar system. | 为太阳系中的所有行星拍张照 |
[50:21] | And I thought that this would be a riveting collection of images, | 我想,这将会是一批 非常精彩的照片 |
[50:24] | you know, a first. | 你知道,是第一批 |
[50:28] | And they said, “Well, there’s really no scientific justification | 他们说,这么做实在没有 科学上的正当理由 |
[50:32] | “for this,” and I couldn’t argue with that, because there wasn’t. | 对此我没啥可说的,因为确实没有 |
[50:36] | The planets were going to be just pinpoints, | 行星会只有针尖大小 |
[50:38] | they were going to be just pixels. | 他们的大小将只有几个像素 |
[50:40] | They couldn’t see it. | 看都看不清楚 |
[50:46] | On Valentine’s Day 1990, 13 years after leaving Earth, | 1990年的情人节 在离开地球13年之后 |
[50:51] | Voyager 1 was asked to turn its cameras back towards the planets. | 旅行者一号受令将其照相机 转回头朝向行星 |
[50:58] | Now 3.7 billion miles away, | 在37亿英里之外 |
[51:02] | by the time Voyager’s pitifully weak signal reached the dishes on Earth, | 当旅行者号弱得可怜的信号 到达地球碟形天线的时候 |
[51:06] | it was just a millionth of a billionth of a watt of power. | 它的功率只剩下 1000亿亿分之一瓦 |
[51:11] | It was then boosted and sent on to Pasadena, | 信号在放大后转发到帕萨迪纳 |
[51:14] | where the image was assembled, here in the Deep Space Control Room. | 图像在深空控制室内进行组合 |
[51:22] | A unique family portrait, | 一张独一无二的全家福 |
[51:25] | the ultimate snapshot of our solar system. | 太阳系最大的快照 |
[51:34] | And this is it! | 就是它! |
[51:35] | There’s actually only six planets visible, | 由于太阳的炫光遮住了水星和火星 |
[51:37] | because Mercury and Mars were obscured by the sun’s glare. | 所以实际上只能看到6颗行星 |
[51:40] | But the picture that captured everybody’s imagination was that of Earth, | 不过这张照片最能吸引 大家注意力的地方在于地球 |
[51:44] | only a tenth of a pixel in size. | 它只有十分之一像素大小 |
[51:46] | And here it is blown up. | 这里它被放大了 |
[51:52] | Here is the mosaic… | 这里是马赛克 |
[51:54] | For Carl Sagan, the symbolic value of the photograph was a gift. | 这张照片具有的象征意义 对卡尔・萨根来说是个礼物 |
[52:00] | He held a press conference to publicise it around the world. | 他举行了一次新闻发布会 将它向全世界广而告之 |
[52:05] | The portrait of the planets has now been taken. | 我们已经拍摄到了行星的 全家福照片 |
[52:10] | This looks more than a dot, | 这看起来和一个点差不多大 |
[52:13] | but it is in fact less than a pixel. | 实际上它连一个像素都不到 |
[52:16] | In this colour picture, you can see it is slightly blue, | 从这张彩照来看,它带一点蓝色 |
[52:22] | and this is where we live, on a blue dot. | 这就是我们的居住之地 住在一个小蓝点上 |
[52:28] | With this final historic image captured, | 拍完这张最后的历史性照片后 |
[52:31] | and nothing more to photograph, | 没什么要拍的了 |
[52:33] | Voyager 1’s cameras were switched off to save power. | 为了节能,旅行者一号关闭了相机 |
[52:44] | But that wasn’t the end of the mission. | 不过任务还没结束 |
[52:46] | Over 35 years on, | 35年以来 |
[52:48] | as they hurtle away from us at over 10 miles a second, | 它们以每秒10英里以上的速度 飞快离我们而去 |
[52:52] | their cutting-edge 1970s technology keeps on chugging. | 它们所用的七十年代尖端技术 仍在继续正常工作 |
[53:01] | And remarkably, | 非同寻常的是 |
[53:02] | they continue to send back new information about the space | 他们仍在距地球110亿英里的 的太空中穿行 |
[53:05] | they’re now travelling through, 11 billion miles from Earth. | 并不断发回新的太空信息 |
[53:13] | Even travelling at the speed of light, | 即使信号以光速传播 |
[53:16] | their messages take quite a while to get home. | 也要花好一会儿才能到达地球 |
[53:20] | The journey time now is about 15 hours one way | 信号从旅行者一号回到地球 |
[53:23] | from Voyager 1 back to Earth, | 现在要花15小时 |
[53:25] | so you send a signal up, | 先发出信号 |
[53:27] | and the next day, you come back and you have some indication | 第二天你回来时就知道 |
[53:30] | that the spacecraft heard the signal and responded. | 航天器收到了信号且已响应 |
[53:36] | There are five instruments that are still operating on the spacecraft. | 目前航天器上 仍然可用的指令还有五条 |
[53:41] | And we’re starting to see the evidence now in the data | 当前的数据证据表明 |
[53:43] | that we are crossing into interstellar space. | 我们正穿越星际空间 |
[53:46] | We’re seeing things that would lead us to believe | 我们观察到的一切让我们确信 |
[53:48] | that we are on that boundary. | 我们已经在分界线上 |
[53:51] | Now, at the end of 2012, our planetary explorers are crossing | 在2012年底,行星探测器正 |
[53:56] | this boundary of the sun’s influence. | 穿越太阳影响范围的边界 |
[53:59] | They’re travelling beyond the limits of our solar wind | 它们正越过太阳风的边界 |
[54:02] | and into the galaxy beyond. | 进入前方的银河系 |
[54:05] | It’s the first time any object built by humans has achieved this. | 这是人类制造的物体 首次达到如此成就 |
[54:10] | A new chapter in human exploration is beginning. | 人类探测的新篇章正在掀开 |
[54:13] | We have enough power to get us to about 10 more years, | 现有的电能足够再用十多年 |
[54:17] | maybe out to 2025, but we will, over the course of those years, | 电力要到2025年才可能耗尽 不过在此期间 |
[54:20] | have to turn off things so that we continue to have enough power | 必须先关闭部分设备 优先给信号发射器供电 |
[54:25] | to run the transmitter to send the data back to Earth. | 保证它能将数据传回地球 |
[54:35] | The fact that Voyager’s still alive | 旅行者号还活着 |
[54:37] | and there’s still a signal from it | 仍然在发送信号 |
[54:40] | and it’s about to leave the solar system, I think that’s wonderful. | 并且它即将飞离太阳系 这太棒了 |
[54:45] | That it hasn’t just given up or that we haven’t given up on it. | 它自己没有放弃 或者说我们还没有放弃它 |
[54:49] | It’s a tribute to what Voyager means to us that we’ve kept it going. | 旅行者号继续前行 体现了其存在意义 |
[54:57] | Really, it’s wonderful, as a scientist, to be still exploring, | 它好象一名科学家一样 依然在不停探索 |
[55:00] | still going somewhere no spacecraft has been before. | 依然要去往其它航天器 从没去过的地方,这实在太棒了 |
[55:05] | 35 years on, this one mission has seen the team at JPL age, | 从喷气推进实验室时代 接收任务起,已经持续了35年 |
[55:11] | events in their lives running parallel to the Voyager’s encounters. | 旅行者号与行星的多次相遇 也贯穿了这些人的一生 |
[55:15] | When I started on the Voyager, my two daughters were young. | 我开始在旅行者号项目上工作时 我的两个女儿还小 |
[55:19] | By the time they were in college, we already had passed Saturn | 他们上大学的时候 我们已经飞过了土星 |
[55:23] | and were on our way to Uranus. | 在去往天王星的路上 |
[55:25] | They got married, and the Voyager just kept going, | 他们结婚了,旅行者号继续前进 |
[55:28] | we had grandchildren, and Voyager just kept going, | 我们有了孙辈,旅行者号仍在前行 |
[55:30] | and so now our grandchildren are aware | 和我们的子女一样 孙辈们也已知道了 |
[55:32] | of what’s happening to Voyager, just like our children were. | 旅行者号发生的事 |
[55:36] | Long after all their power has gone, | 很久以后,旅行者号能量用尽 |
[55:39] | the Voyagers will continue to rush away from us. | 它还会继续高速远离我们 |
[55:42] | One and a half tonnes of 1970s engineering, | 1.5吨的七十年代工程产品 |
[55:46] | monuments to human endeavour and exploration, | 人类奋进和探索的丰碑 |
[55:49] | heading out towards the stars. | 向着星空飞离而去 |
[55:53] | I believe the next encounter with the closest star | 我认为从现在起,还要过四万年 |
[55:57] | is something like 40,000 years from now. | 它才会和离得最近的星球 有下一次相遇 |
[56:07] | The two Voyager spacecraft are the furthest that we’ve ever sailed, | 这两艘旅行者号探测器是 至今航行得最远的航天器 |
[56:11] | but for all their amazing science | 它们拥有令人惊异的技术水平 |
[56:14] | and new worlds that they’ve found and data that they’ve collected, | 它们搜集了数据 它们发现了新世界 |
[56:18] | the Voyager mission is still an incredibly symbolic mission. | 因此旅行者号的飞行更是 一次极具象征性任务 |
[56:23] | Because those two golden discs are still fixed | 那两张金唱片依然 |
[56:25] | to the sides of each spacecraft. | 固定在每个航天器的两侧 |
[56:29] | And in the benign, empty environment of deep space, | 太空深处,空空荡荡 环境良好 |
[56:33] | they will outlive the pyramids, they’re likely to outlive us, | 它们会比金字塔存在得更久 可能比我们存在得更久 |
[56:36] | and perhaps even the Earth itself – the only record of our existence. | 甚至可能比地球本身- 我们存在的唯一记录,存在得更久 |
[56:43] | ‘Hello from the children of planet Earth.’ | 来自地球上孩子们的问候 |
[56:46] | Yet, despite the ambition, | 尽管有着远大的抱负 |
[56:49] | given the vastness of space, it’s almost inconceivable | 但在浩瀚的宇宙之中 |
[56:53] | that these two tiny spacecraft will ever be intercepted by other beings. | 两个小小的航天器被其它文明 所截获的可能性几乎为零 |
[56:59] | It’s a little bit like throwing a bottle into the cosmic ocean. | 这有点像朝宇宙的海洋 扔一个瓶子 |
[57:05] | But Sagan was clever enough to realise this. | 萨根很聪明,意识到了这一点 |
[57:10] | He knew it wasn’t what the golden record said to other civilisations that mattered, | 他明白,金唱片向其它文明 传达了些什么并不重要 |
[57:15] | more significant was what it said to our own. | 它对我们自己表达了些什么 才更有意义 |
[57:20] | You might think that it is a hopelessly quixotic project | 你可能认为 向星际空间发射个瓶中信 |
[57:24] | to launch this message in a bottle into interstellar space | 然后希望有人能找到它 |
[57:30] | and expect anyone will find it, | 这样的方案毫无希望 又不切实际 |
[57:32] | but there are really two kinds of recipients of the message | 不过旅行者号唱片中的信息 |
[57:35] | on the Voyager records. | 确实有两类收件人 |
[57:38] | One is the extra-terrestrial audience. | 一类是外星听众 |
[57:42] | The other one is the audience down here down on Earth. | 另一类听众就在这里,就在地球上 |
[57:44] | Here is a moment when we have to suddenly think, | 有时候我们会被突如其来 的思绪所困扰 |
[57:49] | “What is there about our culture | 我们祈愿其他人所知 |
[57:51] | “that we would want others to know about, | 并为之骄傲的文化 |
[57:54] | “that we would be proud of?” | 究竟是一种怎样的存在? |
[57:56] | The record should represent the human species as an entirety. | 唱片能够代表人类物种这一整体 |
[58:04] | The unity of the human species, seen down here, | 从这个角度来看,全人类的融合 |
[58:08] | is a fact that is essential for the human future. | 对人类的未来必不可少 |
[58:21] | MUSIC: “Over The Rainbow” by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole | 音乐:彩虹之上的某个地方 歌手:以色列 卡马卡威沃尔 注:歌迷叫他IZ,夏威夷音乐 里赫赫有名的歌唱家 擅长演唱和弹奏夏威夷四弦琴, |
[58:26] | OK this one’s for Gabby Ooooo oooooo ohoohohoo Somewhere over the rainbow Way up high … | 歌词: |
[58:53] | Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd |