美国有线新闻 CNN 2013-02-20

 As we kick off a new week of CNN studentnews, we're going to start with what in the world caused this. Well, forstarters, it wasn't from this world, it was a meteor and left that trail in thesky and casued a lot of problems on the ground.

In Russia, more than a thousand people wereinjured, most of that was from flying glass, the shock wave from this meteorshattered more than 75,000 square miles of glass. Here is an idea of whathappened. Friday morning, this meteor entered the earth atmosphere. When thathappened, it exploded, broke up into a lot of smaller pieces and caused thishuge light and a massive² sonic boom³. That boom came from the energy of themeteor when it hit the atmosphere. The thing was around 55 feet wide, weighedaround 10,000 tons, so that's about 20 million pounds.

"It was traveling at 33,000 miles perhour, and as it decelerated, it's kind of like a swimmer doing a belly⁴ flopfrom a very high diving board into water. But you know, it was travling a lotfaster than the swimmer, so that energy has to go somewhere. Then energy wentinto light, that's you saw on that street. When it was hitting up the column ofair, and the injuries why it happened because people naturally went to theirwindow and saw this bright light, because light travels faster than sound. Andthen the sound arrived and shattered¹ the windows when everybody was looking outof their window."

It's easier to talk about the sciencebehind a sonic boom once it's over. But living through a firsthand can beterrified. We've got to look at that from this video inside a Russian highschool.

There's been a lot of news reports the pastcouple of weeks about an asteroid⁵, it passed by the earth on Friday, the sameday this meteor exploded over Russia. The tow⁶ had nothing to do with eachother, Tom Foreman has more on the one that stayed in space.

"This really was a very close call, withthis asteroid in a cosmic⁷ sense. Let's get the lay of the land so we canunderstand how close it was, we also talk about the Moon as being close to theEarth, the Moon isn't really all that close, the Moon is some quarter millionmiles out there. What's much much closer are satellites, the ones we've beenlaunching for decades now. The furthest ones away from us from the surface ofthe Earth, about 22,000 miles out there. This asteroid actually cut across thesouthern hemisphere⁸ and right through the outer edge of those satellites. Sothe Earth is right here, we're talking about some 17,000 miles above it, goingthrough those satellites. Now there is no real danger it was going to hit thesatellites because we don't have that many of them, frankly⁹. They are small,and this was actually fairly small too, but let's look at the stats to talkabout that, some you may it was known as 2012 DA14, it was about half the sizeof a football field, it was traveling close to 17,000-18,000 miles an hour. Andif it had hit the Earth, we're told that would explode with the force of morethan 2 million tons of dynamite¹⁰. what would that be like? How big would thatbe? Well, by comparison, let's think about what happened in Russia where thatmeteor exploded in the atmosphere, about 30 miles above the Earth and producedall of that damage. That was about this big, if it were actually here rightnow, my comparison to it would be, about like this, it's not really that large.The asteroid that missed us, however, was more like this size. And you can justimagine the impact comparatively if this came in and exploded in theatmosphere, or if this actually hit the Earth, and bear in mind, this is arelatively small asteroid. That's one of the reason so many scientists watchedwith interest and so many people are asking, is there something we might beable to do, if something bigger than this starting heading our way?"

1 shattered   

破碎的； 极度疲劳的

参考例句：

• He dropped the vase and it shattered into pieces on the floor. 他失手把花瓶掉到地板上摔碎了。
• The experience left her feeling absolutely shattered. 她在这次经历之后，感到彻底垮了。

2 massive   

adj.巨大的，大规模的，大量的，大范围的

参考例句：

• A massive sea search has failed to find any survivors.经过大规模的海上搜救仍未找到幸存者。
• He drank a massive amount of alcohol.他喝了大量的烈酒。

3 boom   

n.隆隆声；vt.发隆隆声

参考例句：

• The country is having a great boom in industry.这个国家的工业正蓬勃发展。
• Boom!Boom!Boom!A series of explosions shook the valley.轰！轰！轰！一连串爆破声震撼山谷。

4 belly   

n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛

参考例句：

• The boss has a large belly.老板大腹便便。
• His eyes are bigger than his belly.他眼馋肚饱。

5 asteroid   

n.小行星；海盘车(动物)

参考例句：

• Astronomers have yet to witness an asteroid impact with another planet.天文学家还没有目击过小行星撞击其它行星。
• It's very unlikely that an asteroid will crash into Earth but the danger exists.小行星撞地球的可能性很小，但这样的危险还是存在的。

6 tow   

n.拖，拉，牵引

参考例句：

• The broken-down car was taken in tow by a lorry.那辆坏了的车由一辆货车拖着。
• Mrs Hayes went to the supermarket with her four little children in tow.海斯太太带着她的4个小孩到超市去了。

7 cosmic   

adj.宇宙的，广大无边的

参考例句：

• That is a cosmic law that must be respected.这是宇宙的法则必须遵守。
• This has all the appearance of a cosmic free lunch.这就产生了广泛的免费午餐。

8 hemisphere   

n.半球，半球地图

参考例句：

• This animal is to be found only in the Southern Hemisphere.这种动物只有在南半球才能找到。
• In most people,the left hemisphere is bigger than the right.多数人的左脑比右脑大。

9 frankly   

adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说

参考例句：

• To speak frankly, I don't like the idea at all.老实说，我一点也不赞成这个主意。
• Frankly speaking, I'm not opposed to reform.坦率地说，我不反对改革。

10 dynamite   

n./vt.(用)炸药(爆破)

参考例句：

• The workmen detonated the dynamite.工人们把炸药引爆了。
• The philosopher was still political dynamite.那位哲学家仍旧是政治上的爆炸性人物。