【英语时差8,16】航天飞机发光

During the space shuttle's third flight, back in nineteen eighty two, astronauts Jack¹ Lousma and C. Gordon Fullerton saw something remarkable². Above the tail of the shuttle, where there should have been empty space, they saw a faint orange glow instead, flickering³ with ghostly light. Was the space shuttle haunted? What was going on? To understand this phenomenon, known as "shuttle glow," you should know something about the region of space where the shuttle orbits. NASA shuttles stay in low Earth orbit, which is generally about a hundred and seventy miles above the Earth's surface. At that height, the atmosphere has tapered⁴ away to almost nothing--less than a billionth of the pressure it is at ground level--but there are still gasses there. Indeed, low Earth orbit is well within the ionosphere, a major part of our atmosphere. The thin gasses of the ionosphere rush past the space shuttle at about five miles per second, forming a very fast, very thin wind. This wind is so thin you'd never be able to feel it, even if you stuck your head out the space shuttle window the way a dog sticks it's head out a moving car. The wind causes two things to happen. First, it erodes⁵ the surfaces of some materials. The erosion is slight, but it can be significant for camera lenses or other sensitive equipment. Second, the shuttle's surface can scoop⁶ up atoms from this wind, and these atoms can undergo chemical reactions. One reaction, involving nitrogen and oxygen, can produce a luminous⁷ orange glow. And that's what the astronauts saw. It wasn't a ghost--it was shuttle glow.

1 jack   

n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克

参考例句：

• I am looking for the headphone jack.我正在找寻头戴式耳机插孔。
• He lifted the car with a jack to change the flat tyre.他用千斤顶把车顶起来换下瘪轮胎。

2 remarkable   

adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的

参考例句：

• She has made remarkable headway in her writing skills.她在写作技巧方面有了长足进步。
• These cars are remarkable for the quietness of their engines.这些汽车因发动机没有噪音而不同凡响。

3 flickering   

adj.闪烁的，摇曳的，一闪一闪的

参考例句：

• The crisp autumn wind is flickering away. 清爽的秋风正在吹拂。
• The lights keep flickering. 灯光忽明忽暗。

4 tapered   

adj. 锥形的，尖削的，楔形的，渐缩的，斜的 动词taper的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• The tail tapered to a rounded tip. 尾部越来越细，最后成了个圆尖。
• The organization tapered off in about half a year. 那个组织大约半年内就逐渐消失了。

5 erodes   

侵蚀，腐蚀( erode的第三人称单数 )； 逐渐毁坏，削弱，损害

参考例句：

• The sea erodes the rock. 海水侵蚀岩石。
• The sea erodes the land. 海洋侵蚀陆地。

6 scoop   

n.铲子，舀取，独家新闻；v.汲取，舀取，抢先登出

参考例句：

• In the morning he must get his boy to scoop it out.早上一定得叫佣人把它剜出来。
• Uh,one scoop of coffee and one scoop of chocolate for me.我要一勺咖啡的和一勺巧克力的。

7 luminous   

adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的

参考例句：

• There are luminous knobs on all the doors in my house.我家所有门上都安有夜光把手。
• Most clocks and watches in this shop are in luminous paint.这家商店出售的大多数钟表都涂了发光漆。