VOA标准英语2013--旅行者号向星际太空送去的金唱片

 

Voyager Carry’s Gold Record into Interstellar Space 旅行者号向星际太空送去的金唱片

Last weekend, the Voyager spacecraft, launched from Earth in 1977, left the solar system and headed into interstellar space.  As it did, the ship carried an unusual calling card, designed to introduce Earth to any alien being that the Voyager might pass.

上周末,1977年从地面发射的旅行者号宇宙飞船,离开了太阳系,进入星际空间。船上载有一个不寻常的名片,旨在介绍地球任何外星人,旅行者可能会通过。

Traveling now billions of kilometers out in space are the voices and sounds of humans and animals living on Earth in 1977.  They are bolted to the side of Voyager 1 in the form of a gold-plated phonograph record containing the sounds of our planet.

Tim Ferris mixed the audio that went on the record.

"The record is a conventional long-playing phonograph record except that it is made of copper¹ and it is covered in gold and then it is put inside a titanium case to protect it,” he said.

Ferris was one of a small group of people who worked to convince NASA to attach the record to Voyager’s side.  The original idea, according to Annie Druyan, another member of the group, came from astronomer² Frank Drake, at the University of California.

“We wanted to convey to the extraterrestrials that we imagined what it was like to be alive in the beautiful Spring of 1977, and it seemed to Frank that at the time that the best way to compress as much information as possible in a very small space was to do it on a phonograph record,” she said.

And there’s plenty of information there.  The record contains greetings in 59 human languages. It has 118 pictures of life on earth, and 27 pieces of music exemplifying the diversity of human creation.  Ferris mixed the audio that went on the record.  

“There is music on the record from Europe and the United States,” he said.  "But also from Africa, the South Pacific and South America... Georgia, Russia, all these places - China, India."

Shortly after American astronauts returned from space in 1968, NASA released a photograph of the Earth rising from behind the Moon.  According to Margaret Weitekamp, a curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, that photo deeply touched people like Drake and his partner on the gold record project, the scientist and TV celebrity³ Carl Sagan.

She said,“Knowing that that picture was taken by a human being I think profoundly changed the thoughts of these people and really made them start thinking about ‘If we are this pale blue dot in this ocean of vastness, then how do we communicate something about who we are?’”

It made them think carefully about how they might convey the greetings, the art and the talent of all humanity…not just the nation that sent the spacecraft up.

“The Voyager record represents a step along a long process of humans realizing that we are not at the center of the universe and that our story is probably far from being the only story,” Ferris said

The technology they used may seem archaic⁴ today.  But actually, Weitekamp says it has advantages over some of today’s gadgets⁵.

“It's a really durable⁶ technology that has proven to be a great way to record sound," she said. "If you have digital sound, you have to have the right software in order to decode⁷ it or it doesn’t work.”

And she says, if a spacecraft were launched today with a message for aliens, it might still be a wise technology to use.  So that’s the medium.  As for the message they chose, Ferris says you couldn’t have picked anything better.

“You can't say that an Indian raga or a piece by Bach or a Japanese Shakuhachi piece ‘means’ something that you can put into words. It is its own end product," he said. "It means really what it is. Similar to things in nature. A flower isn't a way of expressing something else. It is the end product. It is what it is.”

1 copper   

n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的

参考例句：

• The students are asked to prove the purity of copper.要求学生们检验铜的纯度。
• Copper is a good medium for the conduction of heat and electricity.铜是热和电的良导体。

2 astronomer   

n.天文学家

参考例句：

• A new star attracted the notice of the astronomer.新发现的一颗星引起了那位天文学家的注意。
• He is reputed to have been a good astronomer.他以一个优秀的天文学者闻名于世。

3 celebrity   

n.名人，名流；著名，名声，名望

参考例句：

• Tom found himself something of a celebrity. 汤姆意识到自己已小有名气了。
• He haunted famous men, hoping to get celebrity for himself. 他常和名人在一起, 希望借此使自己获得名气。

4 archaic   

adj.(语言、词汇等)古代的，已不通用的

参考例句：

• The company does some things in archaic ways,such as not using computers for bookkeeping.这个公司有些做法陈旧，如记账不使用电脑。
• Shaanxi is one of the Chinese archaic civilized origins which has a long history.陕西省是中国古代文明发祥之一，有悠久的历史。

5 gadgets   

n.小机械，小器具（ gadget的名词复数 ）

参考例句：

• Certainly. The idea is not to have a house full of gadgets. 当然。设想是房屋不再充满小配件。 来自超越目标英语 第4册
• This meant more gadgets and more experiments. 这意味着要设计出更多的装置，做更多的实验。 来自英汉非文学 - 科学史

6 durable   

adj.持久的，耐久的

参考例句：

• This raincoat is made of very durable material.这件雨衣是用非常耐用的料子做的。
• They frequently require more major durable purchases.他们经常需要购买耐用消费品。

7 decode   

vt.译（码），解（码）

参考例句：

• All he had to do was decode it and pass it over.他需要做的就是将它破译然后转给他人。
• The secret documents were intercepted and decoded.机密文件遭截获并被破译。