可锐考研英语阅读经典文章内容讲解.docx

1、可锐考研英语阅读经典文章内容讲解2018年可锐考研英语阅读经典文章内容讲解（七）Citizen astronomy全民天文学A new world in your bedroom卧室里的新天地Amateur astronomers join the ranks of the planet hunters业余天文学家加入 猎星人 行列IN AN age of professionals, the ability of amateur scientists to make meaningful contributionshas almost vanished.当今世界，专业人士主导天下，业余科学家

2、想要做出积极贡献却心有余而力不足。Almost, but not quite.不足，绝非完全丧失。The internet allows professionals to make their data available for analysis by anyone, andsome are happy to take advantage of the free labour this promises.在互联网的帮助下，专业人士们可以向任何人提供数据用于研究，其中不乏欢迎这种通过分享数据而获得免费劳力办法的人。This approach has proved particularly fr

3、uitful in astronomy, a science with a long historyof amateur contributions.这种方法被证实在天文学领域内极富成效。业余爱好者对天文学的贡献有着漫长的历史。Armchair astronomers have already helped classify galaxies seen by Hubble, the mainorbiting telescope of America s space agency, NASA.已有没有严谨研究经验的天文学爱好者帮助将哈勃望远镜观察到的星系分类。哈勃望远镜是美国宇航局主要的轨道望远

4、镜。They have also looked for interesting asteroids, and kept an eye out for solar storms.业余天文学家们也已参与寻找有趣的小行星和观测太阳风暴。The latest project to involve them, called Planet Hunters, allows amateurs to search forextrasolar planets-those that orbit stars other than the sun.最新的 猎星人 计划号召业余爱好者们参与搜寻太阳系外行星绕除太阳外的其他

5、恒星运行的行星。It was set up by a group at the universities of Oxford and Yale, and links 40,000 participantswith data gathered by Kepler, another NASA space telescope that is specifically designed tohunt for planets.此项目由哈佛大学和耶鲁大学的一个团体发起，向40000名参与者提供开普勒望远镜获取的数据。开普勒望远镜是NASA的另外一架太空望远镜，专门用于寻找行星。On September 2

6、6th the group announced, in a paper posted to arXiv, an online database,that its participants had discovered two probable exoplanets, one a Jupiter-like gas giant, andthe other, possibly, a smaller, rocky world about twice the diameter of Earth.该组织于9月26日在一篇发表在 arXiv上的论文里宣布，其成员发现了两颗极有可能的外部行星，一颗是与木星类似

7、的气体巨行星，另外一颗可能是体积较小、直径约为地球两倍的岩石星体。Kepler works by monitoring the thousands of stars in its field of view for tiny changes inbrightness.开普勒望远镜的工作原理是监测其视野内成千上万个恒星的亮度的微小变化。Mostly, these are natural fluctuations, but particularly sharp and regular changes mightsignify a planet passing in front of a star.

8、大部分情况下，这些变化都是自然波动，但是一旦有急剧变化或者规律性变动，可能是行星在恒星前经过的标志。The raw data are sent to computers on Earth, converted into graphical form and madeavailable to the Planet Hunters.原始数据将被传输到地球的计算机上，转化成图表，向猎星人开发。After logging onto the project s website, its users are given a brightness graph from arandom star and as

9、ked to mark anything of interest.猎星人在登录该项目网站后将随机获得一张亮度图表，可根据兴趣进行任何标注。If several people flag the same star, the result is checked against the computer-derivedresults produced by the main Kepler team.如果多人标注了同一颗恒星，将与专门处理开普勒观测数据的计算机结果比对。Promising candidates are then checked again by ground-based telesco

10、pes.有可能存在的候选行星将由地面望远镜进一步确认。That allows Planet Hunters participants both to act as a benchmark for the star-detectionalgorithms and to discover planets the computers have missed, says Chris Lintott, anastronomer at Oxford who helps to run the project.来自剑桥大学的天文学家Chris Lintott说，这样，猎星人不仅能为恒星探测算法提供检验标准，还

11、能发现计算机漏掉的行星。What people lack in speed they make up for in judgment.Chris Lintott帮助该项目的运行。人们在速度上的劣势在判断力上得到弥补。Some stars being watched have very variable brightness. That is confusing for computers,but for human eyes is less of a problem.一些观测中的恒星亮度变化较大，这对于计算机来说难以把握，但是对于人眼却不成问题。And input from the human

12、 planet hunters is used to refine the algorithms, improving theirperformance.而且，猎星人输入的数据可以用来校正计算机算法，从而优化计算机性能。Planet Hunters grew out of Galaxy Zoo, which was set up in 2007 to help researchersclassify galaxies spotted by Hubble-just the sort of fuzzy task that machines struggle withbut humans excel

13、 at.猎星人计划的灵感来源于星系动物园计划。星系动物园计划成立于2007年，旨在帮助科研人员将哈勃望远镜观测到的星系分类正是那种机器无法胜任而对于人类轻而易举的麻烦活。Galaxy Zoo spawned the Zooniverse, a collection of science projects that harness thepower of amateurs.星系动物园计划孵化了动物宇宙计划一批借助业余爱好者力量的科学计划。Although astronomical projects still dominate, other sciences are starting to ad

14、opt theidea.尽管主要应用于天文学计划，其他学科也开始采用这一想法。One Zooniverse project aims to reconstruct weather records from old Navy logs; another ishelping to transcribe a cache of Egyptian papyri dating from the 1st century AD.动物宇宙的一个项目计划重现古老航海日志里的气象记录，另外一个项目计划抄录可追溯到公元1世纪的埃及纸莎草卷。Dr Lintott and his colleagues have aske

15、d researchers in other fields to submit more ideas, andhope to announce the shortlist in a few weeks time.Lintott博士和他的同事们已经呼吁其他领域的科研人员们提供更多的想法，有望于几星期后公布最终入选名单。二Human evolution人类进化史You look familiar似曾相识Another piece of humanity s family tree is fitted into place南方古猿sediba的发现填补了人类家族谱系的关键空白THE opening

16、scene of Mel Brooks s film History of the World: Part One dispenses withhuman origins in one line: And the ape stood, and became man.梅尔布鲁克斯执导的电影 世界史：序幕 开场仅用一句话就概括了人类起源： 类人猿直立起来，变成了人类。Would that it were that easy for palaeontologists to sort out.要是古生物学家也能如此轻而易举地阐释人类进化的奥秘就好了。The transition to humanity

17、 is generally agreed to have occurred between Australopithecus,a genus of small-brained, bipedal primates whose most famous member is a fossil nicknamed Lucy , and the big-brained species Homo erectus.人们普遍认为人类是由南方古猿和直立人之间的某个物种演化而来。南方古猿头部较小，属双足灵长类动物，其最有名的家族成员是一具被称做 露西 的化石，比较而言，直立人的头部就大多了。But pinning

18、down when precisely this took place, and which of the various australopithecinespecies were involved, has been challenging.不过，要想确定确切的人类演化时间和哪些南方古猿物种参与了演化，仍是极具挑战性的课题。Now the most human-like australopithecine found to date is clarifying things-and staking aclaim to be the species from which early huma

19、ns evolved.目前，迄今为止发现的与人类最为相似的南方古猿正逐渐解开这团迷雾它阐明了早期人类是由哪个物种演化而来的。Fossils of the new species, Australopithecus sediba, were discovered in 2008 in a cave inSouth Africa. Initial research, led by Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand, inJohannesburg, concluded that the species came too late in

20、 the fossil record to be theancestor of the Homo lineage.2008年在南非一个洞穴内发现一个新物种化石，称做南方古猿sediba。约翰内斯堡金山大学的李伯格尔领导的最初研究结果表明南方古猿sediba在化石记录中出现的年份过晚而无法被认定为人类的祖先。This week, however, a range of new research into sediba, again led by Dr Berger, has beenpublished in Science.然而本周，李伯格尔博士领导的一系列关于sediba的最新研究成果在科学杂

21、志上发表。These studies conclude that sediba did in fact predate Homo erectus and, moreover, thatparts of its anatomy are surprisingly similar to modern man.这些研究结果表明，南方古猿sediba确实早于直立人存在，并且它的一些骨骼结构与现代人类有着惊人的相似之处。The fossils examined in the Science papers are of an adolescent boy and an adult woman.发表在科学杂志

22、的该篇论文其研究对象为一个小男孩和一个成年妇女的化石。They are well preserved, and encased in sediments that allow uncommonly precise dating.这些化石保存完好，被封存在可进行精确年代测定的沉积物中，这实属罕见。They lived 1.977m years ago, predating the appearance of Homo erectus by 77,000 years.他们生活于197.7万年前，比直立人早出现7.7万年。The period is an especially muddled one

23、 for palaeontology, being full of fragmentary fossilsthat are difficult to assign either to Homo or to Australopithecus.该时期属于古生物学上极其混乱的年代，大量化石碎片都很难归类到直立人或南方古猿身上。The sediba fossils, by contrast, have some of the most complete features in the early humanrecord.比较而言，南方古猿sediba化石具备了早期人类一些最完整的特征。The new

24、studies centre on the most telling bits of anatomy in the story of human evolution:the brain, pelvis, hands and feet.新研究集中于与人类进化史相关的一些最具说服力的特征：如大脑，骨盆，手和脚。The brain itself does not fossilise, but the inside of the cranium retains an impression of itscontours.大脑本身不会变成化石，但它在颅骨内保留的轮廓特征仍依稀可见。The research

25、ers mapped these with high-powered X-ray beams to create a three-dimensional model of the surface of sediba s brain.XX文库 - 让每个人平等地提升自我XX文库 - 让每个人平等地提升自我研究人员采用高功率X射线束对其进行映射并绘制出sediba大脑表面的三维模型图。They found that its size was on a par with other australopithecines, but its shape was morelike that of a hu

26、man brain.他们发现sediba脑部大小与其它南方古猿并无分别，但形状却更接近人脑。Specifically, the frontal lobes, which are the seat in modern humans of higher cognitivefunctions such as abstract reasoning, looked more humanlike in sediba s brain than they doin the brains of other australopithecines.尤其是作为人类抽象推理等高认知功能区域的脑前叶部分，sediba比其

27、它南方古猿更象人类。That suggests the neurological changes which gave rise to humanity may have predated thebrain s expansionan event that had, hitherto, been regarded as crucial to theemergence of humans.这表明产生人类的神经系统变化可能早于南方古猿大脑的扩张大脑扩张至今仍被认为是人类出现的重要因素。The hands, feet and pelvis of sediba indicate that it bot

28、h climbed trees and walked upright,though with a different gait from that of humans or chimpanzees.南方古猿sediba的手、脚和盆骨表明尽管其步法与人类或黑猩猩有所不同，但它能够爬树和直立行走。The species may have been a toolmaker, as its hand allowed for a human-like grip.这种物种可能还会制造工具，因为它们的手能象人类那样紧握。Sediba s pelvis, an upright butterfly shape,

29、 is likewise reminiscent of the human one.南方古猿sediba呈直立蝴蝶状的盆骨同样与人类相似。It therefore sheds light on a longstanding debate: whether it was bipedalism or giving birthto babies with large heads that drove changes in the shape of the human pelvis.因此它为长期争论的问题提供了很好的阐释：人类的盆骨形状是源自于双足行走还是为了生育大头婴儿。Adult sediba h

30、ad small heads, which indicates thatwalking upright was the advantage brought by the modern pelvis.由于成年南方古猿sediba头部很小，这表明现代人的盆骨可带来直立行走的好处。All of which makes sediba more similar to modern humans than are other australopithecines-and more similar, even, than Homo habilis, until now seen as one of the

31、earliest humans.所有这些都让南方古猿sediba比其它灵长类更象现代人甚至比至今被认为是最早人类之一的 能人 还象现代人。The consensus had been that habilis was a transitional form between Australopithecus andHomo erectus.人们一致认为 能人 是南方古猿和直立人之间的过渡物种。Dr Berger posits that sediba may have evolved directly into Homo erectus, leaving habilis asan evolutionary sideline, and not even part of the genus Homo.李伯格尔博士推断南方古猿sediba可能直接进化成了直立人，这使 能人 成为进化的旁支，甚至不是人属的一部分。Slowly, then, the origin of the strange assemblage of characters that makes a human beinghuman is emerging.