If you take 10,000 people at random, 9,999 have something in common: their interests in business lie on or near the Earth's surface.
如果你随机挑选出10000个人,其中的9999个人会有如下共性:他们对商业的兴趣显而易见。
The odd one out is an astronomer, and I am one of that strange breed. My talk will be in two parts.
余下的那位怪人是天文学家,而我就是这个奇特物种中的一员。我的发言将分为两部分。
I'll talk first as an astronomer, and then as a worried member of the human race.
首先作为一个天文学家发言,之后作为人类社会中忧心忡忡的一员。
But let's start off by remembering that Darwin showed how we're the outcome of four billion years of evolution.
让我们首先回顾达尔文所指出的:我们人类只是40亿年进化的产物。
And what we try to do in astronomy and cosmology is to go back before Darwin's simple beginning, to set our Earth in a cosmic context.
我们进行天文学和宇宙学研究要做的,就是回溯到达尔文的理论原点,将我们的地球置于宇宙的背景中。
And let me just run through a few slides. This was the impact that happened last week on a comet.
请允许我展示几张图片。这是发生在上周的一次撞击彗星实验。
If they'd sent a nuke, it would have been rather more spectacular than what actually happened last Monday.
倘若他们发射的是颗核弹的话,其景象将会更加壮观。图片显示的是上周一的实景。
So that's another project for NASA. That's Mars from the European Mars Express, and at New Year.
那是NASA(美国国家航空航天局)的又一个项目。这张是在新年时由欧洲“火星快车号”探测器拍到的火星。
This artist's impression turned into reality when a parachute landed on Titan, Saturn's giant moon.
艺术家的创想变成了现实,当一个着陆装置降落在土星的巨大的卫星泰坦(土卫六)上。
It landed on the surface. This is pictures taken on the way down. That looks like a coastline.
它降落在土卫六的表面。这张图片拍摄于着陆途中。那些看起来像是海岸线。
It is indeed, but the ocean is liquid methane -- the temperature minus 170 degrees centigrade.
它们确实是,但“海洋”是液态的甲烷 - 温度是零下170摄氏度。
If we go beyond our solar system, we've learned that the stars aren't twinkly points of light.
如果我们放眼到太阳系之外,我们已经知道恒星并不是不断眨眼的光点。
Each one is like a sun with a retinue of planets orbiting around it. And we can see places where stars are forming, like the Eagle Nebula.
每一颗恒星都像太阳,伴有若干行星环绕。我们可以看到恒星形成的区域像天鹰星云(M16)。
We see stars dying. In six billion years, the sun will look like that.
我们还能看到衰竭的恒星。六十亿年后,太阳将变成这样。
And some stars die spectacularly in a supernova explosion, leaving remnants like that.
有些恒星在壮观的超新星爆发中消亡,遗留下这样的残余。