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1、 新概念第四册课文翻译及学习笔记：Lesson43First listen and then answer the following question.听录音，然后答复以下问题。What does the ”uniquely rational way” for us to communicate with other intelligent beings in space depend on?We must conclude from the work of those who have studied the origin of life, that given a planet only
2、 approximately like our own, life is almost certain to start. Of all the planets in our solar system, we ware now pretty certain the Earth is the only one on which life can survive. Mars is too dry and poor in oxygen, Venus far too hot, and so is Mercury, and the outer planets have temperatures near
3、 absolute zero and hydrogen-dominated atmospheres. But other suns, start as the astronomers call them, are bound to have planets like our own, and as is the number of stars in the universe is so vast, this possibility becomes virtual certainty. There are one hundred thousand million starts in our ow
4、n Milky Way alone, and then there are three thousand million other Milky Ways, or galaxies, in the universe. So the number of the stars that we know exist is now estimated at about 300 million million million.Although perhaps only 1 per cent of the life that has started somewhere will develop into h
5、ighly complex and intelligent patterns, so vast is the number of planets, that intelligent life is bound to be a natural part of the universe.If then we are so certain that other intelligent life exists in the universe, why have we had no visitors from outer space yet? First of all, they may have co
6、me to this planet of ours thousands or millions of years ago, and found our then prevailing primitive state completely uninteresting to their own advanced knowledge. Professor Ronald Bracewell, a leading American radio astronomer, argued in Nature that such a superior civilization, on a visit to our
7、 own solar system, may have left an automatic messenger behind to await the possible awakening of an advanced civilization. Such a messenger, receiving our radio and television signals, might well re-transmit them back to its home-planet, although what impression any other civilization would thus ge
8、t from us is best left unsaid.But here we come up against the most difficult of all obstacles to contact with people on other planets - the astronomical distances which separate us. As a reasonable guess, they might, on an average, be 100 light years away. (A light year is the distance which light t
9、ravels at 186,000 miles per second in one year, namely 6 million million miles.) Radio waves also travel at the speed of light, and assuming such an automatic messenger picked up our first broadcasts of the 1920”s, the message to its home planet is barely halfway there. Similarly, our own present pr
10、imitive chemical rockets, though good enough to orbit men, have no chance of transporting us to the nearest other star, four light years away, let alone distances of tens or hundreds of light years.Fortunately, there is a ”uniquely rational way” for us to communicate with other intelligent beings, a
11、s Walter Sullivan has put it in his excellent book, We Are not Alone. This depends on the precise radio frequency of the 21-cm wavelength, or 1420 megacycles per second. It is the natural frequency of emission of the hydrogen atoms in space and was discovered by us in 1951; it must be known to any k
12、ind of radio astronomer in the universe.Once the existence of this wave-length had been discovered, it was not long before its use as the uniquely recognizable broadcasting frequency for interstellar communication was suggested. Without something of this kind, searching for intelligences on other pl
13、anets would be like trying to meet a friend in London without a pre-arranged rendezvous and absurdly wandering the streets in the hope of a chance encounter.ANTHONY MICHAELIS Are There Strangers in Space? from The Weekend Telegraph【New words and expressions 生词和短语】Mercury n. 水星hydrogen n. 氢气prevailin
14、g adj. 普遍的radio astronomer 射电天方学家uniquely adv. 地rational adj. 合理的radio frequency 无线电频率cm n. 厘米megacycle n. 兆周emission n. 散发intersteller adj.星际的rendezvous n. 约会地点【课文解释】1.that given a planet only approximately like our own, life is almost certain to start 这是一个宾语从句，作动词conclude的宾语，其中given a planetour ow
15、n,过去分词短语作条件状语，given与if的意思相近，这个过去分词短语可译成“假如一个行星与我们所在的行星大致一样的话”。2.life is almost certain to start 那几乎确定会产生生命。3.be bound to 必定， 必定例句：You are bound to feel tired after a long walk.长时间步行后你必定会感到疲惫。He”s bound to notice your mistake.他必定会觉察到你的错误。4.prevailing adj. 盛行很广的， 普遍的例句：Your price is out of line with the prevailing international market.你方价格与现行世界市场行情不全都。He wore his hair in the prevailing fashion.他的头发梳的是当时盛行的发型。5.is best left unsaid 不去说(它)e up against 遇到，突然(或意外)，遇到(困难、反对等)例句：He often came up against the problem of money.他那时经常遇到钱的问题。We expect to come up against a l
