托福听力背景知识——天文应用篇

今天给大家带来托福听力背景知识之——

The Application of Astronomy 天文应用篇

Astronmy 天文

天文学(Astronomy)是研究宇宙空间天体、宇宙的结构 和发展的学科。天文学的研究对于人类的日常生活有很大的实际意义，对于人类的自然观有很大的影响。古代的天文学家通过观测太阳、月球和其他一些天体及天象，确定了时间、方向和历法。这也是天体测量学的开端。

Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestialobjects and phenomena. Astronomy is one of the oldestnatural sciences. The early civilizations in recorded historymade methodical observations of the night sky. In the past,astronomy included disciplines as diverse as astrometry,celestial navigation, observational astronomy, and themaking of calendars.

Calendar 日历

The course of the sun and the moon are the mostsalient natural, regularly recurring events useful fortimekeeping, thus in pre-modern societies worldwidelunation and the year were most commonly used astime units.

Nevertheless, the Roman calendar containedremnants of a very ancient pre-Etruscan 10-month solaryear. The first recorded physical calendars, dependenton the development of writing in the Ancient Near East,are the Bronze Age Egyptian and Sumerian calendars.A large number of Ancient Near East calendar systemsbased on the Babylonian calendar date from the IronAge.

TPO 23 Lecture 1:

Antikythera Mechanism 天球仪

The Antikythera Mechanism is a relatively small device—roughly the size of ashoebox—made of gears fitted inside a wooden case.

自动回转式天球仪是一个相对较小的装置，大概跟鞋盒一样大，是在一个木盒中装了齿轮的装置。

In its original state, there were rotating dials and other indicators on the top with letters anddrawings showing the Sun, the phases of the Moon, and different constellations.

在原型中，顶部有旋转的刻度盘和其他的指示器，上面有字母和图示的太阳，月相和不同的星座。

Inside the box bronze gears would’ve rotated the displays.

在盒子内部，铜的齿轮旋转以改变 显示的内容。

The displays—uh, the indicators of the Antikythera Mechanism would then move to showthe motion of the Sun and the Moon relative to the planets and stars.

显示的内容，也就是天球仪的指示器会转动并显示出太阳、月亮和行星的运行。

Navigation 航海

最初航海者通过白天观察太阳的高度，夜间观察北极星的方位来判断所处的纬度，依靠天体定位，航海家使用一种很简单的仪器来测量天体角度，称之为“雅各竿”。

观测者有两根竿子在顶端连接起来，底下一根与地平线平行，上面一根对准天体(星星或太阳)，就能量出偏角。然后利用偏角差来计算纬度和航程。这种技术被称做“纬度航行”，在测量纬度比较成功， 但确定经度却非常困难。尽管如此，“纬度航行”的方法仍在西欧被很普遍地采用，把自己置于与目的地相同的纬度线上，然后保持在这条线上航行，就能直到目的地。人类最早被发明的航海工具是罗盘，也就是指南针的雏形。最初的时候，人们仅在天气情况恶劣，无法看到太阳和北极星，也不知道船首驶向何方才使用罗盘。航海者会在一块磁石摩擦一个铁针，使其产生磁性，并将其固定在一根稻草上，并悬浮于一碗水中，这样有了磁性的铁针就会自动指向北方。

TPO 14 Lecture 3:

But today I want to talk about the importance of stars for early seafarers, about how the fixedpatterns of stars were used as navigational aids.

但是今天我要讲的是星象对于早期船员的重要性，关于怎么利用固定的星象模式作为协助航海的工具的。

Long before the development of, uh, advanced navigational tools in Europe, pacific islanderswere travelling from New Zealand to Hawaii and back again, using nothing but the stars as theirnavigational instruments.

远在在欧洲先进的航海工具被开发出来之前，太平洋岛上的居民就已在新西兰到夏威夷之间穿梭，没有借助任何工具，就靠行星来导航。

Um, the key to the pacific islanders' success was probably their location near the equator.What that meant was that the sky could be partitioned, divided up, much more symmetrically thanit could farther away from the equator.

嗯，太平洋岛上的居民成功导航的关键很可能在于他们所处的位置靠近赤道。这就意味着这里天空可能被分隔开来，比起远离赤道的地方，这里被分割开来后更显对称。

Tide 潮汐

潮汐现象是沿海地区的一种自然现象，指海水在天体(主要是月球和太阳)引潮力作用下所产生的周期性运动。主要应用为灌溉(irrigation)和潮汐能源(tidal energy)。

Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels caused by thecombined effects of the gravitational forces exerted by theMoon and the Sun, and the rotation of the Earth. Tide tablescan be used for any given locale to find the predicted timesand amplitude. The predictions are influenced by manyfactors including the alignment of the Sun and Moon, thephase and amplitude of the tide, the amphidromic systems ofthe oceans, and the shape of the coastline and near-shorebathymetry(海洋测探).

TPO 44 Lecture 4:Tidal Energy

There's currently a lot of interest in harnessing the power of the oceans—of the ocean tides,that is...the movement of huge amounts of water, which causes the water level of oceans to riseand fall.

目前很多人对利用海洋中的能源兴趣颇多，利用海洋潮汐，也就是会导致海洋的水平面上升下降的大量水体的运动。

The idea is that if we can harness that tidal energy, it'd be a great, clean, renewable energysource.One place where this tidal energy can be harnessed is at a shallow body of water, such asan estuary.

想法是如果我们能利用潮汐能，它会成为一种很棒的可再生清洁能源。这种潮汐能可以得到利用的一个地方就是在较浅的水域中，比如入海口。

An estuary's where a river enters the ocean... the fresh water meets the ocean water.Sometimes it's covered in water; sometimes it's not…

入海口是一条河流入海的地方……淡水与海水相遇。有时候它会被覆盖在水中，有时候不会。

Some parts of the estuary—as the tides go in and out... but other parts are alwayssubmerged.

当潮汐进进出出时，入海口的一些部分是显露在外的，但是其他部分总是沉没在水中。

Now, estuaries are an ideal place to try to capture energy from changes in tides because,well, there's an exceptionally large difference between the water level at high tide and at lowtide.

入海口是捕捉潮汐变化中产生的能量的一个理想地点，因为满潮和低潮的水平面之间有特别大的差异。

All that movement of water generates a lot of energy.And one way to harness that energyis by building a structure called a barrage there.

水体的所有运动会产生很多能量。而利用这些能量的一个方法就是在那里建造一个叫做拦河坝的建筑物。

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