SSS 2011-07-13
时间：2019-01-08 作者：英语课 分类：Scientific American(七)月
英语课
This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Steve Mirsky. Got a minute?
You could think of it as the real dancing with the stars. Two white dwarf 1 stars have been found twirling around each other to make a complete orbit in less than every 13 minutes. And they provide a chance to test ideas about general relativity and gravitational waves. The system is described in a paper accepted by the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
One of the stars is about the size of Earth, but has more than half the mass of the Sun. A penny as dense 2 as the star would weigh half a ton here. The other star is about 60 times our size and has about half the mass of its companion.
Astronomers 3 estimate that the partners will collide in about 900,000 years. At that time, they could form a stable binary 4 star, or merge 5 into a single, rapidly spinning white dwarf, or go supernova. In the meantime, they provide a place to look for gravitational waves. Because they're not exchanging mass now, gravitational waves should account for the loss of energy that brings them closer every year. Which for each of them around the other is just a few podcasts long.
Thanks for the minute. For Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I'm Steve Mirsky.
n.矮子，侏儒，矮小的动植物；vt.使…矮小
- The dwarf's long arms were not proportional to his height.那侏儒的长臂与他的身高不成比例。
- The dwarf shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. 矮子耸耸肩膀，摇摇头。
a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的
- The general ambushed his troops in the dense woods. 将军把部队埋伏在浓密的树林里。
- The path was completely covered by the dense foliage. 小路被树叶厚厚地盖了一层。
n.天文学者，天文学家( astronomer的名词复数 )
- Astronomers can accurately foretell the date,time,and length of future eclipses. 天文学家能精确地预告未来日食月食的日期、时刻和时长。 来自《简明英汉词典》
- Astronomers used to ask why only Saturn has rings. 天文学家们过去一直感到奇怪，为什么只有土星有光环。 来自《简明英汉词典》
adj.二，双；二进制的；n.双(体)；联星
- Computers operate using binary numbers.计算机运行运用二进位制。
- Let us try converting the number itself to binary.我们试一试，把这个数本身变成二进制数。