万物简史 第504期:多灾多难的生命进程(24)

Sifting meticulously, the volunteers collected every last tooth and vertebra and chip of bone everything that had been overlooked by previous diggers. 志愿者们精心筛选，捡起了剩下的每一颗牙齿、每一根脊骨和每一片骨头反正

万物简史 第507期:丰富多彩的生命(3)

We wandered through a confusion of departments where people sat at large tables doing intent, 我们漫步穿过一个又一个部门，只见人们坐在大桌子跟前， investigative things with arthropods and palm fronds and boxes of yellowed bo

万物简史 第506期:丰富多彩的生命(2)

Back here are specimens collected by Joseph Banks in Australia, 这里放着约瑟夫班克斯在澳大利亚采集的标本， Alexander von Humboldt in Amazonia, Darwin on the Beagle voyage, and much else that is either very rare or historically im

万物简史 第505期:丰富多彩的生命(1)

23 The Richness of Being 第二十三章 丰富多彩的生命 Here and there in the Natural History Museum in London, 在伦敦自然史博物馆的很多地方， built into recesses along the underlit corridors or standing between glass cases of m

万物简史 第503期:多灾多难的生命进程(23)

The fact is, we don't really know a great deal about the dinosaurs. 实际情况是，我们其实对恐龙了解不多。 For the whole of the Age of Dinosaurs, fewer than a thousand species have been identified (almost half of them known from a sin

万物简史 第502期:多灾多难的生命进程(22)

It stood ten feet high, weighed over eight hundred pounds, and had a beak that could tear the head off pretty much anything that irked it. 它身高3米，体重350千克以上，它的喙能把差不多任何令它讨厌的动物的脑袋扯掉。 I

万物简史 第501期:多灾多难的生命进程(21)

Indeed, with the world dark and hostile, it was a perfect time to be small, warm-blooded, nocturnal, flexible in diet, and cautious by nature, 当世界一片滚黑、布满危险的时候，对于出没于夜间、不挑食物、生性谨慎的小恒温

万物简史 第500期:多灾多难的生命进程(20)

Some animals absolutely prospered including, a little surprisingly, the turtles once again. 有的动物再次一片兴旺的景象包括鳖，真有点儿令人感到意外。 As Flannery notes, the period immediately after the dinosaur extinction c

万物简史 第499期:多灾多难的生命进程(19)

These are difficult inconsistencies. 这些都是难以解释的矛盾地方。 As Richard Fortey observes: Somehow it does not seem satisfying just to call them 'lucky ones' and leave it at that. 正如理查德福泰所说：仅仅把它们称做幸运

万物简史 第508期:丰富多彩的生命(4)

When Emerson poetically noted that mosses favor the north sides of trees (The moss upon the forest bark, was pole-star when the night was dark) 当埃默森富有诗意地谈到苔藓喜欢生长在树木的北侧的时候（在漆黑的夜晚，树干

万物简史 第394期:浩瀚的海洋(13)

He thought underwater exploration a waste of resources and pointed out that the Navy was not a research institute. 他认为水下探索是浪费资源，还指出海军不是个研究机构。 The nation, moreover, was about to become fully preoccup

万物简史 第405期:浩瀚的海洋(24)

Nothing, however, compares with the fate of cod. 然而，命运最惨的要算是鳕鱼。 In the late fifteenth century, the explorer John Cabot found cod in incredible numbers on the eastern banks of North America, 15世纪末，探险家约翰卡伯

万物简史 第21期:如何营造一个宇宙(13)

The analogy that is usually given for explaining the curvature of space is to try to imagine someone from a universe of flat surfaces, who had never seen a sphere, being brought to Earth. No matter how far he roamed across the planet's surface, he wo

万物简史 第20期:如何营造一个宇宙(12)

I should say that everything is just right so far. In the long term, gravity may turn out to be a little too strong, and one day it may halt the expansion of the universe and bring it collapsing in upon itself, till it crushes itself down into anothe

万物简史 第19期:如何营造一个宇宙(11)

Martin Rees, Britain's astronomer royal, believes that there are many universes, possibly an infinite number, each with different attributes, in different combinations, and that we simply live in one that combines things in the way that allows us to

万物简史 第18期:如何营造一个宇宙(10)

What is extraordinary from our point of view is how well it turned out for us. If the universe had formed just a tiny bit differentlyif gravity were fractionally stronger or weaker, if the expansion had proceeded just a little more slowly or swiftlyt

万物简史 第17期:如何营造一个宇宙(9)

The eventual result was the inflation theory, which holds that a fraction of a moment after the dawn of creation, the universe underwent a sudden dramatic expansion. It inflatedin effect ran away with itself, doubling in size every 10-34seconds. The

万物简史 第16期:如何营造一个宇宙(8)

The Big Bang theory isn't about the bang itself but about what happened after the bang. Not long after, mind you. By doing a lot of math and watching carefully what goes on in particle accelerators, scientists believe they can look back to 10-43secon

万物简史 第23期:走进太阳系(1)

2.WELCOME TO THE SOLAR SYSTEM 2.欢迎来到太阳系 Astronomers these days can do the most amazing things. If someone struck a match on the Moon, they could spot the flare. From the tiniest throbs and wobbles of distant stars they can infer the siz

万物简史 第22期:如何营造一个宇宙(14)

For a long time the Big Bang theory had one gaping hole that troubled a lot of peoplenamely that it couldn't begin to explain how we got here. Although 98 percent of all the matter that exists was created with the Big Bang, that matter consisted excl