万物简史 第280期:砰!(15)

Walter was a geologist specializing in paleomagnetism, Luis was a physicist and I was a nuclear chemist. 沃尔特是地质学家，他的专长是古磁学；路易斯是物理学家；我是核化学家。 And now here we were telling paleontologis

万物简史 第296期:地下的烈火(4)

Voorhies sent samples to colleagues all over the western United States asking if there was anything about it that they recognized. 沃里斯把样品寄给美国西部各地的同事们，问他们是否认得出这是什么东西。 Several months l

万物简史 第289期:砰!(24)

Anyone in a tall building in Omaha or Des Moines, say, 要是有人比如说在奥马哈或得梅因的高楼上， who chanced to look in the right direction would see a bewildering veil of turmoil followed by instantaneous oblivion. 恰好看着那个

万物简史 第290期:砰!(25)

As one commentator has put it, fleeing would mean selecting a slow death over a quick one. 有一位评论家说，逃跑意味着在慢死和快死之中选择慢死。 The death toll would be very little affected by any plausible relocation effort,

万物简史 第291期:砰!(26)

Still less could we send up a shipload of space cowboys to do the job for us, as in the movie Armageddon; 我们更不可能发射一飞船警察去为我们干这个活儿，就像电影《善恶大决战》里的场面那样； we no longer possess

万物简史 第292期:砰!(27)

For most of the time of the object's approach we would exist in a kind of cone of uncertainty. 在那个物体渐渐逼近的大部分时间里，我们会生活在某种无法确定的状态之中。 It would certainly be the most interesting few mo

万物简史 第293期:地下的烈火(1)

14 The Fire Below 第十四章 地下的烈火 In the summer of 1971, a young geologist named Mike Voorhies was scouting around on some grassy farmland in eastern Nebraska, 1971年夏，一位名叫迈克沃里斯的年轻地质学家在内布拉斯加

万物简史 第294期:地下的烈火(2)

Working alone in the lab on the morning I passed through was a cheerfully grizzled, looking fellow in a blue work shirt 一天上午，我从里面经过，只见一个身穿蓝色工作服、头发灰白的人独自在实验室里忙碌。 whom I re

万物简史 第295期:地下的烈火(3)

The article called the site a Pompeii of prehistoric animals,' he told me, 文章把这个地方称之为史前动物的庞贝城，他对我说， which was unfortunate because just afterward we realized that the animals hadn't died suddenly at all.

万物简史 第297期:地下的烈火(5)

The distance from the surface of Earth to the center is 3,959 miles, which isn't so very far. 从地面到地心的距离为6370公里。这不算太远。 It has been calculated that if you sunk a well to the center and dropped a brick into it, 有人

万物简史 第298期:地下的烈火(6)

He had discovered the boundary between the crust and the layer immediately below, the mantle; 他发现地壳与下面一层即地幔的界线， this zone has been known ever since as the Mohorovicic discontinuity, or Moho for short. 此后，这个区

万物简史 第299期:地下的烈火(7)

The scale is of course more an idea than an object, an arbitrary measure of the Earth's tremblings based on surface measurements. 当然，里氏震级是一个概念，不是一件东西，是一个根据地面测量的结果武断地得出的地球震

万物简史 第300期:地下的烈火(8)

As you will gather from this, measuring earthquakes is not always an exact science, particularly when interpreting readings from remote locations. 你从中可以知道，测量地震并不总是一门很精确的科学，尤其在牵涉到解释来自

万物简史 第301期:地下的烈火(9)

The San Francisco earthquake of 1906, for comparison, measured an estimated 7.8 on the Richter scale and lasted less than thirty seconds. 相比之下，1906年的旧金山地震只有里氏7.8级，持续了不到30秒。 Earthquakes are fairly comm

万物简史 第302期:地下的烈火(10)

Tokyo stands on the boundary of three tectonic plates in a country already well known for its seismic instability. 日本已经是个以多地震闻名的国家，而东京恰好又位于三个构造板块的相遇之处。 In 1995, as you will remem

万物简史 第303期:地下的烈火(11)

The most notorious such quakes ever to hit the United States were a series of three in New Madrid, Missouri, in the winter of 1811-12. 在美国经历过的这类地震当中，最著名的要算是1811-1812年冬发生在密苏里州新马德里的一

万物简史 第305期:地下的烈火(13)

Four years later, Soviet scientists decided to try their luck on dry land. 4年以后，苏联科学家决定在陆地上碰碰运气。 They chose a spot on Russia's Kola Peninsula, near the Finnish border, and set to work with the hope of drilling

万物简史 第306期:地下的烈火(14)

Because we can't see into the Earth, we have to use other techniques, which mostly involve reading waves as they travel through the interior. 我们无法看到地球的深处，因此不得不使用别的方法，主要包括观察波在地球内部的

万物简史 第307期:地下的烈火(15)

So how much do we know about what's inside the Earth? Very little. 因此说，我们对地球的内部情况究竟了解多少？很少。 Scientists are generally agreed that the world beneath us is composed of four layers, 科学家们普遍认为，

万物简史 第308期:地下的烈火(16)

How and when the Earth got its crust are questions that divide geologists into two broad camps, 地球如何有了地壳，何时有了地壳，这两个问题把地质学家分成两大阵营， those who think it happened abruptly early in the Eart