万物简史 第374期:进入对流层(15)

To these he subsequently added a fourth term, nimbus (from the Latin for cloud), for a rain cloud. The beauty of Howard's system was that the basic components could be freely recombined to describe every shape and size of passing cloudstratocumulus,

万物简史 第372期:进入对流层(13)

The standard way to envision this is to imagine yourself at the center of a large carousel and tossing a ball to someone positioned on the edge. By the time the ball gets to the perimeter, the target person has moved on and the ball passes behind him

万物简史 第371期:进入对流层(12)

Though a lawyer by profession, Hadley had a keen interest in the weather (he was, after all, English) and also suggested a link between his cells, the Earth's spin, and the apparent deflections of air that give us our trade winds. However, it was an

万物简史 第370期:进入对流层(11)

What we do know is that because heat from the Sun is unevenly distributed, differences in air pressure arise on the planet. Air can't abide this, so it rushes around trying to equalize things everywhere. Wind is simply the air's way of trying to keep

万物简史 第369期:进入对流层(10)

At the equator the convection process is generally stable and the weather predictably fair, but in temperate zones the patterns are far more seasonal, localized, and random, which results in an endless battle between systems of high-pressure air and

万物简史 第368期:进入对流层(9)

Jet streams, usually located about 30,000 to 35,000 feet up, can bowl along at up to 180 miles an hour and vastly influence weather systems over whole continents, yet their existence wasn't suspected until pilots began to fly into them during the Sec

万物简史 第367期:进入对流层(8)

Certainly there is no shortage of energy in the world above our heads. One thunderstorm, it has been calculated, can contain an amount of energy equivalent to four days' use of electricity for the whole United States. In the right conditions, storm c

万物简史 第366期:进入对流层(7)

Air is deceptive stuff. Even at sea level, we tend to think of the air as being ethereal and all but weightless. In fact, it has plenty of bulk, and that bulk often exerts itself. As a marine scientist named Wyville Thomson wrote more than a century

万物简史 第365期:进入对流层(6)

People who habitually live at altitude have often spent thousands of years developing disproportionately large chests and lungs, increasing their density of oxygen-bearing red blood cells by almost a third, though there are limits to how much thicken

万物简史 第364期:进入对流层(5)

In The Other Side of Everest, the British mountaineer and filmmaker Matt Dickinson records how Howard Somervell, 在《珠穆朗玛峰的另一侧》中，英国登山家兼电影制片人马特迪金森记录下了霍华德萨默维尔的情况。 o

万物简史 第514期:丰富多彩的生命(10)

Rarely has a man been more comfortable with his own greatness. 很少有人像他那样心安理得地对待自己的名气。 He spent much of his leisure time penning long and flattering portraits of himself, 他花了很多业余时间来绘制和美

万物简史 第391期:浩瀚的海洋(10)

At 3,000 feet, their little porthole was subjected to nineteen tons of pressure per square inch. 到了900米，小舷窗受到的压力高达每平方厘米2.95吨。 Death at such a depth would have been instantaneous, as Beebe never failed to obse

万物简史 第390期:浩瀚的海洋(9)

Although Beebe nearly always gets the credit, 虽然功劳几乎总是归于毕比， it was in fact Barton who designed the first bathysphere (from the Greek word for deep) and funded the $12,000 cost of its construction. 但设计并出资1200美元来

万物简史 第392期:浩瀚的海洋(11)

After their record-breaking descent of 1934, Beebe lost interest in diving and moved on to other adventures, but Barton persevered. 在1934年那次破记录的下海以后，毕比对潜水失去了兴趣，开始转向别的冒险工作，但巴顿依

万物简史 第389期:浩瀚的海洋(8)

They also discovered, by means of depth measurements, that there appeared to be submerged mountains in the mid-Atlantic, 通过测量深度，他们还发现大西洋中部的水底下似乎有山脉。 prompting some excited observers to speculate t

万物简史 第388期:浩瀚的海洋(7)

In the 1830s, the British naturalist Edward Forbes surveyed ocean beds throughout the Atlantic and Mediterranean 19世纪30年代，英国博物学家爱德华福布斯勘察了大西佯和地中海各处的海床， and declared that there was no li

万物简史 第387期:浩瀚的海洋(6)

Nearly 90 percent of the planet's ice is in Antarctica, and most of the rest is in Greenland. 地球上将近90%的冰在南极洲；剩下的主要在格陵兰。 Go to the South Pole and you will be standing on nearly two miles of ice, at the North

万物简史 第386期:浩瀚的海洋(5)

There are 320 million cubic miles of water on Earth and that is all we're ever going to get. 地球上有13亿立方公里水，这是全部。 The system is closed: practically speaking, nothing can be added or subtracted. 系统已经关闭，说得明

万物简史 第385期:浩瀚的海洋(4)

Water is so vital to us that it is easy to overlook that all but the smallest fraction of the water on Earth is poisonous to us, 水对我们太重要了，因此我们不容易注意到，地球上绝大部分的水对我们来说都是有毒的，

万物简史 第384期:浩瀚的海洋(3)

The hydrogen atoms cling fiercely to their oxygen host, but also make casual bonds with other water molecules. 氢原子死死地抓住其主子氧原子不放，而且与别的水分子的黏合也很随便。 The nature of a water molecule means th