万物简史 第407期:生命的起源(1)

19 The Rise Of Life 第十九章 生命的起源 In 1953, Stanley Miller, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, took two flasksone containing a little water to represent a primeval ocean, 1953年，芝加哥大学的研究生斯坦利米勒拿

万物简史 第408期:生命的起源(2)

Proteins are what you get when you string amino acids together, and we need a lot of them. 你把氨基酸串在一起，就得到了蛋白质。我们需要大量的蛋白质。 No one really knows, but there may be as many as a million types of pro

万物简史 第228期:把铅撵出去(17)

So who is making it? We arethat is to say, many of our large corporations are still making it at their plants overseas. It will not be banned in Third World countries until 2010. 那么，是谁在生产含氯氟烃？是我们──那就是说，许多

万物简史 第225期:把铅撵出去(14)

By counting back through these layers and measuring the amount of lead in each, he could work out global lead concentrations at any time for hundreds, or even thousands, of years. The notion became the foundation of ice core studies, on which much mo

万物简史 第224期:把铅撵出去(13)

His main work done, Patterson now turned his attention to the nagging question of all that lead in the atmosphere. He was astounded to find that what little was known about the effects of lead on humans was almost invariably wrong or misleadingand no

万物简史 第173期:爱因斯坦的宇宙(16)

With his pipe, genially self-effacing manner, and electrified hair, Einstein was too splendid a figure to remain permanently obscure, 爱因斯坦常手拿烟斗，和蔼可亲，不爱露面，一头乱发，真是个非凡人物。这样的人物不可

万物简史 第180期:爱因斯坦的宇宙(23)

This was more than a little odd, for Hubbles life was filled from an early age with a level of distinction that was at times almost ludicrously golden. At a single high school track meet in 1906, he won the pole vault, shot put, discus, hammer throw,

万物简史 第182期:爱因斯坦的宇宙(25)

Hubble's luck was to come along soon after an ingenious woman named Henrietta Swan Leavitt had figured out a way to do so. Leavitt worked at the Harvard College Observatory as a computer, as they were known. Computers spent their lives studying photo

万物简史 第511期:丰富多彩的生命(7)

This was an amazing disclosure. 这句话里包含着丰富的历史内容。 Joseph Banks was England's greatest botanist, and the Endeavour voyage that is the one on which Captain Cook charted the 1769 transit of Venus 约瑟夫班克斯是英国最伟

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376期:进入对流层(17)

When you look at a lake, you are looking at a collection of molecules that have been there on average for about a decade. 要是你望一眼湖水，你看到的是一大堆分子，它们在那里平均已达10年之久。 In the ocean the residence

万物简史 第362期:进入对流层(3)

The temperature six miles up can be -70 degrees Fahrenheit, and you would need, or at least very much appreciate, supplementary oxygen. 10公里高空的温度会降至零下57摄氏度，你需要补充氧气，至少很希望这么做。 After you

万物简史 第355期:孤独的行星(20)

Nor does abundance necessarily relate to importance. 风度与重要程度也不一定有关系。 Carbon is only the fifteenth most common element, accounting for a very modest 0.048 percent of Earth's crust, but we would be lost without it. 碳只居

万物简史 第354期:孤独的行星(19)

As you might expect, oxygen is our most abundant element, accounting for just under 50 percent of the Earth's crust, 你也许会想到，氧是最丰富的元素，占地壳的将近50%。 but after that the relative abundances are often surprising.

万物简史 第353期:孤独的行星(18)

We don't really know for sure because we have nothing else to compare our own existence to, 我们确实不知道，因为我们没有任何别的东西可以用来跟我们自己的存在进行比较。 but it seems evident that if you wish to end u

万物简史 第350期:孤独的行星(15)

Its surface temperature is a roasting 470 degrees centigrade (roughly 900 degrees Fahrenheit), which is hot enough to melt lead, 它的表面温度高达470摄氏度，连铅都会熔化。 and the atmospheric pressure at the surface is ninety times

万物简史 第348期:孤独的行星(13)

So far space scientists have discovered about seventy planets outside the solar system, 据认为，外层空间有10亿亿亿颗行星。 out of the ten billion trillion or so that are thought to be out there, so humans can hardly claim to speak wit

万物简史 第337期:孤独的行星(2)

On land, if you rose to the top of a five-hundred-foot eminenceCologne Cathedral or the Washington Monument, say, 在陆地上，要是你爬到150米的高处比如科隆大教堂或华盛顿纪念碑， the change in pressure would be so slight as

万物简史 第336期:孤独的行星(1)

Part V Life Itself 第五部 生命本身 The more I examine the universe and study the details of its architecture, 我越是审视宇宙，越是研究其构造上的具体细节， the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have

万物简史 第322期:美丽而危险(5)

We have absolutely nothing to compare it to. 我们绝对没有任何东西可以用来与它比较。 The biggest blast in recent times was that of Krakatau in Indonesia in August 1883, 近代最大的一次是1883年8月印度尼西亚的喀拉喀托