Mars... |
火星 |
a world with as much land as Earth itself. |
一个和地球陆地面积相当的星球 |
A belt of rocky asteroids circles the Sun |
一条环绕太阳运转的岩石小行星带 |
between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. |
横亘于火星和木星轨道之间 |
With its four giant moons and dozens of smaller ones, |
拥有四颗大卫星和几十颗小卫星 |
Jupiter is like its own little Solar System. |
木星本身像个小型太阳系 |
It has more mass than all the other planets combined. |
它的质量比太阳系其他行星加起来还要大 |
Jupiter's Great Red Spot... |
木星的大红斑 |
a hurricane three times the size of our whole planet |
三倍于地球体积的飓风 |
that's been raging for centuries. |
已经怒吼了几百年 |
The crown jewel of our Solar System, Saturn, |
太阳系皇冠上的宝石土星 |
ringed by freeways of countless orbiting |
被数不清的行星环 |
and slowly tumbling snowballs... |
和缓慢翻滚的雪球所环绕 |
every snowball, a little moon. |
每个雪球都是一个小卫星 |
Uranus |
天王星 |
and Neptune, |
海王星 |
the outermost planets, unknown to the ancients |
太阳系最外层的行星古人不得而知 |
and only discovered after the invention of the telescope. |
发明望远镜后才被发现 |
Beyond the outermost planet, |
在外行星之外 |
there's a swarm of tens of thousands of frozen worlds. |
还有上万个冰封之地 |
And Pluto is one them. |
冥王星就是其中之一 |
Of all our spacecraft, |
在所有的航天器里 |
this is the one that's traveled farthest from home... |
这是离家最远的一艘 |
Voyager 1. |
旅行者一号 |
She bears a message to a billion years from now, |
她带着发往十亿年后的信息 |
something of who we were, |
有关我们的身份 |
how we felt |
我们的感受 |
and the music we made. |
以及制作的音乐 |
The deeper waters of this vast cosmic ocean |
在浩瀚的宇宙大洋里潜得越深 |
and their numberless worlds lie ahead. |
就越会发现数不清的世界 |
From out here, the Sun may look like just another star. |
从这边看去太阳就和其他恒星一样 |
But it still exerts its gravitational hold |
但它的引力仍影响到 |
on a trillion frozen comets, |
上万亿颗冰冻的彗星 |
leftovers from the formation of the Solar System |
那是大约五十亿年前 |
nearly five billion years ago. |
太阳系形成时的残留物 |
It's called the Oort Cloud. |
它被称作奥尔特云 |
No one has ever seen it before, nor could they, |
之前从未有人见过它们也看不到 |
because each one of these little worlds |
因为每个这种小天体 |
is as far from its nearest neighbor as Earth is from Saturn. |
和最近邻居的距离都相当于地球到土星的距离 |
This enormous cloud of comets encloses the Solar System, |
这个巨大的彗星星云包围住太阳系 |
which is the second line of our cosmic address. |
即我们宇宙地址的第二行 |
We've only been able to detect the planets of other stars |
我们能够探测到系外行星 |
for a few decades, |
还仅是这几十年的事 |
but we already know that planets are plentiful. |
但我们已经知道行星数量不菲 |
They outnumber the stars. |
远多于恒星 |
完整版请点击 |
|
Almost all of them will be very different from Earth, |
几乎全都和地球天差地别 |
and hostile to life as we know it. |
不适于我们所知的生命生存 |
But what do we know about life? |
但我们对生命又了解多少呢 |
We've met only one kind so far. |
目前为止我们只见识过一种生命形态 |
Earthlife. |
地球生命 |
See anything? |
看到什么了吗 |
Just empty space, right? |
空无一物是吧 |
Human eyes see only a sliver of the light that shines in the cosmos. |
闪耀在宇宙中的光芒人眼只能看到一小部分 |
But science gives us the power to see what our senses cannot. |
但科学让我们看到了人眼看不到的 |
Infrared is the kind of light made visible by night-vision goggles. |
红外线在夜视镜下变得可见 |
Throw an infrared sensor across the darkness... |
用红外传感器扫过黑暗 |
Rogue planet. |
流浪行星 |
World without a sun. |
即没有恒星的行星 |
Our galaxy has billions of them, |
我们的星系里有几十亿颗这样的星球 |
adrift in perpetual night. |
在永夜里流浪 |
They're orphans, cast away from their mother stars |
它们是孤儿在恒星系统诞生的一片混乱中 |
during the chaotic birth of their native star systems. |
被流放到了远离母恒星之地 |
Rogue planets are molten at the core but frozen at the surface. |
流浪行星中心灼热外表冰冻 |
There may be oceans of liquid water |
在这冰火两极中间也许存在 |
in the zone between those extremes. |
丰沛的液态水 |
Who knows what might be swimming there? |
谁知道水里可能畅游着什么呢 |
This is what the Milky Way looks like in infrared. |
这是红外线下的银河 |
Every single dot, not just the bright ones, |
每一个小点不仅是最亮的那些 |
is a star. |
都是一颗恒星 |
How many stars? |
有多少恒星 |
How many worlds? |
有多少世界 |
How many ways of being alive? |
有多少种生命形态呢 |
Where are we in this picture? |
在这幅图里我们又在哪里呢 |
See that trailing outer arm? |
看到那条旋臂了吗 |
That's where we live... |
那是我们居住的地方 |
about 30,000 light-years from the center. |
距中心有三万光年远 |
The Milky Way Galaxy |
银河系 |
is the next line of our cosmic address. |
是我们宇宙地址的下一行 |
We're now a hundred thousand light-years from home. |
我们现在离家有十万光年远 |
It would take light, the fastest thing there is, |
即使是光已知速度最快的事物 |
a hundred thousand years to reach us from Earth. |
也需要十万年才能从地球到达这里 |
This is the Great Spiral in Andromeda, |
这是螺旋状仙女座星系 |
the galaxy next door. |
紧邻银河系的另一个星系 |
We call our two giant galaxies |
我们把这两个巨型星系 |
and a smattering of smaller ones |
和其他一些小型星系 |
the "Local Group." |
叫做"本星系群" |
Can't even find our home galaxy from out here. |
从这里甚至找不到我们的母星系 |
It's just one of thousands in the Virgo Supercluster. |
这只是室女超团里的几千个星系中的一个 |
On this scale, |
从这个尺度看 |
all the objects we see, |
我们看到的所有东西 |
including the tiniest dots, |
哪怕是一个极微小的点 |
are galaxies. |
都是一个星系 |
Each galaxy contains billions of suns |
每个星系里有数以亿计的恒星 |
and countless worlds. |
和数不清的世界 |
Yet, the entire Virgo Supercluster itself |
然而整个室女超团 |
forms but a tiny part of our universe. |
也不过是宇宙的一小部分 |
This is the cosmos on the grandest scale we know... |
这是我们现已探知到最大尺度的宇宙 |
a network of a hundred billion galaxies. |
一个由数千亿星系组成的网络 |
It's the last line of our cosmic address... |
这是我们宇宙地址的最后一行 |
for now. |
暂时的最后一行 |
Observable universe?! |
可观测宇宙 |