原文標題：
Astronomy
A meteorite?in?the Cotswolds
A?find from?an?English?country?garden?speaks?of?the?solar?system’s?first days
天文學(xué)
科茨沃爾德的一塊隕石
英國鄉(xiāng)村花園的一項發(fā)現(xiàn)說明了太陽系的誕生

[Paragraph 1]
WINCHCOMBE, A RURAL English town, is not a place where much happens.
溫奇科姆，一個很少有新鮮事的英國鄉(xiāng)村小鎮(zhèn)。
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But, on February 28th 2021, something did.
但是2021年2月28日，這里發(fā)生了一件大事。
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At six minutes to ten that evening, Winchcombe was hit by a meteorite.
那天晚上十點差六分，一顆隕石擊中了溫奇科姆。
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[Paragraph 2]
The first piece of this bolide?was found the following day by the Wilcocks, a local family, shattered?on their driveway (see picture).
第二天，當?shù)鼐用裢柨伎怂挂患以谧约业能嚨郎习l(fā)現(xiàn)了第一塊火炭碎片(見圖)。
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Once they realised what it was, they donned rubber?gloves, scooped the remains into freezer bags, and alerted the UK Meteor Observation Network, a group of amateurs who study incoming space debris.
他們一意識到是碎片的意義，就馬上戴上了橡膠手套，把殘骸舀進冷凍袋里，并迅速通知了英國流星觀測網(wǎng)，該組織是由研究太空碎片的業(yè)余愛好者們組成的。
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Other bits turned up?elsewhere, later.
后來，其他部分也在不同地方出現(xiàn)了。
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[Paragraph 3]
Aficionados?were excited by the fall for two reasons.
狂熱愛好者們對這次隕石墜落感到興奮有兩個原因。
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One was that the fragments’ rapid recovery had left little time for them to be contaminated?by terrestrial?chemistry.
一是碎片的快速回收，它們基本未受到地球化學(xué)物質(zhì)的污染。
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The other, that the bolide’s?descent was captured in numerous photographs, both official (in the form of 16 dedicated meteor-tracking cameras) and unofficial (in the form of numerous vehicle-dashboard and doorbell cameras).
另一個原因是，有大量的照片記錄下來了火焰的下降，照片來源于官方的16個專用隕石追蹤相機和非官方的民間汽車儀表盤和門鈴相機。?
These allowed its orbit before its encounter with?Earth to be calculated?with precision.
因此，它與地球相遇前的軌道可以得到精確計算。
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A group of those aficionados (124 of them, to be exact, including the three Wilcocks) have just published a paper on the matter in Science Advances.
這些狂熱愛好者有124人，包括威爾考克三兄弟，他們剛剛在《科學(xué)進展》上發(fā)表了一篇隕石相關(guān)的論文。
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[Paragraph 4]
The stone was of a type called a carbonaceous?chondrite.

這種石頭屬于碳質(zhì)球粒隕石類。

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These, as the mess on the Wilcocks’ drive showed, are loose?agglomerations?of stuff—and that stuff is not much altered from the?primordial cosmic?dust that turned into the solar system.

威爾考克斯家車道上那堆亂七八糟的物質(zhì)是松散結(jié)塊，與形成太陽系的原始宇宙塵埃很是相像。?

[Paragraph 5]
Tracing the Winchcombe meteorite’s path from the pictures taken of its arrival showed its orbital aphelion (the point in that orbit farthest from the Sun) to be just inside the orbit of Jupiter.
根據(jù)溫奇科姆隕石到達時拍攝的照片來看，可以發(fā)現(xiàn)它的遠日點(軌道上離太陽最遠的點)剛好在木星軌道的內(nèi)部。
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It came, in other words, from the outer part of the main asteroid belt.
換句話說，它來自主小行星帶的外部。
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Its chemistry, pristine because of the Wilcocks’ swift action, showed that the water in it nevertheless had the same isotopic composition as water on Earth.
幸好威爾考克斯一家及時操作，得到的隕石化學(xué)成分是原始的。它表明，隕石中水的同位素結(jié)構(gòu)與地球上的水一致。?
This supports the idea that Earth’s ocean was a cosmic afterthought “plastered” onto the planet, subsequent?to its formation, by hydrated?material from space.
這佐證了地球上的海洋來自于太空的觀點。即海洋形成之后，由太空的水合物質(zhì)“涂抹”到地球上。
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[Paragraph 6]
Analysis of the meteorite’s exposure to cosmicrays (revealed by the presence of particular isotopes of neon and aluminium), suggested, meanwhile, that it had until recently (perhaps as little as 300,000 years ago), been below the surface of something bigger.
同時，氖和鋁的特殊同位素的存在揭示了這塊隕石暴露于宇宙射線下?；诖隧椃治觯E石從某個系統(tǒng)內(nèi)部到系統(tǒng)表面至少用了30萬年。?
Presumably, it was liberated?by a cosmic collision and thereby set on the course that eventually brought it to the Wilcocks’ front garden.
據(jù)推測，它是在一次宇宙碰撞中被釋放出來，最終出現(xiàn)在威爾考克家前花園的車道上。?
（恭喜讀完，本篇英語詞匯量478左右）
原文出自：2022年11月19日《The Economist》Science & technology版塊。

精讀筆記來源于：自由英語之路

本文翻譯整理: Maree

本文編輯校對: Irene
僅供個人英語學(xué)習(xí)交流使用。

【補充資料】（來自于網(wǎng)絡(luò)）
2021年2月一塊墜落在格洛斯特郡溫奇科姆鎮(zhèn)的一條車道上，是英國已知第一顆碳質(zhì)球粒隕石，重0.5公斤。分析表明，它來自木星附近的一顆小行星，據(jù)推測形成于大約46億年前。研究顯示，大約12%的隕石樣本由水組成，而這些水的組成與地球海洋中的水“非常非常相似”。另外，由于這塊隕石在墜落后12小時內(nèi)被迅速回收，因此它也是迄今為止收集到的污染最少的樣本，科研價值很高。目前，地球上已知的隕石大約有6.5萬顆。此前通過彗星任務(wù)獲得的數(shù)據(jù)表明，彗星上的水與地球上的不匹配，而溫奇科姆鎮(zhèn)隕石中的水成分與地球上的水更為接近，這意味著小行星，或碳質(zhì)小行星，可能是太陽系內(nèi)部天體和地球的主要水來源。
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【重點句子】（3 個）
At six minutes to ten that evening, Winchcombe was hit by a meteorite.
那天晚上十點差六分，一顆隕石擊中了溫奇科姆。
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Aficionados were excited by the fall for two reasons.
粉絲們對這次隕石墜落感到興奮有兩個原因。
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The stone was of a type called a carbonaceous chondrite.
這種石頭屬于碳質(zhì)球粒隕石類。