正文翻譯

If fire needs oxygen, where does the sun get oxygen if there's no oxygen in space??

如果燃燒需要氧氣，那么太空中沒有氧氣，太陽從哪里得到氧氣？

評論翻譯

Things emit light because they are hot, not because they are on fire. Fire is just a way to make things get hot. But electricity will work too. If you have an electric stove, or a toaster, you can watch this work as well, notice that the elements start to glow when they get hot. Again, they aren’t on fire, they’re just really hot, so they are radiating visible light.

物體發(fā)光是因?yàn)樗鼈兒軣?，而不是因?yàn)樗鼈冎鹆??；鹬皇亲屖虑樽儫岬囊环N方式。但是電力也會起作用。如果你有一個電爐，或者一個烤面包機(jī)，你也可以看到這個過程，注意元素開始發(fā)光時，他們變熱。再說一次，它們并沒有著火，它們只是非常熱，所以它們輻射著可見光。

Now, what’s another thing that gets really hot and emits light?Ah, the atom bomb.Well, the Sun isn’t on fire, and it isn’t a metal element being heated by electric current. It isn’t even a Fission bomb like the ones used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and, we hope, never again. They use Uranium or Plutonium or potentially a number of other very heavy and very rare elements, which split into smaller elements releasing energy.

那么，還有什么東西會變得很熱并發(fā)出光呢？啊，原子彈。好吧，太陽沒有著火，它也不是一種被電流加熱的金屬元素。它甚至不是廣島和長崎使用的那種裂變原子彈，我們希望永遠(yuǎn)不會再發(fā)生。它們使用鈾或钚，或者其他一些非常重和非常稀有的元素，這些元素分裂成更小的元素從而釋放能量。

No, it’s a fusion bomb. That uses two atoms, usually in our case Hydrogen, and fuses them together, forming the heavier Helium and releasing energy.Remember how I mentioned there’s lots of Hydrogen in there? Well, that’s handy, because if you press hydrogen together really really really hard, it fuses and boom, ignition, and since there’s lots and lots, the reaction keeps on running for a few billion years. We’re about halfway through the Hydrogen Fusion Explosion that is called the Sun.

不，這是核聚變炸彈。它使用兩個原子，通常是氫原子，將它們聚合在一起，形成較重的氦原子，并釋放能量。還記得我說過那里有很多氫嗎？好吧，這很方便，因?yàn)槿绻惆褮錃鈮涸谝黄鹫娴暮苡?，它就會聚合，爆炸，點(diǎn)火，因?yàn)橛泻芏嗪芏?，反?yīng)會持續(xù)運(yùn)行幾十億年。我們大概已經(jīng)完成了氫聚變爆炸的一半，這個爆炸被稱為太陽。

at’s just breaking up molecules like O2 and combining the free oxygen atoms with Carbon or Hydrogen or Nitrogen or Iron etc, to make things like ashes, water, nitric oxides, rust. The oxygen still exists, it’s just bound up with those other elements.Fusion turns two bits of hydrogen into one bit of helium. The hydrogen is gone forever, and there was, prior to this, no helium. Nothing just moved around like with mere burning, the elements were fusAnd that makes a lot of heat.

燃燒不會產(chǎn)生或破壞氧氣。這僅僅是分解像氧氣這樣的分子，將游離氧原子與碳、氫、氮、鐵等結(jié)合，形成灰燼、水、氮氧化物、鐵等物質(zhì)。氧氣仍然存在，它只是和其他元素結(jié)合在一起。聚變把兩個氫原子轉(zhuǎn)變成一個氦原子。氫永遠(yuǎn)消失了，在此之前，沒有氦。沒有什么東西像純粹的燃燒一樣四處移動，元素融合在一起。這就產(chǎn)生了大量的熱量。

Dave Consiglio
The sun is not fire. Let’s prove it:When we measure the amount of radiation that hits the Earth from the Sun, we find that it’s around 1,000 W per square meter. It’s actually a bit more than that, but I want to keep the numbers simple. As you’ll see, it’ll get us close enough.The Earth is big. Its surface area is 510,000,000,000,000 square meters. When you scale this us, you end up with 125 quadrillion Watts of power striking the surface of the Earth.

太陽不是火，讓我們來證明這一點(diǎn):當(dāng)我們測量從太陽照射到地球的輻射量時，我們發(fā)現(xiàn)每平方米大約有1000瓦。實(shí)際上不止這些，但是我想讓數(shù)字簡單一點(diǎn)。你會看到，它會讓我們足夠接近。地球很大。它的表面積是510,000,000,000,000平方米。當(dāng)你乘坐這艘船時，你會得到125千萬億瓦特的能量，擊中地球表面。

But that’s just the power that hits the Earth! Lots and lots of the Sun’s radiation doesn’t hit the Earth. In fact, more than 99% of the Sun’s radiation doesn’t hit the Earth. If you do the math on how much power the Sun spits out altogether, you get this absolutely ridiculous number:

但那只是擊中地球的能量！大量的太陽輻射并沒有擊中地球。事實(shí)上，超過99% 的太陽輻射并沒有擊中地球。如果你計算一下太陽總共釋放了多少能量，你會得到這個絕對荒謬的數(shù)字:38460000000000000000000000000w

So the sun can’t be on fire. It must be something different.It’s fusion. Fusion produces billions of times more energy than fire. This allows the sun to shine for millions of times longer. And thus, the sun has lasted 4.5 billion years or so, and will last another 4.5 billion or so before it ceases to fuse.

所以太陽不可能著火，一定是別的什么東西。這是聚合，核聚變產(chǎn)生的能量是火的數(shù)十億倍。這使得太陽的光照時間延長了數(shù)百萬倍。因此，太陽已經(jīng)持續(xù)了45億年左右，在它停止聚變之前還將持續(xù)45億年左右。

Early in the Nineteenth Century the most widely accepted answer was that a chemical reaction drove the Sun’s energy output. Knowing the mass of the Sun, and using the most energetic chemical reactions known, it was estimated that the Sun could only burn for about 5000 years. At that time the Earth was thought to be several thousand years old, so this was not thought a problem.

在十九世紀(jì)早期，最廣為接受的答案是，一種化學(xué)反應(yīng)驅(qū)動了太陽的能量輸出。了解了太陽的質(zhì)量，并利用已知的最高能量的化學(xué)反應(yīng)，估計太陽只能燃燒5000年左右。當(dāng)時人們認(rèn)為地球有幾千年的歷史，所以這不是一個問題。

But since the late 1700s geologists had been finding evidence from sedimentary deposits, and the study of sedimentation, that the Earth was much older than that, millions of years, tens of millions, hundreds of millions.

但是從18世紀(jì)晚期開始，地質(zhì)學(xué)家們就開始從沉積物中，和沉積物的研究中發(fā)現(xiàn)證據(jù)，證明地球的歷史遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)超過那個年代，數(shù)百萬年，數(shù)千萬年，數(shù)億年。

In 1862 William Thomson (Lord Kelvin after 1892) provided a new explanation for the Sun’s heat: gravitational contraction. At the current rate of solar output, and the upper limit of its “starting radius” (the orbit of the Earth), he came up with a figure of 20 million years for its age.

1862年，威廉 · 湯姆森(1892年之后的開爾文勛爵)為太陽的熱量提供了一個新的解釋: 引力收縮。按照目前太陽的發(fā)射速率和“起始半徑”(地球的軌道)的上限，他得出了2000萬年的年齡。

This was compatible with the youngest ages being considered by geologists, and also his own estimate about the age of the Earth based on the time it would take a molten sphere to form its current crust. Thomson’s “age of the Earth” estimate was wildly wrong though because he did not take into account convection inside the core and mantle (also he did not know about radioactive heating, which is an additional factor that also undercuts his model, but this not why his answer was fundamentally wrong - it was wrong even by the physics of the day).

這與地質(zhì)學(xué)家所考慮的最年輕的年齡是一致的，也與他自己根據(jù)熔化的球體形成現(xiàn)在的地殼所需的時間對地球年齡的估計是一致的。湯姆森對“地球年齡”的估計是大錯特錯的，因?yàn)樗麤]有考慮到地核和地幔內(nèi)部的對流(他也不知道放射性加熱，這是一個額外的因素，也削弱了他的模型，但這不是為什么他的答案從根本上是錯誤的——甚至從當(dāng)時的物理學(xué)角度來看也是錯誤的)。

But the evidence that the Earth was much older than 20 million years kept piling up (a little sedimentation joke). Nothing under some hundreds of millions of years looked plausible, which left the source of energy from the Sun a complete mystery.

但是地球比2000萬年前古老得多的證據(jù)不斷積累。在幾億年的時間里，沒有什么東西看起來是可信的，這使得太陽的能量來源完全成為一個謎。

Eddington expanded on this initial insight into his 416 page treatise, also called “The Internal Constitution of Stars” published in 1926. In this remarkable work he derives the structure of stars without knowing the reaction that powered them.

愛丁頓將這個最初的見解擴(kuò)展到他的416頁的論文，也被稱為“星星的內(nèi)部構(gòu)成” ，出版于1926年。在這項(xiàng)非凡的工作中，他在不知道驅(qū)動它們的反應(yīng)的情況下，就得出了恒星的結(jié)構(gòu)。

Two comments Eddington makes in the books well observed:“We should say that the assemblage of 4 hydrogen nuclei and 2 electrons to form the helium atom was impossible if we did not know that it had occurred.”“We may also await developments of the new quantum mechanics of Heisenberg.”

艾丁頓在書中做了兩個評論:“我們應(yīng)該說，如果我們不知道氦原子的形成過程，4個氫原子核和2個電子的集合是不可能的?！薄拔覀円部赡艿却Ｉば铝孔恿W(xué)的發(fā)展?！?/p>

It was not until 1937–1938 when Hans Bethe did his Nobel Prize winning work using that “new quantum mechanics”, which worked out the steps of the solar fusion process in two papers. The first detailed the proton-proton chain reaction that provides 16.68% of the Sun’s power. And the second described the main source of solar energy - the CNO (Carbon-Nitrogen-Oxygen) Cycle which provides 83.32% of the Sun’s power.

直到1937年至1938年，Hans Bethe才使用“新量子力學(xué)”完成了他的諾貝爾獎獲得者的工作，他在兩篇論文中提出了太陽聚變過程的步驟。第一篇詳細(xì)描述了質(zhì)子-質(zhì)子鏈?zhǔn)椒磻?yīng)，它提供了太陽16.68% 的能量。第二個描述了太陽能的主要來源—— CNO (碳-氮-氧)循環(huán)，它提供了太陽83.32% 的能量。