跟读练习: Introduction to Astronomy: Crash Course Astronomy #1 - 通过视频学习英语口语
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Hello, and welcome to Crash Course Astronomy.
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I'm your host, Phil Plait, and I'll be taking you on a guided tour of the entire universe.
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You might want to pack a lunch.
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Over the course of this series, we'll explore planets, stars, black holes, galaxies, subatomic particles, and even the eventual fate of the universe itself.
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But before we step into space, let's take a step back.
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I want to talk to you about science.
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There are lots of definitions of science, but I'll say that it's a body of knowledge and a method of how we learned that knowledge.
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Science tells us that stuff we think we know may not be perfectly known.
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It may be partly or entirely wrong.
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We need to watch the universe, see how it behaves, make guesses about why it's doing what it's doing,
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and then try to think of ways to support or disprove those ideas.
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That last part is important.
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Science must be, above all else, honest if we really want to get to the bottom of things.
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Understanding that our understanding might be wrong is essential, and trying to figure out the ways we may be mistaken is the only way
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that science can help us find our way to the truth .
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Science learns.
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We meander a bit as we use it, but in the long run we get closer and closer to understanding reality,
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and that That is the strength of science, and it's all around us.
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Whether you know it or not, you're soaking in science.
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You're a primate, you have mass, mitochondria in your cells are generating energy, presumably you're breathing oxygen.
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But astronomy is different.
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It's still science, of course, but astronomy puts you in your place.
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Because of astronomy, I know we're standing on a sphere of mostly molten rock and metal 13 ,000 kilometers across,
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with a fuzzy atmosphere about 100 kilometers high,
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surrounded by a magnetic field that protects us from the onslaught of subatomic particles from the Sun 150 million kilometers away.
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Which is also flooding space with light that reaches across space to illuminate the planets, asteroids, dust, and comets, racing out past the Kuiper Belt,
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through the Oort Cloud, into interstellar space, past the nearest stars, which orbit along with gas clouds and dust lanes,
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in a gigantic spiral galaxy we call the Milky Way, that has a supermassive black hole in its center,
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and is surrounded by 150 globular clusters and a halo of dark matter and dwarf galaxies, some of which it's eating,
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all of which can be seen by other galaxies in our local group, like Andromeda and Triangulum.
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And our group is on the outskirts of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster, which is part of the Virgo Super Cluster,
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which is just one of many other gigantic structures that stretch most of the way across the visible universe,
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which is 90 billion light -years across and expanding every day, even faster today than yesterday, day due to mysterious dark energy,
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and even all that might be part of an infinitely larger multiverse that extends forever both in time and space.
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See?
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Astronomy puts you in your place.
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But what exactly is astronomy?
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This isn't necessarily an obvious thing to ask.
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When I was a kid, it was easy.
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Astronomy is the study of things in the sky — the Sun, Moon, stars, galaxies, and stuff like that.
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But it's not so easy to pigeonhole these days.
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Take, for example, Mars.
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When I haul my scope out to the end of my driveway and look at Mars, that's astronomy, right? Of course!
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But what about the rovers there?
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Those machines aren't doing astronomy, surely.
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They're doing chemistry, geology, hydrology, petrology.
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Everything but astronomy.
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So nowadays, what's astronomy?
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I'd say it's still studying stuff in the sky, but it's branched out quite a bit from there.
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Borders between it and other fields of science are fuzzy, a theme I'll be hitting on several times over this series.
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Humans might like firm, delineated boundaries between things, but nature isn't so picky.
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And that brings us to our first edition of Focus On.
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This week's topic, astronomers.
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Who are we?
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What do we do?
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I used to look through telescopes for a living, or at least study the data that came from detectors strapped onto them.
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But now I talk and write about astronomy, and relegate my viewing to my personal backyard telescope.
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But I still consider myself an astronomer.
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So that should give you an idea that there's a lot of wiggle room in the profession.
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In fact, when I worked on Hubble Space Telescope, I was actually hired as a programmer.
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I coded in the language used by the folks helping to build
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and calibrate a camera that was due to launch into space and be installed onto Hubble by an astronaut.
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Once the data from that camera are taken and analyzed, you have to know what to do with them.
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Do the observations fit the physical model of how stars blow up, or how galaxies form, or the way gas flows through space?
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Well, you better know your math and physics, because that's how we test our hypotheses.
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And someone who does that is generally called an astrophysicist.
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Of course, those telescopes and detectors don't create themselves.
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We need engineers to design and build them, and technicians to use them.
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Most astronomers don't actually use the telescopes themselves anymore.
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Someone who's trained in their specific use does that for them.
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Some of those instruments go into space, and some go to other worlds like the Moon and Mars.
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We need astronomers and engineers and software programmers who can build those, too.
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And then, at the end of all this, we need people to tell you all about it — teachers, professors, writers, video makers, even artists.
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So I'll tell you what.
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If you have an interest in the universe, if you love to look up at the stars,
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if you crave to understand what's going on literally over your head, then who am I to say you're not an astronomer?
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However you define astronomy, humans have been looking up at the sky for as long as we've been human.
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Certainly, ancient people noticed the big, glowy ball in the sky, and how it lit everything up while it was up,
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and how it got dark when it was gone.
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The other, fainter, glowy thing tried, but wasn't quite as good at lighting up the night.
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They probably took that sort of thing pretty seriously.
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They probably also noticed that when certain stars appeared in the sky, the weather started getting warmer and the days longer,
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and when other stars were seen, the weather would get colder and daytime shortened.
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And when humans settled down, discovered agriculture, and started farming, noticing those patterns in the sky would have had an even greater impact.
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It told them when to plant seeds and when to harvest.
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The cycles in the sky became pretty important.
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So important that it wasn't hard to imagine gods up there looking down on us weak
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and ridiculous humans interfering with our lives.
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Surely if the stars tell us when to plant and control the weather, seasons, and the length of the day, they control our lives, too.
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And astrology was born.
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Astrology literally means study of the stars.
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As a word, it's been used before science became a formal method of studying nature.
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It irks me a bit, since it got the good name and now we're stuck with astronomy, which means law or culture of the stars,
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and that's not really what we do.
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But what the heck?
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Words change meaning over time, and now it's pretty well understood that astronomy is science and astrology.. isn't.
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Millennia ago, astrology was as close to science as you got.
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It had some of the flavors of science.
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Astrologers observed the skies, made predictions about how it would affect people,
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and then those people would provide evidence for it by swearing up and down it worked.
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The thing is, it really didn't.
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The fault of astrology lies in ourselves and not our stars.
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People tend to remember the hits and forget the misses when predictions are made, which is why they sometimes sit in casinos pumping nickels into machines
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that are proven to be nothing more than a method for reducing the number of nickels you have.
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But astrology led people to really study the sky and find the patterns there,
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which led to a more rigorous understanding of how things really worked in the heavenly vault.
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It wasn't overnight, of course.
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This took centuries.
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Before the invention of the telescope, keen observers built all sorts of odd and wonderful devices to measure the heavens.
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And in fact, it was before the telescope was first turned to the sky that a huge revolution in astronomy took place.
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It is patently obvious that the ground you stand on is fixed, rooted if you will, and the skies turn above us.
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The sun rises, the sun sets.
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The moon rises and sets.
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The stars themselves wheel around the sky at night.
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Clearly the Earth is motionless and the sky is what is actually moving.
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In fact, if you think about it, geocentrism makes perfect sense, that all the objects in the sky revolve about the Earth
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and are fixed to a series of nested spheres, some of which are transparent, maybe made of crystal, which spin once per day.
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The stars may just be holes in otherwise opaque spheres letting sunlight through.
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Sounds silly to you, doesn't it?
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Well, here's the thing.
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If you don't have today's modern understanding of how the cosmos works, this whole multiple shells of things in the sky thing actually does make sense.
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It explains a lot of what's going on over your head.
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And if it was good enough for Plato, Aristotle and Ptolemy, then by God it was good enough for you.
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And speaking of which, it was endorsed by the major religions of the time,
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so maybe it's better if you just nod and agree and don't think about it too hard.
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But a few centuries ago, things changed.
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Although he wasn't the first, the Polish mathematician and astronomer Copernicus came up with the idea that the Sun was the center of the solar system,
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not the Earth.
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His idea had problems, which we'll get to in a later episode, but but it did an incrementally better job than geocentrism.
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And then along came Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler, who modified that system, making it even better.
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Then, Isaac Newton.
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Oh, Newton.
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He invented calculus, partly to help him understand the way objects moved in space.
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Over time, our math got better, our physics got better, and our understanding grew.
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Applied math was a revolution in astronomy, and then the use of telescopes was another.
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Galileo didn't invent the telescope, by the way, but made them better.
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Newton invented a new kind that was even better than that, and we've run with the idea from there.
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Then, about a century ago, came another revolution—photography.
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We could capture much fainter objects on glass plates sprayed with light -sensitive chemicals, which revealed stars otherwise invisible to us.
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Details in galaxies, beautiful clouds of gas and dust in space.
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And then, in the latter half of the last century, Digital detectors were invented, which were even more sensitive than film.
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We could use computers to directly analyze observations, and our knowledge leaped again.
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When these were coupled with telescopes sent into orbit around the Earth, where our roiling and boiling atmosphere doesn't blur out observations,
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we began yet another revolution.
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And where are we now?
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We've come such a long way.
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What questions can we routinely ask that our ancestors would not have dared?
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What statements made with a pretty good degree of certainty?
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Think on this.
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The lights in the sky are stars.
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There are other worlds.
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We take the idea of looking for life on alien planets seriously and spend billions of dollars doing it.
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Our galaxy is one of a hundred billion others.
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We can only directly see 4 % of the universe.
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Stars explode.
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And when they do, they create the stuff of life.
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The iron in our blood, the calcium in our bones, the phosphorus that is the backbone of our DNA.
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The most common kind of star in the universe is so faint you can't even see it without a telescope.
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Our solar system is filled to overflowing, with worlds more bizarre than we could have dreamed.
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Nature has more imagination than we do.
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It comes up with some nutty stuff.
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We're clever too, we big -brained apes.
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We've learned a lot.
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But there's still a long way to go.
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So with that, I think we're ready.
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Let's explore the universe.
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Today, you learned what astronomy is, and that astronomers aren't just people who operate telescopes, but include mathematicians, engineers, technicians, programmers, and even artists.
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We also wrapped up with a quick history of the origins and development of astronomy, from ancient observers to the Hubble Space Telescope.
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Crash Course is produced in association with PBS Digital Studios.
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This episode was written by me, Phil Plait.
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The script was edited by Blake DePastino, and our consultant is Dr. Michelle Thaller.
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It was co -directed by Nicholas Jenkins and Michael Aranda, and the graphics is Thought Cafe.
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本课的词汇与口语要点
这节口语课以视频“Introduction to Astronomy: Crash Course Astronomy”为素材。 视频中反复出现的词有:astronomy, star, sky, science, telescope。 这段视频共有 53 个句子、2244 个单词可供跟读。 讲话部分时长为 11:59。 说话人语速较快,每分钟约 187 个词,会出现较多连读和弱读。 只有 80% 的单词属于英语最常用的 3,000 词,词汇难度较高。 全部 53 个句子中有 12 个是问句,适合练习疑问语调和简短回答。
视频中的重点词汇
视频中 15 个值得学习的单词,附发音和释义:
| 单词 | 发音 | 释义 |
|---|---|---|
| astronomy 名词 | /əˈstɹɑ.nə.mi/ | 天文學 /天文学 |
| telescope 名词 | /ˈtɛl.əˌskoʊp/ | 望遠鏡 /望远镜 |
| galaxy 名词 | /ˈɡæl.ək.si/ | 恆星系 /恒星系, 群星 |
| invent 动词 | /ɪnˈvɛnt/ | 發明 /发明 |
| dust 名词 | /dʌst/ | чынтў, хуэйтў |
| mathematics 名词 | /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/ | 數學 /数学, 算學 /算学 |
| observation 名词 | /ˌɑbzɚˈveɪʃn̩/ | 觀察 /观察 |
| faint 形容词 | /feɪnt/ | 微弱 |
| detector 名词 | /dɪˈtɛktə(ɹ)/ | 檢測儀 /检测仪 |
| programmer 名词 | /ˈpɹoʊɡɹæmɚ/ | 程序員 /程序员, 程式員 /程式员 |
| atmosphere 名词 | /ˈætməsˌfɪɹ/ | 大氣 /大气, 氣圈 /气圈 |
| cloud 名词 | /ˈklaʊ̯d/ | йүн, 雲 /云 |
| sensitive 形容词 | /ˈsɛn.sɪt.ɪv/ | 敏感 |
| physics 名词 | /ˈfɪz.ɪks/ | 物理學 /物理学 |
| explore 动词 | /ɪkˈsploɹ/ | 探索, 探險 /探险 |
视频中出现的短语动词
| 单词 | 释义 |
|---|---|
| come up with 动词 | 想出, 提出 |
| blow up 动词 | 炸掉, 爆破 |
| figure out 动词 | 弄清楚 |
| look down on 动词 | 看不起, 瞧不起 |
| settle down 动词 | 冷靜下來 /冷静下来 |
值得反复跟读的句子
视频中简短而完整的句子,可以直接用在日常对话里:
- What do we do?
- Sounds silly to you, doesn’t it?
- We’ve come such a long way!
- We’re clever too, we big-brained apes.
视频中的语法
说话人最常用的结构,并附上视频中的原话:
| 结构 | 视频中的用法 |
|---|---|
| 被动语态 be + 过去分词 — 强调发生了什么,而不是谁做的 | may not be perfectly known · may be mistaken · is surrounded |
| 定语从句 who / which + 从句 — 补充说明人或事物 | Cluster, which is · someone who does · astronomy, which means |
| 现在完成时 have/has + 过去分词 — 过去发生但与现在仍有关联的事 | we've been · it's been · we've run |
需要注意的发音
说话人用了 40 次缩略和弱读形式,例如 don't, I'll, wasn't。请按听到的简短形式来说。
- “th” 音: mathematics /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/, breathe /bɹiːð/, hypothesis /haɪˈpɒθɪsɪs/, mathematician /ˌmæθ.(ə.)məˈtɪʃ.ən/
- “sh” 和 “zh” 音: observation /ˌɑbzɚˈveɪʃn̩/, prediction /pɹɪˈdɪkʃən/, technician /tɛkˈnɪʃən/, capture /ˈkæp.(t)ʃɚ/, shell /ʃɛl/
- 长单词——注意重音位置: astronomy /əˈstɹɑ.nə.mi/, mathematics /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/, ridiculous /ɹɪˈdɪk.jə.ləs/, photography /fəˈtɑ.ɡɹə.fi/
中文母语者容易读错的音:
- /v/ — 不要读成 /w/,上齿轻触下唇: invent /ɪnˈvɛnt/, observation /ˌɑbzɚˈveɪʃn̩/, sensitive /ˈsɛn.sɪt.ɪv/, observer /əbˈzɝvɚ/, visible /ˈvɪzɪb(ə)l/
- 词尾辅音 — 要读清楚,后面不要加元音: telescope /ˈtɛl.əˌskoʊp/, invent /ɪnˈvɛnt/, dust /dʌst/, mathematics /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/, faint /feɪnt/
- /r/ 和 /l/ 的区别: explore /ɪkˈsploɹ/, partly /ˈpɑɹtli/, particle /ˈpɑɹtək(ə)l/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/, ridiculous /ɹɪˈdɪk.jə.ləs/
如何用这段视频练习
- 先完整听一遍视频,不要开口,记下不认识的单词。
- 先用 0.75 倍速逐句跟读,熟练之后再回到正常速度。
- 录下自己的声音并与原声对比,特别注意 astronomy, telescope, galaxy 这类单词。
什么是跟读法?
跟读法 (Shadowing) 是一种有科学依据的语言学习技巧,最初开发用于专业口译员的培训,并由多语言者Alexander Arguelles博士普及。这个方法简单而强大:您在听英语母语原声的同时立即大声重复——就像是一个延迟1-2秒紧跟说话者的影子。与被动听力或语法练习不同,跟读法强迫您的大脑和口腔肌肉同时处理并模仿真实的讲话模式。研究表明它能显着提高发音准确性,语调,节奏,连读,听力理解和口语流利度——使其成为雅思口语备考和真实英语交流最有效的方法之一。































