2017考博英语阅读题源经济学人文章每日精析（五十五）

　　Keen: adj. 敏锐的

　　Timekeeping: n. 计时;时间记录

　　Eclipse: n. 日食，月食

　　Eclipses were often viewed as portents (usually bad ones), or as battles between moon or sun gods and the forces that sought to overthrow them. For that reason, records of hundreds of historical eclipses survive to the present. Building on work begun in the 1990s, Dr Morrison and his colleaguescollated 424 such observations of 250 eclipses that happened between 720BC and 1600AD. The records were scattered across Babylonian clay tablets preserved at the British Museum, translations of histories of Chinese dynasties and Japanese emperors, records from ancient Greece preserved in works like the “Almagest”, and observations made by Arab astronomers during what was, in Europe, the Dark Ages. (The researchers note that no record survives of an eclipse seen in Europe for almost a thousand years following one recorded in 364AD.)

　　日食和月食在过去往往会被看成是一种不祥之兆，解读为月神和太阳神之间的力量之争。因为上述原因，从古至今关于日食和月食的历史记载多达成百上千。Morrison博士和他的同事们从上世纪90年代开始着手这个研究，并整理了从公元前720年到公元1600年的两百五十份关于日月食的观察记录。这些记录来自不同地方，包括：收藏于大英博物馆的巴比伦泥板，中国及日本皇室两国的翻译文献，古希腊收藏的诸如《天文学大成》之类著作里的记录，以及阿拉伯天文学家在欧洲中世纪(又成为“黑暗时期”)的观测记录。(研究人员指出,从公元364年最后一个记录的发现起，将近一千年的黑暗时期，欧洲几乎没有一份日月食的记录被保留下来。)

　　Portents: n. 前兆

　　Battles: n. 战争

　　Overthrow: vt. 推翻

　　Collate: v. 整理

　　Babylonian: adj. 巴比伦的

　　Almagest: n. 《天文学大成》，又名《至大论》，是希腊天文学家托勒密(Ptolemy)在西元140年前后编纂的天文学和数学百科全书

　　注：中世纪之所以被称为是“the Dark Ages”，是因为基督教统治一切;教会事实上行使着国家的职能，成为了凌驾在所有人头上的国家力量。这也就是所谓“政教合一”。这种作为国家的超级力量为了控制人民，不仅建立了一整套森严的等级制度，掌控绝大多数国家资源，攫取和占有大量国民财富，还千方百计利用宗教对人民进行精神麻痹和思想禁锢，把上帝解释为主宰世界的绝对权威，对世界的任何见解都要以《圣经》的解释为准，谁也不能违背，否则，宗教法庭就要对其进行制裁，甚至被处死。

　　The idea was to combine those observations with modern computer models of the solar system. These are sophisticated enough to let researchers reconstruct the positions of Earth, moon and sun at any given date in the past, and therefore to work out when and from where any past eclipses should have been visible. That means such models can be used to confirm recorded sightings. But because ancient astronomers reckoned the passage of time by the motion of the heavens, and modern models are based on the unvarying output of atomic clocks, the gradual slowing of Earth’s rotation will produce a disagreement in timing between the two.

　　运用现代计算机技术将这些观测记录对太阳系进行建模。模型的复杂程度之高甚至可以让研究员们再现过去任何一天地球、月亮和太阳的位置关系，因此也能重现过去日食和月食发生的时刻和地点。这就意味着这个模型可以检测观测记录的准确性。不过因为古代天文学家是依靠天体的运动来推算时间，而现代的模型的时间是基于不变的原子钟，所以地球自转逐渐放缓将通过这二者的差异得出。

　　Sophisticated: adj. 复杂的

　　Reckone: v. 认为

　　Many a mickle makes a muckle

　　积少成多

　　Given the tiny differences in day length involved (a few dozen milliseconds at most) and the primitive equipment (such as water clocks) available to ancient researchers, it might be thought that any difference in timing would be too small to detect. But Dr Morrison points out that this is not actually a problem. The error introduced by Earth’s deceleration is cumulative. Today may be only fractionally shorter than a day was 2,700 years ago, when the earliest records that the team looked at were collected, but between then and now almost a million days have elapsed. Each passing day adds any daily discrepancy to the total discrepancy, and those repeated daily discrepancies add up to significant fractions of an hour—periods well within the accuracy available to ancient astronomers.

　　考虑到每一天长度的微小差异(最多就只有几十个微秒)以及古代研究员使用的原始的设备(比如说水钟)，可以想当然地理解任何时间上的差异之小足以让人无法发现。不过Morrison博士指出，这实际上并不成问题。由于地球的减速过程而产生地时间误差是不断积累的。根据团队收集的记录来看，今天可能只比两千七百年前的一天多无法感知的一点点，但是从两千七百年前到现如今，中间的无数个日日夜夜里几乎发生了百万次的日月食。日复一日的不明显的误差加到一起，最后累计成了明显的小时——这绝对是连古代的天文学家都能够察觉得到的精度范围了。

　　Detect: v. 观测，察觉

　　Deceleration: n. 减速

　　Cumulative: adj. 累积的

　　Discrepancy: n. 不符;矛盾;相差

　　注：水钟：水钟起源于埃及，于公元前6世纪(大约在春秋战国时期)传入中国。水钟在中国又叫做“刻漏”，“漏壶”。根据等时性原理滴水记时有两种方法，一种是利用特殊容器记录把水漏完的时间(泄水型)，另一种是底部不开口的容器，记录它用多少时间把水装满(受水型)。中国的水钟，最先是泄水型，后来泄水型与受水型同时并用或两者合一。自公元85年左右，浮子上装有漏箭的受水型漏壶逐渐流行，甚至到处使用。

　　After crunching the numbers, the team found that the actual rate at which days have been lengthening over the past couple of millennia is 1.8 milliseconds per century, considerably slower than the 2.3 milliseconds predicted. The main reason for the difference, they reckon, is the lingering effect of the most recent ice age, during which the mass of ice at the planet’s poles was sufficient to deform its shape and thus alter its rate of spin. That is not, though, the only thing which is happening. The researchers also found small but cyclical patterns in the rate of change that repeat themselves over decades—as well as intriguing hints of longer cycles with time periods of thousands of years. Exactly what geophysical goings-on such cycles represent is one for the geologists to work out.

　　处理完数据后，该团队发现每一天的增加的时间在过去两千年里平均每一百年可差出1.8微秒，比之前预估的2.3微秒要少了些。他们认为造成这个改变的主要原因是最近一次的冰川时代的影响，地球两极的冰块重量改变了地球的形状，从而造成了自转的变缓。不过这并不是唯一的改变。研究人员同时也发现了在过去的数十年中不断重复的、微小但是可循的变化规律，这也表明如果成千上万年积累循环周期会更长。

　　Crunch: vt. 处理

　　Lingering: adj. 拖延的

考博必备！历年真题及答案

考博精品好课，就选新东方！