Very期待，每日一篇！
知音 - 尋寶 - 探星 - 補天
「Optimists always picture themselves accomplishing their goals.」
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Philosopher
「樂觀主義者總是想像自己實現目標的情景。」
– 塞內卡(哲學家)
隕石含有比地球更古老的物質This is Scientific American's 60-second Science, I'm Christopher Intagliata.
這裡是科學美國人——60秒科學系列，我是克里斯多福·因塔格裡塔。
Sunday morning, September 28th, 1969, a fireball lit up the skies north of Melbourne, Australia.
1969年9月28日是周日，那天上午，一個火球點亮了澳大利亞墨爾本北部的天空。
"People were getting ready to go to church, and then they heard this loud sonic boom. Some of them saw the bright fireball in broad daylight, and people were surprised. They said, 'What's going on, especially those who were not outside, they really...is there an airplane that came down? It sounded really dramatic.' And then suddenly, shortly after that, there was a smell that was detectable over the whole area. People describe it as methylated spirits—a strong organic smell."
「當時人們正準備去教堂，之後他們聽到了巨大的音爆。有些人在大白天看到了明亮的火球，人們非常驚訝。尤其是不在外面的人，人們都在問：這是怎麼回事？是飛機墜毀了嗎？聲音真的非常大。之後不久，整個地區突然出現了一股能聞到的氣味。人們說那是甲基化酒精，一種強烈的有機氣味。」
Cosmochemist Philipp Heck of Chicago's Field Museum describing the spectacular arrival of what's now known as the Murchison meteorite, named for the village where it was found. A portion of the space debris now resides at the Field Museum. And Heck says it's our best source of presolar stardust—meaning stardust older than the solar system and the sun itself.
芝加哥菲爾德博物館的宇宙化學家菲利普·赫克描述了現在被稱為「默奇森隕石」來臨時的壯觀景象，該隕石是以其被發現的村莊名字而命名。一部分太空碎片現在保存在菲爾德博物館。赫克說這是有關前太陽系星團的最佳資料，前太陽系星團指比太陽系和太陽本身更古老的星團。
"I call it a scientific treasure trove."
「我稱之為科學寶藏。」
Inside the meteorite is dusty debris left over from when stars slightly larger than our sun fizzled out. Over millions of years, those dust grains were battered by cosmic rays, which slightly altered their composition. Atoms of elements got broken down into smaller ones like neon and helium. And then some of that stardust was swallowed up within rocks—such as the Murchison meteorite—during the formation of our solar system. Those rocks served as time capsules, preserving the material for unimaginable ages.
隕石內部是比太陽稍大的恆星逐漸消亡後留下的灰塵碎片。數百萬年前，這些灰塵顆粒受到了宇宙射線的襲擊，之後其成分略有改變。成分中的原子被分解成更小的原子，如氖和氦。之後，在我們太陽系形成的過程中，部分星塵被默奇森隕石之類的石頭所吞噬。這些石頭就像時間膠囊，將這些物質保存到難以想像的年代。
Previous astronomical observations have hypothesized that there was a "baby boom" of stars about seven billion years ago. By studying the Murchison grains' elemental composition, Heck's team was able to date 49 grains and found that two thirds of them were 4.6 to 4.9 billion years old.
此前的天文學觀測曾假定，約70億年前存在過恆星的「嬰兒潮」。通過研究默奇森隕石顆粒的元素成分，赫克的團隊能夠確定49個顆粒的年代，並發現其中三分之二的年齡在46到49億年之間。
"And that all makes sense, because the parent stars—they formed seven billion years ago, and it took them about two to 2.5 billion years to evolve, become planetary nebula and become dust-producing."
「這一切都講得通，因為母星在70億年前形成，用大約20億到25億年的時間進化成行星狀星雲，並產生星塵。」
The results are in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
研究結果發表在《美國國家科學院院刊》上。
Some of the grains are actually up to seven billion years old, making them the most ancient material on Earth—delivered here without notice, on a quiet Sunday morning, 50 years ago.
其中一些顆粒實際上已經有70億年的歷史，這使它們成為地球上最古老的物質，在50年前一個安靜的周日上午，在沒有事先通知的情況下被送到這裡。
Thanks for listening for Scientific American's 60-second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.
謝謝大家收聽科學美國人——60秒科學。我是克里斯多福·因塔利亞塔。
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