很多小夥伴都說想讀英文原著學英語，可每次看兩頁就放棄，從2020年起曉梅老師就帶大家一起讀英文原著，看看有意思的故事，學學地道表達，解析長難句。今天先從A Short History of Nearly Everything《萬物簡史》開始。這本書從宇宙大爆炸開始講現代科學史，穿插了很多科學家的生平故事，妙趣橫生。本書作者Bill Bryson喜歡用口語化的語言敘述，因而裡面的英語要比一般的原著通俗易懂。今天讀第3章關於業餘天文學家羅伯特·埃文斯的片斷。
3 The Reverend Evans's Universe 第3章 埃文斯牧師的宇宙
When the skies are clear and the Moon is not too bright, the Reverend Robert Evans, a quiet and cheerful man, lugs a bulkytelescope onto the back sun-deck of his home in the Blue Mountains of Australia, about 80 kilometres west of Sydney, and does an extraordinary thing. He looks deep into the past and finds dying stars. 當天空晴朗，月亮不太亮的時候，住在澳大利亞雪梨以西約80公裡處藍山的羅伯特·埃文斯牧師，一個安靜而快活的人，把巨大的望遠鏡拖到他家後院陽臺上，做了一件非同尋常的事。他看向過去，尋找正在消亡的星星。
sun-deck
Looking into the past is, of course, the easy part. Glance at the night sky and what you see is history and lots of it - not the stars as they are now but as they were when their light left them. For all we know, the North Star, our faithful companion, might actually have burned out last January or in 1854 or at any time since the eaerly fourteenth century and news of it just hasn't reached us yet. The best we can say - can ever say - is that it was still burning on this date 680 years ago. Stars die all the time. What Bob Evans does better than anyone else who has ever tried is spot these moments of celestial farewell.當然，看向過去比較容易。看一眼夜空，你看到的都是歷史——星星並不是現在的樣子，而是它們的光離開它們時的樣子。據我們所知，北極星，我們忠實的夥伴，可能在去年1月或1854年，或自14世紀以來的任何時候已經燒毀了，而它的消息至今還沒有到達我們。我們能說的最好的情況是，它在680年前的今天仍然亮著。星星總是在消亡。鮑勃·埃文斯比其他嘗試過的人做得更好的是，他發現了天體告別的時刻。
night sky
By day, Evans is a kindly and now semi-retired minister in the Uniting Church in Australia, who does a bit of locum workand researches the history of nineteenth-century religious movements. But by night he is, in his unassuming way, a titan of the skies. He hunts supernovae. 白天，埃文斯是一位和藹可親、現已半退休的澳大利亞聯合教會 (Uniting Church) 牧師，業餘研究19世紀宗教運動歷史。但到了晚上，他就會低調地成為天空的巨人。他尋找超新星。
supernovae
A supernovae occurs when a giant star, one much bigger than our own Sun, collapses and then spectacularly explodes, releasing in an instant the energy of a hundred billion suns, burning for a time more brightly than all the stars in its galaxy. 'It's like a trillion hydrogen bombs going off at once,' says Evans. If a supernova explosion happened within five hundred light years of us, we would be goners, according to Evans - 'it would wreck the show,' as he cheerfully puts it. But the universe is vast and supernovae are normally much too far away to harm us. In fact, most are so unimaginably distant that their light reaches us as no more than the faintest twinkle. For the month or so that they are visible, all that distinguishes them from the other stars in the sky is that they occupy a point of space that wasn't filled before. It is these anomalous, very occasional pricks in the crowded dome of the night sky that the Reverend Evans finds. 當一顆比我們的太陽還要大得多的巨星坍縮，引人注目地爆炸，瞬間釋放出一千億個太陽的能量，發出的光比銀河系中所有的恆星都要明亮時，就出現了超新星。埃文斯說：「這就像一萬億顆氫彈同時爆炸一樣。」根據埃文斯的說法，如果超新星爆炸發生在離我們500光年的範圍內，我們就完蛋了。他高興地說，「這會毀了這場演出。」但宇宙浩瀚，超新星通常離我們非常遠，不會對我們造成傷害。事實上，大多數超新星距離我們如此遙遠，以至於它們發出的光到達我們後就成了最微弱的閃爍。在其存在的一個月左右時間中，它們與天空中其他星星的區別就在於它們佔據了以前沒有被佔據的空間。埃文斯牧師正是在擁擠的夜空中發現了這些異常的、非常偶然的刺。
To understand what a feat this is, imagine a standard dining-room tablecovered in a black tablecloth and throwing a handful of salt across it. The scattered grains can be thought of as a galaxy. Now imagine fifteen hundred more tables like the first one - enough to make a single line two miles long - each with a random array of salt across it. Now add one grain of salt to any table and let Bob Evans walk among them. At a glance he will spot it. That grain of salt is the supernova. 要理解這是一項多麼了不起的壯舉，想像有一張標準的餐桌，鋪著黑色的桌布，在上面撒一把鹽。將這些散落的顆粒想像成一個星系。再想像1500多張同樣的桌子——足夠形成一條兩英裡長的線——每張桌上都隨機撒著一把鹽。現在在任何一張桌子上加一粒鹽，讓鮑勃·埃文斯從桌邊走過去，他一眼就能找出這粒剛加進去的鹽，這粒鹽就是超新星。
地道表達
1. by day，在白天， by night，在晚上。
2. in an instant [nstnt]，瞬間。
3. go off，爆炸，（警報）拉響。
4. What a feat is this! 這是一項多麼偉大的壯舉。feat [fit]，n. 壯舉。
5. dining-room table，餐桌。
6. a handful of salt 一把鹽，a grain of salt 一粒鹽。
長難句分析
1 . What Bob Evans does better than anyone else [主語從句]/ who has ever tried[定語從句，修飾anyone else] / is [系動詞]/ spot these moments of celestial farewell[表語]. 鮑勃·埃文斯比其他嘗試過的人做得更好的是，他發現了天體告別的時刻。
2 . For the month or so that they are visible, all that distinguishes them from the other stars in the sky [定語從句，修飾主語all] is [系動詞] that [that引導表語從句] they occupy a point of space that wasn't filled before [定語從句，修飾 a point of space]. 在他們存在的一個月左右的時間裡，它們與天空中其他星星的區別就在於它們佔據了以前沒有被佔據的空間。
地道表達發音：