时差N小时 电视雪花

We've heard it a hundred times before. There's never anything to watch ontelevision.

我们已经听过很多次了，没有什么好看的电视节目。

Fifty channels and not one worth sitting down to.

50个频道却没有一个值得看。

Well,PBS is nice.But you get the idea.

嗯，公共广播是一个不错的选择。但是你知道的...

If you feel bored by TV, why not try a little experiment?

如果你觉得电视节目很无聊，为什么不尝试一个小实验呢？

All you have to do is turn to a station where nothing is currently being broadcast.

你所要做的就是调到一个没有任何节目的频道。

What do you see?That blankscreen isn't really blank.

你看到了什么？黑色的屏幕并不真正是黑的。

Rather it's full of random-seeming flashes of light,sometimes called “snow.”

相反屏幕上似乎是充满了随机排列的小光点，有时叫做“雪花”。

Now, what if we told you that you have just discoveredevidence of the Big Bang?

现在如果我告诉你你发现了宇宙大爆炸的证据，你相信吗？

It's true. Around three percent of the little sparkles of light you see on an unused channel are caused by photons left over from the Big Bang, the explosionthat started off our entire universe.

这是真的。在你看到的这些未使用频道上出现的小光点中，有三分之一是由宇宙大爆炸遗留下来的光子引起的。这些爆炸形成了我们整个宇宙。

Here's how it works.

现在，让我们看看它们是怎样工作的吧！

For about 300,000 years after the Bang, the universe was so dense¹ that photons couldn't go anywhere without bumping into electrons and being annihilated².

宇宙大爆炸30万年后，密度很大，光子走到哪都会碰到电子相互结合而湮没，

At that 300,000 year mark, however, things cooled off enough to allow atoms to form.

但是这时候温度下降，原子得以形成。

That gave electrons something to do instead ofalways intercepting³ photons.

这就让电子有事可做，而不总是拦截光子。

The photons were set free, to cruise endlesslythrough space, right up to the present day—about 15 billion years later.

光子自由后，不断地穿梭于太空中，直到今天，大概150亿年以后。

These photons fill all of space, trillions passing through your body every second.

这些光子占满了所有的空间。每一秒就有几万亿个光子穿过你们的身体。

They are so weak by this point, though, that you can't see them or sense them.

这一刻它们是如此微弱，你既不能看见也不能感受到。

Unless you open up an antenna⁴ to a similar wavelength⁵ and listen.

除非你打开一个有类似波长的天线的设备听听看，

Your television set is just the machine to do this.

你的电视就是这样的机器。

So take another look at that fuzz.It's brought to you by the origin of thecosmos.

再看看绒毛，这是从宇宙起源时就带来的。

1 dense   

a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的

参考例句：

• The general ambushed his troops in the dense woods. 将军把部队埋伏在浓密的树林里。
• The path was completely covered by the dense foliage. 小路被树叶厚厚地盖了一层。

2 annihilated   

v.（彻底）消灭( annihilate的过去式和过去分词 )；使无效；废止；彻底击溃

参考例句：

• Our soldiers annihilated a force of three hundred enemy troops. 我军战士消灭了300名敌军。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• We annihilated the enemy. 我们歼灭了敌人。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 intercepting   

截取（技术），截接

参考例句：

• The police had been intercepting my mail, ie reading it before it was delivered. 警方一直截查我的邮件。
• We've been intercepting radio transmissions from Moscow. 我们已从莫斯科拦截到无线电信号。

4 antenna   

n.触角，触须；天线

参考例句：

• The workman fixed the antenna to the roof of the house.工人把天线固定在房顶上。
• In our village, there is an antenna on every roof for receiving TV signals.在我们村里，每家房顶上都有天线接收电视信号。

5 wavelength   

n.波长

参考例句：

• The authorities were unable to jam this wavelength.当局无法干扰这一波长。
• Radio One has broadcast on this wavelength for years.广播1台已经用这个波长广播多年了。