英语听力：自然百科 地球自转的奥秘

 Well, the story of the earth spin goes back all the way to the origin of the solar system, four and a half billion years ago. The solar system started out as a cloud of gas and dust. And these gas and dust clumped¹ together to form the sun and the various planets. And the way the earth grew was to cannibalize smaller clumps² that were also growing. So if you were sitting on the surface of the earth, you would see a bombardment of particles all the way from dust particles to perhaps Mars-size objects. It turns out that it’s this bombardment which also gave the earth its spin. The earth that’s sitting out in space is bombarded by all these particles. It’s gonna have some rotation³. So that's where the rotation of the earth comes from.  

 

But that’s not the end of the story. It turns out in the early days the earth was rotating much faster than it is now. So it was perhaps rotating five times faster. So the question is ‘why has it slowed down?

 

Yeah.

 

And it turns out the main culprit is the moon. The moon raises tides on the earth, and it turns out that the moon attracts the ocean tides, and it attracts them in such a way that the gravity of the moon tries to stop the earth in its rotation. Well this is a very small effect, because the tides aren’t very high and the moon is very far away, so its gravity is weak. But this effect keeps on going on century after century and it’s been doing that for billions of years. So originally the earth started out rotating much faster, and now it’s slowed down quite a bit. The earth will continue to slow its rotation in the future. What’s peculiar⁴ is that the moon will move away from the earth for a while, the moon will start coming back and towards the earth and eventually will collide with the earth. But that’s not for billions of years, uh, into the future.

 

1 clumped   

adj.[医]成群的v.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的过去式和过去分词 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声

参考例句：

• The bacteria clumped together. 细菌凝集一团。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• He clumped after her, up the stairs, into his barren office. 他拖着沉重的步伐跟在她的后面上楼了，走进了他那个空荡荡的诊所。 来自辞典例句

2 clumps   

n.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的名词复数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声v.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的第三人称单数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声

参考例句：

• These plants quickly form dense clumps. 这些植物很快形成了浓密的树丛。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The bulbs were over. All that remained of them were clumps of brown leaves. 这些鳞茎死了，剩下的只是一丛丛的黃叶子。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 rotation   

n.旋转；循环，轮流

参考例句：

• Crop rotation helps prevent soil erosion.农作物轮作有助于防止水土流失。
• The workers in this workshop do day and night shifts in weekly rotation.这个车间的工人上白班和上夜班每周轮换一次。

4 peculiar   

adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的

参考例句：

• He walks in a peculiar fashion.他走路的样子很奇特。
• He looked at me with a very peculiar expression.他用一种很奇怪的表情看着我。