英语听力文摘 English Digest 436、UFO来袭！

UFO Attack
“飞碟”来袭

      June.Nineteen sixty-nine, not one airliner¹ but two, plus the pilot of an Air National Guard fighter plane, report being harassed by a team of UFOs. One man estimates the glowing ships have come within a few hundred feet. The pilot of the fighter plane even declares a near-collision.

What were these UFOs really? It turned out they were fragments of a meteor coming apart in the upper atmosphere. Now here's the most interesting part: the meteor fragments were at least one hundred and twenty five miles from the planes. How could you possibly think something over a hundred miles away was about to hit you?

Objects in the sky confuse our perceptual abilities. With no visual cues to help calculate distance, our brains rely on size and speed instead. How? By using a simple fact: far-away things look like they are going slower than close-up things.

You may have noticed this when driving: those distant phone poles pass sluggishly while the ones on the road go zooming by. In a blank white sky, our brains default to a simple strategy: the bigger it looks and the faster it goes, the closer it probably is.

This is a smart way to proceed, and it generally works. Still, our perception can be fouled by rare situations in which we find ourselves looking at something far away that nevertheless moves extremely fast, such as an incoming meteor.

At thousands of miles an hour, that flaming object speeds across your field of vision, and your brain can easily conclude it must be much closer than it is,maybe even about to abduct you.

       “1969年6月”、“两架飞机”、“外加一驾驶战斗机的空军国民警卫队飞行员”-----一群不明飞行物让人们觉得很困扰！有人估测那些发光的飞船已经来到了距离他们数百英尺以内。战斗机的飞行员甚至还宣称跟它有近距离碰触。

这些不明飞行物真正是什么呢？事实证明，它们是流星在高层大气瓦解后的碎片。最不可思议的是：流星的碎片距离飞机至少有125公里，那么人怎么可能会觉得在100多公里以外的东西会碰撞他呢？

天空中的物体会混淆我们的感知能力。没有视觉提示的帮助，我们的大脑就会依赖于（该物体的）大小的速度来计算距离。怎么来计算呢？ 通过一个很简单的道理：远处的东西运动起来看起比近处的东西慢。

你或许会在开车时有这种感觉：远处的电线杆移动的很慢，而路边的电线杆则移动的很快。在空旷的白色天空中，我们的大脑默认了一个简单的道理：看起来越大、运动的越快的东西，距离我们就越近。

这是一个很聪明的方法，而且它通常都会起到作用。然而，在少有的情况下，我们的感知也会出错。例如，我们在看到一些距离很远但移动极快的东西的时候,如一颗靠近的流星。

发光的流星以一小时数千公里的速度穿过你的视野，你的大脑很容易觉得它离你比实际距离要近得多。或许它是来绑架你的！

注释：

UFO：不明飞行物（俗称飞碟），Unidentified Flying Object的缩写

upper atmosphere: 高层大气,指距地面85 km以上的大气层

phone pole: 电线杆，同telephone pole

 

1 airliner   

n.客机，班机

参考例句：

• The pilot landed the airliner safely.驾驶员使客机安全着陆。
• The passengers were shepherded across the tarmac to the airliner.旅客们被引导走过跑道去上飞机。