-
国家地理:难以适应的新常态（4）
My husband is a labor lawyer, his days consumed with pandemic-collapsed businesses and workers losing their paychecks. During the outdoor walks we are still permitted to take, we keep reminding each other to notice spring poppies as we distance-veer
-
国家地理:不再冻人的五大湖(1)
It's still dark, and well below freezing, when Kristie Leavitt pulls to a stop and turns off the rumbling motor. For a moment, there's no sound in the world but the faint whisper of wind sweeping over the ice. The navy blue sky begins to lighten. The
-
国家地理:不再冻人的五大湖(2)
But what Leavitt was doing the February day was a rare occurrence last winter across the Great Lakes. The long-term average for ice coverage on all five Great Lakes -- Superior, Michigan, Erie, Huron, and Ontario -- is 54 percent. Last winter, ice co
-
国家地理:不再冻人的五大湖(3)
The Great Lakes account for about 20 percent of the freshwater on Earth's surface. The lakes' geographical footprint is also hard to fathom. Their combined surfaces span more than 94,000 square miles, about the size of the United Kingdom. The combine
-
国家地理:不再冻人的五大湖(4)
In Japan, priests at a Shinto temple have kept an almost 600-year record of when their lake freezes all the way across. Natural climate cycles emerge from that record -- dwarfed in recent decades by the human-caused warming that has gripped the plane
-
国家地理:不再冻人的五大湖(5)
For Leavitt, 38, the ice has always been a place to bring her life into focus. 对38岁的拉维特来说，冰面一直是她关注的东西。 When her family would drive from downstate Michigan to visit her grandparents, who owned the lakeside cam
-
国家地理:不再冻人的五大湖(6)
Leavitt isn't alone. Ice provides crucial things to everyone who goes out on it. Respite for some, dearly held recreation for others, food, and much more. Snow and ice also are critical components of local U.S. economies across the region: Winter ski
-
国家地理:不再冻人的五大湖(7)
So, although one year may be warmer than the one before, some recent winters were icy cold. In 2013-14, the polar vortex carried frigid air from the Arctic into the continental U.S., and the cold stretched well south of the Great Lakes. Total ice cov
-
国家地理:不再冻人的五大湖(8)
Winter is integral to the culture of the Great Lakes region. Warm mid-February days draw Michiganders outside, but they're uneasy. 冬天是五大湖地区文化不可或缺的一部分。温暖的二月中旬，可以吸引密歇根人来到户外，但
-
国家地理:送给外星人的地图(1)
A half century ago astronomers designed a map that would point to Earth from anywhere in the galaxy. Then they sent it into space, reasoning that any aliens smart enough to intercept a spacecraft could decode the map and uncover its origin. Many movi
-
国家地理:送给外星人的地图(2)
It was December 1971, and NASA was getting ready to launch Pioneer 10, a spacecraft that would sweep by Jupiter and make the first reconnaissance of the solar system's biggest planet. More stunningly, though, Pioneer 10's brush by Jupiter would sling
-
国家地理:送给外星人的地图(3)
Carl asked Dad for help crafting the message while the two of them were in San Juan, Puerto Rico, for a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Dad recalls that, in the lobby of the San Gernimo Hilton, he and Carl quickly came up with ideas abo
-
国家地理:送给外星人的地图(4)
Our galactic neighborhood has no obvious street signs, and crafting a map pointing to one planet among the billions (and billions) of worlds populating the Milky Way is no simple feat. 我们的银河系中并没有明显的标识，要想绘制一张地
-
国家地理:送给外星人的地图(5)
Appropriately, Dad's pulsar map looks like a fancy asterisk, a radial explosion of hatched lines that intersect at our solar system's location. Briefly, here's how his map works: 父亲的脉冲星地图，看起来很像一个漂亮的星号，影线呈
-
国家地理:送给外星人的地图(6)
Several years ago, two significant things happened. I found the original, penciled-in pulsar map, folded away and casually tucked into a tomato box in my parents' closet. And I linked up with a rock climber named Scott Ransom, one of the world's more
