VOA常速英语2019--詹姆斯·韦伯望远镜或2021年投入使用（在线收听）

The James Webb telescope is being prepped for launch in 2021 and it will change the way that NASA views the universe. James Webb is designed specifically to look into the infrared, and this is an area of the spectrum where we have looked before, but certainly never with anything as advanced as Webb, so the hope is that we’re really going to expand what we understand about the universe in this regime.

詹姆斯·韦伯望远镜准备于2021年投入使用。该望远镜将改变美国宇航局（NASA）观测太空的方式。詹姆斯·韦伯望远镜是专门用来进行红外线观测的。红外线是此前我们就已经观测过的光谱区域，但是肯定没有用韦伯望远镜这样高端的设备进行过观测。所以，我们希望能够通过该望远镜来增加我们对宇宙的了解。

The infrared spectrum not only allows astronomers to see things the human eye can’t, but infrared waves are special, and that they don’t scatter as much as visible light does when passing through interstellar gas and dust, so the Webb telescope will see farther and better.

红外光谱不仅能让天文学家看到人眼看不到的物体，而且它也是特别的——它在穿过星际气体和尘埃时，散射的比可见光要少。所以韦伯望远镜能看的更远、更清晰。

Webb is designed to observe the universe in the infrared, and by doing that you open up a tremendous amount of new science that we can do. Two of the extremes are looking, first of all, at the most distant galaxies in the universe. They’re light because of the effects of cosmological red shift. They are shifted all the way into the infrared, so we’re only really able to observe those galaxies by looking infrared.

韦伯望远镜设计的初衷就是用红外线来观测宇宙。这样的方式可以开拓科学新领域供我们研究。有两个极端的例子：一是观测宇宙里最遥远的星系。他们质量很轻，这是因为宇宙红移的影响。红移的结果是进入红外线，所以只能通过红外线来观测这些星系。

It’s also just a much better telescope than Hubble which has been in orbit since 1990. It’s a much larger than Hubble, so it’s five times larger in area than Hubble. It’s also located a much better place to actually, put a telescope so well beyond the orbit of the earth and it’s how I again see fainter objects, and in the intervening time we’ve developed better instrumentation and better cameras.

韦伯望远镜比哈勃好得多，虽然后者从1990年开始就在轨道运行了。韦伯望远镜比哈勃大得多，所以它的面积是哈勃的5倍。而且，韦伯望远镜的位置也更有优势，很适合放望远镜——在地球轨道外很远的地方。这样就能看到更不明显的物体。与此同时，我们也发明了更好的设备和摄像头。

And it’s just possible that the Webb telescope might be the tool that helps astronomers prove that we’re not alone in the universe. It’s not really what this is designed to do, but pile of Webb’s mission is to find quantum and to study their atmospheres. Now there’s possibilities that we might actually discover evidence or indirect evidence for life on these planets by looking at the chemistry in their atmospheres.

还有一种可能性：韦伯望远镜可能成为一种工具，帮助天文学家证明我们在宇宙中不是孤单的。虽然韦伯设计的初衷不是如此，但它执行的很多任务都是要寻找量子，并研究其大气。现在，有可能我们会发现直接或者间接的证据证明生命在这些行星上也存在。寻找证据的方式就是观测它们大气层的化学成分。

The telescope is scheduled to be launched in 2021 who will be deployed about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.

韦伯预计于2021年投入使用，届时，他将在距离地球150万公里的地方工作。