外刊双语：坠落英国的陨石研究大发现？
原文标题：
Astronomy
A meteorite in the Cotswolds
A find from an English country garden speaks of the solar system’s first days
天文学
科茨沃尔德的一块陨石
英国乡村花园的一项发现说明了太阳系的诞生
[Paragraph 1]
WINCHCOMBE, A RURAL English town, is not a place where much happens.
温奇科姆，一个很少有新鲜事的英国乡村小镇。
But, on February 28th 2021, something did.
但是2021年2月28日，这里发生了一件大事。
At six minutes to ten that evening, Winchcombe was hit by a meteorite.
那天晚上十点差六分，一颗陨石击中了温奇科姆。
[Paragraph 2]
The first piece of this bolide was found the following day by the Wilcocks, a local family, shattered on their driveway (see picture).
第二天，当地居民威尔考克斯一家在自家的车道上发现了第一块火炭碎片(见图)。
Once they realised what it was, they donned rubber gloves, scooped the remains into freezer bags, and alerted the UK Meteor Observation Network, a group of amateurs who study incoming space debris.
他们一意识到是碎片的意义，就马上戴上了橡胶手套，把残骸舀进冷冻袋里，并迅速通知了英国流星观测网，该组织是由研究太空碎片的业余爱好者们组成的。
Other bits turned up elsewhere, later.
后来，其他部分也在不同地方出现了。
[Paragraph 3]
Aficionados were excited by the fall for two reasons.
狂热爱好者们对这次陨石坠落感到兴奋有两个原因。
One was that the fragments’ rapid recovery had left little time for them to be contaminated by terrestrial chemistry.
一是碎片的快速回收，它们基本未受到地球化学物质的污染。
The
other, that the bolide’s descent was captured in numerous photographs,
both official (in the form of 16 dedicated meteor-tracking cameras) and
unofficial (in the form of numerous vehicle-dashboard and doorbell
cameras).
另一个原因是，有大量的照片记录下来了火焰的下降，照片来源于官方的16个专用陨石追踪相机和非官方的民间汽车仪表盘和门铃相机。
These allowed its orbit before its encounter with Earth to be calculated with precision.
因此，它与地球相遇前的轨道可以得到精确计算。
A
group of those aficionados (124 of them, to be exact, including the
three Wilcocks) have just published a paper on the matter in Science
Advances.
这些狂热爱好者有124人，包括威尔考克三兄弟，他们刚刚在《科学进展》上发表了一篇陨石相关的论文。
[Paragraph 4]
The stone was of a type called a carbonaceous chondrite.
这种石头属于碳质球粒陨石类。
These, as the mess on the Wilcocks’ drive showed, are loose agglomerations of stuff—and that stuff is not much altered from the primordial cosmic dust that turned into the solar system.
威尔考克斯家车道上那堆乱七八糟的物质是松散结块，与形成太阳系的原始宇宙尘埃很是相像。
[Paragraph 5]
Tracing the Winchcombe meteorite’s path from the pictures taken of its arrival showed its orbital aphelion (the point in that orbit farthest from the Sun) to be just inside the orbit of Jupiter.
根据温奇科姆陨石到达时拍摄的照片来看，可以发现它的远日点(轨道上离太阳最远的点)刚好在木星轨道的内部。
It came, in other words, from the outer part of the main asteroid belt.
换句话说，它来自主小行星带的外部。
Its
chemistry, pristine because of the Wilcocks’ swift action, showed that
the water in it nevertheless had the same isotopic composition as water
on Earth.
幸好威尔考克斯一家及时操作，得到的陨石化学成分是原始的。它表明，陨石中水的同位素结构与地球上的水一致。
This supports the idea that Earth’s ocean was a cosmic afterthought “plastered” onto the planet, subsequent to its formation, by hydrated material from space.
这佐证了地球上的海洋来自于太空的观点。即海洋形成之后，由太空的水合物质“涂抹”到地球上。
[Paragraph 6]
Analysis
of the meteorite’s exposure to cosmicrays (revealed by the presence of
particular isotopes of neon and aluminium), suggested, meanwhile, that
it had until recently (perhaps as little as 300,000 years ago), been
below the surface of something bigger.
同时，氖和铝的特殊同位素的存在揭示了这块陨石暴露于宇宙射线下。基于此项分析，陨石从某个系统内部到系统表面至少用了30万年。
Presumably, it was liberated by a cosmic collision and thereby set on the course that eventually brought it to the Wilcocks’ front garden.
据推测，它是在一次宇宙碰撞中被释放出来，最终出现在威尔考克家前花园的车道上。
（恭喜读完，本篇英语词汇量478左右）
原文出自：2022年11月19日《The Economist》Science & technology版块。
精读笔记来源于：自由英语之路
本文翻译整理: Maree
本文编辑校对: Irene
仅供个人英语学习交流使用。
【补充资料】（来自于网络）
2021年2月一块坠落在格洛斯特郡温奇科姆镇的一条车道上，是英国已知第一颗碳质球粒陨石，重0.5公斤。分析表明，它来自木星附近的一颗小行星，据推测形成于大约46亿年前。研究显示，大约12%的陨石样本由水组成，而这些水的组成与地球海洋中的水“非常非常相似”。另外，由于这块陨石在坠落后12小时内被迅速回收，因此它也是迄今为止收集到的污染最少的样本，科研价值很高。目前，地球上已知的陨石大约有6.5万颗。此前通过彗星任务获得的数据表明，彗星上的水与地球上的不匹配，而温奇科姆镇陨石中的水成分与地球上的水更为接近，这意味着小行星，或碳质小行星，可能是太阳系内部天体和地球的主要水来源。
【重点句子】（3 个）
At six minutes to ten that evening, Winchcombe was hit by a meteorite.
那天晚上十点差六分，一颗陨石击中了温奇科姆。
Aficionados were excited by the fall for two reasons.
粉丝们对这次陨石坠落感到兴奋有两个原因。
The stone was of a type called a carbonaceous chondrite.
这种石头属于碳质球粒陨石类。
