演讲MP3+双语文稿:天文学家成功的奥秘是什么？——尝试不止十年的错
听力课堂TED音频栏目主要包括TED演讲的音频MP3及中英双语文稿，供各位英语爱好者学习使用。本文主要内容为演讲MP3+双语文稿:天文学家成功的奥秘是什么？——尝试不止十年的错，希望你会喜欢！
【演讲者及介绍】Erika Hamden
天体物理学家-TED研究员Erika Hamden建造了望远镜，重点关注紫外线，并开发了传感器技术，使望远镜更加高效。
【演讲主题】发射望远镜需要什么
【中英文字幕】
翻译者Buyun Ping 校对者Cissy Yun
00:13
I'm an astronomer who builds telescopes. I build telescopes because, number one, they are awesome. But number two, I believe if you want to discover a new thing about the universe, you have to look at the universe in a new way. New technologies in astronomy -- things like lenses, photographic plates, all the way up to space telescopes -- each gave us new ways to see the universe and directly led to a new understanding of our place in it.
我是一名专攻望远镜的天文学家。我之所以建造望远镜，原因之一是因为它们很棒。但原因之二，我相信如果你想探索宇宙的新奥秘，你必须从一个新的角度 观察宇宙。在天文界新的科技—— 例如镜头、照相底板，所有这些组成的天文望远镜—— 每一个都让我们能够从 新的角度来观察宇宙，并且让我们重新思考 我们在宇宙中的位置。
00:47
But those discoveries come with a cost. It took thousands of people and 44 years to get the Hubble Space Telescope from an idea into orbit. It takes time, it takes a tolerance for failure, it takes individual people choosing every day not to give up. I know how hard that choice is because I live it. The reality of my job is that I fail almost all the time and still keep going, because that's how telescopes get built.
但这些发现需要代价。数千人努力了44年 才真正建造出了哈勃望远镜。这需要时间，需要经历失败，需要每个人每天 都坚持不放弃。我知道这样的坚持有多难，因为我经历过。我工作的现实是，我几乎每次 都失败，但依然坚持尝试，因为这就是望远镜的诞生之路。
01:19
The telescope I helped build is called the faint intergalactic-medium red-shifted emission balloon, which is a mouthful, so we call it "FIREBall." And don't worry, it is not going to explode at the end of this story. I've been working on FIREBall for more than 10 years and now lead the team of incredible people who built it. FIREBall is designed to observe some of the faintest structures known: huge clouds of hydrogen gas. These clouds are giant. They are even bigger than whatever you're thinking of. They are huge, huge clouds of hydrogen that we think flow into and out of galaxies. I work on FIREBall because what I really want is to take our view of the universe from one with just light from stars to one where we can see and measure every atom that exists. That's all that I want to do.
我努力建造的望远镜叫作 小型星系际红移排放气球，这很拗口，所以我们叫它“火球”。不要担心，它最后不会爆炸。我从事火球的开发 研究已经有10多年了，现在手下有一支出色的建造团队。火球的任务是观测一些 非常模糊的结构： 巨型氢气云层。这些云的体积之庞大，超出你们的想象。它们是由氢气组成的巨型云层，我们认为它们会在星系间浮动进出。我研发火球，因为我非常希望我们对宇宙的认识 从几颗星星上的亮光 进化到可以测量每一个存在的原子。这就是所有我想做的事。
02:13
(Laughter)
（笑声）
02:15
But observing at least some of those atoms is crucial to our understanding of why galaxies look the way they do. I want to know how that hydrogen gas gets into a galaxy and creates a star. My work on FIREBall started in 2008, working not on the telescope but on the light sensor, which is the heart of any telescope. This new sensor was being developed by a team that I joined at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. And our goal was to prove that this sensor would work really well to detect that hydrogen gas.
但测量一部分原子 能对我们理解星系样貌 有至关重要的作用。我想知道 氢气是如何进入星系 进而创造一个恒星的。我对于火球的研究始于2008年，研究的并非是望远镜，还有而是光敏元件，这是所有望远镜的核心。这个新元件的发明者 是我在美国国家航空航天局 喷气式飞机推进实验室加入的小组。我们的目标是证明这个元件 能够完美完成任务，检测到氢气。
02:49
In my work on this, I destroyed several very, very, very expensive sensors before realizing that the machine I was using created a plasma that shorted out anything electrical that we put in it. We used a different machine, there were other challenges, and it took years to get it right. But when that first sensor worked, it was glorious. And our sensors are now 10 times better than the previous state of the art and are getting put into all kinds of new telescopes. Our sensors will give us a new way to see the universe and our place in it.
在我工作的时候，我弄坏了几件非常非常昂贵的元件，然后才意识到我使用的机器 会产生一种等离子体，这会破坏 我们放进去的所有电子设备。我们换了一台机器，还有其他挑战，花了好几年才走上正轨。但当第一个元件起作用的时候，我非常有荣誉感。我们的元件比之前的 最新科技好上10倍，现在被用于所有新款望远镜中。我们的元件可以让我们从新的角度 认识宇宙和我们的位置。
03:26
So, sensors done, time to build a telescope. And FIREBall is weird as far as telescopes go, because it's not in space, and it's not on the ground. Instead, it hangs on a cable from a giant balloon and observes for one night only from 130,000 feet in the stratosphere, at the very edge of space. This is partly because the edge of space is much cheaper than actual space.
解决了元件之后，是时候造望远镜了。作为一个望远镜，火球显得很奇怪，因为它既不在太空，也不在地面上。相反，它是悬挂在一个巨型气球的电缆上，仅仅在平流层13万英尺的高度上，宇宙的边缘，观察一个晚上。这么做的原因之一是 宇宙边缘比真正的宇宙便宜多了。
03:53
(Laughter)
（笑声）
03:55
So building it, of course, more failures: mirrors that failed, scratched mirrors that had to be remade; cooling system failures, an entire system that had to be remade; calibration failures, we ran tests again and again and again and again; failures when you literally least expect them: we had an adorable but super angry baby falcon that landed on our spectrograph tank one day.
那么建造，当然会有更多失败： 反射镜失效了，镜面磨损了需要重做； 冷却系统失效了，整个系统需要重做； 校准失效了，我们一次 又一次地重新测试； 还有你最想不到的失败： 有一支可爱但非常暴躁的幼年鹰隼 降落在我们的光谱仪上，占据了我们一天的时间。
04:21
(Laughter)
（笑声）
04:22
Although to be fair, this was the greatest day in the history of this project.
尽管公平来讲，这是这个项目历史上 最棒的一天。
04:26
(Laughter)
（笑声）
04:27
I really loved that falcon.
我真的很喜欢那只鹰隼。
04:30
But falcon damage fixed, we got it built for an August 2017 launch attempt -- and then failed to launch, due to six weeks of continuous rain in the New Mexico desert.
在修复了它造成的破坏后，在2017年8月我们尝试发射—— 然后失败了，因为新墨西哥州沙漠 时长六周的连续降雨。
04:43
(Laughter)
（笑声）
04:45
Our spirits dampened, we showed up again, August 2018, year 10. And on the morning of September 22nd, we finally got the telescope launched.
我们心情沮丧，收拾心情再努力，2018年8月，项目工作进入第10年，然后在9月22日的早晨，我们终于成功发射了望远镜。
05:00
(Applause)
（掌声）
05:04
I have put so much of myself -- my whole life -- into this project, and I, like, still can't believe that that happened. And I have this picture that's taken right around sunset on that day of our balloon, FIREBall hanging from it, and the nearly full moon. And I love this picture. God, I love it.
我为了这个项目付出了 许多——我整个生命，我现在依然不敢相信 接下来发生的事。我拍下了我们气球升空的照片，正好是快要日落的时候，火球悬挂在气球上，旁边是一个满月。我爱这张照片。天哪，我爱死它了。
05:27
But I look at it, and it makes me want to cry, because when fully inflated, these balloons are spherical, and this one isn't. It's shaped like a teardrop. And that's because there is a hole in it. Sometimes balloons fail, too. FIREBall crash-landed in the New Mexico desert, and we didn't get the data that we wanted. And at the end of that day, I thought to myself, "Why am I doing this?"
但认真看这张照片，它让我有一种想哭的冲动，因为当完全充气膨胀时，这些气球应该是球型的，但这个气球不是。它看起来像一滴眼泪。这是因为它上面有一个洞。有时候气球也会失败。火球坠落在新墨西哥的沙漠，我们甚至没能收集到想要的数据。那一天结束的时候，我对自己说： “我为什么要做这个？”
05:58
And I've thought a lot about why since that day. And I've realized that all of my work has been full of things that break and fail, that we don't understand and they fail, that we just get wrong the first time, and so they fail. I think about the thousands of people who built Hubble and how many failures they endured. There were countless failures, heartbreaking failures, even when it was in space. And none of those failures were a reason for them to give up. I think about why I love my job. I want to know what is happening in the universe. You all want to know what's happening in the universe, too. I want to know what's going on with that hydrogen. And so I've realized that discovery is mostly a process of finding things that don't work, and failure is inevitable when you're pushing the limits of knowledge. And that's what I want to do.
自那天起我思考了很多。我意识到我所有的工作 都是破坏和失败，我们搞不懂，它们失败了，我们可能第一次就弄错了，所以它们失败了。我想到建造哈勃的数千人，以及他们所经历过的失败。有数不尽的失败，心碎的失败，甚至在太空中都可能失败。但任何一次失败都没能让他们放弃。我思考为什么我爱我的工作。我想知道宇宙中发生了什么。你们也都想知道宇宙中发生了什么。我想知道氢气怎么样了。这样，我意识到发现几乎是 一个寻求失败的过程，而当你想要突破先有知识的极限时，失败是不可避免的。这就是为什么我想这么做。
06:49
So I'm choosing to keep going. And our team is going to do what everyone who has ever built anything before us has done: we're going to try again, in 2020.
所以我选择了继续下去。我们的团队准备遵照 那些已经成功的前人的路： 我们要再尝试一次，在2020年。
07:01
And it might feel like a failure today -- and it really does -- but it's only going to stay a failure if I give up.
尽管今天看起来像是一次失败—— 的确是一次失败—— 但如果我放弃了，这将永远保持失败。
07:10
Thank you very much.
非常感谢。
07:11
(Applause)
（掌声）
