CNN News:太阳活动对地球的影响

Time for the Shoutout, which of the following objects is 93 million miles away from you? If you think, you know it, shout it out! Is it the International Space Station, the Sun, Mercury or Moon. You`ve got three seconds, go.It`s the Sun. It`s so far away that its light takes more than eight minutes to reach your eye. That`s your answer and that`s your shoutout.

又到了“大声喊话”环节了，下面哪一个物品距离你有9300万英里远呢?如果知道的话就大声喊出来!是国际空间站，是太阳，是水星还是月亮?你有三秒钟时间回来。答案就是太阳。它距离我们太远了，太阳光需要八分钟的时间才能到达地球。这就是你的答案，下面正式进入此环节。

So, should you be concerned about something that happens some 93 million miles away? 100 years ago the answer was no, today the answer kind of depends. Do you use electronics? There are often storms on the Sun, there were some over the weekend. They were linked to solar flares that send magnetic gas flying toward Earth. A NASA scientist says no one on the ground was in any danger, but they could have affected some of the things we use every day.

你会与一个距离你9300万英里远的物体有关系么?100年前答案是没有关系，但是现在答案却不一定了。你使用电子产品么?在太阳上经常爆发太阳风暴，有些时候在周末爆发，他们与太阳耀斑携带者大量磁性气体朝着地球飞奔而来。一名美国宇航局科学家称地球上的人不会有危险，但是会影响到我们每天使用的东西。

In March of 1989, a solar storm knocked out power for the Canadian province of Quebec. It took 12 hours for the lights and everything else to come back on. What else could happen?

在1989年三月，太阳风暴袭击了加拿大魁北克省的电力网。此次袭击花费了大约12小时恢复照明和其他供应。还会发生什么呢?

Now, the Sun has always been out there, there`s always been a solar wind, there`s always been solar flares, but now that we are so dependent on satellites, on GPS, on the power grid, now we`re worried about what the Sun is doing out there.

现在太阳一直呆在那里，太阳表面总会刮太阳风，于是就会产生太阳耀斑，但是现在我们又是如此依赖卫星，GPS，电网，所以我们会担心太阳活动的爆发。

Well, the solar flare comes out very quickly and it can really disrupt radio communications, especially high latitude radio communications. But a coronal mass ejection, when it comes toward the Earth, it is sending plasma, electrons, protons, the big solar wind that will energize the magnetosphere and possibly even energize the Earth itself and that`s what we`re concerned about.

太阳耀斑产生很快并且会对无线电影响非常大，尤其是对高纬度的无线电通讯。但是日冕物质抛射，当日冕物质朝着地球冲过来时同时会散发着等离子体，电子和质子，巨大的太阳风将会加强磁场甚至会扰乱地球本身的磁场。这就是我们所担心的问题。

Obviously, solar flares and CMEs have been hitting the Earth for billions of years, but we have now the technology in place that can be damaged by these CMEs, the satellites in place, the power grids in place. With a big CME or coronal mass ejection, we could lose the power grid. We could lose satellites, we could certainly lose GPS.

显然太阳耀斑和日冕物质已经对地球造成了数十亿年的冲击。但是我们现在用有高科技设备，很可能被日冕物质毁坏，卫星也是，电网也是。一场日冕活动的爆发我们可能会失去一个电网。或许可以失去卫星，肯定会失去GPS。

You know, we think of geomagnetic storms as being fun because we get to see the northern lights, the aurora borealis, but there`s more to it than that.

我们认为地磁风暴是有趣的，因为我们可以看到北极光，极光，当然不止这些。

It can power the grid, it can make brown-outs in our electrical grid. It can turn our satellites off and maybe we even have to manually turn them off if there is too much energy coming at them. So, think of a world at least temporarily without satellites, without GPS, without communication.

它还可以增强电网电力，会造成电网暂时断电。会关闭我们的卫星工作，或者我们不得不手动关闭工作的卫星，如果有巨大能量朝着他们发射的话。可以想象一下一个暂时没有卫星，没有GPS，没有交流的世界。

A lot of things could shut down with a big CME earth directed.

如果大量日冕物质朝着地球抛射的话，地球上很多设备装置将关闭。