Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in an astronomy class.

旁白：听一段天文学课堂的讲座。

You will not need to remember the numbers the professor mentions.

你不需要记住教授提到的数字。

Professor: OK. Let's get going.

教授：好了。咱们现在开始。

Today I'm going to talk about how the asteroid belt was discovered.

今天我将说说小行星带是如何被发现的。

And... I'm going to start by writing some numbers on the board.

同时，我们将从黑板上的这些数字开始。

Here they are: We'll start with zero, then 3, 6, 12.

开始写了：我们从0开始，接着是3，6，12。

Uh, tell me what I'm doing.

说说我在做什么？

Female student: Multiplying by 2?

女同学：（所得值）乘以2？

Professor: Right. I'm doubling the numbers, so 2 times 12 is 24, and the next one I'm going to write after 24 would be.

教授：不错。我在使这些数翻倍，所以2乘以12是24，24之后我要写的数是。

Female student: 48.

女同学：48。

Professor: 48. Then 96.

教授：48。然后是96。

We'll stop there for now.

我们暂时停一下。

Uh, now I'll write another row of numbers under that.

嗯，我在这一组数字下面写另外一组数字。

Tell me what I'm doing.

说说我在干什么？

4, 7, 10. How am I getting this second row?

4,7,10。第二组数字我是怎么得到的？

Male Student: Adding 4 to the numbers in the first row.

男同学：在第一组数字后面加上4。

Professor: I'm adding 4 to each number in the first row to give you a second row.

教授：现在我给第一组数字的每一个数值加4得出第二组。

So the last two will be 52, 100, and now tell me what I'm doing.

所以那就是52，100，说说我在做什么？

Female Student: Putting in a decimal?

女同学：十进位排序？

Professor: Yes, I divided all those numbers by 10 by putting in a decimal point.

教授：是的，我用这些数除以10。

Now I'm going to write the names of the planets under the numbers.

我现在在这些数字下面写上行星的名字。

Mercury ...Venus...Earth...Mars.

水星、金星、地球、火星。

So, what do the numbers mean?

这样看来，这些数字又是什么意思？

Do you remember from the reading?

你们能记住这些读数吗？

Male Student: Is it the distance of the planets from the Sun?

男同学：是从这些行星到太阳的距离吗？

Professor: Right. In astronomical units, not perfect, but tantalizingly close.

教授：是的。用天文单位计算，不算完美，但极为接近了。

The value for Mars is off by... 6 or 7 percent or so.

就那火星到太阳的距离来说可能偏差6%到7%。

It's... but it's within 10 percent of the average distance to Mars from the Sun. [02.00.39]But I kind of have to skip the one after Mars for now.

但，误差应该在10%以内。[02.00.39]我暂时先跳过火星后的这颗行星。

Then Jupiter's right there at 5-point something, and then Saturn is about 10 astronomical units from the Sun.

然后这边的木星到太阳有5个左右天文单位的距离，之后土星到太阳的距离大概有10个天文单位。

Um, well, this pattern is known as Bode's Law.

嗯，这个规律就是众所周知的波德定律。

Um, it isn't really a scientific law, not in the sense of predicting gravitation mathematically or something, but it's attempting a pattern in the spacing of the planets, and it was noticed by Bode hundreds of years ago.

嗯，这不是一个真正意义上的科学定律，并不在预测重力数值之类的层面，它在尝试测量星球之间的距离，它在几百年前被波德发现。

Well, you can imagine that there was some interest in why the 2.8 spot in the pattern was skipped, and um...but there wasn't anything obvious there, in the early telescopes.

你们可以设想一下，这里有点意思：为什么跳过了2.8个点？嗯，但这在早期的望远镜中并不明显。

Then what happened in the late 1700s?

那么在18世纪末发生了什么？

The discovery of... ?

发现了……？

Female Student: Another planet?

女同学：又一个行星？

Professor: The next planet out, Uranus; after Saturn.

教授：下一个行星显现，天王星；在土星之后。

And look, Uranus fits in the next spot in the pattern pretty nicely, um, not perfectly, but close.

天王星放在下面这个空档里倒是很合适，嗯，尽管谈不上十分精准，但已经非常接近。

And so then people got really excited about the validity of this thing and finding the missing object between Mars and Jupiter.

后来，人们对这个数值的准确性变得很感兴趣，同时寻找火星和木星之间缺失的天体。

And telescopes, remember, were getting better.

还记得，望远镜也变得越来越好了吗？

So people went to work on finding objects that would be at that missing distance from the Sun, and then in 1801, the object Ceres was discovered.

所以人们从那个空档到太阳间寻找缺失的天体，后来到1801年，谷神星被发现。

And Ceres was in the right place; the missing spot.

谷神星正好在那个空档里。

Uh, but it was way too faint to be a planet.

嗯，但作为一颗行星它又太微弱。

It looked like a little star.

它看起来像一颗小星。

Uh, and because of its starlike appearance, um, it was called an asteroid.

因为它具备小行星的特征。

OK? Aster is Greek for star, as in astronomy.

明白吗？Aster是希腊文，指星星，天文学这个词也有。

Um, and so, Ceres was the first and is the largest of what became many objects discovered at that same distance.

嗯，那么，谷神星是第一个也是在同一距离发现的天体里面最大的行星。

Not just one thing, but all the objects found at that distance from the asteroid belt.

还有，在从整个行星带到这个空档之间的距离里也算是最大的。

So the asteroid belt is the most famous success of this Bode's Law.

行星带是波德定律里最成功的（假设）。

That's how the asteroid belt was discovered.

行星带是这样被发现的。