发布时间 : 星期一 文章Unit-6-A-World-of-Mystery新编大学英语第二版第一册课文翻译更新完毕开始阅读98d1a0590540be1e650e52ea551810a6f424c87d
正常工 作。通常磁罗盘指向磁北极。在地球上有两个地方罗盘刚好指向真北，而百慕大三角就是其中之一。因 而，这一地区的磁性有些怪异。
12 许多人认为这些解释令人难以置信。而最新的一种理论具有科学根据，因而比较可信。百慕大 海底甲烷的发现使得麦克维尔博士开始考虑如何解释这些神秘现象。有时大量甲烷气体会从海底逸出， 升人空中。这可能在海面产生巨浪从而使船只沉没。甲烷和空气混合还可能引起船上发动机停转或者起 火。同样，甲烷与空气的混合物升人空中会引起飞机发动机停转或爆炸。而爆炸会把船只或飞机炸成极 小的碎片。
13 这一最新理论仍有待证实，但它似乎给第 19 飞行小队以及所有其他的飞机、船只和人员为什 么会在百幕大三角失踪提供了一种更好的解释。
Life Elsewhere?
[1] As we all know, the Earth has everything that is needed for life to develop, which is why we are here. But four billion years ago, when the Earth
was formed, what were the chances that life would emerge ? Pretty small, according to biologists—about the same chance that you would have of winning the national lottery five weeks in a row. So we're quite lucky to be here.
[2] What about the chances of life forming elsewhere —in our own galaxy, for instance? The Milky Way contains about 400 billion stars. Some (maybe most) of these have planets orbiting them, and the chances are that many millions — or even billions — of these planets could support life. So it does seem possible that there are some other lottery winners living in the same neighborhood.
[3] And if you think that there are countless other galaxies out there — many of them far bigger than the Milky Way — then it seems obvious that there must be other forms of life somewhere
in the universe.
[4] But is it intelligent life, the kind of life that could build spaceships and pay us a visit?
[5] Here on Earth there have been billions of species, but only one of them has turned out to be intelligent enough to develop technology and fly into space. And
even
we're the
not
particularly race
will
intelligent:
human
probably blow itself up long before it learns how to visit other parts of the galaxy.
[6] But let's suppose that there are advanced civilizations here in our own galaxy, who have developed fast-moving flying saucers. Would they visit the Earth?
[7] First we need to ask: why should they want to? The most likely answer is that their own sun is at the end of its life, and they need to find somewhere else to
live.
[8] And the next question is: why here? The diagram shows the part of the Milky Way which probably has the largest number of habitable planets. The oldest ones (and therefore ones which are most likely to have advanced forms of life) are in the shaded area. We're towards the edge (marked X).
[9] If I were an alien looking for a new home, I think I would try a few million of my neighboring planets before bothering to travel a hundred thousand trillion miles to visit the Earth, in a journey that would take at least 200,000 years.
[10] But what about all those UFO sightings that are reported every year? Well, most of them are planes. And whatever the others are, they're not flying saucers. If you were a visiting alien
with
incredibly
powerful