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[已翻译,待校对] 最古老的科学迎来新纪元 A new age for the oldest science

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发表于 2013-6-24 10:11:15 | 显示全部楼层 |阅读模式
来源: http://www.isgtw.org/feature/feature-new-age-oldest-science
标题:最古老的科学迎来新纪元(A new age for the oldest science)
有愿意帮助翻译的,请直接回帖(可以先占座,说明翻译那一部分,再翻译或编辑)

Wiki打回翻译…… 标题请自己斟酌,我只是直译……

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参与人数 1维基拼图 +5 收起 理由
昂宿星团人 + 5

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发表于 2013-6-24 11:14:45 | 显示全部楼层
本帖最后由 SaintLaser 于 2013-7-3 21:51 编辑

占个座,先翻译Entering a bright new age之前的部分。

A new age for the oldest science
最古老的科学迎来新时代


Hubble_L.jpg
An illustration of a huge star cluster in our own Milky Way galaxy. The red ones are supergiant stars and the blue ones are young stars. There are an estimated 20,000 stars in the cluster. (Click on image above to enlarge.)Image: NASA/courtesy nasaimages.org
一幅银河系内巨大恒星团的插图。红色的是超巨星,蓝色的是年轻的恒星。一个星团中估计有2万颗恒星。(点击上述图片查看大图)图片来自国家航空航天局(NASA,National Aeronautics and Space Administration)。
译注:以下摘自网络:超巨星 [supergiant star]是体积和真实光度都极大的恒星,明显的比巨星亮几个星等,并大好几倍。如同其他星系,超巨星在实践中通常通过鉴定其光谱中的某些特定谱线而鉴别它们之间的差别(参阅光谱学[spectroscopy])。超巨星的直径一般比太阳大好几百倍,光度大近百万倍。其寿命也许只有几百万年,为极为短暂的恒星。

For millennia, astronomy meant looking at the night sky and sketching what you saw, making star maps by estimating the relative brightnesses of stars by eye and the routes of wandering planets traced against the celestial sphere.
几千年以来,天文学意味着仰望夜空,估计出星星的相对亮度、推算处星星在天球上的运动轨迹,最后把结果画下来。


Even the advent of the telescope didn’t change this much. Sure, astronomers could see fainter objects like the Galilean moons of Jupiter, and resolve point-like planets into disks with structures of color and shade. But the human visual system remained an integral component, limiting data gathering to what could be seen and sketched by human observers in real time.
甚至望远镜的出现也没有对天文学产生太大影响。的确,天文学家可以通过望远镜发现更加暗淡的天体,比如木星的伽利略卫星,或是把原本(看起来)只是一个小点的行星变到盘子那么大,从而发现上面的颜色分布与阴影。但人的视觉系统仍然是(观测工具的)主要组成部分,这就把数据的搜集限制在了人眼能够及时发现并加以记录的部分。


The advent of the photographic plate caused a revolution. Photography allowed more precise and objective measurements of objects in the sky, and long exposures could reveal fainter and more distant objects. But extracting data still involved human effort, from developing the photographic plates to reducing data into a standard format.
照相制版的出现引发了一次革命。摄影能够更为精确、客观的测量划过天空的天体,长时间曝光的办法能够发现更加暗淡、遥远的天体。虽然底片已经把数据压缩成标准格式,但是数据分析依旧需要人力完成。


In recent years, all the mucking about in darkrooms has been superseded by digital photography, leading to a huge change in the practice of astronomy. Digital astronomy began as a host of small programs targeting a few individual objects. The data, manually reduced, would typically end up in the astronomer’s desk drawer. But as digital detectors became larger and cheaper they gave birth to a new kind of astronomy: Fewer surveys, but on a much larger scale, mapping vast areas of the sky at a time. Data reduction is automatic and ends up in query-able databases that astronomers worldwide can use.
最近数年,数字摄影为天文学的工作方式带来了天翻地覆的变化,顺便终结了恼人的暗室工作。天文学的数字化开始于几个小项目中用来瞄准特定天体的主机,即便所得到的数据被人为地精简了,通常也能够装满天文学家们的一个桌子抽屉。随着电子传感器的大型化和廉宜化,产生了一种新的天文学:fewer surveys,这不是一种大规模调查,只是为特定时间点的一大片天空画个星图,计算机能够自动精简数据并将其保存在全世界天文学家都能使用的可查询服务器里。
译注:fewer surveys还真不知道叫什么,也许咱们可以管它叫做“特定调查”。


Cold nights in the dome have been replaced by the warm glow of the computer screen.
苍穹下寒冷的夜晚被计算机屏幕的温热代替了。


These changes, driven by policy, economics and technology, are the subject of the new UK  e-Science Institute research theme, “Next Generation Sky Surveys: Astronomical Opportunities and Computational Challenges.” The Theme Leader, Bob Mann, outlined the goals and ambitions of the theme to come in an eSI public lecture on 7 July.
英国新电子科学研究所的研究主题“下一代巡天调查:天文学机遇与计算科学挑战”将会讨论政治、经济、技术为天文学带来的变化。研究主题的负责人,鲍勃·曼恩,将在研究所7月7日的公开演讲中勾勒出该研究主题的目标与雄心。




Entering a bright new age

进入光明的新时代


Chandra_2_L.jpg
This composite of both X-ray and Infrared images shows the Coronet Australis region, one of the nearest and most active regions of ongoing star formation. (Click on image to enlarge.)   X-ray images courtesy NASA/CXC/CfA/J.Forbrich et al.; Infrared images courtesy NASA/SSC/CfA/IRAC GTO Team  
这张X射线与红外线的合成图展示了距离我们最近,同时也是恒星活动最频繁的Coronet Australis区。X射线图片来自于国家航空航天局、钱德拉X射线天文台(CXC, Chandra X-Ray Observatory)、CfA、J.Forbrich等团体或个人。红外线图片来自于国家航空航天局、
斯坦尼斯航天中心(SSC,the John C. Stennis Space Center)、CfA、IRAC GTO Team译注:紧急呼唤大神,Coronet Australis region、CfA、IRAC GTO Team是啥?另外整个句子没看明白。


How much data would surveying the whole sky generate? Well, the atmospheric interference that makes stars seem to twinkle limits the resolution you can observe from ground-based telescopes to about half an arcsecond, or just over one ten-thousandth of a degree. (To give a sense of size, the moon is about 1800 arcseconds across, says The Planetary Society.) Dividing the whole area of the sky by half an arcsecond, and allowing 2-to-4 bytes per pixel to give an acceptable dynamic range for measurements, puts the size of a whole-sky survey at roughly 20 terabytes.
把天空全部调查一遍会产生多少数据呢?呃,大气干扰让星星看起来在“眨眼睛”,进而把路基望远镜的解析度降低到了大约半角秒,刚好超过一角度的一万分之一。(行星协会:为了让大家有个直观感觉,月亮大约有1800角秒)把整个天空按半角秒分割,每一像素(译注:大概就是按半角秒划分的“格子”)存放2到4字节的动态测量信息,这样的全天空调查大概会产生20TB的数据。


In the old days of photographic plates, producing 20 terabytes might take 60 years of observing time, and another ten years of digitization. Current digital sky surveys can produce 20 terabytes in a year. The newest generation of sky surveys will produce 20 terabytes every night for a decade. As data volumes increase dramatically, the importance of computation increases.
在使用照相底片的时代,搜集同样20TB的数据需耗时60年,把数据数字化另外需要约10年的时间。目前的数字化巡天设备一年可以产生数据20TB,新一代巡天设备可以以每晚20TB的数据搜集速度运转十年。数据量戏剧般的增加推高了计算的重要性。
(译注:作为小白很难知道要多少新一代巡天设备才能达到这样的效果)


Because survey science is statistical in nature, trying to characterize populations by parameters such as the clustering of galaxies or the types of stars requires a large sample volume of the cosmos to produce meaningful results. Users must analyze data sets that are too large to practically download, so data analysis code must be run at data centers.
由于调查科学本质上是统计,想要依照参数对星系团或恒星进行分类,就需要分析宇宙中的大量样本以提供有意义的参考。这使得数据集过于庞大,用户难以下载,所以数据分析代码必须在数据中心运行。
译注:clustering of galaxies,网络的翻译是“星系团”或者“聚类的星系”。


A further challenge is in real-time follow-up studies of transient events. When a star explodes, for example, telescopes can promptly swing round to examine the explosion at different wavelengths, revealing a wealth of scientific information — but only if they’re told in time. If a sky survey is to be able to issue an alert within one minute of detecting such a transient effect, its data reduction system needs to achieve a data rate of about 2 terabytes per hour.
未来的挑战是对暂现事件(transient event)的即时跟踪分析。举例来说,当一个恒星爆炸时,望远镜能够迅速地在多个波长进行观测,保存珍贵的科学信息,这一切都建立在及时发现的基础上。如果巡天调查能够在发现暂现事件后一分钟内发出警报,数据缩减系统就能把数据生成速度提高到2TB每小时。
译注:为啥缩减系统能够提高数据生成速度?个人猜测是因为没用的、重复的数据减少了,搜集的有效数据的比例提高了。


So astronomers need to work with computing scientists. But is the reverse true?
所以天文学家需要与计算机科学家保持合作,反过来也一样么?


Astronomical data can be very useful to computing scientists who want to develop data-handling and mining algorithms. The data has no commercial value and doesn’t refer to human beings, so there are no issues of commercial confidentiality or personal privacy.
天文学数据对那些研究计算机科学中改善数据处理和优化算法的人非常管用。天文学数据既没有商业价值也不提及个人,所以不会触及商业机密或者个人隐私。


And there is an awful lot of it.
同时天文学数据要多少有多少。


Therefore, computational astronomy is an excellent sandbox for data-mining algorithms, and an effective way to teach both astronomy and computer science. Consequently, the new generation of sky surveys will encourage the development of new computational techniques.
因此,计算天文学是天生的优化数据处理算法的沙盒,也是同时学习天文学和计算机科学的有效途径。新一代巡天调查必将推动新的计算机技术的发展。


The oldest science is entering a bright new age.
最古老的科学正在进入一个光明的新时代。


—Exerpted from an original article by Iain Coleman, which appeared in the National e-Science Newsletter to introduce the e-Science Institute Research Theme:"Next Generation Sky Surveys: Astronomical Opportunities and Computational Challenges.” Edited for iSGTW by Seth Bell.
--截取自《国家电子科学时事通讯》中刊登的"下一代巡天调查:天文学机遇与计算科学挑战",该文阐述了电子科学研究所的研究主题。
本文为《国际科学网格周刊》(iSGTW, International Science Grid This Week)再编辑,作者塞斯·贝尔。


@昂宿星团人 搞完了,没想出来什么需要另行修改的地方了。一些看不懂的地方还是看不明白,坛子里有熟悉相关知识的人么。

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参与人数 1维基拼图 +16 收起 理由
昂宿星团人 + 16 不好意思发分迟了,@功能又傲娇,我刚看见.

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