西内SINE

我是西内，我又来了。一个中国人跟你讲美国宇航局，可能有点奇怪哦。但是美国宇航局很重要，像我这样对这些事物感兴趣的人，都会关注的。
This is Sine again. It may seem strange to you that a Chinese is telling you about NASA. But NASA is important, and people like me, people interested in these things, pay attention.

1993年，美国宇航局将雷达对准了一颗被命名为图塔提斯的小行星。他们在12月8日、9日、10日和13日利用莫哈韦沙漠跟踪站230英尺宽的天线圆盘捕捉雷达反射波，来制作图塔提斯的图片。
In 1993, NASA pointed radar at an asteroid they gave name Toutatis. They used the 230 foot-wide antenna dish at the Mojave Desert tracking station to capture radar echoes with a 112-foot-wide antenna to make pictures of Toutatis on Dec. 8, 9, 10 and 13.

这些资料显示，图塔提斯直径有4英里，而且被一分为二。
These show Toutatis is 4 miles across and split in two pieces.

当时，美国宇航局估计，一颗直径1/3英里或更大的小行星有1/10万的可能性撞击地球，摧毁粮食作物，并“可能终结我们的文明”。这可能会发生在我们这一代人的某个时刻。
At that time, NASA guess estimated a 1-in-l0,000 chance an asteroid one third mile wide or more may hit Earth, destroy food crops and ‘maybe end civilization as we know it.’ Sometime during our generation.

后来，在2012年，加州和内华达州看到了一道闪电，他们猜测大约有10英尺宽，散落到了该区域。搜寻地外文明研究所的陨石研究人员彼得·杰尼斯肯斯召集了很多人收集掉落的东西，他们收集到了小至两磅左右，大至8万磅左右重的小行星块。在2012年12月21日的《科学》杂志上，会有更多的分析。
Then, in 2012, California and Nevada saw a flash they surmised was about ten feet wide that fragmented and fell over the area. Meteor researcher Peter Jenniskens from (SETI), Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, crowd-sourced many people to collect what fell and got about 2 pounds from a maybe 80,000 pound piece of an asteroid. In the December 21, 2012 issue, Science magazine says more analysis is coming.

这些很意思，表明我们不知道接下来某个时刻会发生什么。
Which is interesting, showing we don’t know about when or what next.