12月 18 2007
迷失太空
以下这篇出现在CCTV网站，来自环球网的文章，从其标题上看，似乎是暗示英国人在证实嫦娥一号的月球照片不是伪造，从内容上看，又似乎有点不着边际。如果你查看原文，就会发现这是没有掌握好原文的总体语气语调所致。另一方面，这也反映了报纸网站的局限。
我注意到这篇翻译文章，是因为我恰好在这之前看到了原文。原文 At last – a moon picture that really is fake? 是刊登在《卫报》副刊G2第3版上的一篇文章，在这个位置上的文章多半是以轻松调侃的口气介绍世界各地发生的有趣故事。原作者显然毫无“调查真相”的野心，不过是阐述其“阴谋论者到处都有，中国也不例外。网络时代，谣言传播太快，是阴谋论者的天堂。”这个观点。
这篇中文翻译，也许是没有掌握原文语气语调(如果知道文章出现在那个版面会有帮助)，有意或无意地忽略了两个细节，第一个细节是原文第一段，作者说的是“中国”网民对嫦娥一号月球照片的质疑。第二个细节是最后一段，“China did indeed launch a probe into deep space in the general direction of the moon”。句式 “in the general direction of ”明显带着一种调侃的口气，不是科学求证类型文章所采用。为什么会这样呢？下一句解开了谜底：“the inability of Fylingdales to see beyond an altitude of 3,000 miles”。也就是说，这个观测站的设备根本无法探测离地球三千英里以外的物体，当然无从证实或证伪嫦娥一号是否抵达月球了。
http://news.cctv.com/world/20071207/100772.shtml
英国《卫报》：中国犯不着伪造探月照片
CCTV.com 2007年12月07日 08:17 来源：环球网
专题:“嫦娥一号”探月行动
英国《卫报》12月5日文章，原题：终于——一张伪造的月球照片?
中国卫星真的去了月球吗？网民就注意到，中国首颗探月卫星“嫦娥一号”最近发回的第一幅月球图像，同美国航空航天局(NASA)两年前拍摄的月球图像有着惊人的相似。阴谋论者认为，这幅图像太完美，不像是真的。
这令人联想起1969年阿姆斯特朗首次登上月球也遭到了人们的猜疑。当时有人指出，背景中没有星星以及美国国旗明显在飘动(人们料想月球上是没有风的)，这些都表明登月是一场精心策划的骗局。
如果人们能相信登月是伪造的，那么伪造几幅月球照片肯定如同儿戏。一架位于地球上或绕地球轨道运行的望远镜就可以拍摄清晰的月面图像。或者找出几幅美国或俄罗斯探测器拍摄的月球远侧的存档图像，然后通过图像处理软件添加几个陨石坑就行了。但美国拉瑟福德•阿普尔顿实验室的太空科学家哈普吉德说，伪造一次完整的太空行动却没那么容易。他说：“被识破的风险是巨大的。”
据跟踪地球轨道上的卫星和太空垃圾的英国皇家空军法林代尔斯基地发言人蒂姆•芬顿说，中国的确向太空深处发射了一枚探测器，总的方向是月球。（李军译）
《卫报》原文：
At last – a moon picture that really is fake?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,,2222029,00.html
Duncan Graham-Rowe
Wednesday December 5, 2007
The Guardian
Did China really go to the moon? It took just a matter of hours before bloggers started noticing uncanny similarities between the first images sent back by China’s flagship lunar probe Chang’e-1 recently, and those taken by Nasa two years ago. For the conspiracy theorists, it was too good to be true. The bulletin boards were abuzz with indignant claims that the Chinese government had tried to pull a fast one. Far from triggering a renewed sense of national pride in China’s fledgling space agency, the images prompted a response sufficient to force Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist of the lunar exploration programme, to publicly repudiate the claims.
“Because China and the United States took the images in the same region, it’s natural the two pictures look alike,” Ouyang told a news agency on Monday. And as if to shoot down any remaining element of doubt, he went on to point out differences between the two images, namely the appearance of new craters in the Chinese one.
It’s all very reminiscent of the conspiracy theories that surrounded Neil Armstrong’s famous lunar landing in 1969. At the time people pointed out that an absence of stars in the background and the apparent flapping of the US flag (where there was supposed to be no wind) all suggested a very elaborate hoax.
If people can believe that the lunar landings were faked, then surely it would be child’s play to fake a few photos of the moon. A ground-based or Earth-orbiting telescope could take detailed shots of the moon’s surface, or if you wanted to make it more believable, then just dig up some old archive images of the far side of the moon taken by US or Russian probes – and add a few craters in Photoshop.
But faking a whole mission is not that easy, says Mike Hapgood, a space scientist at Rutherford Appleton Laboratories in Didcot, Oxfordshire: “The risk of getting caught is enormous.” There are so many ways to track objects in space, particularly for US agencies such as Nasa and Norad.
However, if they did, they certainly didn’t come charging to China’s rescue by confirming the mission. According to Tim Fenton, spokesman for RAF Fylingdales, which tracks satellites and space junk in the Earth’s orbit, China did indeed launch a probe into deep space in the general direction of the moon. Unfortunately, he says, the inability of Fylingdales to see beyond an altitude of 3,000 miles means that they can’t confirm that it reached its destination.
