雙語故事:大震頻繁,難道世界末日成真?

NASA said last week that the world was not ending--at least anytime soon. Last year, CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, said the same thing, which I guess is good news for those of us who are habitually jittery. How often do you have a pair of such blue-ribbon scientific establishments assuring us that everything is fine?
美國國家航空航天局上週表示，世界並未走向末日，至少短時間內不會。歐洲核子研究中心去年也曾發表過同樣的聲明。我想這對我們當中那些動不動就心神不寧的人來說是個好消息。這類世界一流的科學權威機構雙雙向我們保證：萬事皆安，這種事你多久趕上過一回？

On the other hand, it is kind of depressing if you were looking forward to taking a vacation from mortgage payments to finance one last blowout.
從另一方說，如果你正盼着用還房貸的錢去休假以享受最後的聚會，那麼這樣的保證有點令人鬱悶。

CERN's pronouncements were intended to allay concerns that a black hole would be spit out of its new Large Hadron Collider and eat the Earth.
歐洲核子研究中心的聲明試圖消除人們有關新建成的大型強子對撞機在實驗時將產生一個黑洞，進而吞噬整個地球的恐慌。

The announcements by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, in the form of several Web site postings and a video posted on YouTube, were in response to worries that the world will end on Dec. 21, 2012, when a 5,125-year cycle known as the Long Count in the Mayan calendar supposedly comes to a close.
美國國家航空航天局在其官網上發了幾次消息，並在YouTube上發了視頻，就是爲了迴應人們對世界將在2012年12月21日終結的擔心。在以“長曆法”聞名的瑪雅人的歷法中，每5125年是一個輪迴，據說在2012年12月21日這天是一個輪迴的結束。

But this is only one version of apocalypse out there. In other variations, a planet named Nibiru crashes into us or the Earth's magnetic field flips.
然而，這只是世界毀滅的一個版本而已。其他的版本還有名爲Nibiru的行星撞向我們或者地球磁場翻轉等災難。

There are hundreds of books devoted to 2012, and millions of Web sites, depending on what combination of "2012" and "doomsday" you type into Google.
有關2012年世界末日的書籍不下數百種，根據你在谷歌上鍵入的“2012”和“世界末日”的不同組合，能搜到數百萬個相關的網站。

All of it, astronomers say, is bunk.
天文學家們說，所有這些都是無稽之談。

"Most of what's claimed for 2012 relies on wishful thinking, wild pseudoscientific folly, ignorance of astronomy and a level of paranoia worthy of 'Night of the Living Dead,'" Ed Krupp, director of the Griffith Observatory, in Los Angeles, and an expert on ancient astronomy, wrote in an article in the November issue of Sky & Telescope.
“大多數關於2012年的斷言都來自某種臆想，異想天開的僞科學的荒唐，對天文學的無知，或者一定程度的類似《活死人之夜》的妄想，”洛杉磯裏菲斯天文臺主任、古天文學專家埃德·克虜伯在11月號的《天空和望遠鏡》雜誌上撰文道。

But the trend has gone too far, suggested David Morrison, an astronomer at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., who made the YouTube video and is one of the agency's point people on the issue of Mayan prophecies of doom.
但戴維·莫里森認爲，這種趨勢太過火了，莫里森是英國國家航空航天局位於加利福尼亞莫非特基地埃姆斯研究中心的一位天文學家，他是航天局裏有關瑪雅人世界末日預言問題的出頭人之一。就是他代表航天局在YouTube上發佈相關視頻的。

"I get angry at the way people are being manipulated and frightened to make money," Dr. Morrison said. "There is no ethical right to frighten children to make a buck."
“我對這種以左右和恐嚇觀衆來賺錢的方法感到憤怒，”莫里森博士說。“從道義上來講，沒有人有權利用嚇唬孩子的方式來賺錢。”

Dr. Morrison said he had been getting about 20 letters and e-mail messages a day from people as far away as India scared out of their wits. In an e-mail message, he enclosed a sample that included one from a woman wondering if she should kill herself, her daughter and her unborn baby. Another came from a person pondering whether to put her dog to sleep to avoid suffering in 2012.
莫里森博士說，他曾一天收到大約20封信和電子郵件，這些信息有的來自遙遠的印度，都是些被嚇得魂不附體的人發來的。莫里森舉例說，在一封電子郵件裏，一名婦女正在猶豫是否應該殺死她的女兒和尚未出生的孩子，然後自殺。在另外一封信中，一名女子正在考慮是否讓她的夠安樂死，以避免在2012年遭劫。

If you want to worry, most scientists say, you should think about global climate change, rogue asteroids or nuclear war. But if speculation about ancient prophecies gets you going, here are some things Dr. Morrison and the others think you should know.
大多數科學家說，如果你要擔心，就去擔心全球氣候變化，飄忽不定的小行星或者核戰爭。但如果關於古代預言的猜測使你擔憂，莫里森博士和其他一些學者認爲你應該瞭解以下幾點：

To begin with, astronomers agree, there is nothing special about the Sun and galactic center aligning in the sky. It happens every December with no physical consequences beyond the overconsumption of eggnog. And anyway, the Sun and the galactic center will not exactly coincide even in 2012.
首先，天文學家一致認爲，太陽和銀河系中心點在天空中連成一線沒什麼特別，這種事情每年的12月份都會發生，除了（因爲聖誕節的到來使得）蛋奶酒的需求大增之外沒什麼自然後果。而且太陽和銀河系中心點即使在2012年也不會精確地連成一線。

If there were another planet out there heading our way, everybody could see it by now. As for those fierce solar storms, the next sunspot maximum will not happen until 2013, and will be on the mild side, astronomers now say.
其次，即便真的有另外一顆行星正向我們撞來，那麼我們每個人現在都應該能看到了。至於那些猛烈的太陽風暴，天文學家們接着說，在2013年之前不會發生下一個太陽黑子的大爆發期，而且強度也會相對較弱。

Geological apocalypse is a better bet. There have been big earthquakes in California before and probably will be again. These quakes could destroy Los Angeles, as shown in the movie, and Yellowstone could erupt again with cataclysmic force sooner or later. We and our works are indeed fragile and temporary riders on the Earth. But in this case, "sooner or later" means hundreds of millions of years, and there would be plenty of warning.
實際上，地質學上的災變預言或許更令人信服。加利福尼亞此前曾發生過大地震，今後也可能還會有。這些地震可能像電影《2012》中演的那樣摧毀洛杉磯。黃石國家公園裏的火山可能遲早會以災難性的自然威力再次噴發。我們和我們擁有的一切實際上非常脆弱，都只是地球的暫時過客。但假使這樣的話，“遲早”也意味着數億年的時間，而其間將會有大量的前兆。

The Mayans, who were good-enough astronomers and timekeepers to predict Venus's position 500 years in the future, deserve better than this.
瑪雅人在天文學和記錄時間方面足夠出色。他們在那個年代就預言了500年後金星的位置。而值得稱頌的還不僅於此。

Mayan time was cyclic, and experts like Dr. Krupp and Anthony Aveni, an astronomer and anthropologist at Colgate University, say there is no evidence that the Mayans thought anything special would happen when the odometer rolled over on this Long Count in 2012. There are references in Mayan inscriptions to dates both before the beginning and the ending of the present Long Count, they say, just as your next birthday and April 15 loom beyond New Year's Eve, on next year's calendar.
瑪雅人的時間是循環的，包括克虜伯博士和科爾蓋特大學天文學和人類學家安東尼·阿韋尼在內的專家們說，沒有證據證明瑪雅人認爲有什麼特別的事情將在2012年“長曆法”一輪迴結束時發生。專家們說，在瑪雅人的石刻裏，有關於目前“長曆法”輪迴開始和結束前的日子的標識，正像你知道你的下一個生日和4月15日將出現在明年日曆的新年前夜之後一樣。

So keep up those mortgage payments.
因此，還是接着還房貸吧。