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進入中英對照讀新聞》Rock collected by Apollo 17 astronaut in 1972 reveals moon’s age阿波羅17號太空人在1972年採集到的岩石揭露月球年齡
阿波羅17號任務在51年前採集的月球樣本幫助科學家計算出月球年齡。（路透）
◎林家宇
During the Apollo 17 mission in 1972 - the last time people walked on the moon - U.S. astronauts Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan collected about 110.4 kg of soil and rock samples that were returned to Earth for further study.
距人類上一次在月球漫步要追溯到1972年的阿波羅17號任務。美國太空人哈里遜．舒密特和尤金．塞爾南採集了約110.4公斤的土壤和岩石樣本，在返回地球後進行進一步研究。
The moon is about 40 million years older than previously thought - forming more than 4.46 billion years ago, within 110 million years after the solar system’s birth, scientists said on Monday, based on analyses of the crystals.
科學家週一表示，基於對晶體的分析發現，月球形成在44.6億多年前，比先前的推算早了約4000萬年，即在太陽系誕生後的1.1億年內。
The leading hypothesis for lunar formation is that during the solar system’s chaotic early history a Mars-sized object called Theia slammed into primordial Earth. This blasted magma - molten rock - into space, forming a debris disk that orbited Earth and coalesced into the moon. But the exact timing of the moon’s formation has been hard to nail down.
主流的月球組成假說為太陽系仍處於早期混亂時，一顆被命名為「忒伊亞」的火星大小星體撞上了原始地球，把岩漿-熔岩-炸進了太空，形成一個繞行地球的碎屑盤並凝聚成月球。但確切的月球形成時間始終難以斷定。
"I love the fact that this study was done on a sample that was collected and brought to Earth 51 years ago. At that time, atom probe tomography wasn’t developed yet and scientists wouldn’t have imagined the types of analyses we do today," said cosmochemist Philipp Heck, senior director of research at the Field Museum in Chicago, a University of Chicago professor and senior author of the study published in the journal Geochemical Perspectives Letters.
「讓我欣喜的事實是，這項研究是在51年前採集、帶回地球的樣本上完成的。在當時，原子針尖斷層影像儀還沒發展出來，科學家想像不到我們今時今日的分析方式」，宇宙化學家、芝加哥菲爾德博物館資深研究主任、芝加哥大學教授赫克表示。他是這項研究成果刊登於「地球化學展望通訊」期刊的資深作者。
新聞辭典
hypothesis：名詞，假說、假設。例句：Big Bang is the major hypothesis about the birth of the universe.（大霹靂是宇宙誕生的主流假說）
primordial：形容詞，原始的、原初的。例句：The primordial earth was full of dangers.（原始地球遍布著危險）
