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发表于 2006-5-1 10:51:56
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1 March, 2006
2006-3-1
Dear Stardust@home Participant:
亲爱的Stardust@home参与者：
First, we sincerely apologize that we are not able to make data available on our original timetable. We know that some of you, particularly teachers, have made plans based on this schedule. If this delay presents a problem for you, we'd like to help.
首先对我们未能按原先的时间表提供数据表示真诚的歉意。我们了解你们中的一些人，特别是教师，已经据此制定了一些计划，如果此次推迟给您带来了麻烦，我们愿提供帮助。
Since we made our original schedule, two things have happened.
从我们制定原始的计划表到现在，发生了两件事。
First, we have been completely overwhelmed by the excitement surrounding the analysis of the other side of Stardust -- the first cometary samples ever returned to Earth for study. (Stardust is really two missions in one -- a sample return mission from the Kuiper Belt and a sample return mission from the Galaxy.) A critical part of the Stardust mission is so-called Preliminary Examination, a six-month period in which scientists from all of the world get samples of the cometary dust for study using a huge variety of instruments, from scanning electron microscopes (SEMs) that fit on a table-top, to synchrotrons the size of a shopping mall.
首先，我们完全被分析星尘的背面——首次带回地球研究的彗星样本——的激动所淹没。（星尘项目是个二合一的任务，将来自科伊伯带和银河的样本带回地球。）星尘任务的一个关键性部分被称作“初步考察”，在为期六个月的时间里来自全球的科学家会用从台式扫描电子显微镜到购物中心般大小的同步加速器等各种各样的仪器研究他们得到的彗星样品。
The clock started ticking as soon as the capsule touched down in Utah. Six months sounds like a long time, but it is in fact incredibly short for the kind of detailed and time-consuming study that's necessary for understanding even the most basic things about the cometary samples. We have an important role in the preparation of samples, like the "keystone" below, for our colleagues all over the world. This has been an incredible experience, and we have been making exciting and unexpected discoveries. We wish that we could share them with you right now, but the collaboration has an embargo on the discoveries until they are published in peer-reviewed journals. This is necessary to make sure that we get it right!
从返回舱在犹他落地那一刻算起，六个月听起来似乎很长，但实际上对于这种详细而耗时的研究也实在是太短了，即便是了解彗星样品最基本的情况所必需。我们在准备样品过程中饰演重要角色，为我们在世界各的同事们当好基石。这是一次难以置信的经历，有很多令人兴奋和意想不到的发现。我希望现在就与你们分享这些发现，但是共同研究禁止我这么做，直到他们在学术刊物上公开发表后。这是确保我们站在公正的立场上所必需的。
The search for interstellar dust is just as important as the analysis of the cometary dust, but since everyone expected that the search for interstellar dust would take years, there is no official Preliminary Examination period for this. So the cometary dust work had to take priority.
寻找星际尘埃如同分析彗星尘埃一样重要，由于每个人都认为寻找星际尘埃需要花费数年的时间，因此没有官方的初步考察阶段。也因此彗星尘埃的工作获得了优先。
Second, we were completely overwhelmed with the response to Stardust@home. More than 100,000 people worldwide have pre-registered to participate in the search for the first contemporary interstellar dust particles ever returned to earth for study. This is fantastic news, but with it comes a challenge: our data pipe at U. C. Berkeley is not nearly big enough to handle the traffic, and we have had to scramble to figure out what to do. We have a solution, we think, that we will be testing very soon.
其次，我们被Stardust@home产生的反响完全吞没了。超过10万来自全球的人们已经为参与搜寻首次带回地球研究的星际尘埃而预注册了。这真是一个梦幻般的消息，但是也带了挑战：我们在U.C.Berkeley的数据通道根本无法承受得住，这迫使我们得想办法解决。现在有了一个方案，我想，我们很快会测试一下的。
Click to enlarge >点击放大
Stardust particle
星尘微粒
A mote of comet dust embedded in a tiny wedge of aerogel extracted from the Stardust aerogel collector. The comet dust was extracted by UC Berkeley researcher Christopher Snead. The grain of dust entered the aerogel from the lower right at supersonic speed and moved to the upper left, where it can be seen as a bright dot at the end of the carrot-shaped trail. The large oval cavity at lower right was blown out by shock waves created as the grain exceeded the sound barrier in the aerogel. At right is a micromachined fixture developed by UC Berkeley physicists, in collaboration with Chris Keller of MEMS Precision Instruments, to extract grains of comet and interstellar dust from the detectors. Led by UC Berkeley research physicist Andrew Westphal, a team at the campus's Space Sciences Laboratory also developed the device – a glass needle attached to a robotically-controlled micromanipulator – to cut out the wedge-shaped piece of aerogel from a larger aerogel tile. The aerogel-embedded comet grain, still in the clean room at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, will be distributed to researchers for study. The trail is about 1 millimeter long, while the dust grain is only 10 microns across.
Photo Credit: Hope Ishii, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
这是从星尘号气凝胶收集器提取的一小块楔形气凝胶，里面有一个植入的彗星尘埃。该彗星尘埃由UC Berkeley的研究员克利斯多夫 斯尼德（Christopher Snead）提取。尘埃微粒从右下方以超音速进入气凝胶并移动到左上部，在胡萝卜状形迹末端的亮点就是它。那个右下方大的卵圆形的空腔是微粒超过了气凝胶中的声障所产生的冲击波炸开的。在右边是UC Berkeley的物理学家在来自MEMS精密设备的克利斯 克勒（Chris Keller）协助下开发的微机械装置，用以从探测器中取出彗星微粒和星际尘埃。一只由UC Berkeley的物理学家安德鲁 韦斯特法尔（Andrew Westphal）领导的，来自校内空间科学实验室的小组也对该设备进行了改进——一个附着在全自动显微操作器上的玻璃针——用以从大块气凝胶上切下一小片楔形气凝胶。含有彗星颗粒的气溶胶依然在休斯敦、约翰逊宇航中心的无尘室里，将分发给研究人员研究。整个形迹大约有1毫米长，而尘埃粒直径只有10微米。
图片感谢：国家实验室的 霍普 伊斯（Hope Ishii），劳伦斯 利弗莫尔（Lawrence Livermore）
Here is how things stand right now: The Stardust Interstellar Dust Collector (SIDC) is in a storage cabinet in the Stardust Clean Room at Johnson Space Center in Houston. The automated scanning microscope has been installed in a laminar-flow tunnel in the Cosmic Dust Lab, which is just around the corner from the Stardust Lab. The microscope has been modified to accept the SIDC, and is ready to go.
现在的情况是：星际尘埃收集器（SIDC）存放在休斯敦约翰逊宇航中心的“星尘”无尘室存储柜中。自动扫描显微镜已经安装在离“星尘实验室”不远的拐角附近、“彗星尘埃”实验室的一个层流通道中。显微镜已经为接收SIDC做了调整，随时可用。
If this were any ordinary object that we're scanning, we would have started weeks ago. But when you're working with something that is absolutely unique and priceless, and is half of the sample returned by a $200 million dollar mission, you have to be incredibly careful. You try to think of anything that can go wrong, even if it's very unlikely. It turns out that the microscope is in the line of fire of two fire sprinklers in the Cosmic Dust Lab. If they were to go off, the collector would be ruined in less than a minute. We can't put up a solid shield because it would interrupt the laminar air flow, and the clean tunnel that the microscope is in would no longer be clean. After some puzzling about how to deal with this, we decided to build a huge wall made of a metal honeycomb called hexcel. This will allow the clean air to flow in the tunnel, but will prevent water from getting on the SIDC if the sprinklers go off.
如果我们要扫描的是一些普通的物品，那么我们几周前就可以开始了。但是当你要处理的是绝无仅有、价值连城——2亿美元的使命所带回的一半样品的时候，你需要绝对的小心。你必须设想任何可能出现的问题，即使它们的可能性很小。比如显微镜所在的“彗星尘埃实验室”的两条消防洒水装置，如果它们发射的话收集器在不到一分钟里就会被毁灭。我们不能盖上一个实心的保护壳，因为它会打断气流层使得显微镜所处的洁净通道不再洁净。在被如何解决这一情况困扰了一段时间后，我们决定用一种称作hexcel（这个好像是一种什么复合纤维材料，但我不知道是什么东西做的）的蜂窝状金属建造了一大面墙，能让洁净空气吹入通道中，却阻止万一洒水器启动喷出的水进入SDIC。
We hope to finish the installation of this wall during the week of March 13-17. We will then transfer the SIDC from the Stardust Lab to the Cosmic Dust Lab (a big deal all by itself!), and start scanning. Our hope is that we will be able to start making data available to you soon after April 1.
我们希望能在三月13-17日完成这面墙的安装。届时将把SDIC从“星尘实验室”转移到“彗星尘埃实验室”（真是一大笔买卖），开始扫描工作。我们期望能在4月1日后不久为你们生成可用的数据。
Thank you very sincerely for your patience, and thank you in advance for your work on this project.
真诚的感谢各位的耐心等待，并提前感谢你们为项目所作的工作。
Andrew Westphal
Stardust@home Project Director
安德鲁 韦斯特法尔（Andrew Westphal）
Stardust@home项目主管
==========================（大家校正一下，）
[ Last edited by Rojer on 2006-5-28 at 11:21 ] |
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。翻译完成的页面我就贴到下面了。