Anthony, I often get asked this question,

Anthony 经常有人问我这个问题

if scientists actually knew that there was an impending catastrophic collision,

如果科学家知道即将发生灾难性的碰撞

some asteroid was heading towards earth, would they tell you?

某个小行星正在朝地球飞来 他们会告诉我们吗？

And the answer is yes.

答案是会的

We actually study the sky every night we’re looking for objects that might be on a collision course with earth

其实我们每天晚上都在研究天空 寻找可能与地球发生碰撞的天体

and if we find anything that even looks risky we inform lots of people.

一旦发现任何有风险的对象 我们就会通知很多人

The other thing is that the sky is available to anybody on the earth,

另一点就是 天空对地球上的任何人都是开放的

no one government owns the sky, there are telescopes everywhere on the planet,

天空不属于任何政府 地球各处都有望远镜

there’s no way that anybody could hide the fact that some big asteroid was on a course with the earth.

若是有任何大行星位于地球的运行轨道上 没有人能隐藏这一事实

So one of the things that I find very difficult as a scientist is people often ask the question:

作为一名科学家 我觉得很为难的一点是 人们经常会问：

“Would scientists tell us if something really bad was about to happen?”

“如果即将发生很不好的事 科学家会告诉我们吗？”

And you think about that sentence and you have to ask the question who is the us here?

看看这个句子 “我们”到底指谁？

Am I not part of us?

难道我不是“我们”的一员吗？

I remember back I think it was in 2012 there was this idea that the Mayan apocalypse was going to come

我记得应该是在2012年 人们认为玛雅人预言的大灾难就要发生了

that the world was going to end, it was all over the news and I actually got a phone call from somebody.

世界即将毁灭 当时所有新闻都在报道 有人给我打了电话

I was sitting at my desk at NASA and somebody asked me the question, “Is the world going to end next week?”

那时候我坐在NASA的办公室里 有人问我“世界下周就要毁灭了吗？”

And I thought about that because, of course, we knew that the world was not going to end,

我想了想 当然了 我们知道世界不会毁灭

there was nothing happening astronomically that we could tell,

从天文学上来说 当时什么也没发生

but I realized this person didn’t think of me as an actual human being –

但我发现这个人没把我当成普通人对待

that if I knew the world was going to end in a week I would be at work at my desk.

他觉得如果我知道世界将在一周后毁灭 我还会坐在办公室工作

I don’t think so.

我可不觉得是这样

The day you have all the scientists buy up all the great wine and max out their credit cards and disappear

如果有一天 所有科学家买完最好喝的酒 刷爆信用卡 然后凭空消失

then you might want to worry, but even that’s not how we work, we are people

那时候你可能需要担心一下 但那也不是我们的行事风格 我们是人类

and if we knew something dangerous was coming there would be no way for us to hide it.

如果我们知道危险即将到来 没有任何办法能藏住这一事实

Now, one of the things that NASA is researching right now is how to actually alleviate a bad collision.

现在 NASA正在研究的一点就是 如何减轻严重的碰撞

If we see a big asteroid coming toward us on a collision course

如果我们看到有大行星正朝我们撞来

there are actually many things we could do to avert the asteroid a little bit,

我们其实可以做很多事情来避免这颗行星

have it miss the earth, and we‘re studying those right now.

让它绕过地球 这是我们正在研究的领域

But in the past whenever we’ve even seen something that looked slightly risky

但以前 只要我们看到稍微有点危险的物体

we’ve gone to the government about it, we’ve gone to the people, we’ve gone to the press.

我们就会通知政府 通知人民 通知媒体

We have nothing to hide.

我们没什么好藏的

And this is something that is really difficult in my life.

这是我生命中很难的一点

People are saying are you hiding aliens?

人们会问 你们隐藏了外星人吗？

Are you hiding evidence of this?

你们隐藏了这个的证据吗？

Are you hiding the fact that an asteroid is going to blow us up or whatever?

你们隐藏了地球即将被行星撞毁的事实吗？等等

And to me it speaks to the separation that somehow scientists are this monolithic inhuman group

于我而言 不知道为什么 科学家就被分离成了一个单独的非人类的集体

that we could hide things, that we would want to.

人们认为我们能够也想隐藏事实

Instead we’ve been trying to involve the public in everything that we do.

相反 我们一直想让大众参与到我们所做的所有事情中来

I know this will not convince the conspiracy theories out there,

我知道这不足以说服那些阴谋论

but one of the things I love most about our science is how accessible it is

但我觉得我们的科学最优秀的一点 就是它的易接触性

and how much we would tell you even if something bad was going to happen.

即便坏事即将发生 我们也会知无不言言无不尽