(单词翻译:单击)
Nearby Star Came In with the Bang
伴随宇宙大爆炸而来的恒星
There’s an old-timer in the neighborhood, and it’s got a story to tell. A new study of a relatively nearby old star shows that it’s almost as old as the big bang itself.
有个老朋友存在于地球附近，它还有一段故事。据最新研究：近地有个我们发现已久的恒星几乎与宇宙大爆炸相伴而生。
The star HD 140283 lies about 190 light-years away in the constellation Libra. Astronomers have long known that it’s ancient, because it contains mostly hydrogen and helium—which were present at the dawn of the univers’—and few of the heavy elements that were forged later in stellar furnaces.
HD 140283恒星距离天秤座有190光年之远。天文学家先前就知道其是远古恒星，因其主要由存在于宇宙诞生之始氢和氦元素组成，而这些大质量的元素较少出现在后期的恒星内。
With the Hubble Space Telescope, researchers have now pinned down the distance to HD 140283, which allowed them to determine how bright the star is. Along with the chemical composition of the star, the newly derived stellar properties allowed for a new age estimate.
借助哈勃望远镜，研究者现在确认了HD 140283号恒星离地球的距离，这使他们能够进一步测量该行星的亮度。这个最新发现的星系资源还有待进一步做化学成分和年龄的最新估量。
The study of HD 140283, in the Astrophysical Journal Letters [Howard E. Bond et al., HD 140283： A Star in the Solar Neighborhood That Formed Shortly after the Big Bang], found that the star is 14.46 billion years old. But the entire universe, as you may have heard, is only 13.77 billion years old. The two age estimates aren’t actually in conflict, because there’s always some uncertainty. The full age estimate is thus 14.46 billion years plus or minus 800 million years. Put your money on the minus.
对于HD 140283恒星的研究，据《天体物理学杂志》中Howard E. Bond 等人联合发表的“HD 140283恒星：近地太阳系中紧随宇宙大爆炸形成的恒星”一文中，阐明其存在了144.6亿年之久。 但整个宇宙的生成时间才仅仅有137.7亿年。这两个对其年岁的推断实际上并不冲突，因为有太多不确定因素。因此，对该行星年龄的大致推断应在144.6亿万年以上，也可能不超过80亿年，后者可能性极大。
