The Butterfly Effect
蝴蝶效應(yīng)
The Butterfly Effect is the reason. For small pieces of weather -- and to a global forecaster, small can mean thunderstorms and blizzards -- any prediction deteriorates rapidly. Errors and uncertainties multiply, cascading upward through a chain of turbulent features, from dust devils and squalls up to continent-size eddies that only satellites can see. The modern weather models work with a grid of points of the order of 60 miles apart, and even so, some starting data has to be guessed, since ground stations and satellites cannot see everywhere. But suppose the earth could be covered with sensors spaced one foot apart, rising at one-foot intervals all the way to the top of the atmosphere. Suppose every sensor gives perfectly accurate readings of temperature, pressure, humidity, and any other quantity a meteorologist would want. Precisely at noon an infinitely powerful computer takes all the data and calculates what will happen at each point at 12.01, then 12.02, then 12.03...
The computer will still be unable to predict whether Princeton, New Jersey, will have sun or rain on a day one month away. At noon the spaces between the sensors will hide fluctuations that the computer will not know about, tiny deviations from the average. By 12.01, those fluctuations will already have created small errors one foot away. Soon the errors will have multiplied to the ten-foot scale, and so on up to the size of the globe.
JAMES GLEICK, Chaos
New words and expressions 生詞與短語(yǔ)
forecast
n. 預(yù)報(bào)
speculative
adj. 推測(cè)的
blizzard
n. 暴風(fēng)雪
deteriorate
v. 變壞
multiply
v. 增加
cascade
v. 瀑布似地落下
turbulent
adj. 狂暴的
dust devil
小塵暴，塵旋風(fēng)
squall
n. 暴風(fēng)
eddy
n. 旋渦
grid
n. 坐標(biāo)方格
sensor
n. 傳感器
humidity
n. 濕度
meteorologist
n. 氣象學(xué)家
Princeton
n. 普林斯頓(美國(guó)城市名)
New Jersey
n. 新澤西(美國(guó)州名)
fluctuation
n. 起伏，波動(dòng)
deviation
n. 偏差
本文參考譯文
世界上最好的兩三天以上的天氣預(yù)報(bào)具有很強(qiáng)的猜測(cè)性，如果超過(guò)六七天，天氣預(yù)報(bào)就沒(méi)有了任何價(jià)值。
原因是蝴蝶效應(yīng)。對(duì)于小片的惡劣天氣 -- 對(duì)一個(gè)全球性的氣象預(yù)報(bào)員來(lái)說(shuō)，“小”可以意味著雷暴雨和暴風(fēng)雪 -- 任何預(yù)測(cè)的質(zhì)量會(huì)很快下降。錯(cuò)誤和不可靠性上升，接踵而來(lái)的是一系列湍流的徵狀，從小塵暴和暴風(fēng)發(fā)展到只有衛(wèi)星上可以看到的席卷整塊大陸的旋渦。 現(xiàn)代氣象模型以一個(gè)坐標(biāo)圖來(lái)顯示，圖中每個(gè)點(diǎn)大約是間隔60英里。既使是這樣，有些開(kāi)始時(shí)的資料也不得不依靠推測(cè)，因?yàn)榈孛婀ぷ髡竞托l(wèi)星不可能看到地球上的每一個(gè)地方。假設(shè)地球上可以布滿傳感器，每個(gè)相隔1英尺，并按1英尺的間隔從地面一直排列到大氣層的頂端。再假定每個(gè)傳感器都極極端準(zhǔn)確地讀出了溫度、氣壓、溫度和氣象學(xué)家需要的任何其他數(shù)據(jù)。在正午時(shí)分，一個(gè)功能巨大的計(jì)算機(jī)搜集了所有的資料，并算出在每一個(gè)點(diǎn)上12：01、12：02、12：03時(shí)可能出現(xiàn)的情況。
計(jì)算機(jī)無(wú)法推斷出1個(gè)月以后的某一天，新澤西州的普林斯頓究竟是晴天還是雨天。正午時(shí)分，傳感器之間的距離會(huì)掩蓋計(jì)算機(jī)無(wú)法知道的波動(dòng)、任何偏平均值的變化。到12：01時(shí)，那些波動(dòng)就已經(jīng)會(huì)在1英尺遠(yuǎn)的地方造成偏差。很快這種偏差會(huì)增加到尺10英的范圍，如此等等，一直到全球的范圍。
以上是“新概念英語(yǔ)第四冊(cè)：The Butterfly Effect”的內(nèi)容，更多關(guān)于新概念英語(yǔ)的考試資料可點(diǎn)擊下載查看：進(jìn)入資料下載。
