双语阅读英语外刊精讲：卡西尼号坠入土星(附音频)

2019-01-07 17:50:38来源：酷学英语

　　Hidden in the dust

　　But the research team's work is not yet over. Many discoveries about Saturn's moons, rings and interior are likely to emerge in the coming months. Since April, Cassini has carried out a series of 22 orbits, looping between the giant planet and its rings — a perspective never before captured.

双语阅读：英语外刊阅读精讲(附音频)

　　The dust data also look set to answer a long-standing question: How old the rings are? The rings' mass can also be used to help tease out their age, since the more massive the rings, the older they may be. Preliminary analysis of data from Cassini's grand-finale orbits have given Less and his colleagues their best estimate yet of the rings' total mass. “We cannot release any value yet,” Less says, “but this is the first indication that we have that probably the rings didn't form together with Saturn.” By comparing those results with the estimate from Cassini's dust analyser, researchers hope to be able to settle the question of ring age once and for all.

　　A puzzling match

　　Cassini's magnetometer has already made some unexpected discoveries. … The finding “suggests that we don't really understand Saturn's internal structure and how the planetary dynamo is generated yet”, says Michele Dougherty, a space physicist at Imperial College London. She estimates that it will take another three to six months to crunch through the data and understand exactly what they mean.

　　Cassini scientists have another year's worth of funding to tease more secrets out of the data. But after that, there are no US missions on the books to return to Saturn — unless researchers can persuade NASA or other space agencies otherwise. Scientists have submitted proposals to NASA to study Saturn and some of its moons, projects that will be up for consideration later this year as the agency decides on its next set of missions.

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