1.How common are other civilizations in the universe? This question has fascinated humanityfor centuries, and although we still have no definitive answer, a number of recent developments have brought it once again to the fore. Chief among these is the confirmation, after a long time wait and several false starts, that planet exist outside our solar system.外星文明在宇宙中是普遍存在的吗？这个问题已经困扰了人类几个世纪。
虽然我们到现在也不能给出一个确定的回答，但是最近的一些科技进展再一次把这个问题推到了风口浪尖。
其中最重要的，就是经过了漫长的等待和无数错误的尝试，我们终于确认了地外行星的存在。
2.By the time the debris settled and the collective misery was tallied, the devastation had insome respects exceeded even that of El Nino of 1982-1983, which killed 2,000 worldwide and caused about 13 billion dollars in damage.一切尘埃落定之后，人们开始统计此次厄尔尼诺现象造成的损失。
这次毁灭性的灾难造成的损失在某些方面更甚于1982到1983年间的厄尔尼诺现象，那次在世界范围内有2000余人遇难，导致的经济损失高达130亿美元。
3.The sun had set 12 minutes earlier, and twilight was waning on the northern coast of PapuaNew Guinea. It was July 17, 1998, and another tranquil Friday evening was drawing to a close for the men, women and children of Sissano, Arop, Warapu and other small villages on the peaceful sand spit between Sissano Lagoon and the Bismarck Sea.太阳在12分钟前就已经落山了，铺洒在巴布亚新几内亚北岸的暮色渐渐的减弱。
那是1998年7月17日，对生活在Sissano、Arop、Warapu和其他位于俾斯麦海和Sissano泻湖之间安静的沙滩上的村庄的村民来说，只不过是又一个宁静周五傍晚即将来临。
4.To the extent that planets are necessary for origin and evolution of life, theseexcitingdiscoveries certainly argue well for the widely held view that life pervades the universe.如果说行星是生命诞生和进化的必要条件，那么这些令人振奋的发现为生命在宇宙中是普遍存在的论调提供了有力的佐证。
5.There is no specific technology, no silver bullet to extend the oil supplies. But there are surean awful lot of copper bullets lying around.没有什么特别的科技，也没有什么灵丹妙药可以增加石油供给。
但是，肯定有许多其他的办法等待着我们利用。
6.Many people have argued that once primitive life has evolved, natural selection willinevitably cause it to advance toward intelligence and technology. But is this necessarily so?That might be something wrong with this argument was famously articulated by nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi in 1950. If extraterrestrials are commonplace, he asked, where are they? Should their presence not be obvious? This question has become known as Fermi Paradox.许多人认为一旦原始生命产生了，自然选择必定使他进化为智慧生命和科技文明。
但是事实真的如此吗？这个问题已经被核物理学家恩里克·费米在1950年十分清晰的阐述了。
他问道，如果地外文明是十分普遍的，那么，他们在哪儿呢？难道他们的存在没有办法观测吗？这就是著名的费米佯谬。
7.Even though the link between birds and dinosaurs is family established, the definition ofbirds has become a difficult problem. The fact is that it is hard to draw a line between birds and dinosaurs that is anything other than arbitrary.尽管鸟类与恐龙的联系已经牢牢地建立起来了，但鸟类的定义仍然是一个难题。
事实上，我们很难在鸟类与恐龙之间划上一个界限，任何此类的尝试都是十分武断的。
8.Many SETI researchers, as well as others who convinced that ET civilizations must becommon tend to dismiss the implications of the Fermi Paradox by an uncritical appeal to one or more of these sociological considerations.正如许多坚信外星文明普遍存在的人一样，许多SETI计划的研究者趋向于通过不假思索的借助于这些社会道德来规避费米佯谬的深意。
9.Indeed, the only technological civilization we actually know anything about, namely, our own,has yet to self-destruct, shows every sign of being expansionist, and is not especially reticent about interfering with other living things.然而，我们唯一完全了解的技术文明，也就是我们地球文明，尚未自我毁灭，而且无论从哪个方面看，都是一个彻头彻尾的扩张主义分子，并且我们对于接触其他的智慧生命也没有什么特别的禁忌呀。
10.The new finds raise a deeper problem, the same raised by the discovery of any transitionalform between what we have hitherto thought of as distinct categories, such as “bird” and “dinosaur”.迄今为止，鸟类与恐龙都被认为是完全不同的物种。
因此，它们之间任何过渡类型的发现，都能引发人们关于鸟类内涵的深刻思考。
11.Worse still, he argues, the number of oil finds peaked in the 1960s. Today, one new barrel ofoil is found for every four produced.更糟糕的是，油田的勘探在60年代达到了顶峰。
如今，每一桶石油中只有一桶来自新发现的油田。
12.Once we admit this possibility, we must see that the many adaptations of the modern birdskeleton to make it a better airframe could have evolved among the ancestor of birds, for different reasons.一旦我们承认这种错误可能存在，我们就必须认识到，虽然现代鸟类的祖先在骨骼结构上发生了许多适应性变化，这些变化使得它们更有利于飞行，但是进化的原因却可能与飞行无关。
13.Once we liberate ourselves from the restrictive ideas of key characters, and that featuressuch as feathers evolved with a particular purpose---one limited by what we humans perceive as possible or plausible---the scales fall from our eyes.一旦我们不再受这些“关键特征”的束缚，不再假想诸如鸟类羽毛的出现有着其明确的目的，我们的眼前就豁然开朗了。
14.Our almost intuitive knowledge of an “essence of birdness” largely derives from the long listof extreme specializations that modern birds have to meet the punishing demands of flight.我们关于鸟类本质的认知近乎来源于直觉，而这种认知则基于现代鸟类身上一大串适应艰难飞行的极端特化形态。