雅思阅读材料：我们的地球价值三千万亿

　　An astrophysicist from the University of California-Santa Cruz has created a formula to calculate the worth of the planet and has valued Earth at 3,000 trillion pounds.

　　Professor Greg Laughlin came up with the figure by calculating the sum of the planet's age, size, temperature, mass and other vital statistics – and Earth came out as the most expensive.

　　Mars was only valued at 10,000 pounds, while Venus is said to be worth less than a penny. There are about 1,235 other planets in the universe, most of which weren't given a high price tag because of their inhospitable climates.

　　The planet-hunting spacecraft went into orbit two years ago and a year later Laughlin decided to create price tags for the terrestrial planets that Keplar was set to discover. At the time, the exoplanet Gilese 581 c was considered the most Earth-like world known to scientists, but the equation only valued it at 100 pounds.

　　Laughlin said: "I've just always thought that the concept of an 'Earth-like planet in the habitable zone' was pretty vaguely defined, and I wanted a metric that I could plug a planet into to see whether its value was high enough to warrant media hype."

　　The professor concluded that planets with a value of 60 million pounds or more are worth studying but the ones worth less aren't. He also said: "The formula makes you realise just how precious Earth is."

　　据英国《每日邮报》28日报道，来自加州大学圣克鲁兹分校的一名天体物理学家最近发明了一个天体价值计算公式，并算得地球的“价值”乃3000万亿英镑。

　　这位名为格雷格？劳克林的教授称计算时所涉及的参数包括天体的年代、大小、温度、质量等多项重要因素，结果发现地球是所有天体中最“贵”的。

　　（依据他的公式，）火星的价值有1万英镑，而金星的价值不足1便士。另外，宇宙中还有大约1235个已知的行星，大多数都因气候不佳不适合居住而价值不大。

　　两年前，美国宇航局的“开普勒”飞船进入轨道开始寻找类地行星。一年后，劳克林教授决定发明一种公式为“开普勒”发现的目标估价。当时发现的外行星Gilese 581 c被认为是已发现的最像地球的行星，然而价值公式的计算结果只有100英镑。

　　劳克林教授说：“我总认为‘可居住类地行星’是个非常模糊的定义，因此发明一种衡量方式，以判断一颗行星是不是值得炒作。”

　　劳克林教授说还得出结论，称只有估价超过6000万英镑以上的行星才值得研究。他称：“这个公式也会让你意识到，地球是多么珍贵”。

责任编辑：admin