60秒学美语：Human Eye Sometimes Sees the Unseeable

学更多地道英语口语，关注公众微信【英语】微信号：yingyu9 ，如果想系统学习提高英语口语能力，报名吉米老师听力口语特训班，百度传课网chuanke.com 搜索：听力口语特训班，看到第一个即可报名，365个同学报名啦，100%好评哦！ Human Eye Sometimes Sees the Unseeable 【科学60秒】 灵光乍现 Sometimes it’s hard to see the light. Especially if it lies outside the visible spectrum, like x-rays or ultraviolet radiation. But if you long to see the unseeable, you might be interested to hear that under certain conditions people can catch a glimpse of usually invisible infrared light. That’s according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [Grazyna Palczewska et al, Human infrared vision is triggered by two-photon chromophore isomerization] 有时候很难看到光线.特别是那些可见光谱之外的光,像x射线或者紫外线。但是如果你很渴望看到这些不可见的光，你也许会对如下传说感兴趣，那就是在某种条件下，人们能隐约可见那个不可见的红外线哦。这是根据一项近期发表在《美国国家科学研究进展》杂志上的研究得出的结论。 Our eyes are sensitive to elementary particles called photons that have sufficient energy to excite light-sensitive receptor proteins in our retinas. But the photons in infrared radiation don’t have enough oomph. We can detect these lower energy photons using what are sometimes called night-vision goggles or cameras. But the naked eye is usually blind to infrared radiation. 我们的眼睛对一些被称为光子的元素颗粒很敏感，它们通常带有不少能量可以激发我们视网膜上的光敏受体蛋白。但是红外线中的光子并没有足够的这种能量。我们使用那些有时被称作夜视镜或者夜视相机的设备探测这些第能量的光子。裸眼恐怕通常很难直接看到红外线。 But recently researchers in a laser lab noticed that they sometimes saw flashes of light while working with devices that emitted brief infrared pulses. So they filled a test tube with retinal cells and zapped it with their lasers. When the light pulses rapidly enough, the receptors can get hit with two photons at the same time—which supplies enough energy to excite the receptor. This double dose makes the infrared visible. 但是最近一个激光研究室的科研人员们注意到他们有时候在一些能释放短暂红外脉冲的设备附近工作时，会看到闪光现象。所以他们安装了一个测试管里面装着视网膜细胞，还用激光袭击这些细胞。当光脉冲足够快的时候，这些受体能被两个光子同时袭击——此时的情况下，能量就足以使受体被激活。翻倍的能量使红外光变得可见。 One application of the finding is that it could give doctors a new tool to diagnose diseases of the retina. So they could eyeball trouble before it might otherwise be seen. 这项研究结果的一个应用就是，也许它能为医生们提供一种新型工具，用于诊断视网膜疾病。所以他们就可以提前用肉眼辨别一下情况。