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The continents of our planet are drifting.
地球上的大陆正在漂移
Fast forward 75 million years and they
快进七千五百万年
will be clustered towards the south pole.
它们将朝着南极聚拢
No one knows if the Earth will still be habitable then,
没人知道地球将来还是否适合居住
but the sad truth is that
但遗憾的是
we may not last long enough to find out.
人类也许活不到见证的一刻的出现
As we gaze into the future,
我们凝视未来时
it turns out that the universe is a pretty dangerous place.
会发现其实宇宙颇为危险
Just look at our neighborhood.
看看地球周边即可略知一二
It's littered with billions of asteroids,
这里存在着数十亿颗小行星
ancient remnants left over from the process that built the solar system.
都是太阳系形成时期存留下来的古老的残骸
The possibility of one of these wiping us out
它们毁灭我们的可能性
isn't just the stuff of Hollywood disaster movies.
并不只停留在好莱坞虚构的灾难片中
The threat from asteroids is real.
小行星的威胁是真实存在的
We've even given some of them names.
我们已经为其中一些命名
This one is called Apophis,
这一颗叫阿波菲斯
after a mythical Egyptian demon,
得名自埃及神话中的一个恶魔
a god of darkness and destruction.
黑暗与毁灭之神
Discovered in 2004,
于2004年被发现的阿波菲斯
Apophis is the size of a 100-story skyscraper.
大小相当于百层摩天大楼
It weighs about 20 billion tons.
重约二百亿吨
Speeding through space at 28,000 miles an hour,
以每小时二万八千英里，子弹的十倍速度
10 times as fast as a bullet,
穿梭于宇宙之中
it carries almost as much energy as
它所具有的能量几乎是
all the world's nuclear weapons combined.
世界上所有核武器所具能量的总和
And we know roughly where it's headed.
我们目前只知道其大致走向
The precise path is not yet fully known.
其精确路径还有待研究
But on April 13th, 2029,
但在2029年4月13日
this huge rock is likely to pass
这块巨石很可能在距地球表面
within 23,000 miles of the planet's surface.
约两万三千公里的位置经过
Close enough to pass beneath the satellites in orbit around Earth
近得能在地球轨道卫星下空掠过
and give us all a scare.
从而使我们担惊受怕
Luckily there is very little chance that Apophis will actually hit us,
幸运的是，阿波菲斯撞上地球的可能微乎其微
but the problem for humanity is
但人类面临的真正问题是
that in space there is always a bigger rock.
宇宙中总是有更大的石块
