The Pioneer Plaque, Read Line by Line

Pioneer 10 left Earth in March 1972 and Pioneer 11 in April 1973. They were the first spacecraft built to pass the asteroid belt, fly by Jupiter and keep going until the Sun could no longer hold them. Each carries the same small plate of gold-anodised aluminium, about 23 by 15 centimetres, fixed to the struts that hold the antenna, where it is sheltered from the dust between the stars. The idea of putting a message on board came late; Carl Sagan and Frank Drake designed it in a few weeks, and Linda Salzman Sagan drew it.

先驱者 10 号在 1972 年 3 月离开地球，先驱者 11 号在 1973 年 4 月出发。它们是最早被造出来穿越小行星带、飞掠木星、然后一直飞到太阳再也拉不住它们的飞船。两艘飞船上各带着一块同样的小牌子：镀金阳极氧化铝板，约 23 × 15 厘米，固定在支撑天线的支架上，那里能挡住星际间的尘埃。在飞船上放一份信息的主意来得很晚；卡尔·萨根和弗兰克·德雷克用几个星期设计出了它，琳达·萨尔兹曼·萨根画出了图样。

The plaque has no words, because no one could guess what language its finder would read. It is written instead in things that are the same everywhere.

铭牌上没有文字，因为没有人能猜到发现它的人读哪一种语言。它改用那些到哪里都一样的东西来书写。

In the upper left corner are two small circles joined by a line: a hydrogen atom drawn in its two lowest energy states. When hydrogen flips from one to the other it gives off radio light with a wavelength of about 21 centimetres and a period of about 0.7 billionths of a second. A single short stroke under the drawing, the binary digit one, says: let this be the unit. Every length and time on the plate is counted in it.

左上角有两个用一条线连起来的小圆：画的是处在两个最低能态的氢原子。氢原子从一个能态翻转到另一个能态时，会发出波长约 21 厘米、周期约十亿分之 0.7 秒的射电光。图下一道短短的竖画，也就是二进制的 1，说的是：就以此为单位。铭牌上所有的长度和时间，都用它来计量。

At the left, fifteen lines burst from a single point. Fourteen of them lead to pulsars, spinning stars that flash with very regular periods, and along each line those periods are written in binary, in hydrogen units. The lengths of the lines give the pulsars' distances. The fifteenth line, the long one running to the right behind the people, points to the centre of the galaxy. Because pulsars slow down at known rates, the map says not only where the spacecraft came from but roughly when.

左边，有十五条线从同一点向外迸射。其中十四条通向脉冲星——那些以极其规则的周期闪烁的旋转恒星——每条线上都用二进制、以氢为单位写着它的周期。线的长短表示这些脉冲星的远近。第十五条线最长，向右一直延伸到人像背后，指向银河系的中心。由于脉冲星会以已知的速率逐渐变慢，这幅地图说出的不只是飞船从哪里来，还大致说出了它是什么时候出发的。

At the right stand a man and a woman in front of an outline of the spacecraft, drawn to the same scale. The man has raised one hand. Beside the woman, between two short marks, is the binary number eight: eight times 21 centimetres, about 168 centimetres tall.

右边站着一个男人和一个女人，背后是按同一比例画出的飞船轮廓。男人举起了一只手。女人身旁，两道短线之间，是二进制的 8：8 乘以 21 厘米，约 168 厘米高。

Along the bottom is the solar system, the Sun and its planets in a row, with their distances from the Sun written above and below in binary. Saturn has its rings. From the third planet a curved line runs out past Jupiter and ends in a small drawing of the spacecraft.

最下面是太阳系：太阳和行星排成一行，它们到太阳的距离用二进制写在上下两侧。土星带着它的环。一条弧线从第三颗行星出发，越过木星向外延伸，末端是一个小小的飞船图形。

Some of it has aged. Pluto, drawn as a planet, has since been counted differently, and Pioneer 11 in fact flew on to Saturn, not straight out past Jupiter as the drawing shows. And as one critic pointed out, the arrow on that line is an old human sign that may mean little to anyone whose ancestors never hunted with bows. The last signal from Pioneer 10 reached Earth in January 2003. The plates themselves are still out there, unread, moving away from the Sun.

其中有些内容已经过时了。画成行星的冥王星后来被重新归类；先驱者 11 号实际上飞向了土星，而不像图上画的那样直接越过木星飞出去。也有批评者指出，那条线上的箭头是一个古老的人类符号，对于祖先从未用弓狩猎过的人来说，可能没有多少意义。先驱者 10 号的最后一次信号在 2003 年 1 月传回地球。而那两块铭牌仍在外面，无人读过，正一点点远离太阳。