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Another Ellipse around the Sun

另一个绕日椭圆轨道

Happy New Year! And don't feel bad about taking today off. After all, you've traveled far. And I'm not talking about the trip home from the party last night. According to NASA, just by being on the planet Earth in the last year, you’ve zipped about 584 million miles around the sun to get back where you were. At an average speed of about 67,000 miles per hour. Again, not talking about the drive home last night.

新年快乐！别再为又一年第一天的到来而伤感了，毕竟，你已行走了如此之久。我可不是在说昨晚从新年派对上回家的路程。据美国航空航天局（NASA）称，仅仅在去年，你为回到自己的所在地，在地球上已绕着太阳呼啸飞过了5亿8千4百万英里，平均速度约为每小时6.7万英里。同刚才一样，我不是在说昨晚开车回家的事。

Of course, the trip was not a perfect circle. As Kepler showed, the Earth’s orbit is an ellipse, with the sun at one of the two focal points. He also figured out the planet goes faster when it’s at perihelion, nearer the sun, than when it's at aphelion, its farthest distance.

当然，我们绕着太阳的轨道并不是一个正圆。开普勒发现地球的轨道是椭圆形，太阳正好处于椭圆的两个焦点之一。他还计算出地球在近日点（即距离太阳最近的点）比在远日点（即距离太远最远的点）运行得更快。

Which would explain why summer seems to zip by, except the seasons are a function of the tilt of the Earth’s axis, not its different distances from the sun. And the Earth rotated 365 and a quarter times during its sweep around the sun. The trip took 8,766 hours. Or 31,557,600 seconds. Or 525,960 minutes just like this one.

这或许可以解释为什么我们感觉夏天会过得那么快，当然，季节是由地球自转轴倾斜造成的之外，而地球与太阳之间的距离变化不是四季更替的原因。地球绕太阳一周自转365又1/4次。共花8766个小时，即3千1百55万7千6百秒，或52万5千9百60分钟——我们的节目恰恰好是一分钟。

—Steve Mirsky

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