1. 偶然的一點好運也能夠保持良久
It was hailed as one of the biggest success stories in the history of space exploration – 20 years of planning ended earlier this year with the Philae lander rendezvousing with Comet 67P over 300 million miles (480 million kilometres) away from Earth.
菲萊探測器被譽為太空摸索史上最大逾越之一，歷經20年的謀劃期終于在年初發射并勝利在離地球四億八千萬公里的67P彗星上著陸。
The biggest challenge, says Stephan Ulamec, manager of the Philae lander programme, was how to design a probe to land on a body whose makeup they had little knowledge about. “We had no idea of the size, we had no idea of the day-night cycle, which influences the thermal design, we had no idea of the gravity, so how fast would the lander impact, we had no idea how the surface looked,” he says.
據菲萊項目標負責人斯蒂芬先容，在這20年里碰到的最大挑釁是對彗星結構懂得較少，不曉得該如何設計這個探測器。“咱們不知道彗星的日夜輪回情形會影響保熱設計，不知道彗星的重力也無法猜測探測器著陸后對轉速的影響，甚至不明白彗星表面的樣子。”
They needed to create design parameters that could cope with an extremely wide range of possible comet structures – but banked on the comet being a relatively even potato shape with enough flat surfaces for the probe to land on. Even then, not everything went to plan, and two decades of meticulous planning could have failed within minutes at touchdown. Philae's anchoring harpoons didn't fire as planned, and it bounced off the comet before settling onto its icy surface and successfully beaming data back to its relieved creators.
迷信家們需要樹立盡可能合乎多種彗星構造的設計參數，然而還是得寄盼望于彗星的名義要夠平坦�？杉词故腔�20年設計、周密打算過的菲萊仍是在著陸的多少分鐘里有點小失�。�“魚叉”體系未如規劃翻開，無法正確釘入彗星表面。不外榮幸的是，菲萊還是成功地把數據發還了地球。
Lesson six: Genius is indefinable
2. “天才”定義不明
“It’s a funny word: the word ‘genius’,” says Nirenberg. “I just sort of ignore it and just go on with life. You just do what you do independent of whatever label’s attached to you. I don’t know really how else to explain it.”
“蠢才這個詞很有趣”，尼倫伯格說，“我經常疏忽這個標簽持續走本人的路。只須要拋掉別人在你身上貼的各種標簽做自己想做到的事就好了。由于所謂天才真是斷定尺度不一、無奈說明的事件。”
3. 觀點要用證據來證實
Like his peers, geophysicist Steven Jacobsen from Northwestern University believed that water on Earth originated from comets. But by studying rocks, which allow scientists to peer back in time, he discovered water hidden inside ringwoodite, which lies in the Earth’s mantle, and which suggests that the oceans gradually made its way out of the planet’s interior many centuries ago.
美國西北大學地球物理學家史蒂文·雅各布森曾以為，地球上的水源于彗星。但通過對巖石的研究，他發現地幔的林伍德石里面也藏有水，這一發現表明或者在N個世紀之前，大陸是從地球內部自己漸漸溢出來的。
“I had a pretty hard time convincing others,” he admits. Yet two key pieces of evidence uncovered this year seem to support his point of view. Time will tell whether the new theories are true, and there may be further twists to the tale. “But thinking about the fact that you may be the first person to see something for the first time doesn’t happen very often,” he says. “When it does it’s thrilling.”
“那時候我難壓服別的學者信任這個。”史蒂文說。但是今年新發明的兩個癥結證據仿佛支撐了他的實踐。所以，一個新理論的準確與否可能需要時光來緩緩印證，在被眾人接收前可能會閱歷良多波折。“但是假如你發現你是第一個發現這個法則的人，且時間又證明你是對的之后，你會倍受鼓勵的。”史蒂文說。
Lesson three: It really is 99% perspiration
4. 天才的99%確切是汗水
Sheila Nirenberg at Cornell University is trying to develop a new prosthetic device for treating blindness. Key to this was cracking the code that transmits information from the eye to the brain. “Once I realised this, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep – all I wanted to do was work,” says Nirenberg.
康奈爾大學希拉·尼倫伯格正在研討醫治失明的新型假體，其中破解眼睛與大腦的信息交換密碼是最要害的。“我意識到這一點之后，就吃不下飯、睡不著覺，只想全身心投入工作。”尼倫伯格說。
“Sometimes I’m exhausted and I get burnt out,” she adds. “But then I get an email from somebody in crisis or somebody who’s getting macular degeneration, and they can’t see their own children’s faces, and it is like, ‘How can I possibly complain?’ It gives me the energy to just go back and keep doing it.”
“每次感到精疲力竭、江郎才盡的時候，我都會收到一些到正處于危險狀況立刻要失明的、或是患有黃斑部退化癥的病人的郵件，這些人將沒措施看清自己孩子的長相、無法看這色彩斑斕的世界。每當這個時候，我就跟自己說‘我怎么可能埋怨呢’，而后就又能源十足的繼承工作。”
Lesson four: The answer isn’t always what you expect
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