Shownotes Transcript
Hello everybody, and welcome to a new episode of News Bites!
I'm Trevor Tortomasi…
And I'm Ryan Drillsma.
In today's news:
The Taipei 101 gets ready for a fireworks show, scientists look into the past with a space telescope, and a baby dinosaur is found in China.
All that and more, coming up next.
台北101元旦將施放一萬六千枚煙火彈 Taipei 101 to Fire Off 16,000 Fireworks for New Year's
It's the end of 2021!
Has it been a good year for you?
It has definitely been an interesting year for the world…
And in Taiwan, 2021 is going out with a "BANG"!
On December 31st, the Taipei 101 is planning to fire off 16,000 fireworks, over 360 seconds. 台北101準備在今年12月31號晚上360秒以內施放一萬六千枚煙火彈。
That's about 6 minutes of fireworks!
The fireworks will go off (被放) after the New Year's Countdown, when everyone counts backwards (倒數) from ten.
When it reaches zero, we'll be in the year 2022, and the fireworks show will begin!
The theme of this year's show is "Towards a Better Future", and hopes to help people move forward, away from the very difficult past two years. 今年活動的題目是【迎向美好未來】，希望能夠鼓勵大家往前邁進，擺脫近兩年的困難。
Taipei officials say the show took about 6 months to prepare (準備), and will be one of the biggest fireworks shows the Taipei 101 has ever had.
Either way, time moves forward…
Let's hope next year is better for everyone!
韋伯太空望遠鏡 成功發射升空 James Webb Space Telescope Launches Safely
Scientists have finally put something very amazing into outer space.
It's called the James Webb Space Telescope (韋伯太空望遠鏡), or JWST, and might be the greatest camera the world has ever made.
First of all, a telescope (望遠鏡) is something that takes light from very far away, so our eyes can see it better…
Meanwhile, a camera works by taking in lots of light from the world, and making that light into a picture we can see later.
And the JWST is the best of both worlds!
It has a giant, golden mirror, to reflect light into a tiny point and save pictures of things that are very far away. 它有一個巨大的金色鏡子，為了把很遠的光線聚集到很小一個點，好儲存照片。
But not just very far away… further away than anyone has ever seen before.
The JWST is designed to look at a very special kind of light, that is still hitting us from 13.5 billion light years away (離我們一百三十億光年那麼遠).
And because that light has been traveling for 13.5 billion years… that means when we see it, we'll be looking at things that are almost as old as the universe. 因為那些光線要一百三十億光年才能達到我們的眼睛… 那就代表當我們看到那些星星時，就是在看著跟宇宙一樣老的東西。
Of course, with all of this amazing technology, it was extremely difficult to make this telescope.
It took many, many scientists more than 25 years and 10 billion U.S. dollars (等於兩千七百六十億台幣) to build it.
And finally, on Christmas Day of 2021, the JWST was sent into outer space on a giant rocket, to fly far away from Earth and begin looking into the universe's history. 終於，在2021年的聖誕節，韋伯太空望遠鏡由巨大的火箭送上太空，遠離地球，尋找宇宙最早的歷史。
We'll still have to wait another six months, before it is ready to take in its first light and make pictures.
But we've waited 13.5 billion years for this light to hit us already…
I guess we can wait a little longer!
保存完美的恐龍胚胎在中國出現 Perfectly Preserved Dinosaur Embryo Found In China
Have you ever seen a dinosaur?
Well, you have definitely seen birds… and that's the closest we can get!
We have always known that birds evolved from dinosaurs, over millions of years… 我們很早就知道鳥類是由好幾百萬年前的恐龍而演化出來的…
But now, we can see even more similarities (相似之處) between them.
That's because scientists have recently found a dinosaur egg, in southern China.
They say the egg is about 66 million years old (那枚恐龍蛋有六千六百萬年歷史).
Inside the egg, there was a perfectly-preserved (保存得很完美) dinosaur embryo!
An embryo (胚胎) is what we call a tiny, baby animal before it is born.
The dinosaur embryo was about 27 centimeters long from head to tail, inside an egg that was only about 17 centimeters long.
And it was curled up, in the same way that baby birds are curled up inside their eggs before they hatch. 這個胚胎捲曲在蛋裡面，跟大部分還沒生出來的鳥類胚胎一樣。
Scientists will have to analyze it (分析) very slowly, because it is so old…
But we still have a lot more to learn from it!
So, in today's News Bites:
On December 31st, the Taipei 101 is planning to fire off 16,000 fireworks, over 360 seconds.
The theme of this year's show is "Towards a Better Future".
It hopes to help people move forward, away from the very difficult past two years.
And,
The James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST, has been launched into outer space.
It is designed to look at a very special kind of light, that is still hitting us from 13.5 billion light years away.
And,
Scientists have recently found a dinosaur egg in southern China.
They say the egg is about 66 million years old.
And inside the egg, there was a perfectly-preserved dinosaur embryo!
And that's today's episode of News Bites!