英语听力：探索发现 2014-06-27 BBC 地平线：陨石的真相-20

 Oh, perfect, perfect, perfect. Now we’re seeing the fireball come in, it’s brighter than the Sun and then, “Kapow”, it hits the surface. Jeez!

 

This whole region, downrange, would have been incinerated. It would have been incinerated just by this plasma¹, this exploding vapour plume² engulfing³ everything. There would have been winds that would have been going so fast. It could pick up houses and spread them hundreds of kilometres away. This would have been Armageddon. 

 

Experiments like this reveal several important things. One is that it’s not just the impact. It’s all that vapour that runs downrange. In fact, you can see areas here where there was so much wind it actually carved out pieces of this landscape. So what these experiments help us do? They actually allow us to witness the event, see it in real time and try to understand the processes that are going on. It’s really complex but we have to see it to understand it. So asteroid⁴ impacts unleash⁵ a trail of destruction far greater than suggested by the footprint of the crater⁶ alone. 

1 plasma   

n.血浆，细胞质，乳清

参考例句：

• Keep some blood plasma back for the serious cases.留一些血浆给重病号。
• The plasma is the liquid portion of blood that is free of cells .血浆是血液的液体部分，不包含各种细胞。

2 plume   

n.羽毛；v.整理羽毛，骚首弄姿，用羽毛装饰

参考例句：

• Her hat was adorned with a plume.她帽子上饰着羽毛。
• He does not plume himself on these achievements.他并不因这些成就而自夸。

3 engulfing   

adj.吞噬的v.吞没，包住( engulf的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• A photographer had fused the lights,engulfing the entire house darkness. 一位摄影师把电灯的保险丝烧断了，使整栋房子陷于黑暗当中。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• A professional photographer had fused the lights,engulfing the entire house in darkness. 一位职业摄影师把保险丝烧断了使整所房子陷于黑暗当中。 来自辞典例句

4 asteroid   

n.小行星；海盘车(动物)

参考例句：

• Astronomers have yet to witness an asteroid impact with another planet.天文学家还没有目击过小行星撞击其它行星。
• It's very unlikely that an asteroid will crash into Earth but the danger exists.小行星撞地球的可能性很小，但这样的危险还是存在的。

5 unleash   

vt.发泄，发出；解带子放开

参考例句：

• They hope to create allies to unleash against diseases,pests,and invasive species.他们希望创造出一些新群体来对付疾病、害虫和一些有侵害性的物种。
• Changing water levels now at times unleash a miasma of disease from exposed sewage.如今，大坝不时地改变水位，从暴露的污水释放出了疾病瘴气。

6 crater   

n.火山口，弹坑

参考例句：

• With a telescope you can see the huge crater of Ve-suvius.用望远镜你能看到巨大的维苏威火山口。
• They came to the lip of a dead crater.他们来到了一个死火山口。