2015-02-20 BBC:星光七纪元-10

At this time people very much believed that God had created a template for the heavens and he'd used pretty much the same template to create the society as well, and so with this as above so below belief, any change in the heavens immediately had huge cultural implications, by 1611 Copernicanism was sufficiently¹ known that poet John Don says the new philosophy calls all in doubt, all in pieces, all coherence² gone.

Our view of our relationship with the Sun had completely changed, what Copernicus didn't know but what scientists have now worked out is that the Sun isn't just at the centre of our solar system, it's the creator of it, the birth of a star leads to the birth of any planets that surround it.

Planets are the natural consequences of star formation, planets are the left over debris³ of the gas and dust forming a star, they are like the afterbirth if you like.

As the new star is born, the orbiting remnants of the cloud from which it is formed start creating a disc, and over millions of years in this disc the dust grains start to stick together, blank out the light of a young star in the northern constellation⁴ of P and you can see white dots which the planets are forming in the disc of dust that surrounds the star, eventually the star is encircled by its children.

1 sufficiently   

adv.足够地，充分地

参考例句：

• It turned out he had not insured the house sufficiently.原来他没有给房屋投足保险。
• The new policy was sufficiently elastic to accommodate both views.新政策充分灵活地适用两种观点。

2 coherence   

n.紧凑；连贯；一致性

参考例句：

• There was no coherence between the first and the second half of the film.这部电影的前半部和后半部没有连贯性。
• Environmental education is intended to give these topics more coherence.环境教育的目的是使这些课题更加息息相关。

3 debris   

n.瓦砾堆，废墟，碎片

参考例句：

• After the bombing there was a lot of debris everywhere.轰炸之后到处瓦砾成堆。
• Bacteria sticks to food debris in the teeth,causing decay.细菌附着在牙缝中的食物残渣上，导致蛀牙。

4 constellation   

n.星座n.灿烂的一群

参考例句：

• A constellation is a pattern of stars as seen from the earth. 一个星座只是从地球上看到的某些恒星的一种样子。
• The Big Dipper is not by itself a constellation. 北斗七星本身不是一个星座。