科技新闻莫名其妙？这不奇怪

科技新闻多来自国外科技新闻的编译，本来从学术文章到科普文章或科技新闻就会有一定程度的失真，再从英语文章到翻译成汉语新闻，又会有一定的信息损失。从翻译的角度讲，选择的科技新闻来源有详有略，而且通常各有侧重；其次，新闻讲究时效性，因此背景介绍和准确度上就容易忽略，这就会造成新闻莫名其妙。这一点也不奇怪。

现以新闻《月球上的水不是普通水 可喝可用作火箭燃料》为例说一下。

话说特朗普上台后，想要重返月球，因此，这方面的新闻美国也就格外关注了一些。

吴老读后，说是《凤凰网科技如此莫名其妙的报道：月球上的水》。

国外这个新闻有三个主要来源：

第一个是福克斯新闻网的：

Water may be all over the Moon, giving new hope for sustained life

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2018/02/27/water-may-be-all-over-moon-giving-new-hope-for-sustained-life.html

这可能是国内新闻的主要来源。

另外还有两个：

Water Might Be All Over the Moon, New Research Shows - Space.com

www.space.com/39821-water-might-be-widespread-on-moon.html

Moon Water Could Be Used for Rocket Fuel MSN News

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/moon-water-could-be-used-for-rocket-fuel/ar-BBJBotK?li=AA571q

如果我们从不同的消息来源对比分析，大概不会如此莫名其妙。

比如“月球上是什么水？ 可喝可用作火箭燃料！”

首先，探测月球采用的方法如下：
Water on the moon reflects sunlight at a specific wavelength — about 3 micrometers — which lies beyond visible light and in the realm of infrared radiation, NASA officials said in the statement. Remote sensors measure the strength of sunlight reflected off the lunar surface. But the moon also gets hot enough to emit its own light in the infrared spectrum, so researchers have to untangle this signal from the one coming from reflections off of water and hydroxyl. They do this by using information about the lunar temperature.（www.space.com来源）

所以对“water”还是“hydroxyl”分不大清。所以，www.msn.com新闻有如下说法：

Scientists now need to figure out whether they have found water, hydroxyl, or both—and how these chemicals got there.

“The next step is to determine whether it’s water, hydroxyl, or a mixture of the two—and where it came from,” Poston said. “Is it from external sources, delivered by comet or asteroid impacts? Is it from internal processes on the Moon itself, such as ancient volcanism? Or could it be an ongoing process of the solar wind reacting with lunar materials to create OH or H2O?”

“月球上的水可用作火箭燃料”，这是将来的事情，是说如果能将水分解成氢气和氧气后的事。并不是现在的事。

www.space.com新闻有如下说法：

The analysis, published in the journal Nature Geoscience on Feb. 12, could help researchers understand where the moon's water comes from and how helpful the water would be as a resource for Earth, whether it's collected for drinking water or converted into hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel or into air for future space explorers.

www.msn.com新闻有如下说法：

“When you split water molecules, you end up with oxygen and hydrogen, critical components for breathable air and rocket fuel” explained Michael Poston, a Southwest Research Institute scientist and co-author of the research, in a statement.

再说月球上的水“月球上水资源的分布如何非常广泛？而且无论昼夜都会怎么出现？”

这是跟早先的论文比较，新研究表明：

Scientists have discovered that water, or its relative hydroxyl, may be widely distributed across the surface of the moon—contradicting earlier research placing it mostly at the poles.（www.msn.com新闻）

Although this new analysis doesn't give researchers a sense of how accessible the water is, it does suggest that both H2O and OH (a molecule known as hydroxyl) are spread across the moon's surface and can be found day and night.（www.space.com新闻）

为什么还分白天黑夜呢？

因为：

Earlier studies have suggested water was mostly present at the poles of the moon, and that water signals varied according to the lunar day (29.5 Earth days).

“We find that it doesn’t matter what time of day or which latitude we look at, the signal indicating water always seems to be present,” said Joshua Bandfield, a senior research scientist with the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and lead author of the study, in a NASA statement. “The presence of water doesn’t appear to depend on the composition of the surface, and the water sticks around.” （www.msn.com新闻）