学而时嘻之

凤凰号探测器着陆火星北极，所有媒体都要报道一下，就好像汶川地震，所有公众人物都要表个态一样。说到科学报道，我觉得至少存在三个层次。

第一个层次是”知道不知道”。也就是说这个科学事件发生了，你们报纸，或者你们网站，报道了没有。这个追求是对广度的追求。现在国内很多媒体都有了专门 的科学版，报道一些最新的科学发现，而不像以前所谓的科学报道都成了（主要跟健康有关的）科普报道，或者UFO什么的。

第二个层次是”理解不理解”。也就是说光报道不行，你得能把事情说清楚，至少要说对。现在的科学记者越来越专业化，很多都是原本学科学的出身，再加上专业选手偶而客串，在这一点上也是越来越有进步了。这个追求是对深度的追求。

第三个层次是”好看不好看”。说了，说对了，还不够。还得说的好看。好看才有读者。在这一点上国内尚有欠缺之处，国外的，纽约时报等等的报道就很通俗易懂，而且能把最有意思的思想传达出来，让读者看完产生智力上升的感觉（或者错觉）。这个追求是对浅出的追求。

时代周刊，每周一期，它不可能跟人比科学报道的广度。等读者拿到杂志，可能早在网上看过这个探测器着陆的新闻了。作为薄薄的一本综合性杂志，它也不可能追求报道的深度，要看深度报道不如去看专业杂志。

时代周刊对火星探测器着陆的这篇报道，已经达到了对意境的追求。

这篇短文出现在简报板块，副标题是『A thrilling landing on Martian ice that was over before it began』，在开始之前就已经结束的刺激登陆。整个着陆过程只有7，8分钟，但信号从火星传递到地球需要15分20秒，也就是说地面人员只能在”事后”了解情况，而无法做到真正的”现场直播”。

作者把这个事件报道的令人充满遐想。文章一开头就说，宇宙空间没有什么”breaking news”，因为所有事件信号到达地球的时候，该事件可能早就在几百万年以前发生了。地面人员看探测器着陆，就好像看录像播出的已经结束的足球比赛一样。 整个文章的主题似乎不是在说火星探测，而是在说一种新时期的新行为中的新艺术感。

每个现代人都知道并理解其中光速有限信号传递的原理，但是经此文一说，真的去体会一下这种”意境”，似乎另有一番味道一般。

看时代周刊的人，正如路上来去匆匆的所有人一样，其中绝大多数对探测器的事情并不十分关心，也许其中很多人甚至以为人类已经去过火星。然而这个”即使从最好的角度讲也只能事后知道探测器干了什么”的事实，对人们来说不失为一个新奇的体验。

新闻报道写成这样，很有意思。它令我们相信，杂志并不是一个过时的媒体。

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原文：

Cosmic News
Thursday, May. 29, 2008 By JEFFREY KLUGER

There’s no such thing as breaking news when it comes to us from space. It’s not enough for an event to occur; word of it must then travel to Earth across the vast ocean of the cosmos. The dispatch may move at the speed of light, but the journey can still take hours, years, epochs–turning current events into history long before we ever learn of them. Signals from the Cassini spacecraft, currently studying Saturn’s moons, take 84 min. to reach us; the supernova whose cataclysmic birth astronomers observed earlier this year was already fading millions of years ago.
Never was the oddly ex post facto quality of celestial news more surreally on display than on May 25, when the Phoenix spacecraft touched down on Mars, the first landing ever in the Red Planet’s polar region. In order to arrive at its destination in one piece, Phoenix had to cap its sleepy 10-month journey with a fiery 7-min. plunge through the atmosphere, during which it opened its parachutes, jettisoned its heat shield, fired its engines and decelerated from a blistering 12,700 m.p.h. (20,400 km/h) to a toe-in-the-dust touchdown speed of a few feet per second. With Mars and Earth currently 171 million miles (275 million km) apart, however, signals from the ship need a full 15 min. 20 sec. to get here, meaning NASA did not confirm the 7-min. plunge until 8 min. after it ended. If the ship had crashed, the stream of incoming data would have been nothing more than an electromagnetic message from the grave.

In the era of TiVo, the nail-biting scene at NASA as controllers watched the descent had a curious familiarity to it. Engineers whooped at every milestone just as football fans cheer every pass in a prerecorded game–even though in both instances they know the end of the tale is already writ.

In Phoenix’s case, another tale is just beginning. The ship will soon start to sample the frozen soil of the Martian pole, where a possible abundance of ice indicates a possible abundance of water and could–in theory–mean a little bit of life. If such a discovery is made, that news too will reach us 15 min. later–though odds are, no one will gripe about the wait.