《那些古怪又讓人憂心的問題》第130期:最孤獨的人(1)
LONELIEST HUMAN
Q. What is the farthest one human being has ever been from every other living person? Were they lonely?
Q．在這個世界上離其他活人最遠的人是誰？他們孤獨嗎？——Bryan J McCarter
——布賴恩•J．麥卡特
A. IT'S HARD TO KNOW for sure!
A．這問題很難給出確定的答案！The Most likely suspects are the six Apollo command module pilots who stayed in lunar orbit during a Moon landing: Mike Collins, Dick Gordon, Stu Roosa, Al Worden, Ken Mattingly, and Ron Evans.
最有可能的人是阿波羅登月計劃中曾待在位於月球軌道上的指令艙裏的6位宇航員了，他們分別是：邁克爾•科林斯、迪克•戈登、斯圖爾特•羅薩、阿爾弗萊德•沃爾登、肯•馬丁利和羅納德•埃萬斯。Each of these astronauts stayed alone in the command module while two other astronauts landed on the Moon. At the highest point in their orbit, they were about 3585 kilometers from their fellow astronauts.
在每次任務中都會有一位宇航員留在指令艙中，與此同時另兩位宇航員會踏上月球表面。當指令艙位於軌道的最高點時，登陸月球的宇航員離留守指令艙的宇航員約有3585千米。From another point of view, this was the farthest the rest of humanity has ever managed to get from those jerk astronauts.
換個角度看，這也是其餘的地球人和這些宇航員相距最遠的時候。You'd think astronauts would have a lock on this category, but it's not so cut-and-dried. There are a few other candidates who come pretty close!
也許你以爲這些宇航員獲此殊榮是板上釘釘的事了，但別這麼急着下結論，還有一些人可能離這一殊榮也不遠！Polynesians
波利尼西亞人It's hard to get 3585 kilometers from a permanently inhabited place.1 The Polynesians, who were the first humans to spread across the Pacific, might have managed it, but this would have required a lone sailor to travel awfully far ahead of everyone else. It may have happened-perhaps by accident, when someone was carried far from their group by a storm-but we're unlikely to ever know for sure.
從一個永久居住地往外數3585千米1而碰不到一個活人幾乎是不可能的。但第一個跨過太平洋的波利尼西亞人卻很有潛力，不過這需要一個孤獨的水手比他的隊友快出一大截。這種情況是有可能的——也許某個人意外地被風暴捲入大海並遠離夥伴——但我們恐怕永遠也無法確定。Once the Pacific was colonized, it got a lot harder to find regions of the Earth's surface where someone could achieve 3585-kilometer isolation. Now that the Antarctic continent has a permanent population of researchers, it's almost certainly impossible.
自從太平洋成了人類殖民地的一部分後，便很難在地球表面找到在3585千米內看不見活人的地方了。現在南極洲都有駐留的研究人員，就更別想找到這種地方了。
