A new cash crop has sprung up on Nicholas Beatty’s enchanting farm near Hartwell. Rows of gray solar panels range over about 25 acres, turning sunlight into electricity, as dog-size muntjac deer hop by.

The panels, trouble-free money earners that feed into the electric grid, are no longer unusual on farms in Britain or other countries. What’s new in Beatty’s field is a hulking 40-foot-long shipping container.

尼古拉斯·畢提位於哈特威爾附近的迷人農場，出現了一批新的現金作物。一排排灰色的太陽能板散布在約25英畝的土地上，把陽光轉化成電力。大小如狗的麂鹿從一旁躍過。

這些太陽能板在英國或其他國家，不再是農場上的不尋常景觀，它們是毫不麻煩的賺錢機器，將電力注入電網。而畢提田地中新奇的東西，是1個笨重龐大的40呎貨櫃。

Stacked inside, in what look like drawers, are about 200 lithium-ion cells that make up a battery large enough to store a substantial portion of the electricity the solar farm puts out.

The battery and its software give Beatty an advantage over other solar panel farmers. Power prices in Britain and elsewhere rise and fall, sometimes strikingly, during the day and over the year, depending on the supply and demand. By storing power in the battery, Beatty can feed it into the grid when prices are high. “The battery effectively takes power off the line when there is too much and puts it on when there is too little,” he said.

堆放在裡面，宛如一個個抽屜的，是約莫200個鋰離子電池，它們組合而成的電池，大到足可儲存這座太陽能場生產的大部分電力。

電池和它的軟體讓畢提比其他太陽能場主人享有更大優勢。英國和其他地方的電價視供需而定，可能一天或一年內起起伏伏，有時幅度驚人。將電力儲存到電池，畢提可在電價高時將它送進電網。他說：「電池可在電力太多時有效斷電，電力太少時再連線輸送。」

Beatty said the battery, which costs about 825,000 pounds ($1 million), could increase revenue for his solar farm by as much as 200,000 pounds a year. In addition to making more by timing his delivery to the grid, he said he planned to enter an auction to become a standby source of power to compensate for unexpected drops in the grid.

Beatty is one of many entrepreneurs and businesses trying to play the fast-shifting electric power landscape. The global effort to combat climate change is forcing what had been an old-line business to evolve. Polluting, coal-fired power stations are closing, while clean energy sources like wind and solar are growing fast.

畢提說，成本約82萬5000英鎊（約1百萬美元）的電池，每年最多可為他的太陽能場增加20萬英鎊收入。除了藉掌握送電時間增加收入，他說，他還計畫加入拍賣行列，成為備用電力來源，在電網電量意外下降時補其不足。

畢提是試圖在快速變遷的電力業中尋求發展的許多企業家和商家之一。全球對付氣候變遷的努力正迫使這個老行業進化。造成汙染的燃煤火力發電廠一一關閉，而風力和太陽能這類乾淨能源則成長快速。

While renewable energy sources have the huge advantage of not emitting the gases blamed for climate change, they can be tricky for a grid operator to rely on, not least because their output is dependent on wind and sunlight. In addition, the power they produce is essentially free, which puts downward pressure on prices.

“The growing use of renewables is creating an unstable energy system,” said David Hill, managing director of Open Energi, a British company that helps industrial companies save money by timing and otherwise managing their energy use. “What everyone is trading on now is that there is a value in flexibility.”

Batteries are one way of achieving that flexibility.

雖然再生能源因為不會排放導致氣候變遷的氣體而享有巨大優勢，電網運營商想依賴它們仍頗棘手，不僅僅因為它們的生產完全仰賴風和陽光而已。此外，由於它們生產的電力基本上沒有成本，電價恐有下跌壓力。

英國公司「開放能源」總經理大衛．希爾說：「再生能源的使用增加，正造就一套不穩定的能源系統。現在每人交易的著眼，都是彈性這項價值。」「開放能源」是協助工業公司透過時間的掌握或其他方式管理能源使用，以達到省錢目的公司。

The next great space telescope spread its golden wings last month.

Like the petals of a 20-foot sunflower seeking the light, the 18 hexagonal mirrors that make up the heart of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope were faced toward a glassed-in balcony overlooking a cavernous clean room at the Goddard Space Flight Center here.

下一個偉大的太空望遠鏡上個月展開了它的金色翅膀。

組成NASA詹姆斯．韋伯太空望遠鏡心臟的18個六角鏡，就像一朵20英尺長的向日葵尋求光線的花瓣一般，在哥達德太空飛行中心內跟一個俯瞰著海綿狀無塵室的玻璃罩露台對望。

Inside the room, reporters and a gaggle of space agency officials, including the ebullient administrator Charles Bolden, were getting their pictures taken in front of the giant mirror.

Now, after 20 years with a budget of $8.7 billion, the Webb telescope is on track and on budget to be launched in October 2018 and sent 1 million miles from Earth, NASA says.

在無塵室內的記者們與一群NASA官員，包括熱情洋溢的署長勃登，正在這座巨型鏡子前拍照。

NASA說，在經過20年花費87億美元的預算後，韋伯望遠鏡計畫進行得很順利且在預算之內，將於2018年元月發射，送到距地球約100萬英里的太空中。

The telescope, named after NASA Administrator James Webb, who led the space agency in the 1960s, is the long-awaited successor of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Seven times larger than the Hubble in light-gathering ability, the Webb was designed to see farther out in space and deeper into the past of the universe. It may solve mysteries about how and when the first stars and galaxies emerged some 13 billion years ago in the smoky aftermath of the Big Bang.

這個以NASA前署長詹姆斯．韋伯命名的望遠鏡，是哈伯太空望遠鏡令人盼望已久的繼任者。韋伯是NASA1960年代的領導人。

韋伯在聚光能力上大過哈伯7倍，是為了看到更遠的太空和進一步探索宇宙的過去而設計。它可解開大約130億年前大爆炸後的煙霧中，首批恆星與星系出現方式與時間的謎團。

Equipped with the sort of infrared goggles that give troops and police officers night vision, the Webb would peer into the dust clouds and gas storms of the Milky Way in which stars and planets are being birthed. It would be able to study planets around other stars.

That has been NASA’s dream since 1996 when the idea for the telescope was conceived with a projected price tag then of $500 million. But as recently as six years ago, the James Webb Space Telescope was, in the words of Nature magazine, “the telescope that ate astronomy,” mismanaged, over budget and behind schedule so that it had crushed everything else out of NASA’s science budget.

韋伯配備有提供軍人和警察夜視能力的紅外線護目鏡，將窺視孕育恆星與行星的銀河系內的塵雲與氣體風暴。它將能研究其他恆星附近的行星。

這是NASA自1996年以來的夢想，當時萌生的望遠鏡點子預估花費為5億美元，但在6年前，「自然」雜誌曾稱詹姆斯．韋伯太空望遠鏡是「吃掉天文學的望遠鏡」，管理不善、超出預算且進度落後，以致把NASA的科學預算全給榨乾了。

A House subcommittee once voted to cancel it. Instead, the program was rebooted with a strict spending cap.

The scientific capabilities of the telescope emerged unscathed from that period, astronomers on the project say. The major change, said Jonathan P. Gardner, deputy senior project scientist, was to simplify the testing of the telescope.

Most of the pain was dealt to other NASA projects like a proposed space telescope to study dark energy, which the National Academy of Sciences had hoped to put on a fast track to be launched this decade. It’s now delayed until 2025 or so.

美國眾議院一個小組委員會曾一度表決將它取消，不過該計畫還是在嚴格設定支出上限的前提下被重新啟動。

該計畫的天文學家表示，望遠鏡的科學能力從那時起毫髮未損。副資深計畫科學家喬納森．嘉納指出，望簡化遠鏡的測試是主要的改變。

NASA的其他計畫承受了大部分的痛苦，像是研究黑暗能量的太空望眼鏡提案。美國國家科學院曾希望快馬加鞭，在2020年之前發射，但目前已推遲到2025年左右。

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文／張佑生

本文介紹因預算管理不善（mismanaged），差點「吞噬」掉天文學發展的新一代天文望遠鏡，終於spread its golden wings。中文也有「翅膀硬了」的說法，意指可以展翅高飛、能力完全發揮、作些新的嘗試。例：Going to college gave her the chance to spread her wings.動詞可用stretch或try。以此片語形容發射到外太空的天文望遠鏡，可謂一語雙關。

形容無菌室的cavernous意指房間或空間袤廣，甚至空蕩蕩黑漆漆，讓人宛如置身洞穴中，也指凹下深陷的。吳爾芙（Virginia Woolf）首部小說《遠航》（The Voyage Out）描述年輕的牛津大學數學家St John Hirst從旋轉門外被風颳進室內，面色慘白、邊幅未修、兩頰凹陷：He was rather blown about by the wind, and his cheeks looked terribly pale, unshorn, and cavernous.

報導用gaggle形容NASA官員略有幾分戲謔，這個字原指鵝群，描述人時不單指一群人，而是像鵝一樣嘎嘎叫、嘈雜紛亂的一群人。例：a gaggle of children in the park.