There's no use sugar coating it: According to one scribe in medieval England, A.D. 1110 was a "disastrous year." Torrential rainfall damaged crops, famine stalked the land — and, as if that wasn't bad enough, on one fateful night in May, the moon simply vanished from the sky.
根据中世纪英格兰的一位观察记录人员的说法，公元1110年是“灾难性的一年”。暴雨毁坏了庄稼，饥荒肆虐大地。而且，好像这还不够糟糕似的，在五月的一个夜晚，月亮突然从天空中消失了。
"On the fifth night in the month of May appeared the moon shining bright in the evening, and afterwards by little and little its light diminished," the unnamed scribe wrote in the Anglo-Saxon manuscript known as the Peterborough Chronicle. "As soon as night came, it was so completely extinguished withal, that neither light, nor orb, nor anything at all of it was seen. And so it continued nearly until day, and then appeared shining full and bright."
“五月的第五天晚上，月亮在傍晚时分闪烁着明亮的光芒，此后，月光逐渐减弱，”这位不知名的记录人员在被称为《盎格鲁-撒克逊编年史》的手稿中写道。“当夜晚来临的时候，它就彻底地消失了，既没有光芒，也没有圆盘，什么也看不到，一直持续到白天，才又变得明亮如初。”
Clouds weren't the problem; if they were, the scribe would not go on to describe how bright and twinkling the stars appeared while the moon faded from view. Nor was the moon being eclipsed by Earth's shadow — if it was, the sky watcher would have seen the orb become a coppery "blood moon," not an eerie blank spot in the sky.
不是云的问题；如果是，记录人员不会继续描述闪闪发光的星星，而月亮却从视野中消失了。月球也没有被地球的阴影遮住。如果是这样的话，天文学家就会看到月球变成暗红色的 “血月”，而不是诡异的从天空中消失。
So, what made the moon disappear in an already dismal year? According to a study published April 21 in the journal Scientific Reports, the explanation for both the moon's mysterious vanishing act and the rain-ravaged summer that followed may be one and the same — volcanoes.
那么，是什么让月亮在本已惨淡的一年里消失了呢？根据发表在4月21日的《科学报告》杂志上的一项研究，对月球神秘消失的解释和随之而来的雨水肆虐的夏天可能是同一个原因 -火山。
"The spectacular atmospheric optical phenomena associated with high-altitude volcanic aerosols have caught the attention of chroniclers since ancient times," the study authors wrote. "Careful evaluation of ice core records points to the occurrence of several closely spaced volcanic eruptions," which may have occurred in Europe or Asia between A.D. 1108 and A.D. 1110.
研究报告的作者写道:“自古以来，与高空火山气溶胶有关的壮观的大气光学现象就引起了编年史家的注意。对冰芯样本记录的仔细评估表明，在公元1108年至1110年期间，欧洲或亚洲发生过几次密集的火山爆发。”
Those volcanic events, which the researchers call a "forgotten cluster" of eruptions because they were sparsely documented by historians at the time, may have released towering clouds of ash that traveled far around the world for years on end. Not only could a high-altitude veil of volcanic aerosols blot out the moon while leaving many stars unobscured, as the Peterborough writer described, but a series of large eruptions could have also disrupted the global climate, the researcher wrote, causing or exacerbated the cold, wet weather that made life so miserable in A.D. 1110.
研究人员称这些火山活动为“被遗忘的火山爆发群”，因为当时的历史学家对它们的记录很少。这些火山活动可能释放出了火山灰云，这些火山灰云在世界各地持续了多年。高空中的火山气溶胶不仅能遮住月亮的昏暗光芒，同时让明亮的星光穿透，出现了彼得伯勒记录描述的现象，而且这一系列的大规模爆发也可能扰乱全球气候，研究人员写道，火山大规模爆发导致或加剧了寒冷潮湿的天气，使公元1110年的生活如此悲惨。
One such eruption, which occurred in Japan in A.D. 1108, could be to blame, the team said.
研究小组说，这可能要归咎于公元1108年在日本发生的一次火山喷发。
Hunting for the 'forgotten'
寻找“被遗忘者”
For evidence of these "forgotten" eruptions, the researchers looked at ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica — long tubes of ancient ice that can reveal what the global climate looked like at the time, as well as what sorts of particles were floating around in the atmosphere. The team saw an increase in sulfate aerosols (a component of volcanic ash) in both cores between A.D. 1108 and A.D. 1110, suggesting that the stratosphere was sprinkled with fumes from a recent eruption.
为了寻找这些“被遗忘”的火山爆发的证据，研究人员观察了格陵兰岛和南极洲的冰芯，这些古老冰芯可以揭示当时的全球气候，以及大气中漂浮的粒子种类。研究小组发现，公元1108年至公元1110年间，两地的硫酸盐气溶胶(火山灰的组成部分)都有所增加，这表明平流层中弥漫着最近一次火山喷发的烟雾。
The team found further evidence of volcanic activity in tree rings dating from the same period. The rings, which change thickness in response to climate patterns, revealed that 1109 was an unusually cold, wet year in Western Europe — a climatic "anomaly" comparable to the effects of several other major volcanic eruptions from history, the researchers said. The team also tracked down 13 narrative accounts of adverse weather, crop failure and famine from that time period, further supporting the theory that a series of eruptions had slammed Europe's climate.
研究小组还在同一时期的树木年轮中发现了火山活动的进一步证据。根据气候模式改变厚度的年轮显示，公元1109年是西欧异常寒冷潮湿的一年，这种气候“异常”可与历史上其他几次大型火山爆发的影响相媲美，研究人员说。该小组还追踪了13个关于那段时期的恶劣天气、作物歉收和饥荒的记录，进一步支持了一系列火山爆发重创了欧洲气候的理论。
"The sources of these eruptions remain unknown," the team wrote, "yet one eruption with a historical date in this period is that of Mount Asama in Japan."
“这些火山爆发的来源仍然未知，”研究小组写道，“但这一时期日本浅间山发生了火山爆发。”
According to a diary the team examined, written by a Japanese statesman between 1062 and 1141, the eruption of Mount Asama in central Japan began in late August 1108 and lasted until October of that year.
研究小组查阅了一位日本政治家在1062年至1141年间所写的日记。日记显示，位于日本中部的浅间山于1108年8月下旬爆发，并一直持续到当年10月。
This eruption, which the statesman described as throwing fire into the sky and rendering nearby fields unfit for cultivation, could have plausibly contributed to the sulfate spike in the Greenland ice core and polluted the sky with enough aerosols to induce the eclipse two years later, the team wrote. (Another unknown eruption, located somewhere in the southern hemisphere and also dating to 1108, likely contributed to the sulfates in the Antarctic ice core, the researchers added.)
这位政治家将这次火山爆发描述为向天空喷射火焰，使附近的土地不适合耕种。研究小组写道，这次火山爆发很可能导致了格陵兰岛冰芯的硫酸盐峰值，大量的气溶胶污染了天空，导致了月球“凭空消失”事件。(研究人员补充说，另一次不为人知的喷发发生在南半球的某个地方，也可追溯到1108年，可能造成了南极冰芯中的硫酸盐。)
While this explanation relies on a lot of "indirect" evidence, the researchers said, it still provides the best solution yet for the case of the disappearing moon.
研究人员说，虽然这种解释依赖于大量的“间接”证据，但它仍然为月亮消失的情况提供了最佳解释。
原文链接：
https://www.livescience.com/disappearing-moon-caused-by-forgotten-volcano.html
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