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天文学家目前无法解释来自半人马座附近恒星方向的无线电波

Astronomers don’t have an explanation yet for a beam of radio waves from the direction of the star Proxima Centauri

没有人相信是外星人在打电话,但射电天文学家承认,他们还不能解释一束显然来自半人马座附近恒星的无线电波。

Nobody believes it was ET phoning, but radio astronomers admit they don’t have an explanation yet for a beam of radio waves that apparently came from the direction of the star Proxima Centauri.

“这是某种技术信号。问题是这是地球技术还是来自远方的技术,”宾夕法尼亚州立大学的研究生索菲亚·谢赫说,她带领一个研究小组研究信号,并试图破解信号的来源。她是由俄罗斯亿万富翁投资者尤里·米尔纳(Yuri Milner)出资1亿美元寻找外星无线电波的“突破倾听”项目的一部分。现在,该项目无意中发现了迄今为止最吸引人的有利条件。

“It’s some sort of technological signal. The question is whether it’s Earth technology or technology from somewhere out yonder,” said Sofia Sheikh, a graduate student at Pennsylvania State University leading a team studying the signal and trying to decipher its origin. She is part of Breakthrough Listen, a $100 million effort funded by Yuri Milner, a Russian billionaire investor, to find alien radio waves. The project has now stumbled on its most intriguing pay dirt yet.

半人马座比邻星就是那个“诱人的条件”。

Proxima Centauri is an inviting prospect for “out yonder.”

它是已知距离太阳最近的恒星,距离地球只有4.24光年,是半人马座阿尔法三星系的一部分。Proxima至少有两颗行星,其中一颗是一个岩石星球,其质量仅比地球稍大,占据着恒星所谓的宜居区,那里的温度应该有利于其表面的水,即生命物质。

It is the closest known star to the sun, only 4.24 light-years from Earth, part of a triple-star system known as Alpha Centauri. Proxima has at least two planets, one of which is a rocky world only slightly more massive than Earth that occupies the star’s so-called habitable zone, where temperatures should be conducive to water, the stuff of life, on its surface.

2019年春天探测到的无线电信号本身,以及早些时候《卫报》的报道,在很多方面都是外星人猎人梦寐以求的东西。这是澳大利亚帕克斯天文台记录的频率为982.02兆赫的窄带信号。而自然界中,无论是爆炸的恒星还是地磁暴,都倾向于以广泛的频率传播。

The radio signal itself, detected in spring 2019 and reported on earlier in The Guardian, is in many ways the stuff of dreams for alien hunters. It was a narrow-band signal with a frequency of 982.02 MHz as recorded at the Parkes Observatory in Australia. Nature, whether an exploding star or a geomagnetic storm, tends to broadcast on a wide range of frequencies.

原文来自 The New York Times

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