[E370]Space "Treasure Map" Guides E.T. Search
Space "Treasure Map" Guides E.T. Search
By Christopher Intagliata on March 3, 2016
Carl Sagan[1] once referred to our home planet as [CLIP: "a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam[2]."] And that poetic description[3] holds true[4] for a lot of exoplanets[地外行星], too. In fact one of the simplest ways we detect exoplanets is by looking at their sunbeam… and measuring how it dims[变模糊,变暗淡], ever so slightly, as the exoplanet passes across it, called a transit[5].
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注释
[1]卡尔·爱德华·萨根（Carl Edward Sagan，1934年11月9日－1996年12月20日），美国天文学家、天体物理学家、宇宙学家、科幻作家，和非常成功的天文学、天体物理学等自然科学方面的科普作家。行星学会的成立者。
小行星2709、火星上的一个撞击坑以他的名字命名。——百度百科
[2]我们身在宇宙之中，就像是漂浮在尘埃中的一颗微粒。(而我相信，人类的未来会是如何，端视我们对宇宙的了解有多么透彻而定。)——Carl Sagan
[3]诗意般的描述
[4]适用；有效
[5]transit—凌日较小天体在较大天体前经过的过程；另外也指天体上中天，即经过观测者当地天子午线的过程。
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Which raises an interesting question: "Thinking about extraterrestrial[地球外的] observers—which of them would observe the Earth, moving across our own sun?" Ralph Pudritz, a theoretical astrophysicist[1] at McMaster University[2] in Canada. He and his colleague René Heller quantified[测量;量化;定量] the narrow band[3] of space from which any observers on other worlds would be able to see the Earth transiting the sun.
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注释
[1]理论天体物理学家
[2]麦克马斯特大学(加拿大一大学)
[3]窄带，窄频带;狭小汇率幅度
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And they determined that this line of sight[1] would be a plane just half a degree thick, but that cuts through a slice of our galaxy that's estimated to contain 100,000 sunlike stars… along with their companion planets. The analysis is in the journal Astrobiology[2]. [René Heller and Ralph E. Pudritz,(online soon)]
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注释
[1]视线
[2]天体生物学
[3]地外智慧生物，外星人
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Pudritz and Heller suggest that hunters of extraterrestrial life may want to listen particularly closely for signals originating at star systems[1] within that narrow band of galactic[银河的] sky. Advanced civilizations there may have already detected us using the transit method, they say, and may now be sending us a message. You might think of this paper, then, like a treasure map[2], for intelligent life. "We don't know if there's treasure out there of course, right? You never know that about a treasure map. But it's a good place to look.”
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注释
[1]星系
[2]藏宝图
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—Christopher Intagliata
From 60-Second Science