Alien Neighbors 寻访外星人 1

2042 A.D., powerful orbiting telescopes scour¹ the heavens for signs of life. They focus on a dim yellow globe. Spectrum² analyser results, negative, no oxygen, no life. The autotracker zooms³ into another world, a pale blue dot, oxygen signal affirmative, and there appears to be water, this could be it. The scenario⁴ belongs to the future, but the future is almost here. Life on earth may have begun with a bang when microorganisms hitching⁵ a ride on a comet or asteroid⁶, crashlanded on our planet.

Finding themselves in a mild and watery⁷ world, the single-celled organisms could have slowly evolved into the rich and varied⁸ life forms that exist today. There are clues that this may have been what happened, but what do these early microorganisms look like and from which planets or moons might they have come? Single-celled organisms are just one example of life that might exist in the depths of space, there could also be intelligent life out there, way beyond our own solar system.

Some people go as far as to say that aliens have already appeared on earth, that governments have hidden them away in secret military establishments. Today, serious efforts are being made to search for life on other worlds. Radiotelescopes listen for signals transmitted from civilizations at least as advanced as ours. Seth Shostak works for SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, the offshoot of an earlier NASA program.

"People in the last century thought about possibly searching for aliens using lights and stuff like that, but in fact, radio searches began in this century, and really, after the war. It was 1960 that the first really scientific radio search was conducted."

(..invaders⁹ from Mars, weird¹⁰ and fascinating beings of a super intelligence.)

Popular fantasies about the appearance and intentions of alien beings are as varied as human imagination. Paul Davies is a physics professor and writer of popular science. He has studied the cultural presence of aliens in human history.

"When most people think about intelligent alien beings, they have something very much like ourselves in mind, that they would look like us, think like us and behave like us, but they would be sort of super beings. And when you look back in history, stories of angels and giants and Greek gods and so on, they're always presented in this human or semi-human form. I think that's just some sort of deep cultural needs to believe in something like ourselves but better." ...

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scour:to search a place or thing very carefully in order to try to find something 巡视；搜索

scenario:a description of possible actions or events in the future 想定

asteroid：one of many rocky objects, varying in width from over 900 kilometres to less than one kilometre, which circle the sun [天文]小游星, 小行星,

offshoot: something which has developed from something larger which already existed 分支, 支流

1 scour   

v.搜索；擦，洗，腹泻，冲刷

参考例句：

• Mother made me scour the family silver.母亲让我擦洗家里的银器。
• We scoured the telephone directory for clues.我们仔细查阅电话簿以寻找线索。

2 spectrum   

n.谱，光谱，频谱；范围，幅度，系列

参考例句：

• This is a kind of atomic spectrum.这是一种原子光谱。
• We have known much of the constitution of the solar spectrum.关于太阳光谱的构成，我们已了解不少。

3 zooms   

n.嗡嗡声( zoom的名词复数 )；隆隆声；（车辆等）疾驰的声音；变焦

参考例句：

• A sneeze zooms out of your mouth at over 600 m.p.h. 从你口中打出的喷嚏速度可达每小时600里。 来自互联网
• When the camera zooms in, the whole world watches out. 当镜头对准（汶川），全世界都在关注。 来自互联网

4 scenario   

n.剧本，脚本；概要

参考例句：

• But the birth scenario is not completely accurate.然而分娩脚本并非完全准确的。
• This is a totally different scenario.这是完全不同的剧本。

5 hitching   

搭乘； （免费）搭乘他人之车( hitch的现在分词 )； 搭便车； 攀上； 跃上

参考例句：

• The farmer yoked the oxen before hitching them to the wagon. 农夫在将牛套上大车之前先给它们套上轭。
• I saw an old man hitching along on his stick. 我看见一位老人拄着手杖蹒跚而行。

6 asteroid   

n.小行星；海盘车(动物)

参考例句：

• Astronomers have yet to witness an asteroid impact with another planet.天文学家还没有目击过小行星撞击其它行星。
• It's very unlikely that an asteroid will crash into Earth but the danger exists.小行星撞地球的可能性很小，但这样的危险还是存在的。

7 watery   

adj.有水的，水汪汪的；湿的，湿润的

参考例句：

• In his watery eyes there is an expression of distrust.他那含泪的眼睛流露出惊惶失措的神情。
• Her eyes became watery because of the smoke.因为烟熏，她的双眼变得泪汪汪的。

8 varied   

adj.多样的，多变化的

参考例句：

• The forms of art are many and varied.艺术的形式是多种多样的。
• The hotel has a varied programme of nightly entertainment.宾馆有各种晚间娱乐活动。

9 invaders   

入侵者，侵略者，侵入物( invader的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• They prepared to repel the invaders. 他们准备赶走侵略军。
• The family has traced its ancestry to the Norman invaders. 这个家族将自己的世系追溯到诺曼征服者。

10 weird   

adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的

参考例句：

• From his weird behaviour,he seems a bit of an oddity.从他不寻常的行为看来，他好像有点怪。
• His weird clothes really gas me.他的怪衣裳简直笑死人。