VOA常速英语2018--NASA未来10年或专攻外星生命是否存在（在线收听）

The Hubble telescope has given us spectacular pictures from space, but they’re not detailed enough to help us in our search for life in the trillions of galaxies across the universe. If tens of percent of stars have planets that could resemble the earth and could potentially have life, then the implications are that there are billions of them just within our Milky Way galaxy.

哈勃望远镜为我们拍摄了很多绝美的太空影像，但这些影像提供的细节还不足以帮助我们搜寻浩瀚宇宙无数星系中的生命。如果很多恒星都有类似于地球的行星，并且可能可以孕育生命的话，那可能意味着单是银河系里就有无数颗这样的星体。

As a member of the NAS Committee on Exoplanet Science Strategy, Justin Crepp focused on how and what the United States will explore in space over the next decade.

作为美国国家科学院委员会外行星战略委员会的成员，贾斯汀主要研究美国未来10年空间探索的方式和目标。

In September, the Committee released a report detailing several recommendations to do just that. First, it encourages NASA to develop and launch a space-based mission, specifically to image and characterize earth-like planets around the stars, but that’s not easy. If you try to image a planet, you run into several difficulties straight away. One is that their separation is very small on the sky, so you need a certain sized telescope to do that. The problem is that Earth’s atmosphere blurs out the images and so it exacerbates that problem.

9月份，该委员会发布了一份报告，里面详细写明了数条有关这个方向的建议。首先，该报告鼓励美国宇航局研发并发射太空观测基地，也就是弄清这些恒星附近行星的影像和特征，但这并非易事。要确定某颗行星的影像，首先要解决几个难题。其中一个难题就是：它们在天空中的距离很近，所以需要特定大小的望远镜才能观测。问题在于：地球大气层会让这些影像变得模糊，所以加大了问题的难度。

The committee believes the NASA mission collecting data from above the Earth’s atmosphere and more powerful equipment could resolve that issue, which leads to the second recommendation, building two large ground-based telescopes that will produce images 10 times sharper than that of the Hubble Space Telescope. In his lab, Crepp and his colleagues work on other new equipment. Highly sophisticated equipment will also help with another recommendation, completing the partially-funded wide-field Infrared Survey telescope. When launched into space, it will not only search for planets hundreds of light-years away, it will gather information on what they’re made of and if they could support life. That Crepp says could answer an age-old question.

该委员会认为，如果美国宇航局能在大气层外收集数据，并且能够获得功能更加强大的设备的话，就能解决这个问题，所以也就有了第二条建议——建造2个大型地面望远镜，其拍摄的影像图片清晰度是哈勃的10倍。在实验室里，贾斯汀及其同事还研究了其他的新设备。高度精密的设备也可以助力另一项建议的实践，即完成部分资助的宽视场红外探测望远镜。一旦发射到宇宙中，就不仅可以搜寻上百光年外的行星，还可以汇总数据，内容关于这些行星的组成以及是否可以孕育生命。贾斯汀认为，此举能解答亘古未解的问题。

Are we alone? This is a question that impacts not only science but theology and philosophy and other areas, and so it’s a curiosity. It’s part of being human. Is our world’s special? Is it isolated or other planets out there that could have life? Can we communicate with them? Other recommendations to start to answer those questions include building state-of-the-art equipment, developing a network for teens around the world to collaborate and creating an investor program to fund it all. The report will be reviewed by the US Congress and used in the federal plan to search for new planets and extraterrestrial life over the next decade.

地球是有生命的唯一星体吗？这个问题不仅影响着科学界，还影响着神学、哲学等领域，这是一个谜团。这是生而为人就会想要知道的问题。我们生活的世界是特别的吗？地球是与世隔绝的吗？还是其他行星上也有生命呢？如果有，那我们能和这些生命交流吗？还有一些建议是着手回答如下问题，比如建造先进的设备，为全球青少年研发网络从而并肩作战，以及创办一个投资计划以资助所有项目。该报告将由美国国会审阅，并将用于联邦计划中，从而在未来10年中搜寻新的行星和外星生命。