科學家發現新地球 太空游牧時代或來臨(圖)

http://www.sina.com.cn   2011年09月15日 10:19   國際在線 

 科學家發現新地球

　　European astronomers have discovered 50 new planets beyond our solar system, including 16 which are a similar size to Earth. This is the largest number of such planets ever announced at one time。

　　歐洲天文學家新發現了50顆位於太陽系以外的行星，其中有16顆和地球差不多大。這是第一次在同一時間宣布發現數量如此多的星球。

　　The biggest planet of the new batch is HD 85512 b, which is 3.6 times the mass of Earth and can be found 36 light-years away in the Vela constellation。

　　在這一批最新發現的行星中，最大的是HD 85512 b。其質量是地球的3.6倍，離船帆座36光年遠。

　　The findings suggest that more than half of the stars like our sun possess planets, and that many of those worlds are lighter than Saturn。

　　調查結果顯示，正如太陽一樣，超過半數的恆星擁有行星，但他們大多數都小於土星(太陽系第六行星)。

　　HD 85512 b is the only one of new planets, dubbed "super-Earths" that is located in its star system"s habitable zone. That"s the area where scientists believe water could exist, in liquid form, making a planet potentially habitable。

　　HD 85512 b是唯一一個被稱為「超級地球」的新行星，它位於其恆星系統的可居住地帶。科學家們相信，在這片區域中，水可以液態形式存在，這使得一個行星可能適於人類居住。

　　Super-Earths are of particular interest to planet-hunters because it"s thought that they could be even more conducive to the development of life than our own planet。

　　行星獵手們對「超級地球」特別感興趣，因為他們認為這些行星沒準比地球更利於人類發展生活。

　　This discovery was made by The High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS)， which is installed at the European Southern Observatory"s La Silla Observatory in Chile。

　　高精度徑向速度行星搜索器(HARPS)完成了這次發現。HARPS是歐洲南方天文台(國際性天文研究機構)安裝在智利拉西亞天文台的。

　　HARPS can detect the slight gravitational wobble caused by planets as small as Earth, if they have incredibly close-in orbits。

　　HARPS能檢測到到由像地球一樣小的行星引起的輕微的引力搖擺，只要它們無限接近運行軌道。

　　HARPS" observations of 376 sunlike stars has led the team to conclude not only that more than half of such stars are surrounded by planets, but also that about 40 per cent of them have at least one planet less massive than Saturn。

　　基於HARPS對376顆類太陽恆星的觀察，研究小組推斷說半數以上的這類恆星都被行星環繞，而且40%這類恆星至少有一顆行星質量比土星小。

　　One of the team members, Lisa Kaltenegger, of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and the Harvard Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, said the latest round of findings marked a new age in the search for habitable planets。

　　馬克斯·普朗克天文研究所，哈佛史密森天文物理中心的一員Lisa Kaltenegger說：「這新一輪的發現標誌著一個尋找可居住行星的新時期到來了。」