Every evening in Maui, a telescope perched atop a volcano captures particles of light in the universe with the world’s largest digital camera. Normally it searches for asteroids1asteroind小行星。dancing across the cosmos. But one night last October, it locked its gaze onto something remarkable, an unidenti fi ed fl ying object moving quickly through space,seemingly from another solar system.

[2] Or at least that’s what astronomers at the University of Hawaii concluded when they discovered it. At first, they thought it was a comet, then an within a month, they realized the object was long and thin and unlike any asteroid known to science. They named it “Oumuamua”—a Hawaiian word that means “messenger from the distant past.”

在毛伊岛，一架位于火山顶的望远镜每晚都会通过世界上最大的数码摄像机来捕捉宇宙中的光子。通常它会寻找那些在宇宙中飘荡的小行星，但去年10月的一个晚上，它把目光锁定在了一个非同寻常的物体上，一个似乎来自另一个太阳系的不明飞行物正在太空中快速移动。

[2]或者至少这是夏威夷大学的天文学家们在发现它时得出的结论。起初，他们以为它是颗彗星，后来又认为它是颗小行星。但未出一个月，他们意识到这个物体又长又薄，根本不像任何科学界已知的小行星。他们将其命名为Oumuamua——这是一个夏威夷词，意为“来自遥远过去的使者”。

[3] Thousands of miles away, a Harvard astronomer named Avi Loeb learned of the mysterious object as , he began pondering an enticing possibility: that Oumuamua was actually an alien spacecraft sending signals back to its creators. This theory may sound a bit out there. But Loeb isn’t some crackpot2crackpot怪人，疯子。looking for little green men in a spaceship. He and his colleagues are part of a growing number of top-tier scientists who are applying the same rigorous standards they use on other scientific issues to tackle one of the biggest questions facing humanity:Are we alone in the universe?

[4] Americans have long been fascinated by the possibility of alien 2001 Gallup Poll (the most recent one available) found that 33 percent of Americans believed aliens have visited the Earth. But scientists—both inside and outside the U.S. government—have been reluctant to take such claims seriously. From the 1947 weather balloon3weather balloon探空气球，把探空仪器带到高空进行温度、大气压力、湿度、风速风向等气象要素测量的气球。crash in Roswell, New Mexico, to crop circles in England, they’ve largely joined the debate only to debunk44 debunk揭露，揭穿。some very dubious claims. They’ve also lamented the lack of distinction most people make between alien landings—which haven’t occurred—and the possibility of future alien contacts (which

[3]数千英里外，一位名叫阿维·罗卜的哈佛天文学家也得知了关于这个神秘物体的消息。很快，他便开始考虑一种十分吸引人的可能性：Oumuamua实际上是一艘用来给它的创造者回传信号的外星飞船。这一理论乍一听有点不着边际，但罗卜并非是一个要在飞船里寻找小绿人的怪人。他和他的同事们所在的顶尖科学家队伍不断壮大，这些科学家们正在用与对待其他科学问题同等严苛的标准研究人类面临的最重要问题之一：我们是这个宇宙中孤独的存在吗？

[4]美国人一直以来对外星访客的存在充满幻想。2001年的盖洛普民意调查（可取得的最近一次调查）发现，33%的美国人相信外星人已经到访过地球。但是，不管是来自政府内部还是外部的科学家们，一直都把此类说法当作儿戏。从1947年新墨西哥城罗斯威尔的探空气球坠毁事件到英格兰的麦田怪圈，他们参加了诸多辩论，但只是为了揭穿一些非常可疑的说法。他们还感叹大多数人缺乏辨别能力，外星could indeed happen).

[5] But while UFO claims are often hoaxes5hoax骗局；恶作剧。or the work of conspiracy theorists, the search for extraterrestrial6extraterrestrial地球外的。intelligence—alien life just as smart and technologically advanced as humans—is a legitimate scienti fi c fi eld.

[6] Experts disagree on how intelligent life might try to contact the resurrected field, known as SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), is largely based on the assumption that extraterrestrials—if they are out there and actually trying to chat—might use the same type of tech that we use to communicate with one another—from radio signals to fl ashes of light.人登陆——实际并未发生——和未来可能与外星人联络（这确实有可能发生）完全是两回事。

[5]但尽管关于不明飞行物的各种说法通常是恶作剧或是阴谋论者的杰作，寻找外星智慧——和人类一样聪明且拥有先进科技的外星生命——却是正当合理的科学领域。

文章来源：《乡村科技》 网址: http://www.xckjzz.cn/qikandaodu/2021/0119/1119.html