Anybody out there?

The story of The Three-Body Problem follows how humans contact aliens in a faraway solar system. Liu Cixin’s modern sci-fi classic shows that after making contact, people on Earth will face many problems – including the danger of invasion!
《三体》讲述了人类如何与遥远星系的外星人接触。刘慈欣的这部现代经典科幻小说表明，地球人一旦与外星人接触，将面临许多问题——包括遭到入侵的危险!

Similar to the novel, a team from the United States’ NASA space agency, led by scientist Jonathan Jiang, wants to send a new message into the stars.
与小说情节类似，科学家乔纳森·姜领导着一个来自美国国家航空航天局（NASA）的团队，该团队想要向外星发送新的信息。

According to Scientific American, the technology needed to send the message is not yet ready. Regardless, the scientists hope humanity can now have a serious discussion about if and how we should talk to aliens, reported the US-based science magazine.
据《科学美国人》报道，发送信息所需的技术尚未成熟。这家美国科学杂志报道称，无论如何，科学家们希望人类现在可以就“是否联系外星人”以及“如何与外星人对话”展开严肃的讨论。

Even if we send a message, none of us will be around for the reply. It will take millennia to reach the target galaxy. So, why should we send it at all?
即使我们发了一条信息，也没有人能等到回复，因为信息要花上千年才能到达目标星系。那么，我们为什么还要发送信息呢?

“We want … to say, ‘Hey, we are here,’ even if we are not here some years later,” Jiang, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, told Live Science.
美国国家航空航天局喷气动力实验室（JPL）的天体物理学家乔纳森·姜在接受《生活科学》采访时称:“我们想……说‘嘿，我们在这里’，哪怕多年后我们不在了。”

Humans have long sought ways to contact other worlds. In the early 19th century, Austrian astronomer Joseph Johann von Littrow said we should communicate with space by making giant geometric patterns in the sands of the Sahara Desert, filling them with kerosene and lighting them on fire.
人类一直在寻找与其他世界联系的方法。在19世纪早期，奥地利天文学家约瑟夫·约翰·冯·利特罗曾说，我们应该在撒哈拉沙漠的沙子上画出巨大的几何图案，用煤油填充图案并点火，从而与太空进行交流。

It never happened, but the invention of radio has allowed us to try other ways to communicate, said Live Science.
《生活科学》报道称，虽然冯·利特罗的想法没有变成现实，但由于无线电这一发明，我们可以尝试其他的交流方式。

According to Scientific American, there remains a basic problem: what do we say and how?
据《科学美国人》报道，一个基本问题仍待解答：我们说什么、怎么说?

Nearly all the messages humans have sent so far start with some basic science and math information – two topics that aliens with a radio telescope would understand.
迄今为止，几乎所有人类发出的信息都是由一些基础科学和数学信息展开的——拥有射电望远镜的外星人应该能理解这两个主题。

How do we send our messages?
我们如何发送信息？

As early as 1974, a team sent a radio message from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. It was an image, in binary code, of a cartoon person and some chemistry diagrams. Three years later, the two capsules on Voyager spacecraft, launched by NASA, carry golden phonograph records full of images and sounds of Earth.
早在1974年，波多黎各的阿雷西博天文台的一个团队就发送了一条无线电信息。该信息是由二进制数字编码而成的图像，含有卡通化的人物和一些化学图形。三年后，美国国家航空航天局发射了两艘旅行者号宇宙飞船，其上的太空舱携带着装满地球图像和声音的金唱片。

Images in binary code are called “bitmaps”. They allow “the maximum amount of information … in the minimal amount of message”, according to Jiang.
姜表示，二进制编码的图像称为“位图”，位图能够“以最少的数据传递最多的信息”。

Will the NASA team use bitmaps? Jiang hopes not. “With improvements in digital technology, we can do much better,” he said.
美国国家航空航天局的团队会使用位图吗？姜希望不要，他说：“随着数字技术的进步，我们可以做得更好。”

以上文章内容选自《21世纪学生英文报高中版》，详情请见《21世纪学生英文报高中版》高二866期