科学家接收到了来自宇宙另一边的无线电信号

科学家接收到了来自宇宙另一边的无线电信号

Someone may have forgotten to turn off the TV at the other end of the universe.

宇宙另一端的某个人可能忘记关电视了。

Or maybe someone has sent us an emoji from a faraway mothership.

或者可能是某个人从遥远的星球上向我们发送了一个表情包。

In other words, we don't have a clue what transmitted the single fast radio burst scientists picked up last week. But we do know where it came from: A galaxy far, far away.

换句话说，我们并没有线索说明科学家上周接收到的单向快速信号波是什么发射出来的，但是我们知道它来自于哪里：一个遥远的星球。

The galaxy where the signal originated is similar in size to our own, but creates stars at a relatively slow rate. (Photo: pixelparticle/Shutterstock)

In a study published this week, researchers at the California Institute of Technology claim to have traced a single radio burst back to its home nearly 8 billion light-years away.

在本周发表的一项调查中，加利福尼亚科技研究所的研究员称无线电信号可追踪至80亿光年以外。

Fast radio bursts, or FRBs — typically lasting anywhere from a fraction of a millisecond to a few milliseconds — have been enshrouded in mystery since they were first discovered in 2007. They're so powerful that they can make their way to our neck of the universe from impossibly far away, although it's rare that we receive them.

快速无线电突发(FRBs)-通常持续时间从一毫秒到几毫秒不等-自2007年首次被发现以来一直保持着神秘状态。它们是如此强大以致于可以从不可思议的遥远处来到我们的星球，尽管我们很少接收到。

That's likely to change over the next few years as new pace-scanning equipment that specializes in FRBs comes online.

随着专门研究FRBs的新型速度扫描设备的问世，这种情况很可能在未来几年发生改变。

Back in January, a newly built Canadian telescope picked up no fewer than 13 fast radio bursts, all seeming to originate some 1.5 billion light-years away.

今年1月，加拿大新建成的一架望远镜观测到至少13次快速无线电突发，它们似乎都来自15亿光年之外。

What all fast radio bursts have in common is mathematical regularity. They beep-beep-beep at exactly the same intervals. But repeating FRBs are a lot easier to pick up and trace than a single radio burst.

所有快速无线电突发的共同之处在于数学上的规律性，它们以完全相同的间隔发出哔哔声，但是重复的frb比单个的快速无线电突发更容易被接收和跟踪。

"Finding the locations of the one-off FRBs is challenging because it requires a radio telescope that can both discover these extremely short events and locate them with the resolving power of a mile-wide radio dish," study author and Caltech professor Vikram Ravi explained a statement.

研究报告的撰写者、加州理工学院教授维克拉姆·拉维在一份声明中解释说:“找到一次性frb的位置是一项挑战，因为它需要一台射电望远镜，既能发现这些极短的事件，又能以一英里宽的无线电碟形天线的分辨率定位它们。”

The signal appears to hail from a galaxy similar in size to our own, a region with such a low rate of star formation that scientists call it a "mellow" galaxy.

这一信号似乎来自一个大小与我们相似的星系，这个星系的恒星形成率如此之低，以至于科学家们称之为“成熟”星系。

A repeating fast radio burst, by its very nature, is much easier to receive than a one-off signal. (Photo: solarseven/Shutterstock)

The report comes a week after scientists in Australia announced the signal's discovery, dubbing it FRB 190523. To find that tiniest of blips in the cosmos, the researchers sifted through vast amounts of data collected by the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder.

澳大利亚科学家宣布了发现这一信号一周后，相关报道将其命名为FRB 190523。为了找到宇宙中最小的光点，研究人员筛选了澳大利亚平方公里阵列探路者收集的大量数据。

Keith Bannister, who led that study, called it "the big breakthrough that the field has been waiting for since astronomers discovered fast radio bursts."

领导这项研究的基思·班尼斯特称，这是“自天文学家发现快速无线电突发以来，该领域一直在等待的重大突破”。

And now that researchers have zeroed in on its source, we may soon learn what caused it.

现在研究人员已经锁定了它的来源，我们可能很快就会知道它的成因。

In the meantime, that single, incredibly brief transmission can carry a universe of data. Its odyssey across staggering distances could reveal what lies between star systems.

与此同时，这个简单的、令人难以置信的传输可以携带大量的数据。它跨越了惊人的距离，揭示了恒星系统之间的秘密。

"These bursts are altered by the matter they encounter in space," Jean-Pierre Macquart, the professor who authored last week's study, noted in a statement. "Now we can pinpoint where they come from, we can use them to measure the amount of matter in intergalactic space."

“这些爆发被它们在太空中遇到的物质所改变，”麦格亚特教授在一份声明中指出，他是上周那项研究的作者。“现在我们可以确定它们来自哪里，我们可以用它们来测量星系间空间的物质量。”