國家地理:送給外星人的地圖(2)

It was December 1971, and NASA was getting ready to launch Pioneer 10, a spacecraft that would sweep by Jupiter and make the first reconnaissance of the solar system's biggest planet. More stunningly, though, Pioneer 10's brush by Jupiter would sling it onto an interstellar trajectory, making it the first ever human-made object destined to leave the solar system.

那是在1971年12月，美國國家航空航天局正準(zhǔn)備發(fā)射“先驅(qū)者10號”，這艘宇宙飛船將探索木星，對太陽系最大的行星進行首次偵察。但更讓人吃驚的是，“先驅(qū)者10號”越過了木星，飛掠到了星際軌道上，這使它成為了第一個飛離太陽系的人造物體。

With a little help from his friends, the astronomer Carl Sagan decided that the craft ought to carry a greeting from humanity -- a message identifying and commemorating Pioneer's makers that would be interpretable by anyone who found it. NASA agreed and gave Carl less than a month to design the message.

在朋友們的幫助下，天文學(xué)家卡爾·薩根決定，該飛船應(yīng)該攜帶一份來自人類的問候，即一份標(biāo)識和紀(jì)念先驅(qū)號制造者的信息，讓發(fā)現(xiàn)它的人都能翻譯出來。NASA同意了，并給了卡爾不到一個月的時間來設(shè)計該信息。

This is when Carl's friend, the astronomer Frank Drake, enters the story. Frank is also my dad, and among other notable accomplishments, he is credited with conducting the first scientific search for noisy aliens and with formalizing a framework for estimating the number of detectable alien civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy.

這時，卡爾的朋友、天文學(xué)家弗蘭克·德雷克參與了其中。弗蘭克也是我的父親，在他的諸多成就中，他被承認是對吵鬧的外星人進行第一次科學(xué)研究，并形成了一個框架，來估算在銀河系中可探測到的外星文明的數(shù)量。