2023-04-19|閱讀時間 ‧ 約 19 分鐘

What the Discovery of Exoplanets Reveals About the Universe

Hello. I am a planet hunter and keeper of the keys at NASA's Exoplanet archive. In March 2022, we reached a major milestone in space exploration with 5000 known exoplanets.

reach a major milestone 達到重要的里程碑 Our company has just reached a major milestone by completing our 100th successful project, which marks a significant achievement in our industry.

For thousands of years, we've wondered about planets outside of our solar system, now called exoplanets. But our technology only recently caught up with our imaginations. And yes, 5000 planets is incredible.

catch up with 追上某人或某物，也可以表示把落後的工作、任務等完成。 We need to walk faster if we want to catch up with the others. The company has invested heavily in new technology to catch up with its competitors.

What's even more incredible is how space research will change as a result. When I started grad school, there were about 100 known exoplanets all radically different from the Earth and from each other. I was determined to find more.

radically (adv.) 極其；徹底地；非常地 The new company policies are radically different from the old ones.

I spent four years looking at nearly 87,000 stars one by one. Now, you might have this romantic idea that I was gazing【註1】 intently through a telescope, pondering some gorgeous view of the universe. I was not.

gaze (v.) 凝視；注視通常用於描述長時間注視某個物體或景象的動作。 She gazed out of the window, lost in thought.

ponder (v.) 仔細思考、深思熟慮某件事情，後面常接about或on，表示思考某個特定的問題或主題。 He spent hours pondering the meaning of life.

I was looking at data like this measuring the brightness of each star over time. If the brightness dipped just briefly, just a little bit it could be because a planet had orbited in front of that star blocking some of the light from reaching my telescope. So I spent four years looking for decimal-level changes in these data.

dip (v.) 物體從高處向下移動，或數值從原有的高點降低。 The temperature dipped below freezing last night. (降到0度以下)

decimal-level 指非常微小的數值，通常指小數點後的位數 decimal 十進位 The instrument is capable of measuring temperature changes at a decimal-level precision.

And after four years, I'd found nothing. Zero exoplanets. Thankfully, they still gave me the Ph.D.

I think, for effort. Then I moved to Harvard where I worked on my first NASA mission called Epoxy. I still didn't find any exoplanets.

Then, in March 2010, I joined the Kepler mission NASA's grand experiment with putting one of our planet-hunting instruments into space. Monday was my first day on the base in Silicon Valley. It was mostly spent in HR.

Tuesday, I sat down and looked at the data for the first time and I found my first exoplanet. A few minutes later, I found another one. There's a saying that we're the generation that was born too late to explore Earth and too soon to explore space.

That's not true anymore. That day and every day since I've gotten to explore space. Kepler made it possible for us to measure stellar brightness much more precisely than we had before.

stellar brightness 星體亮度

And eventually, I helped find thousands of exoplanets. And we've really only searched our local corner of the galaxy to find those planets. That means there are likely tens of billions of planets just in our Milky Way.

Milky Way 銀河系

Now, with so much data, we can start sorting and grouping, and categorizing these planets to find trends. Think of it this way. If you wanted to learn about dogs and you had five dogs in your study, well, you'd learn a lot about those five dogs that they're all good dogs, but maybe not about dogs in general.

sort：通常指的是依據某一個標準，將資料按照一定的順序排列。例如，將一堆數字按照大小排序，或者將一些人按照年齡排序等等。 group：指依據某些特徵，將資料分成若干個組，每個組內的資料具有相似的特徵。例如，將一些人按照性別分組，或者將一些動物按照食性分組等等。

If you had 5000 dogs in your study then you'd start to see that there were German shepherds and Dobermans and Beagles and that these different breeds have different features. With demographic-level data on exoplanets, we can start asking some of these big questions for the first time like of those thousands and billions of planets in our galaxy. How many are like the Earth or like Jupiter? How many planets does a typical star have? Can a planet orbit more than one star? Yes. Can a planet exist without any stars at all? Also yes.

breed (n.) 品種；血統

demographic-level 指的是與恆星外行星相關的群體特徵資料，例如這些行星所在的恆星類型、距離、大小、軌道等等。 demographic (adj.) 人口的；人口統計的

One surprising result from the study of planet populations is that the most common kind of planet in our galaxy might be one we don't have in our solar system a super-Earth up to twice as big and ten times as heavy as our Earth. We've found evaporating planets, disintegrating planets, planets clustered together in a clockwork dance, ultra-puffy planets, and ultra-dense planets. It's truly a wild and wonderful menagerie that I get to corral at the NASA Exoplanet archive.

evaporate (v.) 蒸發；揮發 The ice on the surface of the lake is evaporating quickly in the hot sun.

disintegrating planets 分解行星

cluster (v.) 聚集；成群結隊 The students clustered around the teacher to ask questions after class.

puffy (adj.) 蓬鬆的 dense (adj.) 緻密的

menagerie (n.) （私人豢養或供公眾觀賞的一群）野生動物在更廣泛的意義上，它還可以指各種不同的人或事物，這裡指的是NASA exoplanet archive中，各式各樣的事物集合。

corral (n.) （尤指北美圈牛馬的）畜欄，圍欄 "corral" 可以用來描述將一群事物或人圍攏在一起的行為或地方，在句子中"corral" 的意思是將眾多的外行星資料集中管理整理。

But it gets even more interesting than that. With so much data, we might finally be able to figure out how planets are made. We see baby stars being born in stellar nurseries surrounded by dust and gas, and we see older stars surrounded by completed planetary systems.

nursery (n.) 幼兒園，托兒所或指年輕的植物或動物在這裡被培育、照顧和準備好後續的生長或發展的地方。

But we still don't really know what happens in between. With more data, we might find planets at some middle stage or many middle stages, and from there be able to map out a timeline of planetary development. What triggers these diffuse clouds of dust and gas to collapse and transform? And how does the chaos and turmoil of dust become pebbles, and pebbles become boulders, and boulders become planetesimals? And from there, after an intense series of bombardments, eventually settle into an ordered series of planets.

turmoil (n.) 混亂：動盪詞常常被用來形容政治、社會、經濟、心理等各種方面的困擾、煩惱或混亂狀態。 The company was thrown into turmoil after the unexpected resignation of its CEO.

pebble (n.) 鵝卵石 boulder (n.) 巨石 planetesimal (n.) 原行星體，在形成行星的過程中的小天體。

bombardment (n.) 連續砲擊；連續轟炸在天文學上，它常用來形容行星或其他天體受到彈道物體連續撞擊的現象，例如行星形成過程中的碰撞轟擊。

settle into (phr.) 逐漸適應新的環境或狀況，並感到較為穩定、自在和放鬆。 After a few days, I finally settled into my new job and started to feel more comfortable.

How often is one of those planets solid and warm, with a water ocean lapping a sandy shore? Where do we come from, and how did we get here? The more we learn about exoplanets, the easier it is to target the ones we want. So far, we haven't found any planets that are like Earth, but I hope we will. NASA just spent the last few years studying the idea of a very large telescope in space with next-generation technology that would allow us to take an image, an actual photograph of a planet like the Earth.

lap (v.) 輕拍；拍打表面 (通常用於水面) The waves lapped against the shore.

With that photo, we could search for biomarkers signatures of life. I'll probably spend the rest of my career working on that mission. I hope I get to take that photo.

Thank you.

biomarkers signature 生物標誌物的特徵可以用來只是生命的存在或特定的生物體系，生常在生物醫學和生態學等領域中使用。'

【註1】 gaze和stare的差別： "gaze" 比較含蓄、柔和，通常形容長時間注視某物、沉思或欣賞。這個詞所描述的動作通常是有目的的、有感情的，而不是機械式的。此外， "gaze" 也可以用來形容一個人的眼神，表示他們正在凝視著某物。

"gtare" 則比較強烈、直接，形容長時間的凝視，通常不涉及情感和意圖，而且可能讓被凝視的對象感到不舒服、受到侵犯。有時 "stare" 還可以用來描述驚訝、震驚或憤怒的目光。

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What the Discovery of Exoplanets Reveals About the Universe

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