Hawking's search for alien life 霍金发起寻找外星人计划

媒体英语会带大家一起学习 BBC 撰稿人在报道世界大事时常用到的单词和短语。

Professor Stephen Hawking has previously said: "I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space."

史蒂芬·霍金教授发起了一项新的探索行动，试图回答外星是否有生命存在这个问题。据说这是人类历史上规模最大的外星智慧生命搜索行动。以下是 Pallab Ghosh 的报道。

Scientists have been listening out for signals from intelligent civilisations on other worlds for decades, so far with no success. This new initiative is the most ambitious yet. It will survey ten times more of the sky than previous programmes. And over the next ten years, radio telescopes will listen out for broadcasts from a million of the stars closest to the Earth.

The scheme has the support of some of the world's leading space researchers, including Professor Stephen Hawking, who says it's now time to answer one of the biggest questions in science:

Professor Stephen Hawking

“Somewhere in the cosmos, perhaps, intelligent life may be watching these lights of ours, aware of what they mean. Or do our lights wander a lifeless cosmos - unseen beacons announcing that here, on one rock, the Universe discovered its existence? There is no bigger question. It's time to commit to finding the answer - to search for life beyond Earth."

Many scientists believe that there's only a small chance of receiving a signal from aliens from outer space. But if we do, we'll know that humanity is not alone in the universe.