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| It was a project that launched a thousand interstellar dreams. |
| 这曾是启发了无数星际梦想的计划。 |
| Fifty years ago, NASA published a fat, 253-page book titled, “Project Cyclops.” It summarized the results of a NASA workshop on how to detect alien civilizations. What was needed, the assembled group of astronomers, engineers and biologists concluded, was Cyclops, a vast array of radio telescopes with as many as a thousand 100-meter-diameter antennas. At the time, the project would have cost $10 billion. It could, the astronomers said, detect alien signals from as far away as 1,000 light-years. |
| 50年前，NASA出版了一份厚达253页的报告，名为《独眼巨人计划》。它对NASA组织的如何探测外星文明研讨会的结果进行了总结。参加研讨会的天文学家、工程师和生物学家得出结论说，他们需要一个“独眼巨人”，即一个用上千个直径100米的接收器组成的巨型射电望远镜阵列。当时对项目耗资的估计是100亿美元。天文学家说，这个“独眼巨人”能探测到来自最远距离为1000光年的外星信号。 |
| The report kicked off with a quotation from the astronomer Frank Drake, now an emeritus professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz: |
| 报告的开篇引用了现为加州大学圣克鲁兹分校名誉教授的天文学家弗兰克·德雷克的一段话： |
| At this very minute, with almost absolute certainty, radio waves sent forth by other intelligent civilizations are falling on the earth. A telescope can be built that, pointed in the right place and tuned to the right frequency, could discover these waves. Someday, from somewhere out among the stars, will come the answers to many of the oldest, most important and most exciting questions mankind has asked. |
| 几乎有绝对把握的是，就在此时此刻，其他智慧文明发出的无线电波正落在地球上。如果能建造一台指向正确位置、调到正确频率的望远镜，就能探测到这些电波。有朝一日，人类提出的许多最古老、最重要和最令人兴奋的问题的答案将来自星际间的某个地方。 |
| The Cyclops report, long out of print but available online, would become a bible for a generation of astronomers drawn to the dream that science could answer existential questions. |
| 独眼巨人报告早已绝版，但仍可在网上找到。它后来成为一代天文学家的宝典，他们曾被用科学来回答存在主义问题的梦想吸引。 |
| “For the very first time, we had technology where we could do an experiment instead of asking priests and philosophers,” Jill Tarter, who read the report when she was a graduate student and who has devoted her life to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, said in an interview a decade ago. |
| “我们第一次有了可以做实验的技术，而不是问牧师和哲学家（来回答这种问题），”吉尔·塔特在十年前接受采访时说。她在念研究生时读过这份报告，后来毕生致力于寻找地外文明的研究。 |
| I was reminded of Cyclops and the work it inspired this week when word flashed around the world that Chinese astronomers had detected a radio signal that had the characteristics of being from an extraterrestrial civilization — namely, it had a very narrow bandwidth at a frequency of 140.604 MHz, a precision nature doesn’t usually achieve on its own. |
| 上周，中国天文学家探测到了具有地外文明特征的无线电信号的消息在世界上传开，让我想起了独眼巨人和受其启发的工作。中国探测到的信号频率为140.604兆赫兹，带宽非常窄，自然界本身通常无法实现这种精确度。 |
| They made the detection using a giant new telescope called the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope, or FAST. The telescope was pointed in the direction of an exoplanet named Kepler 438 b, a rocky planet about 1.5 times the size of Earth that orbits in the so-called habitable zone of Kepler 438, a red dwarf star hundreds of light years from here, in the constellation Lyra. It has an estimated surface temperature of 37 degrees Fahrenheit, making it a candidate to harbor life. |
| 中国天文学家的探测使用了全称为“500米口径球面射电望远镜”（英文缩写FAST，中文俗称“中国天眼”）的巨型新望远镜。望远镜指向一颗名为开普勒438 b的系外行星，这颗岩石行星的大小约为地球的1.5倍，在天琴座的开普勒438红矮星的所谓宜居带内的轨道上运行，天琴座距离地球数百光年。据估计，这颗行星的表面温度为2.8摄氏度，让其成为可能存在生命的候选者。 |
| Just as quickly, however, an article in the state-run newspaper “Science and Technology Daily” reporting the discovery vanished. And Chinese astronomers were pouring cold water on the result. |
| 然而，报道这一发现的官方报纸《科技日报》上的文章很快就消失了。中国的天文学家们已在给这个结果泼冷水。 |
| Zhang Tong-jie, the chief scientist of China ET Civilization Research Group, was quoted by Andrew Jones, a journalist who tracks Chinese space and astronomy developments, as saying, “The possibility that the suspicious signal is some kind of radio interference is also very high, and it needs to be further confirmed or ruled out. This may be a long process.” |
| 跟踪中国空间和天文学进展的记者安德鲁·琼斯援引中国地外文明搜寻的首席科学家张同杰的话说，“可疑信号是某种无线电干扰的可能性也非常高，需要进一步的确认或排查。这可能是个漫长的过程。” |
| Dan Werthimer, of the University of California, Berkeley, who is among the authors of a scientific paper on the signal, was more blunt. |
| 加州大学伯克利分校的丹·沃西默是一篇关于这种信号的科学论文的作者之一，他的说法更直率。 |
| “These signals are from radio interference; they are due to radio pollution from earthlings, not from E.T.,” he wrote in an email. |
| “这些信号来自无线电干扰；它们是地球人的无线电污染造成的，而不是来自外星人，”他在一封电子邮件中写道。 |
| This has become a familiar story. For half a century, SETI, or the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, has been a game of whack-a-mole, finding promising signals before tracking them down to orbiting satellites, microwave ovens and other earthly sources. Dr. Drake himself pointed a radio telescope at a pair of stars in 1960 and soon thought he had struck gold, only to find out the signal was a stray radar. |
| 这是一个大家并不陌生的故事。半个世纪以来，搜寻地外文明计划（缩写为SETI）就像打地鼠游戏，先找到有希望的信号，然后再追踪到轨道卫星、微波炉和其他地球来源。1960年，德雷克本人用射电望远镜对准了一对恒星，很快他就以为自己淘到了金子，结果却发现信号来自一个雷达的干扰。 |
| More recently, a signal that appeared to be coming from the direction of the sun’s closest stellar neighbor, Proxima Centauri, was tracked down to radio interference in Australia. |
| 最近，一个信号似乎来自太阳最近的邻居比邻星的方向，结果最后追踪到的是来自澳大利亚的无线电干扰。 |
| Just as NASA’s announcement last week that it would make a modest investment in the scientific study of unidentified flying objects was intended to bring rigor and practicality to what many criticized as wishful thinking, so, too, was the agency’s Cyclops workshop held at Stanford over three months in 1971. The conference was organized by John Billingham, an astrobiologist, and Bernard Oliver, who was the head of research for Hewlett-Packard. The men also edited the conference’s report. |
| NASA上周宣布，将对不明飞行物的科学研究进行适度投资，以便给这种被许多人批评为一厢情愿式的想法带来严谨性和实用价值。1971年，该机构在斯坦福大学为期三个多月的独眼巨人研讨会也是同样的目的。该会议由天体生物学家约翰·比林汉姆和时任惠普研究主管伯纳德·奥利弗组织。他们还编辑了会议报告。 |
| In the introduction, Dr. Oliver wrote that if anything came of Cyclops he would consider this the most important year of his life. |
| 在序言中，奥利弗博士写道，如果独眼巨人有任何进展，他会认为那是他生命中最重要的一年。 |
| “Cyclops was, indeed, a milestone, largely in pulling together a coherent SETI strategy, and the clear calculations and engineering design that followed,” said Paul Horowitz, an emeritus professor of physics at Harvard who went on to design and start his own listening campaign called Project Meta, funded by the Planetary Society. The movie director Steven Spielberg (“E.T.” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”) attended the official opening in 1985 at the Harvard-Smithsonian Agassiz Station in Harvard, Mass. |
| “独眼巨人确实是一个里程碑，主要是它有连贯的SETI战略、清晰的计算和随后的工程设计，”哈佛大学物理系荣休教授保罗·霍洛维茨说。霍洛维茨后来设计并开始了自己的监听活动，名为“Meta计划”，由行星协会资助。曾执导《ET》和《第三类接触》的电影导演史蒂文·斯皮尔伯格出席了1985年在马萨诸塞州哈佛—史密森天体物理学中心阿加西斯站举行的正式开幕仪式。 |
| “SETI was for real!” Dr. Horowitz added. |
| “SETI是真的！”霍洛维兹博士说。 |
| But what Dr. Oliver initially received was only a “Golden Fleece” award from Senator William Proxmire, Democrat of Wisconsin, who crusaded against what he considered government waste. |
| 但奥利弗最初得到的只有威斯康辛州民主党参议员威廉·普罗克斯迈尔颁发的“金羊毛”奖（上世纪七八十年代颁发给挥霍公款的美国政府官员的一种半开玩笑的奖项——译注），后者认为这是政府浪费行为，对此表示反对。 |
| “In my view, this project should be postponed for a few million light years,” he said. |
| “在我看来，这个项目应该推迟几百万光年，”普罗克斯迈尔说。 |
| On Columbus Day in 1992, NASA did initiate a limited search; a year later, Congress canceled it at the behest of Senator Richard Bryan, Democrat of Nevada. Denied federal support ever since, the SETI endeavor has limped along, supported by donations to a nonprofit organization, the SETI Institute, in Mountain View, Calif. Recently, through a $100 million grant, the Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner set up a new effort called Breakthrough Listen. Dr. Horowitz and others have expanded the search to what they call “Optical SETI,” monitoring the sky for laser flashes from distant civilizations. |
| 在1992年的哥伦布日，美国宇航局确实启动了一项有限的搜索；一年后，在内华达州民主党参议员理查德·布莱恩的要求下，国会取消了该计划。自那以后，由于得不到联邦政府的支持，SETI计划一直举步维艰，其资金来自于加州山景城的非营利组织SETI研究所。最近，俄罗斯企业家尤里·米尔纳通过一笔1亿美元的赠款，建立了一项名为“突破聆听”的新计划。霍洛维茨博士和其他人将搜索范围扩大到他们所谓的“光学SETI”，监测天空中来自遥远文明的激光闪烁。 |
| Cyclops was never built, which is just as well, Dr. Horowitz said, “because, by today’s standards, it would have been an expensive hulking monster.” Technological developments like radio receivers that can listen to billions of radio frequencies at once have changed the game. |
| 霍洛维茨博士说，“独眼巨人”没有建造出来，这也是好事，“因为按照今天的标准，它将是一个昂贵的笨重怪物。”技术发展已经改变了游戏规则，比如可以同时收听数十亿个无线电频率的无线电接收器。 |
| China’s big new FAST telescope, also nicknamed “Sky Eye,” was built in 2016 partly with SETI in mind. Its antenna occupies a sinkhole in Guizhou in Southwest China. The size of the antenna eclipses what was the iconic Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, which collapsed ignominiously in December 2020. |
| 中国新的大型FAST望远镜于2016年建造，还有个昵称叫“天眼”，部分也考虑到了SETI。它位于中国西南部贵州的一个天坑里。其规模令波多黎各标志性的阿雷西博射电望远镜黯然失色，后者于2020年12月非常不体面地坍塌了。 |
| Now FAST and its observers have experienced their own trial by false alarm. There will be many more, SETI astronomers say. |
| 现在，FAST和它的观测者们也经历了虚惊一场的考验。SETI天文学家说，还会有更多。 |
| The generation of astronomers who were inspired by the Cyclops report is getting old. Dr. Billingham died in 2013. Dr. Oliver died in 1995. Dr. Tarter retired from the SETI Institute in 2012, proud that she had never sounded a false alarm. |
| 受到“独眼巨人”报告启发的那一代天文学家正在老去。比林汉姆于2013年去世。奥利弗于1995年去世。2012年，塔尔特博士从SETI研究所退休，她为自己从未发出过错误的预警而自豪。 |
| Those who endure profess not to be discouraged by the Great Silence, as it is called, from out there. They’ve always been in the search for the long run, they say. |
| 那些坚持下来的人声称不会因为所谓的“大沉默”而气馁。他们说，他们一直是着眼于长期的寻找。 |
| “The Great Silence is hardly unexpected,” said Dr. Horowitz, including because only a fraction of a percent of the 200 million stars in the Milky Way have been surveyed. Nobody ever said that detecting that rain of alien radio signals would be easy. |
| “大沉默并不出人意料，”霍洛维茨说，一定程度上是因为，在银河系的2亿颗恒星中，只有不到百分之一的恒星被观测过。从来不会有人说，探测到大量的外星无线电信号是件容易的事。 |
| “It might not happen in my lifetime, but it will happen,” Dr. Werthimer said. |
| “这可能不会在我的有生之年发生，但它会发生，”沃西默说。 |
| “All of the signals detected by SETI researchers so far are made by our own civilization, not another civilization,” Dr. Werthimer grumbled in a series of emails and telephone conversations. Earthlings, he said, might have to build a telescope on the backside of the moon to escape the growing radio pollution on Earth and the interference from constellations of satellites in orbit. |
| “迄今为止，SETI研究人员探测到的所有信号都是我们自己的文明发出的，而不是其他文明发出的，”沃西默博士在一系列的电子邮件和电话交谈中抱怨道。他说，地球人可能不得不在月球背面建造望远镜，以避开地球上日益严重的无线电污染和轨道上卫星群的干扰。 |
| The present time, he said, might be a unique window in which to pursue SETI from Earth. |
| 他说，现在可能是在地球上进行SETI活动的独特窗口期。 |
| “One hundred years ago, the sky was clear, but we didn’t know what to do,” he said. “One hundred years from now, there will be no sky left.” |
| “一百年前，天空是晴朗的，但我们不知道该怎么做，”他说。“一百年后，天空将不复存在。” |
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