【轻松英文阅读】科学家的新发现

 Recently, some researchers in Australia were excited about messages from a distant galaxy¹. But it turns out that the signals were from a completely different source.

 

The scientists at Parkes Observatory² in Australia specialize in radio bursts- short pulses that last only fractions of a second and come from distant galaxies³. In January of 2015, the scientists started getting repeated strange signals from an unknown source. “It was a puzzle,” said John Sarkissian, a researcher at the observatory.

 

The mysterious signals had the space scientists scratching their heads. So with some new highly sensitive instruments, they began to investigate. And what they found was very close to home—the signal was coming from a microwave in the kitchen of the observatory.

 

It appears that when someone opens the door of the microwave while it is still running, it emits a short pulse that is detectable⁴ by the radio telescope at the observatory.

 

The microwave has since been banned from the kitchen.

1 galaxy   

n.星系；银河系；一群(杰出或著名的人物)

参考例句：

• The earth is one of the planets in the Galaxy.地球是银河系中的星球之一。
• The company has a galaxy of talent.该公司拥有一批优秀的人才。

2 observatory   

n.天文台，气象台，瞭望台，观测台

参考例句：

• Guy's house was close to the observatory.盖伊的房子离天文台很近。
• Officials from Greenwich Observatory have the clock checked twice a day.格林威治天文台的职员们每天对大钟检查两次。

3 galaxies   

星系( galaxy的名词复数 )； 银河系； 一群（杰出或著名的人物）

参考例句：

• Quasars are the highly energetic cores of distant galaxies. 类星体是遥远星系的极为活跃的核心体。
• We still don't know how many galaxies there are in the universe. 我们还不知道宇宙中有多少个星系。

4 detectable   

adj.可发觉的；可查明的

参考例句：

• The noise is barely detectable by the human ear.人的耳朵几乎是察觉不到这种噪音的。
• The inflection point at this PH is barely detectable.在此PH值下，拐点不易发现。