在美国宇航局实习的青少年发现新行星

在美国宇航局实习的青少年发现新行星

School advisors always tell students to make the most of summer internships. New York teen Wolf Cukier sure proves that point.

学校顾问总是告诉学生要充分利用暑假实习。纽约青少年沃尔夫·库基尔肯定证明了这一点。

The 17-year-old joined NASA's internship program at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, after his junior year at Scarsdale High School.

这名17岁的少年在斯卡斯代尔高中三年级结束后，参加了NASA在马里兰州格林贝尔特的戈达德太空飞行中心的实习项目。

Cukier received an assignment to examine variations in star brightness captured by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).

库基尔接受了一项任务，研究NASA凌日系外行星勘测卫星(TESS)捕捉到的恒星亮度变化。

On his third day of work, Cukier noticed a strange signal coming from a system called TOI 1338. As the intern kept digging deeper into the data, he had a hunch that what he'd found was actually a new planet.

在他工作的第三天，库基尔注意到一个奇怪的信号来自一个叫做TOI 1338的系统。随着这位实习生不断深入挖掘数据，他有一种预感，他发现的其实是一颗新行星。

In this illustration, TOI 1338 b is silhouetted by its host stars. (Photo: Chris Smith/NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center)

"I was looking through the data for everything the volunteers had flagged as an eclipsing binary, a system where two stars circle around each other and from our view eclipse each other every orbit," Cukier said in a NASA news release. "About three days into my internship, I saw a signal from a system called TOI 1338. At first I thought it was a stellar eclipse, but the timing was wrong. It turned out to be a planet."

库基尔在NASA的新闻发布会上说:“我仔细查看了志愿者们标记为食双星的所有数据，在这个双星系统中，两颗恒星围绕彼此旋转，在我们的视野中，每绕一圈，就会使对方黯然失色。”“在我实习的第三天，我看到了一个叫做TOI 1338的系统发出的信号。起初我以为这是一次恒星日食，但时机不对。原来是一颗行星。”

NASA named the planet TOI 1338 b. It's the first circumbinary discovery by TESS, meaning it's a world orbiting two stars.

美国国家航空航天局将这颗行星命名为TOI 1338 b。这是苔丝第一次发现环绕双星的行星，意味着这是一个围绕两颗恒星运行的世界。

It's 6.9 times the size of Earth and orbits at almost the same plane as its stars. This means it regularly experiences stellar eclipses.

它的大小是地球的6.9倍，轨道几乎与它的恒星处于同一平面。这意味着它经常经历恒星日食。

Cukier co-authored a paper with scientists from Goddard, San Diego State University, the University of Chicago and other institutions about the discovery. They recently submitted their work to a scientific journal for publishing.

库基尔与来自戈达德、圣地亚哥州立大学、芝加哥大学和其他机构的科学家共同撰写了一篇关于这一发现的论文。他们最近把他们的研究成果提交给了一家科学杂志发表。

"There are PhD candidates who would die to have the type of opportunities that Wolf has lucked into in this internship. It was an amazing, cool bit of serendipity," Wolf's mom, Beth Cukier, told CBS.

“有些博士生为了能得到沃尔夫在实习中幸运获得的机会，宁愿牺牲性命。沃尔夫的妈妈贝丝·库基尔告诉哥伦比亚广播公司。

The TOI 1338 system is 1,300 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Pictor. The two stars orbit each other every 15 days. TOI 1338 b is the only known planet in the system.

TOI 1338星系距离地球1300光年。这两颗恒星每15天绕对方运行一周。TOI 1338b是太阳系中唯一已知的行星。

Planets orbiting two stars are hard for TESS to detect because of their irregular passes in front of their stars. Cukier had to visually examine each of these passes to reach his conclusion.

围绕两颗恒星运行的行星很难被苔丝探测到，因为它们在它们的恒星前面有不规则的通道。库基尔必须对每一张通行证进行视觉检查，才能得出结论。

"These are the types of signals that algorithms really struggle with," said lead author Veselin Kostov, a research scientist at the SETI Institute and Goddard. "The human eye is extremely good at finding patterns in data, especially non-periodic patterns like those we see in transits from these systems."

“这些是算法真正难以处理的信号类型，”主要作者、SETI研究所和戈达德的研究科学家维瑟林·科斯托夫说。“人类的眼睛非常善于在数据中发现模式，尤其是像我们从这些系统中看到的那些非周期性模式。”

TESS is expected to observe hundreds of thousands of eclipsing binaries during its initial two-year mission, meaning many more of these circumbinary planets could be discovered in the near future.

在最初的两年任务中，苔丝预计将观测到数十万个日食双星，这意味着在不久的将来可能会发现更多这样的双星。

As for Cukier, he plans to use this experience as a way to jumpstart his career. He plans to study physics or astrophysics at college — an education that could serve him well at a place like NASA.

至于库基尔，他计划利用这次经历来启动他的职业生涯。他计划在大学里学习物理学或天体物理学——在NASA这样的地方，这种教育对他很有帮助。