NASA首次发现“星际冲击”的证据

NASA首次发现“星际冲击”的证据

NASA has captured a phenomenon in space that has eluded humanity for centuries — an “interplanetary shock.”

美国国家航空航天局捕捉到一种太空现象，这是人类几个世纪以来都没有发现的——“星际冲击”。

Four spacecraft from the space agency, which are part of the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission (MMS) that launched in 2015, managed to get a view of the event in January 2018. The craft were just 12 miles away from one another, which made seeing the spectacle possible.

作为2015年发射的磁层多尺度任务(MMS)的一部分，美国宇航局的四艘宇宙飞船在2018年1月成功地观测到了这次活动。这架飞机彼此相距仅12英里，这使得观看这一奇观成为可能。

“MMS was able to measure the shock thanks to its unprecedentedly fast and high-resolution instruments. One of the instruments aboard MMS is the Fast Plasma Investigation,” the space agency said in a statement on its website. “This suite of instruments can measure ions and electrons around the spacecraft at up to 6 times per second. Since the speeding shock waves can pass the spacecraft in just half a second, this high-speed sampling is essential to catching the shock.”

“由于其前所未有的快速和高分辨率仪器，MMS能够测量冲击。”空间局在其网站上的一份声明中说“这套仪器可以每秒最多6次测量航天器周围的离子和电子。由于高速激波可以在半秒内通过航天器，这种高速采样对捕捉激波至关重要。”

NASA continued: “Looking at the data from Jan. 8, the scientists noticed a clump of ions from the solar wind. Shortly after, they saw a second clump of ions, created by ions already in the area that had bounced off the shock as it passed by. Analyzing this second population, the scientists found evidence to support a theory of energy transfer first posed in the 1980s.”

NASA表示：“从1月8日的数据来看，科学家们注意到太阳风中有一团离子。不久之后，他们又看到了第二团离子，这是由已经在经过冲击时反弹的区域中的离子形成的。通过分析第二个群体，科学家们发现了支持能量转移论的证据，该理论首次提出是在20世纪80年代。”

An interplanetary shock, which emanates from the sun, is a type of “collisionless shock,” where particles transfer energy through electromagnetic fields as opposed to bouncing into one another, NASA added.

来自太阳的行星际冲击是一种“无碰撞冲击”，粒子通过电磁场传递能量，而不是相互碰撞，NASA补充道。

“These collisionless shocks are a phenomenon found throughout the universe, including in supernovae, black holes and distant stars. MMS studies collisionless shocks around Earth to gain a greater understanding of shocks across the universe,” the space agency continued.

“这些无碰撞冲击是是宇宙中普遍存在的现象，包括在超新星、黑洞和遥远的恒星中。MMS研究地球周围的无碰撞冲击，以更好地了解宇宙间的冲击。”NASA表示。

The researchers behind the observation hope that additional instances are spotted by the MMS that will give them more detailed looks at these interplanetary shocks.

研究人员希望MMS能发现更多的实例，让他们更详细地观察这些星际冲击。

NASA has released a video describing the charged particles, also known as the solar wind, in greater detail.

美国宇航局发布了一段视频，更详细地描述了带电粒子，也被称为太阳风。

The research describing the find was published in the journal JGR Space Physics.

描述这一发现的研究发表在JGR空间物理学杂志上。