囧研究：美國航天局可能已經訪問過地球了？

NASA was set up in part to find traces of extraterrestrial life in the universe. While the government space agency has yet to find any definitive evidence that extraterrestrials exist, one NASA scientist believes we may have already been visited by them here on Earth.

美國國家航空航天局建立之初就是爲了找到宇宙中的外星生物，但是至今未找到確切證據證明外星人的存在，航天局某科學家認爲外星人可能已經到訪過地球了。

In a new research paper, Silvano P. Colombano, who in addition to being a computer scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, is also a professor, theorizes that intelligent life may not be what we are used to and may not necessarily use the traditional building blocks of that humanity is accustomed to, such as carbon.

美國航天局研究中心的計算機專家兼教授薩瓦努在研究報告中闡述了相關理論，說明外星人可能和人類不同，身體的基本元素非碳。

So if extraterrestrials are not carbon-based, what does that do to our assumptions about what to look for? Well, a lot, Colombano noted.

如果外星人不依靠碳元素存在，我們要靠什麼來尋找外星生物呢？薩瓦努表示有多種方式。

Colombano also suggests that extraterrestrials may have figured out technology that humans can not comprehend yet, making tasks such as interstellar travel possible. "If we adopt a new set of assumptions about what forms of higher intelligence and technology we might find, some of those phenomena might fit specific hypotheses, and we could start some serious enquiry," he suggested.

薩瓦努還說外星人可能已經理清了人類無法理解的技術，大概已經能夠進行星際移動了。“如果我們對高等生物和科技做出一系列設想，有些現象是能與之對應的，繼而可以提出一些嚴肅的問題。”

"Considering further that technological development in our civilization started only about 10K years ago and has seen the rise of scientific methodologies only in the past 500 years, we can surmise that we might have a real problem in predicting technological evolution even for the next thousand years, let alone 6 Million times that amount!" he explained.

“仔細想想，人類文明不過是一萬年前纔開始，在過去短短五百年間就見證了各種科學發明，我們可以猜想未來千年中，人類就會在科技革新中遇到問題，更不用說六百萬年中我們遇到過多少問題。”

（翻譯：阿忙）