Search for Alien and Extra-Terrestrial Signs of Life (BBC News

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Search for Alien and Extra-Terrestrial Signs of Life
(BBC News – 2010)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/the_daily_politics/8484929.stm
For over a hundred years, this twenty-eight-tonne telescope has scanned the skies from the Royal
Observatory at Greenwich. So, is there anybody out there?
We have these hundred billon galaxies each with a hundred billion stars. That’s a very, very huge
number of stars. Just the sheer probability of there being earth-like planets out there, because most solar
systems will form in the same way, galaxies will form in the same way as far as we know. It just seems
sensible to suggest that ‘well, why would we be the only ones?’
Lift-off at the Delta II rocket with Kepler on a search for planets in some way like our own.
Last year, NASA launched the Kepler mission to search for earth-like planets that could support life. In
fact, down here, the SETI project - the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence - uses vast radio
telescopes to scan for any messages sent our way by an alien civilization.
The father of SETI, Frank Drake, has spent fifty years listening to… well, nothing!
We’ve only done perhaps a few percent of what will be necessary to succeed. And you might think - well,
isn’t that depressing? - But it isn’t. We’re eager to continue because we know that the eventual discovery
is so important and so will so change our world that it’s worth slugging along for year after year till we
succeed.
Frank was a star turned (?) at the Royal Society this week, where some of the top thinkers in this field
gathered to assess how the search is going. And what happens if we ever find anything.
I chaired something called the SETI Post-Detection Task Group. The only thing we have seriously
agreed on is that if there is some sort of signal received from a particular source in the sky that we should
not disclose where that source is located because then, people might try beaming messages towards It
and we feel that we shouldn’t be sending any messages until there’s been wild consultations with all
communities worldwide.
And serious thought has been given to what they might be like.
(We know) They could be pretty short, that an alien would have the ability to manipulate with its hands, it
would look at me, using eyes, very similar arrangement. In fact it would also have a large brain and all
these sorts of things. So in that sort of way one could see that an alien would be approachable. But
might also in certain circumstances be potentially dangerous, especially if it has a technology which
enables it to travel from one star system to the other. Now all of this is science-fiction. None of it may be
true.
And if you spot something, who are you gonna call? Well, not the Ministry of Defence. Last year, they
shut down the unit that investigates UFO sightings, even though there were six hundred reported during
2009 and scientists say that governments don’t really care about the search for extra-terrestrial
intelligence.
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Vocabulary
1.
2.
3.
4.
to scan the skies
huge
the sheer probability
earth-like planets
5. lift-off
6. to launch
7. to support life
7. to be eager
8. it will so change our world
9. to slug along
10. till (= until)
11. top thinkers
12. to chair
13. to gather
14. to assess
15. to disclose something
16. to beam messages
17. the ability
18. to enable
19. to spot something
20. you gonna call
21. they shut down the unit
22. UFO sightings
22. to be reported
23. Governments don’t really care about …
scruter le ciel
énorme
pure et simple
comparables / ayant les mêmes caractéristiques
que la Terre
décollage
lancer
soutenir / créer les conditions favorables à la
vie
être impatient de
cela changera notre monde d’une telle manière
tenter de réaliser
jusqu’à
les experts
présider
se réunir
évaluer
révéler, divulguer
diffuser
la capacité
permettre
apercevoir, repérer
= going to
fermer définitivement
observations d’OVNI
(UFO = unidentified flying object)
être signalé
ne sont pas vraiment intéressés par