科学家发现新地球

　　European astronomers have discovered 50 new planets beyond our solar system, including 16 which are a similar size to Earth. This is the largest number of such planets ever announced at one time。

　　欧洲天文学家新发现了50颗位于太阳系以外的行星，其中有16颗和地球差不多大。这是第一次在同一时间宣布发现数量如此多的星球。

　　The biggest planet of the new batch is HD 85512 b, which is 3.6 times the mass of Earth and can be found 36 light-years away in the Vela constellation。

　　在这一批最新发现的行星中，最大的是HD 85512 b。其质量是地球的3.6倍，离船帆座36光年远。

　　The findings suggest that more than half of the stars like our sun possess planets, and that many of those worlds are lighter than Saturn。

　　调查结果显示，正如太阳一样，超过半数的恒星拥有行星，但他们大多数都小于土星(太阳系第六行星)。

　　HD 85512 b is the only one of new planets, dubbed 'super-Earths' that is located in its star system's habitable zone. That's the area where scientists believe water could exist, in liquid form, making a planet potentially habitable。

　　HD 85512 b是唯一一个被称为“超级地球”的新行星，它位于其恒星系统的可居住地带。科学家们相信，在这片区域中，水可以液态形式存在，这使得一个行星可能适于人类居住。

　　Super-Earths are of particular interest to planet-hunters because it's thought that they could be even more conducive to the development of life than our own planet。

　　行星猎手们对“超级地球”特别感兴趣，因为他们认为这些行星没准比地球更利于人类发展生活。

　　This discovery was made by The High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS)， which is installed at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory in Chile。

　　高精度径向速度行星搜索器(HARPS)完成了这次发现。HARPS是欧洲南方天文台(国际性天文研究机构)安装在智利拉西亚天文台的。

　　HARPS can detect the slight gravitational wobble caused by planets as small as Earth, if they have incredibly close-in orbits。

　　HARPS能检测到到由像地球一样小的行星引起的轻微的引力摇摆，只要它们无限接近运行轨道。

　　HARPS' observations of 376 sunlike stars has led the team to conclude not only that more than half of such stars are surrounded by planets, but also that about 40 per cent of them have at least one planet less massive than Saturn。

　　基于HARPS对376颗类太阳恒星的观察，研究小组推断说半数以上的这类恒星都被行星环绕，而且40%这类恒星至少有一颗行星质量比土星小。

　　One of the team members, Lisa Kaltenegger, of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and the Harvard Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, said the latest round of findings marked a new age in the search for habitable planets。

　　马克斯·普朗克天文研究所，哈佛史密森天文物理中心的一员Lisa Kaltenegger说：“这新一轮的发现标志着一个寻找可居住行星的新时期到来了。”

　　(编译：董璐莹)