NASA望远镜探测创纪录的太空爆炸
We’ve got it pretty good here on our little blue orb orbiting a relatively chilled-out star, but space is dark and full of terrors. In a new paper published in The Astrophysical Journal, scientists using data from NASA’s NICER telescope reveal the discovery of an absolutely massive energy burst spotted some 11,000 light-years away from Earth.
我们在围绕着一颗相对静止的恒星运行的蓝色小星球上已经拍得很好了，但是太空是黑暗的，充满了恐怖。在《天体物理学杂志》上发表的一篇新论文中，科学家们利用美国国家航空航天局(NASA)的一架更好的望远镜获得的数据，发现了一场距离地球约11000光年的巨大能量爆发。
NICER, which is a high-tech sensor installed on the International Space Station, detected the incredible release of energy coming from a system known as SAX J1808. Unlike our own solar system, J1808 is a binary system, meaning that its heart is made up of two objects rather than one.
这是一个安装在国际空间站上的高科技传感器，它探测到一个名为SAX J1808的系统释放出令人难以置信的能量。与我们的太阳系不同，J1808是一个双星系统，这意味着它的核心是由两个物体组成的，而不是一个。
In the case of J1808, the primary object is a neutron star. Its companion is a brown dwarf, which is cooler than a star but larger than a planet. The neutron star, also known as a pulsar, gathers gas from the brown dwarf and every so often this relationship results in a truly apocalyptic explosion.
在J1808的例子中，主要的目标是一颗中子星。它的伴星是一颗褐矮星，比恒星要冷，但比行星要大。中子星，也被称为脉冲星，从褐矮星中收集气体，这种关系经常导致一场真正的世界末日式的爆炸。
The blast itself lasts just seconds, but the amount of energy released when the outermost layers of the pulsar detonate is mind-boggling. As NASA explains in a new blog post, it would take 10 full days for our sun to release the same amount of energy as the pulsar beams into space in just 20 seconds.
爆炸本身只持续几秒钟，但当脉冲星最外层爆炸时释放的能量是令人难以置信的。美国国家航空航天局在一篇新的博客文章中解释说，我们的太阳需要整整10天才能释放出与脉冲星光束相同的能量，只需20秒。
“This burst was outstanding,” said lead researcher Peter Bult, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland and the University of Maryland, College Park. “We see a two-step change in brightness, which we think is caused by the ejection of separate layers from the pulsar surface and other features that will help us decode the physics of these powerful events.”
“这次爆炸非常出色，”首席研究员Peter Bult说，他是位于马里兰州绿带的NASA戈达德太空飞行中心和马里兰大学学院公园分校的天体物理学家。“我们看到亮度有两步的变化，我们认为这是由脉冲星表面的独立层和其他特征的喷射造成的，这些特征将帮助我们破译这些强大事件的物理机制。”
It was the largest X-ray burst ever detected by the NICER observatory and it was spotted way back in August. Analyzing and interpreting the data takes time, of course and the full paper describing the discovery was just recently published.
这是由更好的天文台探测到的最大的x射线爆炸，早在8月就被发现了。当然，分析和解释这些数据需要时间，描述这一发现的完整论文刚刚发表。
