"三體"行星被發現,不知道上面有沒有生命

Our Sun is a lone wolf of a star, but out there in the wider Universe, stars are often locked in a dance with others, orbiting a mutual centre of gravity.

我們的太陽是一顆獨狼恆星。但是在廣袤的宇宙，恆星通常與其他星球鎖在一起，圍繞一個相互的重力中心旋轉。

In one such triple-star system, astronomers have just found an exoplanet.

在一個這樣的三星系統中，天文學家剛發現了一顆系外行星。

It has the rather catchy name LTT 1445Ab, as it orbits the primary star of three red dwarfs that constitute the system LTT 1445, located around 22.5 light-years away.

這顆星球有個很惹眼的名字：LTT1445Ab。因爲它圍繞着組成LTT1445系統的三顆紅矮星構成的主恆星旋轉，距離地球約22.5光年。

"If you're standing on the surface of that planet, there are three suns in the sky, but two of them are pretty far away and small-looking," astronomer Jennifer Winters of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics told New Scientist.

哈佛-史密森尼天體物理中心的天文學家詹妮弗·溫特斯說，“如果你站在那顆星球的表面，就能看到天空中有三個太陽。但是其中的兩個離得很遠，看起來很小。”

"They're like two red, ominous eyes in the sky."

“他們就像天空中兩隻紅色的不祥眼睛。”

Her team's research has been submitted to The Astronomical Journal, so we can expect it to be peer-reviewed soon.

她團隊的研究已經提交給了《天文學期刊》。因此應該很快就可以進行同行評議了。

The planet was discovered by TESS, NASA's planet-hunting space telescope designed to find exoplanets that pass between us and their home star, by detecting the telltale dimming as the planet blocks a small percentage of the star's light.

這顆行星是由美國航空航天局的行星獵手太空望遠鏡TESS發現的。TESS的使命是通過檢測行星阻隔恆星一小部分光線時指示性的變暗來尋找系外行星。這些行星經過地球和他們的主恆星之間。

The depth of dimming, and the tiny movements of the star as it is very slightly pulled by the planet's gravity (detected with other telescopes), allow scientists to place constraints on the size and mass of the planet.

科學家通過變暗的程度以及恆星被行星重力牽引時微小的運動（由其他望遠鏡探測）得出行星大小和質量的範圍。

LTT 1445Ab is very different from the 2016 discovery of HD 131399Ab, another exoplanet with three suns.

LTT1445Ab與2016年發現的另一個有“三個太陽”的系外行星HD 131399Ab差別很大。

The latter is a giant with a 550-year orbit around one of the stars in a triple system 340 light-years away.

後者十分巨大，距離地球約340光年，每550年繞三星系統中的一顆恆星旋轉一圈。