New Earth? 科学家发现新大陆？

媒体英语会带大家一起学习BBC撰稿人在报道世界大事时常用到的单词和短语。

Background: 天文学家发现了能满足人类生存条件的行星，并称此行星和太阳系外已发现的所有行星相比，其特征更近似于地球。

Gliese 581g is the sixth planet to be found circling a dwarf star some 20 light-years away, in the constellation of Libra.

On paper it looks good – three times the mass of the Earth with possibly a rocky surface and enough gravity to hold on to an atmosphere.

The researchers also promised shirt-sleeve weather in some regions, but not everywhere. One side of the planet is almost always in sunshine; the other almost always in darkness. And estimated temperatures range from minus four degrees Celsius to a very hot 71 degrees.

A year meanwhile would go by in just 37 days.

Of course, whether life could be supported on Gliese 581g would need much more investigation and most probably technologies which don't exist yet. But the astronomers say that planethunting is getting easier and they were surprised how quickly they detected the tell-tale signs of this distant body using ground-based telescopes.