关于UFO的冷知识你知道多少？【中英双语】 _科学家

近日，国外就UFO这个话题展开了一场大型讨论会，相信不少小伙伴对于UFO都特别感兴趣，对于科幻迷的朋友们来说，吸引力更是加倍的。那么今天就随小易一起来了解一下吧。

【关于UFO的冷知识你知道多少？【中英双语】】
（图源网络，侵删）

UFO —Unidentified flying object’ 不明飞行物。UFO现象大体分为四类：已知自然现象的误认；未知自然现象；未知自然生物；第四类是指有明显智能飞行能力、空军所制造的没公开的有高性能的飞行器，即一些空军没公开的实验性的圆盘飞行器（Circular Disc Aerocraft）
那么UFO这一词是如何诞生的呢，小易查阅资料得到了这样的结论：
Strange objects in the sky were first named flying saucers in the 1940s: the first OED citation is from The Times in 1947. They were so called because of an account by a US pilot Kenneth Arnold who stated in various newspaper and radio interviews of that year that he’d seen ‘saucer-like’ objects in the sky while he was flying past Mount Rainier. The media seemed to have quickly changed this to the snappier ‘flying saucer’ and so the term was born. By the time Ruppelt and his USAF colleagues were investigating reports of these sightings in the 1950s it was clear that ‘saucer’ was too limited a description since the objects in question were said to be of many different shapes: hence Ruppelt’s invention of ‘UFO’.
早在二十世纪四十年代，人们起初用的是“飞碟”（flying saucer）一词来指代空中的不明飞行物，而《牛津英语词典》最早对该词的引用，源于1947年《泰晤士报》。这些不明飞行物之所以被叫做飞碟，是源于当初美国一个叫做Kenneth Arnold的飞行员的话，他在各个报纸和电台的受访中，声称自己当年在飞越雷尼尔山时，看到了空中的碟状物体。而媒体似乎很快就把这个“碟状物体”的说法改为了更为时髦的词语“飞碟（flying saucer）” ，飞碟的说法由此诞生。等到Ruppelt和他的空军部队的同事们于二十世纪五十年代开始调查这些见闻时， “碟状物”的说法已经过于局限，因为被质疑的那些物体据说有很多种形状，因此Ruppelt发明了“UFO”一词。
UFOs captured the public’s imagination and it wasn’t long before sightings were reported from all over the world. The study of UFOs became known as ufology (recorded in The Times Literary Supplement in 1959) and experts in the field were named ufologists about four years later even though research in this area isn’t generally regarded as an academic discipline.
UFO激发起了大众的遐想，很快世界各地都出现了关于目击到UFO的报道。而对UFO的研究也逐渐被称为“飞碟学（ufology）”（该词于1959年记录于《泰晤士报文学增刊》），在飞碟学领域的专家也在四年后被称作“不明飞行物研究专家（ufologists）” ，尽管这方面的研究作为一个学科并没有得到普遍的认可。
在世界范围内， UFO有如此大的影响力，也算是人们经久不衰的讨论话题了。这背后所展现的除了对于外太空的探索和对于科学的追求，更为重要的，是人类亘古不变的好奇心和探索欲。
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