Aliens using 'cosmic Twitter'

外星人曾向人类发'微博'

Sometimes it seems as if the expansion of the social networking phenomenon knows no bounds. Aliens could have been using cosmic 'tweets' to contact us for decades, scientists claim - but we have been missing them, British media reported Thursday. ET is more likely to be sending out short, directed messages than continuous signals beamed in all directions, experts said. The reason? Because alien civilisations are likely to strive to limit waste and make their signalling technology efficient.

社交网站沟通无国界，甚至可能没有宇宙的疆界。据英国媒体22日报道，科学家宣称，过去数十年来，外星人可能一直使用类似宇宙版的推特(Twitter)跟地球人沟通，只不过我们全都忽略了。专家表示，外星人很有可能会采用定向发送短信的方式，而非漫无目的地发送连续信息。那么原因呢？因为外星文明可能会试图控制浪费，并使他们的信息发送更有效率。

*以上新闻由ChinaDaily双语手机报提供