
一 | 据外国媒体报道,科学家最新的研究发现,一颗巨大的超级行星离地球只有6光年远,这可能孕育着原始的生命形式。巴纳德B(GJ699B)是最近发现的一颗绕着巴纳德运行的超级地球行星,它是离地球第二近的恒星系统。 The August 15, 2021 fall of Kabul shocked the world, signaling the collapse of the West’s 20-year-long, multi-trillion-dollar nation-building experiment in Afghanistan in a single day.,Less than two weeks before the cataclysm, US and Afghan officials issued statement after statement expressing confidence in the Afghan military’s ability to fight on without American support on the ground.,“[The Afghan Army has] got greater numbers, they’ve got an air force, and, oh by the way, their air force is also flying…This is not an incompetent air force – they know how to fight from the air and they are. They have modern weaponry. They have military organizational ability as well as 20 years of training in the field by – not just the United States but our NATO and Allied partners. So they have a lot of advantages. It’s really just now about using those advantages,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters in Washington on August 11, less than 100 hours before Kabul’s collapse.,In the chaotic few days that followed, Afghan Air Force personnel wound up flying nearly 50 helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft out of the country to neighboring Uzbekistan.,What happened? How did the US and NATO’s orderly withdrawal – which began in May 2021 amid fears that the Taliban would attack Western forces if they didn’t stick to the terms of the 2020 Trump-Taliban Doha peace deal, turn into such a humiliating and disorganized rout?,Paper Tiger vs Shoeless Army,On paper, the Afghan government and army seemed prepared for a years-long slog, similar to the one put up by the Soviet-backed Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, which managed to hold out against the Mujahedeen independently between 1989 and early 1992, even as the jihadists received billions in arms and cash from the CIA, Saudi and Egyptian intelligence, Pakistan and China. By comparison, the NATO-backed Afghan Army had serious problems with foreign support for the Taliban, with the insurgent group’s only major foreign backer consisting of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence.,The Afghan military boasted a total size of some 300,000 personnel – the 16th largest army in the world, along with an impressive array of $85 billion in US-gifted weaponry, including tens of millions of guns, grenades and rocket launchers, 8,500 Humvees, hundreds of armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, tanks, mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles, and thousands of heavy and light trucks.,The Air Force’s inventory included more than two hundred Russian and US-made attack and utility helicopters, dozens of transport planes, and close to 30 Cessna 208 and A-29 Super Tucano ground attack and COIN jets.,US 'Lost Track' of Afghan War Aims, Says Retired Marine General12 August, 17:00 GMT,Facing off against them were the Taliban: a rag-tag group of militants whose core fighting force was estimated to consist of about 60,000 fighters, some of them shoeless, no air force, and limited mobility due to their adversary’s total air superiority and control of fuel.,Behind the scenes, a sprinkling of media reports and testimonies from Afghan soldiers and officials told a sobering story previewing the coming disaster, discussing the widespread disillusionment, demoralization and corruption centered around military and police structures based more on patronage, personal power and enrichment than competence and aptitude.,“There is no motivation for the army to fight for the corrupt government and corrupt politicians here,” Ahmad Wali Massoud, Afghanistan’s former envoy to the UK, told the Wall Street Journal on August 10, a few days before Kabul’s collapse.,“They are not fighting for [then-Afghan President Ashraf] Ghani. They haven’t even been fed properly. Why should they fight? For what? They are better off with the Taliban, which is why they are switching sides like that,” Massoud explained.,US Military Vehicles Falling Into Taliban Hands at Alarming Rate, Report Finds3 July 2021, 15:14 GMT,Ghani himself would end up fleeing the country as Kabul fell, with his entourage reportedly carrying so much money in suitcases from the state coffers that he had to leave some of it behind. Ghani has categorically dismissed these reports and denied allegations besmirching his good name.,John Sopko, the US inspector general for Afghanistan, warned Congress in March 2021 about the state of the Afghan’s military’s demoralization, admitting that “endemic corruption” was a threat, and that it was “fueling” the insurgency and giving the Taliban the means to gain public support.,Another problem, according to a May 2021 report by the Associated Press, was lack of professionalism. Attiqullah Amarkhiel, a former Afghan Army major general, told the news agency that while the Moscow-allied Afghan Army of 1989 consisted of about 150,000 high school educated troops. By contrast, he said, the NATO-trained crack troops of the Western-backed Afghan government had just six-to-eight weeks of basic training, with most recruits uneducated and/or allied to warlords.,“Then we had quality. Today we have quantity,” Amarkhiel said.,Blitzkrieg,This demoralization and corruption, combined with what The Intelligencer characterized as an institutionally built-in deep overdependence on US coalition support, culminated in the events of early-mid-August 2021.,By mid-July of that year, the Taliban was able to take advantage of coalition forces’ withdrawal by establishing control over large swathes of the Afghan countryside. However, no major cities and none of the country’s 34 provincial capitals were under the group’s control at the time. Throughout its two-decade insurgency campaign, the Taliban only launched one major strategic offensive against a government-controlled city – striking Kandahar in May 2011 before retreating back into the countryside.,Fast forward a decade, and the militant group would finally cast off their inhibitions about offensives cities.,On August 6, the militants captured Zaranj, capital of the southern province of Nimruz near the border with Iran, in a lightning attack, with government forces putting up light resistance and local bureaucrats fleeing the city.,A day later, the militants captured Sheberghan, capital of Jawzjan province, after heavy fighting. On August 8, Sar-e-Pul, Kunduz and Taluqan, three provincial capitals in the north of the country, fell, followed by Aybak in the northern Samangan province on August 9.,August 10 witnessed the collapse of Farah in the west and Pul-e-Khumri in Afghanistan’s center. A day later, Faizabad, capital of the northeastern province of Badakhshan also fell.,Animation showing Taliban's inexorable march towards Kabul. “The problem with the army was not lack of training or weapons. The most important thing in war is politics”Read @AmyKazmin @KatrinaManson and @b_parkyn's story on why the Afghan army foldedhttps://t.co/bjjJdPp15J pic.twitter.com/Ll6JrHQWLH— Steven Bernard (@sdbernard) August 15, 2021,August 12-13 would become the darkest days for the Afghan army and government up to that point, with the cities of Ghazni, Herat, Kandahar, Lashkar Gah, Qala-e-Naw, Feruz Koh, Pul-e-Alam, Terenkot and Qalat falling to the Taliban in the space of 48 hours. On August 14, the strategic northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif fell.,Finally, on August 15, 2021, Kabul and the eastern city of Jalalabad collapsed – falling, awkwardly, while tens of thousands of coalition troops, contractors, diplomats, Afghan puppet administration assistance and Western intelligence agents were still in the country.,© AP Photo / Rahmat GulA U.S. Chinook helicopter flies over the city of Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Aug. 15, 2021. Taliban fighters entered the outskirts of the Afghan capital on Sunday, further tightening their grip on the country as panicked workers fled government offices and helicopters landed at the U.S. Embassy.A U.S. Chinook helicopter flies over the city of Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Aug. 15, 2021. Taliban fighters entered the outskirts of the Afghan capital on Sunday, further tightening their grip on the country as panicked workers fled government offices and helicopters landed at the U.S. Embassy.© AP Photo / Rahmat Gul,In a post-op analysis of the events, General Yasin Zia, the former chief of staff of the Afghan army, estimated that some 4,000 security forces troops were killed, and 1,000 more gone missing, in the deadly weeks between July 1 and August 15, 2021 – with that figure representing about one half of the average of 8,000 Afghan security personnel killed each year over the previous five years.,Zia estimated that in total, some 92,000 members of the Afghan security forces died in the line of duty since 2001. Up to 100,000 Afghan civilians, tens of thousands of Taliban fighters, over 3,500 US and coalition troops, and 4,000+ Western mercenaries also perished.,* An organization under UN sanctions for terrorist activities.。

二 | 这颗行星被认为是非常冷的,其表面温度与木卫二相似,大约在零下150度。然而,研究人员说,它可能有一个巨大的热铁/镍核心,地热活动非常活跃,这将有助于促进生命。

三 | 维拉诺瓦大学的天体物理学家爱德华·桂南在美国天文学会第223届年会上说,核热活动可能支持地表下的“生命带”,这种现象类似于南极洲地下湖泊中的现象。我们注意到欧罗巴的表面温度与巴纳德B的相似,由于潮汐加热,欧罗巴冰的表面下可能有一个液态海洋。他还指出,如果存在水,核热活动(火山羽流、火山口等)可能在冰面下形成液态水的“生活区”。它非常像结冰的欧罗巴卫星,它是由潮汐活动而不是地热能加热的。巴纳德的恒星系统将是我们未来研究和分析的重点。巴纳德最显著的特点是,它是离太阳最近的两个恒星系统之一,而且其中有行星。

四 | 这项研究的共同作者斯科特·恩格尔强调,这项研究支持开普勒先前的任务数据,这些数据可以推断行星在整个星系中非常常见,可能高达数百亿颗。同时,巴纳德恒星的年龄大约是太阳的两倍——90亿年,而太阳的年龄是46亿年。宇宙要想形成地球大小的行星需要很长的时间,甚至比太阳现在的年龄还要长。巴纳德B是地球质量的三倍,绕着红矮星巴纳德运行233天。它的轨道距离与水星绕太阳的轨道距离大致相同。

五 | 当它经过巴纳德星球的雪线时,它变暗了。”这些观测将帮助我们了解大气层、表面结构和系外行星的潜在生存能力,”恩格尔说。虽然巴纳德B的表面温度约为零下150摄氏度,但科学家们仍然相信,地球冰冻表面下的液态水区域可能是生命形式的滋生地。外行星是一颗岩石行星,至少是地球的3.2倍大。巴纳德距离地球只有六光年,在天文距离上非常接近,它的亮度是太阳的0.0035倍。离太阳最近的恒星是半人马座α星,它由离地球四光年的三颗引力束缚的恒星组成。

六 | 据报道,巴纳德B行星的存在是通过使用不同的陆基望远镜和天文仪器20年来发现的。其中之一是西班牙卡门尼天文台最先进的行星探测器。即使是今天最强大的望远镜也不能直接成像巴纳德B。

七 | 巴纳德星的名字来自于1916年发现它的耶克斯天文台的爱德华·艾默生·巴纳德。虽然巴纳德离地球只有六光年远,但它是人类肉眼看不见的。如果你把半人马座阿尔法星系的三颗恒星作为一个单位,那么巴纳德是离地球第二近的恒星。这是一颗暗的,低质量的M4矮星,亮度只有太阳的0.0035倍。相关辐射数据表明,它的直径仅为太阳直径的20%,质量仅为太阳最近恒星的17%。大多数恒星属于M矮星,它们很弱,很难用肉眼观察,就像半人马座的邻居一样。巴纳德的明星都很老了。他们是在恒星爆炸怀孕期间出生的。当时,星际金属含量已达到目前的水平,星际金属含量仅为太阳含量的10%。它的年龄也证实了它有一个更长的旋转周期130天。

八 | 随着年龄的增长,其转速逐渐减慢。相反,太阳自转周期平均为25.4天,相当于巴纳德恒星自转周期的五分之一。巴纳德恒星仍有一些磁场活动,偶尔会有磁场能量释放的耀斑。它有一个像太阳一样活跃的X射线日冕,最高温度为200万摄氏度。

九 | 巴纳德恒星内部的低温条件和微弱的能量产生率使它成为一颗不可思议的“长寿星”。事实上,在银河系中还没有发现已经灭绝的M矮星。

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