英文科普阅读材料双语—宇宙4篇

英文科普阅读材料双语——宇宙四篇

目录

一、究竟有多少个宇宙 (1)

二、科学家在自然界中发现宇宙的第一个分子 (9)

三、如果我们的宇宙与另一个相撞怎么办？ (20)

四、宇宙的尽头有什么？ (28)

一、究竟有多少个宇宙

有时候当我在孤单的长途飞行中，

Sometimes when I’m on a long plane flight,

我望向那些山脉与沙漠

I gaze out at all those mountains and deserts

尝试去理解地球的广袤

and try to get my head around how vast our Earth is.

然后我想起来有一样东西我们天天看见，

And then I remember that there’s an object we see every day

它的体积相当于130万个地球的大小。

that would literally fit one million Earths inside it.

太阳，看起来无限大，

The sun seems impossibly big,

但从宇宙的角度上讲，它只是茫茫星海中的一个尘埃，

but in the great scheme of things, it’s a pinprick,

只是银河系里四百亿颗恒星当中的一颗，

one of about 400 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy,

银河系是你可以在晴朗的夜晚看到

which you can see on a clear night

的一片横跨天空的银色带子。

as a pale, white mist stretched across the sky.

但这还远远不止于此

And it gets worse.

我们通过望远镜，可以探知到大概有100亿个星系

There are maybe 100 billion galaxies detectable by our telescopes,

所以如果每一颗恒星等于一颗细沙的大小，

so if each star was the size of a single grain of sand,

仅仅是银河系就有足够的恒星来装满

just the Milky Way has enough stars to fill

一个体积是30英尺乘以30英尺，3英尺深的沙滩

a 30 foot by 30 foot stretch of beach three feet deep with sand. 而整个地球根本没有足够大的沙滩，

And the entire Earth doesn’t have enough beaches

来代表整个宇宙中的恒星。

to represent the stars in the overall universe.

如此巨大沙滩持续几亿英里之长

Such a beach would continue for literally hundreds of millions of miles.

史蒂芬·霍金啊，宇宙真的难以想象的大啊。

Holy Stephen Hawking, that is a lot of stars.

但是他和其他物理学家如今相信一个真理，

But he and other physicists now believe in

那就是宇宙是无限大的

a reality that is unimaginably bigger still.

我的意思是，一，在我们望远镜探测范围内的这一百亿个星系I mean, first of all, the 100 billion galaxies within range of our telescopes

大概只是整个宇宙的极微小的部分，

are probably a minuscule fraction of the total.

空间是不断加速膨胀着的

Space itself is expanding

这如此多数量的星系

at an accelerating pace. The vast majority of the galaxies

正在以飞快的速度远离我们而去

are separating from us so fast

快到它们发出的光线从未能够到达我们的眼里

that light from them may never reach us.

虽然如此，物理定律还是使地球

Still, our physical reality here on Earth

和这些遥远的不可见的星系紧密地联系在一起

is intimately connected to those distant, invisible galaxies.

我们可以想象它们，作为宇宙的一部分

We can think of them as part of our universe.

它们组成了一个巨大的结构，

They make up a single, giant edifice,

遵守着相同的物理定律，并且由同样类型的原子、电子、obeying the same physical laws and all made from the same types of atoms, electrons,

质子、夸克、中微子组成，也组成了你和我

protons, quarks, neutrinos that make up you and me.

但是，最新的物理理论

However, recent theories in physics,

包括其中的’弦理论’，

including one called string theory,

告诉我们或许有无数个其它的宇宙存在，

are now telling us there could be countless other universes,