I want to ask you all to consider for a second the very simple fact that, by far, most of what we know about the universe comes to us from light. We can stand on the Earth and look up at the night sky and see stars with our bare eyes. The Sun burns our peripheral vision. We see light reflected off the Moon. And in the time since Galileo pointed that rudimentary telescope at the celestial bodies, the known universe has come to us through light, across vast eras in cosmic history. And with all of our modern telescopes, we've been able to collect this stunning silent movie of the universe -- these series of snapshots that go all the way back to the Big Bang.
請各位思考一下 一個非常簡單的事實 目前為止 我們所知的宇宙 都透過「光」而來 站在地球上仰望夜空 我們憑肉眼就能看得見星星 太陽照亮我們的視野邊界 因為光的反射而看見月亮 自從伽利略以最原始的望遠鏡 舉目望天開始了觀測 一向以來,已知宇宙都是透過光來向我們傳達訊息 即便穿越了宇宙浩瀚的歷史 以現代的望遠鏡 我們能接收 這齣令人驚異、讚歎的宇宙無聲電影 用許多連續圖形 一路回溯至大霹靂時期
And yet, the universe is not a silent movie because the universe isn't silent. I'd like to convince you that the universe has a soundtrack and that soundtrack is played on space itself, because space can wobble like a drum. It can ring out a kind of recording throughout the universe of some of the most dramatic events as they unfold. Now we'd like to be able to add to a kind of glorious visual composition that we have of the universe -- a sonic composition. And while we've never heard the sounds from space, we really should, in the next few years, start to turn up the volume on what's going on out there.
但是,宇宙上演的並不是一齣默劇 因為宇宙其實並非一片死寂 我想說服你們的就是這件事 宇宙是個有聲電影 宇宙自己發出聲音成為它的聲部 這是因為太空像鼓一樣會震動 它像唱片一樣可以發出聲音 傳遍整個宇宙 尤其當某些極富戲劇效果的事件展開的時候 現在我們想嘗試 在炫麗奪目的視覺效果以外 為我們的宇宙再加上 它聲音的部份 雖然我們從沒聽過來自太空的聲音 幾年之內,我們應該可以開始 把外面世界發出的聲音音量再調更大
So in this ambition to capture songs from the universe, we turn our focus to black holes and the promise they have, because black holes can bang on space-time like mallets on a drum and have a very characteristic song, which I'd like to play for you -- some of our predictions for what that song will be like. Now black holes are dark against a dark sky. We can't see them directly. They're not brought to us with light, at least not directly. We can see them indirectly, because black holes wreak havoc on their environment. They destroy stars around them. They churn up debris in their surroundings. But they won't come to us directly through light. We might one day see a shadow a black hole can cast on a very bright background, but we haven't yet. And yet black holes may be heard even if they're not seen, and that's because they bang on space-time like a drum.
在這雄心壯志 企圖接收宇宙譜出的歌曲驅動下 帶領我們將目光轉向 黑洞和它們的能量特性 因為黑洞能在空-時中發出聲響 像一根鼓棒一樣 它的歌曲則極富特色 在此根據我們的假設 將要播放一段黑洞可能會發出的聲音 黑洞是襯在黑底之上 不可能直接看得見 它們不是直接以光的形式向我們呈現,至少沒有以直接的方式 我們能以間接的方式看見它們 也就是黑洞對它週遭環境施加的破壞 諸如毀滅周圍恆星 將方圓以內碎片劇烈攪拌...等 總之它們不會以可見光讓我們看見 有一天我們或許看得見它的影子 當黑洞遇上一個非常明亮的背景時這就有可能 但現在還在努力中 但黑洞是可以聽得見的 就算它們真的是我們所不能看見的 能聽見黑洞是因它像鼓一樣,敲槌著空時
Now we owe the idea that space can ring like a drum to Albert Einstein -- to whom we owe so much. Einstein realized that if space were empty, if the universe were empty, it would be like this picture, except for maybe without the helpful grid drawn on it. But if we were freely falling through the space, even without this helpful grid, we might be able to paint it ourselves, because we would notice that we traveled along straight lines, undeflected straight paths through the universe. Einstein also realized -- and this is the real meat of the matter -- that if you put energy or mass in the universe, it would curve space, and a freely falling object would pass by, let's say, the Sun and it would be deflected along the natural curves in the space. It was Einstein's great general theory of relativity. Now even light will be bent by those paths. And you can be bent so much that you're caught in orbit around the Sun, as the Earth is, or the Moon around the Earth. These are the natural curves in space.
我們會有這麼一個太空中響著鼓聲的念頭 最該感謝的人是愛因斯坦,非常感謝 愛因斯坦明瞭如果太空是空的 宇宙是空的 就像這張照片 或者說實際上應沒有這些輔助線會像得更徹底些 不過如果我們自由的墜入太空中 就算沒有這些輔助線 我們自己也能畫的出這幅圖 因為我們會注意到自己是以直線運動前進 以直線不偏轉的路徑 通過宇宙 愛因斯坦還想到另一件事 而那個部份才是更加精采 也就是,若將能量或質量放在宇宙中 它會彎曲空間 而自由落下的物體 有可能會經過,譬如說,太陽 於是它的路徑會受偏轉 沿著空間自然曲線偏轉 這是愛因斯坦的普通相對論 因為連光都會受這些路徑影響而彎曲 彎曲到一個程度 你會被太陽抓住而繞著它依軌道運轉 就像地球繞太陽轉,月亮繞地球轉 這就是空間的自然曲線
What Einstein did not realize was that, if you took our Sun and you crushed it down to six kilometers -- so you took a million times the mass of the Earth and you crushed it to six kilometers across, you would make a black hole, an object so dense that if light veered too close, it would never escape -- a dark shadow against the universe. It wasn't Einstein who realized this, it was Karl Schwarzschild who was a German Jew in World War I -- joined the German army already an accomplished scientist, working on the Russian front. I like to imagine Schwarzschild in the war in the trenches calculating ballistic trajectories for cannon fire, and then, in between, calculating Einstein's equations -- as you do in the trenches. And he was reading Einstein's recently published general theory of relativity, and he was thrilled by this theory. And he quickly surmised an exact mathematical solution that described something very extraordinary: curves so strong that space would rain down into them, space itself would curve like a waterfall flowing down the throat of a hole. And even light could not escape this current. Light would be dragged down the hole as everything else would be, and all that would be left would be a shadow.
愛因斯坦沒想通的事情是 如果你拿著太陽 把它擠壓直到只剩6公里直徑大小 這是一團質量是地球100萬倍的東西 然後把它的體積壓縮到6公里寬 這樣就是個黑洞 一個非常嚴密的物質 如果靠得太近,連光不可能逃走 成為一個相對於宇宙的黑色陰影 愛因斯坦沒領悟到這件事情 這是卡爾史瓦西解出來的 他是德國猶太人,在第一次世界大戰時 在入伍時已是一位傑出科學家 在德俄邊境前線工作 我總愛想像史瓦西是躲在戰爭時期的壕溝裡頭 邊計算高射炮的發射彈道 邊偶爾計算一下 愛因斯坦的公式 壕溝裡能做的事情不多 他正拜讀愛因斯坦最新的 普通相對論 令他大感驚訝的理論 他很快推算出 一道精確的數學解答 極不尋常的描述了一個現象 一道強大的曲線 空間會順勢下流 空間本身會像瀑布一般的彎曲 向下流入一個喉嚨敞開的洞 即便是光也無法逃離這股流勢 光會被拉入這個洞中 和其他任何東西一樣 所有東西最後都會只剩下一個影子
Now he wrote to Einstein, and he said, "As you will see, the war has been kind to me enough. Despite the heavy gunfire, I've been able to get away from it all and walk through the land of your ideas." And Einstein was very impressed with his exact solution, and I should hope also the dedication of the scientist. This is the hardworking scientist under harsh conditions. And he took Schwarzschild's idea to the Prussian Academy of Sciences the next week. But Einstein always thought black holes were a mathematical oddity. He did not believe they existed in nature. He thought nature would protect us from their formation. It was decades before the term "black hole" was coined and people realized that black holes are real astrophysical objects -- in fact they're the death state of very massive stars that collapse catastrophically at the end of their lifetime.
史瓦西寫信告訴愛因斯坦 他說,「且看, 戰爭對我是多麼慷慨有餘啊, 即便在戰火交織下 我也能有遠離這一切的一個某處可去 一步步前進在由你的理論所佔領的土地上。」 愛因斯坦對史瓦西精確的解答實在印象深刻 我應該期望自己有科學家這樣全心全力 在這樣艱困的處境下仍辛勤工作 帶著著史瓦西的理論想法 一週後,愛因斯坦前往波斯科學院 愛因斯坦一向以為黑洞只不過是個純數學的怪物 他並不相信自然界真有這個東西存在 他認為自然界應該會在創生的過程中保護我們 幾十年過去 黑洞一詞被憑空創造問世 人們理解到 黑洞是天文物理中真實的天體 事實上它們是一種最終的境界 大質量恆星們的最終結局 災難性的崩塌瓦解 當它的生命走到盡頭時
Now our Sun will not collapse to a black hole. It's actually not massive enough. But if we did a little thought experiment -- as Einstein was very fond of doing -- we could imagine putting the Sun crushed down to six kilometers, and putting a tiny little Earth around it in orbit, maybe 30 kilometers outside of the black-hole sun. And it would be self-illuminated, because now the Sun's gone, we have no other source of light -- so let's make our little Earth self-illuminated. And you would realize you could put the Earth in a happy orbit even 30 km outside of this crushed black hole. This crushed black hole actually would fit inside Manhattan, more or less. It might spill off into the Hudson a little bit before it destroyed the Earth. But basically that's what we're talking about. We're talking about an object that you could crush down to half the square area of Manhattan.
我們的太陽不會塌縮成黑洞 事實上它的質量還不夠形成為黑洞 但如果我們運用思考來做個實驗 就像愛因斯坦很喜歡做的事情一樣 我們不妨想像 把太陽壓縮成6公里大小 把一個超微小地球放在它旁邊依軌道運行 距離約30公里 在這顆太陽黑洞外面30公里處 然後地球自己會發光 因為沒有太陽了,我們也將失去光源-- 只好先假設地球變成是發光體的情形 你會發現這個距離之下地球軌道 在距離黑洞 30公里以外 一個被壓縮的黑洞 事實上就和紐約市中心的曼哈頓區差不多大而已 有時它或許會碰到一點哈得遜區 在它快要吞滅地球之前 基本上我們說的就是體積這麼小的一個東西 我們說的這個東西是你可以把它壓縮到 只有曼哈頓方圓一半大的區域
So we move this Earth very close -- 30 kilometers outside -- and we notice it's perfectly fine orbiting around the black hole. There's a sort of myth that black holes devour everything in the universe, but you actually have to get very close to fall in. But what's very impressive is that, from our vantage point, we can always see the Earth. It cannot hide behind the black hole. The light from the Earth, some of it falls in, but some of it gets lensed around and brought back to us. So you can't hide anything behind a black hole. If this were Battlestar Galactica and you're fighting the Cylons, don't hide behind the black hole. They can see you.
我們把這個地球移動到非常靠近 -- 30公里外的這個距離 這是繞行這顆黑洞完美的軌道 這有點神秘 黑洞無一例外的吞滅宇宙裡的一切物體 但事實上你必須非常靠近它才能掉的下去 但令人驚訝的是,從我們的觀望點 我們總是看得到地球 它沒辦法躲藏在黑洞的後方 這時有些從地球發出的光會掉入黑洞中 有些會因受到透鏡得作用,傳回來讓我們看見 你沒辦法把一樣東西藏在黑洞後面 如果是在科幻影集「太空堡壘」中 你和塞隆人正在作戰 千萬別選在一個黑洞的後面跟他玩躲迷藏 敵人一定會看見你
Now, our Sun will not collapse to a black hole -- it's not massive enough -- but there are tens of thousands of black holes in our galaxy. And if one were to eclipse the Milky Way, this is what it would look like. We would see a shadow of that black hole against the hundred billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy and its luminous dust lanes. And if we were to fall towards this black hole, we would see all of that light lensed around it, and we could even start to cross into that shadow and really not notice that anything dramatic had happened. It would be bad if we tried to fire our rockets and get out of there because we couldn't, anymore than light can escape.
太陽不會塌縮成黑洞 它質量不夠 我們的銀河系裡有上萬顆黑洞 如果銀河系裡發生了「食」的現象 看起來會像這樣 我們會看到一個黑洞的影子 在數千億顆明亮恆星的映襯之下 在銀河系還有許多明亮的塵埃帶中 若我們朝黑洞裡頭掉進去 我們會看見受到透鏡作用的光環繞在外層 我們甚至開始穿透那個陰影 卻並不會真的發現什麼太有戲劇效果的事情 試圖從黑洞裡發射一顆火箭逃出來並不是個太好的主意 因為根本不可行 連光都逃不掉
But even though the black hole is dark from the outside, it's not dark on the inside, because all of the light from the galaxy can fall in behind us. And even though, due to a relativistic effect known as time dilation, our clocks would seem to slow down relative to galactic time, it would look as though the evolution of the galaxy had been sped up and shot at us, right before we were crushed to death by the black hole. It would be like a near-death experience where you see the light at the end of the tunnel, but it's a total death experience. (Laughter) And there's no way of telling anybody about the light at the end of the tunnel.
不過雖然黑洞從外面看是漆黑一片 內層卻不是黑的 因為所有銀河系而來的光都在我們身後掉進來 儘管如此,由於時間膨脹的相對關係 我們的時鐘會慢下來 相對於星系時間 看起來會好像是銀河系的演化 加速度進行並且正對著我們而來 然後我們將被黑洞壓碎而死掉 很像是個瀕死經驗 看得見光在隧道末端... 但這經驗其實會讓你非死不可 (笑聲) 你也沒辦法跟任何人說這個經歷 說你看得見光在隧道末端...
Now we've never seen a shadow like this of a black hole, but black holes can be heard, even if they're not seen. Imagine now taking an astrophysically realistic situation -- imagine two black holes that have lived a long life together. Maybe they started as stars and collapsed to two black holes -- each one 10 times the mass of the Sun. So now we're going to crush them down to 60 kilometers across. They can be spinning hundreds of times a second. At the end of their lives, they're going around each other very near the speed of light. So they're crossing thousands of kilometers in a fraction of a second, and as they do so, they not only curve space, but they leave behind in their wake a ringing of space, an actual wave on space-time. Space squeezes and stretches as it emanates out from these black holes banging on the universe. And they travel out into the cosmos at the speed of light.
我們從來沒看見過像這樣的一個黑洞的影子 但是我們聽得見黑洞 雖然就算看不到 想像現在天文物理中有這樣一個現實情境 有兩個黑洞在一起,已經過了很久的時間 也許從它們是恆星的身分開始 然後崩塌為兩個黑洞 每一個都有太陽質量的十倍大 所以現在我們把它們壓縮為60公里大小 它們可能在自轉 以每秒數百次的速度自轉 當它們的恆星生命走到盡頭時 它們以幾乎是光速互繞對方轉 以每秒數千里的速度 快速移動 如此,不只扭曲了空間 它們也在所經之處的後方 留下一個發出響聲的空間 在空時中有一道實際的波 太空壓縮也延伸 這些自黑洞中發出來的波 敲擊著宇宙 它們朝向宇宙 以光速奔去
This computer simulation is due to a relativity group at NASA Goddard. It took almost 30 years for anyone in the world to crack this problem. This was one of the groups. It shows two black holes in orbit around each other, again, with these helpfully painted curves. And if you can see -- it's kind of faint -- but if you can see the red waves emanating out, those are the gravitational waves. They're literally the sounds of space ringing, and they will travel out from these black holes at the speed of light as they ring down and coalesce to one spinning, quiet black hole at the end of the day. If you were standing near enough, your ear would resonate with the squeezing and stretching of space. You would literally hear the sound. Now of course, your head would be squeezed and stretched unhelpfully, so you might have trouble understanding what's going on. But I'd like to play for you the sound that we predict.
這個電腦模擬結果 是由美國航太總署戈達德太空中心的相對論組製作 地球上很多人近30年時間都用來解答出這一道題目 戈達德小組是其中之一 它顯示的情況是兩個黑洞彼此互繞 如前述,藉由自然界事先就畫好的曲線 它們看起來有點暗淡 但你看得見紅色的波向外散射 這就是重力波 使太空發出聲響 它們從黑洞裡以光速跑出來 震盪並聯合 合成為一個波,安靜的黑洞 在喧囂後重歸寧靜 倘若你站的距離夠近 耳中會回響著 空間擠壓和伸展的聲音 你會真的聽得見聲音 當然你的頭也會被壓縮拉長,這是無可避免的 所以其實你也根本搞不清楚現在是什麼情況 不過我想播一段這個給你聽 這是我們預測中的聲音
This is from my group -- a slightly less glamorous computer modeling. Imagine a lighter black hole falling into a very heavy black hole. The sound you're hearing is the light black hole banging on space each time it gets close. If it gets far away, it's a little too quiet. But it comes in like a mallet, and it literally cracks space, wobbling it like a drum. And we can predict what the sound will be. We know that, as it falls in, it gets faster and it gets louder. And eventually, we're going to hear the little guy just fall into the bigger guy. (Thumping) Then it's gone. Now I've never heard it that loud -- it's actually more dramatic. At home it sounds kind of anticlimactic. It's sort of like ding, ding, ding.
從我的團隊而來的數據 我們的電腦計算模型看起來比較沒那麼炫 想像一個質量較輕的小黑洞 掉進了質量很大的黑洞 你聽見的聲音 是小黑洞敲擊著太空 每一次的聲音都代表更加靠近 越遠會越安靜 但它像是個木槌 而且實際上它真的是在敲打著空間 像鼓一樣的震動 我們可以預估這個聲音像是什麼 我們知道,因為它掉進來 它愈來愈快也愈來愈大聲 最後 我們聽見小黑洞掉進大黑洞裡 (砰砰重擊聲) 然後它消失 我從來沒聽過這麼大聲的版本 -- 這樣更富戲劇效果 在家裡頭聽它比較像是漸漸沒力 聽起來只有叮,叮,叮而已
This is another sound from my group. No, I'm not showing you any images, because black holes don't leave behind helpful trails of ink, and space is not painted, showing you the curves. But if you were to float by in space on a space holiday and you heard this, you want to get moving. (Laughter) Want to get away from the sound. Both black holes are moving. Both black holes are getting closer together. In this case, they're both wobbling quite a lot. And then they're going to merge. (Thumping) Now it's gone. Now that chirp is very characteristic of black holes merging -- that it chirps up at the end. Now that's our prediction for what we'll see.
這裡還有另一個我的團隊所模擬的聲音 我就不播放影像的部份了 因為黑洞並不留下 有跡可循的脈絡 太空中也沒有明顯的 告訴你哪裡有一道曲線 但如果有一天你得到太空之旅的門票,要在太空中漂浮 聽到這個聲音的時候 你就知道該拔腿逃走了 (笑聲) 快點遠離這種聲音 因為兩個黑洞都在移動 兩個都在朝向對方靠近移動中 這種情況下,它們兩個都震的很厲害 然後他們將要合併 (砰砰重擊聲) 它沒了 最後那個「啾」的一聲是黑洞合併非常具代表性的特色 在最後面的那個「啾」聲 這是我們基於我們將會看見景象 所做成的假設預估
Luckily we're at this safe distance in Long Beach, California. And surely, somewhere in the universe two black holes have merged. And surely, the space around us is ringing after traveling maybe a million light years, or a million years, at the speed of light to get to us. But the sound is too quiet for any of us to ever hear. There are very industrious experiments being built on Earth -- one called LIGO -- which will detect deviations in the squeezing and stretching of space at less than the fraction of a nucleus of an atom over four kilometers. It's a remarkably ambitious experiment, and it's going to be at advanced sensitivity within the next few years -- to pick this up. There's also a mission proposed for space, which hopefully will launch in the next ten years, called LISA. And LISA will be able to see super-massive black holes -- black holes millions or billions of times the mass of the Sun.
很幸運我們是在加州長島,很安全,距離黑洞夠遠 但我相信在宇宙中必然有某處 兩個黑洞是已經合併 因此,實實在在的講,週遭的太空 正在發出聲響 在旅遊了一百萬光年或一百萬年以後 正以光速朝向我們而來 但它的聲音太安靜我們沒人聽得到 現在地球上有很多相關的實驗正在進行 一個叫做LIGO -- 它可監測偏向 因空間壓縮和拉長引起的偏向 在四公里範圍內還不到 一顆核子或原子大小的偏向 這是一個極具野心的實驗 需要非常高的靈敏度 在幾年內可以完成一些實驗結果 還有一個和空間相關的實驗 可望在未來10年內啟動 稱為LISA計畫 LISA能看見超大質量黑洞 這種黑洞是太陽質量 的百萬倍甚至數十億倍
In this Hubble image, we see two galaxies. They look like they're frozen in some embrace. And each one probably harbors a super-massive black hole at its core. But they're not frozen; they're actually merging. These two black holes are colliding, and they will merge over a billion-year time scale. It's beyond our human perception to pick up a song of that duration. But LISA could see the final stages of two super-massive black holes earlier in the universe's history, the last 15 minutes before they fall together. And it's not just black holes, but it's also any big disturbance in the universe -- and the biggest of them all is the Big Bang. When that expression was coined, it was derisive -- like, "Oh, who would believe in a Big Bang?" But now it actually might be more technically accurate because it might bang. It might make a sound.
在這張哈伯太空望遠鏡的圖像中,我們看見兩個星系 看起來好像凝結不動 兩個可能都各自擁有 一個超大質量黑洞在其核心 但其實它們並非凝結不動的 它們正在合併中 兩個黑洞正在走向相撞的不歸路 它們將在一段長達數十億年的時程當中完成合併 這遠超乎人類所能想像 誰能掌握住一個長度如此的歌曲呢 但是LISA可以看到最終章 兩個超大量黑洞命運的最終章 從宇宙較早的歷史中去找資料 找到它們最後鄉重前的最後15分鐘 不僅只是黑洞有聲音而已 宇宙中任何大擾動也都會有聲音 其中最大的就是大霹靂 當這個形容詞首度公開時,引來一陣潮笑 人們說,「大霹靂,怎麼可能真有霹哩啪啦這種事?」 不過現在看來「霹靂」一詞技術上還滿正確的 因為它真的會霹靂 它可能真的有聲響
This animation from my friends at Proton Studios shows looking at the Big Bang from the outside. We don't ever want to do that actually. We want to be inside the universe because there's no such thing as standing outside the universe. So imagine you're inside the Big Bang. It's everywhere, it's all around you, and the space is wobbling chaotically. Fourteen billion years pass and this song is still ringing all around us. Galaxies form, and generations of stars form in those galaxies, and around one star, at least one star, is a habitable planet. And here we are frantically building these experiments, doing these calculations, writing these computer codes.
這個動畫是我在Proton Studios的友人所製作 顯示從大霹靂外面看大霹靂 那並不是我們想做的部份;我們想在宇宙以內而非以外 因為根本沒有所謂的站在宇宙以外的這種事 現在假設你身處在大霹靂裡面 大霹靂四圍環繞你 空間混亂的抖動 經過140億年 而這首歌仍在我們四圍餘音繞樑 星系形成 恆星在星系中形成,並且世代交替 而在一顆恆星旁 至少有一顆這樣的恆星旁邊 有一顆可適合人類居住的行星 所以我們在地球上進行這些瘋狂的實驗 進行這些運算,編寫這些電腦程式
Imagine a billion years ago, two black holes collided. That song has been ringing through space for all that time. We weren't even here. It gets closer and closer -- 40,000 years ago, we're still doing cave paintings. It's like hurry, build your instruments. It's getting closer and closer, and in 20 ... whatever year it will be when our detectors are finally at advanced sensitivity -- we'll build them, we'll turn on the machines and, bang, we'll catch it -- the first song from space. If it was the Big Bang we were going to pick up, it would sound like this. (Static) It's a terrible sound. It's literally the definition of noise. It's white noise; it's such a chaotic ringing. But it's around us everywhere, presumably, if it hasn't been wiped out by some other process in the universe. And if we pick it up, it will be music to our ears because it will be the quiet echo of that moment of our creation, of our observable universe.
想像10億年前的事 想像兩顆黑洞相撞 這首歌穿越時空而來 長長的時空 它來自我們不存在之處 越靠越近 4萬年前我們還在山洞裡畫壁畫 某處傳來一種催促聲說,快點建造你的儀器! 時空之歌愈來愈近,走進了21世紀 無論是哪一年 當我們的探測器終於夠精確靈敏 這些儀器會被建造起來,我們總會讓它開工運作 然後,我們會收聽到這首來自太初的大霹靂之歌 如果我們真要收聽大霹靂之歌 這就會是它聽起來像什麼樣子 (靜電聲) 這聲音挺恐怖 這根本是噪音 這是白色噪音,聽起來失序混亂的聲音 但它就在我們四周,假設 如果到目前為止它都還沒被消音 假設宇宙未曾發生任何變化過程而使它消失 然後我們接收到這首歌,耳中聽起來像歌 因為它會像是安靜的迴音 來自創世的那一分那一秒 在我們能觀測的這個宇宙中
So within the next few years, we'll be able to turn up the soundtrack a little bit, render the universe in audio. But if we detect those earliest moments, it'll bring us that much closer to an understanding of the Big Bang, which brings us that much closer to asking some of the hardest, most elusive, questions. If we run the movie of our universe backwards, we know that there was a Big Bang in our past, and we might even hear the cacophonous sound of it, but was our Big Bang the only Big Bang? I mean we have to ask, has it happened before? Will it happen again? I mean, in the spirit of rising to TED's challenge to reignite wonder, we can ask questions, at least for this last minute, that honestly might evade us forever.
接下來的幾年 可能的話,我們可把音量調大 把宇宙轉譯為聲音 但如果接受到起初的聲音 它將會帶我們 更了解大霹靂 使我們更能 問一些「大哉問」: 如果宇宙電影可以倒著播 我們知道過去曾有一個大霹靂 我們甚至聽得見這個不和諧的聲音 究竟這個大霹靂是唯一的大霹靂嗎? 我們必須要問,還是它以前也曾發生過? 還會再發生嗎? 依循TED的精神宗旨及挑戰 我們要將「好奇心重新點燃」 所以要在最後不多的時間裡問 我們永遠都在逃避
But we have to ask: Is it possible that our universe is just a plume off of some greater history? Or, is it possible that we're just a branch off of a multiverse -- each branch with its own Big Bang in its past -- maybe some of them with black holes playing drums, maybe some without -- maybe some with sentient life, and maybe some without -- not in our past, not in our future, but somehow fundamentally connected to us? So we have to wonder, if there is a multiverse, in some other patch of that multiverse, are there creatures? Here's my multiverse creatures. Are there other creatures in the multiverse, wondering about us and wondering about their own origins? And if they are, I can imagine them as we are, calculating, writing computer code, building instruments, trying to detect that faintest sound of their origins and wondering who else is out there.
但又不得不問的問題 有無可能我們的宇宙,在時間上 只不過是一棵歷史大樹上小小的枝枒? 又或者,我們該不會是多元宇宙的一小部份而已 -- 而每個小部份都來自一個大霹靂的過去 -- 也許其中有些有黑洞在敲著鼓聲 有些沒有 -- 有些是具有敏銳感覺,有些沒有 不在過去,不在未來 但奇妙的卻和我們在基本上相扣相連? 所以我們必須設想,如果有多元宇宙 在那個宇宙的某一方塊 會有生物嗎? 來自平行宇宙的生物就在這邊... 在多元宇宙裡會有其他生物 也正在揣測關於我們的一切 或許也正在揣測他們自己的起源? 若果真如此 想像它們是和我們一樣 也計算,也用電腦寫計算程式 也在建造尖端儀器 試圖偵測到微弱不明的聲音 來自不同起源的聲音 也在猜想著,那邊有人嗎
Thank you. Thank you.
謝謝各位.謝謝.
(Applause)
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