If you take 10,000 people at random, 9,999 have something in common: their interests in business lie on or near the Earth's surface. The odd one out is an astronomer, and I am one of that strange breed. (Laughter) My talk will be in two parts. I'll talk first as an astronomer, and then as a worried member of the human race. But let's start off by remembering that Darwin showed how we're the outcome of four billion years of evolution. And what we try to do in astronomy and cosmology is to go back before Darwin's simple beginning, to set our Earth in a cosmic context.
Ako nasumično uzmete 10.000 ljudi, 9.999 imaju jednu zajedničku stvar: njihovi poslovni interesi nalaze se na ili blizu površine Zemlje. Crna ovca je astronom, a ja sam pripadnik te čudne sorte. (Smeh) Moj govor sastoji se iz dva dela. Prvo ću govoriti kao astronom, a zatim kao zabrinuti član ljudske rase. Ali počnimo tako što ćemo se setiti da je Darvin pokazao kako smo mi rezultat četiri milijarde godina evolucije. Ono što pokušavamo da uradimo astronomijom i kosmologijom je da se vratimo u vreme pre Darvinovog početka, i smestimo Zemlju u kosmički kontekst.
And let me just run through a few slides. This was the impact that happened last week on a comet. If they'd sent a nuke, it would have been rather more spectacular than what actually happened last Monday. So that's another project for NASA. That's Mars from the European Mars Express, and at New Year. This artist's impression turned into reality when a parachute landed on Titan, Saturn's giant moon. It landed on the surface. This is pictures taken on the way down. That looks like a coastline. It is indeed, but the ocean is liquid methane -- the temperature minus 170 degrees centigrade. If we go beyond our solar system, we've learned that the stars aren't twinkly points of light. Each one is like a sun with a retinue of planets orbiting around it. And we can see places where stars are forming, like the Eagle Nebula. We see stars dying. In six billion years, the sun will look like that. And some stars die spectacularly in a supernova explosion, leaving remnants like that.
Pogledajte ovih par slajdova. Ovo je udar koji se desio prošle nedelje na jednoj kometi. Da su poslali nuklearku, bilo bi poprilično spektakularnije od onoga što se zaista desilo prošlog ponedeljka. Još jedan projekat za NASA. To je Mars sa evropskog Mars Ekspresa. Mašta ovog umetnika se ostvarila na Novu godinu kada je padobran sleteo na Titan, Saturnov gigantski mesec. Sleteo je na površinu. Ovo su slike puta na dole. Ovo izgleda kao obala. Zaista jeste, ali je okean tečni metan - temperatura je minus 170 stepeni Celzijusa. Ako izađemo izvan sunčevog sistema, shvatamo da zvezde nisu svetlucave tačkice svetlosti. Svaka je jedno sunce sa čitavom pratnjom planeta koje oko nje orbitiraju. Možemo videti mesta gde zvezde nastaju, kao u maglini Orao. Vidimo zvezde kako umiru. Za šest milijardi godina Sunce će izgledati ovako. Neke zvezde umiru spektakularno u eksploziji supernove, stvarajući ovakve ostatke.
On a still bigger scale, we see entire galaxies of stars. We see entire ecosystems where gas is being recycled. And to the cosmologist, these galaxies are just the atoms, as it were, of the large-scale universe. This picture shows a patch of sky so small that it would take about 100 patches like it to cover the full moon in the sky. Through a small telescope, this would look quite blank, but you see here hundreds of little, faint smudges. Each is a galaxy, fully like ours or Andromeda, which looks so small and faint because its light has taken 10 billion light-years to get to us. The stars in those galaxies probably don't have planets around them. There's scant chance of life there -- that's because there's been no time for the nuclear fusion in stars to make silicon and carbon and iron, the building blocks of planets and of life. We believe that all of this emerged from a Big Bang -- a hot, dense state. So how did that amorphous Big Bang turn into our complex cosmos?
Na još većoj skali vidimo čitave galaksije zvezda. Vidimo čitave ekosisteme u kojima se reciklira gas. A za kosmologa, ove galaksije su samo atomi, takoreći, u univerzumu velikih razmera. Na ovoj slici je parče neba tako malo da bi bilo potrebno oko 100 takvih parčića da se prekrije pun mesec na nebu. Kroz mali teleskop, ovo bi bilo sasvim prazno, ali se vide stotine malih nejasnih mrlja. Svaka je galaksija, potpuno nalik našoj ili Andromedi, a izgleda tako mala i nejasna jer je njena svetlost prešla 10 milijardi svetlosnih godina da bi stigla do nas. Zvezde tih galaksija verovatno nemaju planete. Tamo su slabe šanse postojanja života, jer nije bilo vremena da nuklearna fuzija u zvezdama proizvede silicijum i ugljenik i gvožđe, osnovne sastojke planeta i života. Verujemo da je sve ovo nastalo u Velikom prasku - toplom, gustom stanju. Pa kako je taj bezobličan Veliki prasak postao naš svemir?
I'm going to show you a movie simulation 16 powers of 10 faster than real time, which shows a patch of the universe where the expansions have subtracted out. But you see, as time goes on in gigayears at the bottom, you will see structures evolve as gravity feeds on small, dense irregularities, and structures develop. And we'll end up after 13 billion years with something looking rather like our own universe. And we compare simulated universes like that -- I'll show you a better simulation at the end of my talk -- with what we actually see in the sky. Well, we can trace things back to the earlier stages of the Big Bang, but we still don't know what banged and why it banged.
Pokazaću vam simulaciju 10 na 16-i puta ubrzano realno vreme, koji prikazuje parče univerzuma gde su se ekspanzije anulirale. Ali vidite, kako vreme protiče u giga-godinama na dnu, strukture evoluiraju usled gravitacije koja se hrani malim, gustim nepravilnostima, i strukture se razvijaju. Nakon 13 milijardi godina dobićemo nešto što veoma liči na naš univerzum. Tako upoređujemo simulirane univerzume - pokazaću vam bolju simulaciju na kraju - sa onime što zapravo vidimo na nebu. Možemo da pratimo stvari unazad do ranijih faza Velikog praska, ali i dalje ne znamo šta je puklo i zašto je puklo.
That's a challenge for 21st-century science. If my research group had a logo, it would be this picture here: an ouroboros, where you see the micro-world on the left -- the world of the quantum -- and on the right the large-scale universe of planets, stars and galaxies. We know our universes are united though -- links between left and right. The everyday world is determined by atoms, how they stick together to make molecules. Stars are fueled by how the nuclei in those atoms react together. And, as we've learned in the last few years, galaxies are held together by the gravitational pull of so-called dark matter: particles in huge swarms, far smaller even than atomic nuclei. But we'd like to know the synthesis symbolized at the very top. The micro-world of the quantum is understood. On the right hand side, gravity holds sway. Einstein explained that. But the unfinished business for 21st-century science is to link together cosmos and micro-world with a unified theory -- symbolized, as it were, gastronomically at the top of that picture. (Laughter) And until we have that synthesis, we won't be able to understand the very beginning of our universe because when our universe was itself the size of an atom, quantum effects could shake everything.
To je izazov za nauku 21. veka. Da moja istraživačka grupa ima logo, bio bi ova slika: uroboros, sa mikro-svetom sa leve - kvantni svet - i desno svet velikih razmera sa planetama, zvezdama i galaksijama. Ipak znamo da su naši univerzumi ujedinjeni, veze između levog i desnog. Svakodnevni svet određen je atomima, načinom na koji se sakupljaju da stvore molekule. Zvezde se napajaju međusobnom reakcijom jezgara ovih atoma. Kako saznajemo, galaksije se drže na okupu gravitacionom silom takozvane tamne materije: ogromni rojevi čestica, mnogo manji čak i od atomskih jezgara. Želimo znati sintezu koju simboliše vrh. Kvantni mikro-svet je shvaćen. Sa desne strane, prevlast ima gravitacija. Ajnštajn je to objasnio. Ali posao koji nauka 21. veka nije završila je povezivanje kosmosa i mikro-sveta teorijom ujedinjenja - simbolizovanom, takoreći, gastronomski na vrhu slike. (Smeh) Dok ne pronađemo tu sintezu, nećemo moći da razumemo početak univerzuma jer kada je naš univerzum bio veličine jednog atoma, kvantni efekti bi mogli sve poljuljati.
And so we need a theory that unifies the very large and the very small, which we don't yet have. One idea, incidentally -- and I had this hazard sign to say I'm going to speculate from now on -- is that our Big Bang was not the only one. One idea is that our three-dimensional universe may be embedded in a high-dimensional space, just as you can imagine on these sheets of paper. You can imagine ants on one of them thinking it's a two-dimensional universe, not being aware of another population of ants on the other. So there could be another universe just a millimeter away from ours, but we're not aware of it because that millimeter is measured in some fourth spatial dimension, and we're imprisoned in our three. And so we believe that there may be a lot more to physical reality than what we've normally called our universe -- the aftermath of our Big Bang. And here's another picture. Bottom right depicts our universe, which on the horizon is not beyond that, but even that is just one bubble, as it were, in some vaster reality. Many people suspect that just as we've gone from believing in one solar system to zillions of solar systems, one galaxy to many galaxies, we have to go to many Big Bangs from one Big Bang, perhaps these many Big Bangs displaying an immense variety of properties.
Tako da nam treba teorija koja objedinjuje veoma veliko i veoma malo, koju još nemamo. Jedna ideja, slučajno - imam ovaj znak upozorenja da ću od sada nagađati - je da naš Veliki prasak nije jedini. Jedna ideja je da je ovaj trodimenzionalni univerzum usađen u višedimenzionalni prostor. Kao što možete zamisliti sa ova tri papira. Zamislite mrave na jednom od njih koji misle da su u dvodimenzionalnom svetu, nesvesni još jedne grupe mrava na drugom. Znači, još jedan univerzum mogao bi da postoji na samo milimetar od našeg, ali toga nismo svesni jer se taj milimetar meri u nekoj četvrtoj prostornoj dimenziji, a mi smo zarobljeni u svoje tri. Tako da verujemo da u okviru fizičke realnosti postoji dosta više od onoga što smo inače nazvali našim univerzumom - posledica našeg Velikog praska. Evo još jedne slike. Donja desna je naš univerzum, koji je samo tačka na ovom horizontu, ali čak i sve ovo je samo jedan mehur, takoreći, neke veće realnosti. Mnogi misle da onako kako smo prešli sa verovanja u jedan sunčev sistem na milijarde sunčevih sistema, u jednu galaksiju na mnoštvo galaksija, moramo preći i sa jednog Velikog praska na mnoge Velike praskove, koji će nam možda prikazati ogromnu raznovrsnost osobina.
Well, let's go back to this picture. There's one challenge symbolized at the top, but there's another challenge to science symbolized at the bottom. You want to not only synthesize the very large and the very small, but we want to understand the very complex. And the most complex things are ourselves, midway between atoms and stars. We depend on stars to make the atoms we're made of. We depend on chemistry to determine our complex structure. We clearly have to be large, compared to atoms, to have layer upon layer of complex structure. We clearly have to be small, compared to stars and planets -- otherwise we'd be crushed by gravity. And in fact, we are midway. It would take as many human bodies to make up the sun as there are atoms in each of us. The geometric mean of the mass of a proton and the mass of the sun is 50 kilograms, within a factor of two of the mass of each person here. Well, most of you anyway. The science of complexity is probably the greatest challenge of all, greater than that of the very small on the left and the very large on the right. And it's this science, which is not only enlightening our understanding of the biological world, but also transforming our world faster than ever. And more than that, it's engendering new kinds of change.
Vratimo se ovoj slici. Na vrhu je simbol jednog izazova, ali postoji još jedan izazov nauci čiji je simbol na dnu. Ne želimo samo da spojimo jako veliko i jako malo, želimo i da razumemo ono jako složeno. A najsloženije stvari smo mi, Na pola puta između zvezda i atoma. Zavisimo od zvezda jer stvaraju atome od kojih smo sastavljeni. Oslanjamo se na hemiju da odredimo svoju složenu strukturu. Jasno je da moramo biti veliki u poređenju sa atomima, da bi imali slojeve i slojeve složene strukture. Jasno je da moramo biti mali u odnosu na zvezde i planete - inače bi nas gravitacija smrskala. Zapravo, mi smo na pola puta. Bilo bi potrebno onoliko ljudi za jedno sunce koliko atoma ima u svakom od nas. Geometrijska sredina mase protona i mase sunca je 50 kilograma, a u opseg faktora dva ovog broja upadamo svi. Pa, barem većina nas. Nauka o složenosti je verovatno najveći izazov do sad, veći od jako malog sa leve i jako velikog sa desne strane. Ovo je nauka, koja ne samo što prosvetljuje naše razumevanje biološkog sveta, već i preobražava naš svet brže nego ikad. Štaviše, izaziva nove vrste promena.
And I now move on to the second part of my talk, and the book "Our Final Century" was mentioned. If I was not a self-effacing Brit, I would mention the book myself, and I would add that it's available in paperback.
A sada nastavljam na drugi deo govora, i knjiga "Naš poslednji vek" bila je spomenuta. Da nisam ovako skroman Britanac, i sam bih pomenuo knjigu, i dodao bih da se štampa i sa mekim koricama.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
And in America it was called "Our Final Hour" because Americans like instant gratification.
U Americi je nazvana "Naš poslednji sat" jer Amerikanci vole trenutno zadovoljstvo.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
But my theme is that in this century, not only has science changed the world faster than ever, but in new and different ways. Targeted drugs, genetic modification, artificial intelligence, perhaps even implants into our brains, may change human beings themselves. And human beings, their physique and character, has not changed for thousands of years. It may change this century. It's new in our history. And the human impact on the global environment -- greenhouse warming, mass extinctions and so forth -- is unprecedented, too. And so, this makes this coming century a challenge. Bio- and cybertechnologies are environmentally benign in that they offer marvelous prospects, while, nonetheless, reducing pressure on energy and resources. But they will have a dark side. In our interconnected world, novel technology could empower just one fanatic, or some weirdo with a mindset of those who now design computer viruses, to trigger some kind on disaster. Indeed, catastrophe could arise simply from technical misadventure -- error rather than terror. And even a tiny probability of catastrophe is unacceptable when the downside could be of global consequence.
Moja poenta je da u ovom veku, nije samo nauka izmenila svet brže nego ikad, već i na nove i drugačije načine. Ciljano lečenje, genetska modifikacija, veštačka inteligencija, možda i implanti u mozgovima, mogu promeniti ljudska bića kao takva. A ljudska bića, njihov izgled i karakter, nije se promenio hiljadama godina. Može se promeniti u ovom veku. Ovo je novost za našu istoriju. A i ljudski uticaj na globalnu okolinu - efekat staklene bašte, masivna izumiranja i tako dalje - nikad nije bio veći. Zbog ovoga je predstojeći vek izazov. Bio i sajber tehnologije su benigne za okolinu, samim tim što nude fantastične izglede za budućnost, dok, u isto vreme, smanjuju pritisak na energiju i resurse. Ali imaće i tamnu stranu. U ovom povezanom svetu, nove tehnologije mogu osposobiti samo jednog fanatika, ili nekog čudaka sa mentalitetom onih koji danas prave kompjuterske viruse, koji će izazvati katastrofu. Zaista, katastrofa može proizići iz proste tehničke greške - neopreznost, a ne opasnost. Čak ni mala verovatnoća katastrofe nije prihvatljiva kada bi posledice bile globalne.
In fact, some years ago, Bill Joy wrote an article expressing tremendous concern about robots taking us over, etc. I don't go along with all that, but it's interesting that he had a simple solution. It was what he called "fine-grained relinquishment." He wanted to give up the dangerous kind of science and keep the good bits. Now, that's absurdly naive for two reasons. First, any scientific discovery has benign consequences as well as dangerous ones. And also, when a scientist makes a discovery, he or she normally has no clue what the applications are going to be. And so what this means is that we have to accept the risks if we are going to enjoy the benefits of science. We have to accept that there will be hazards. And I think we have to go back to what happened in the post-War era, post-World War II, when the nuclear scientists who'd been involved in making the atomic bomb, in many cases were concerned that they should do all they could to alert the world to the dangers.
Zapravo, pre par godina, Bil Džoj je napisao članak u kom izražava ogromnu brigu da će nas roboti nadvladati, itd. Ne slažem se sa time, ali je interesantno njegovo jednostavno rešenje. Zvao ga je "sitno odricanje". Hteo je da se odrekne opasne nauke i da zadrži dobre delove. To je potpuno naivno iz dva razloga. Kao prvo, svako naučno otkriće ima bezopasne posledice isto kao i opasne. Takođe, kada naučnik nešto otkrije, uglavnom nema pojma koju će to primenu imati. To znači da moramo da prihvatimo rizike ako ćemo da uživamo u povlasticama nauke. Moramo prihvatiti opasnosti. Mislim da se moramo vratiti u posleratno doba, posle Drugog svetskog rata, kada su nuklearni naučnici koji su radili na atomskoj bombi, uglavnom bili zabrinuti kako će upozoriti svet na ove opasnosti.
And they were inspired not by the young Einstein, who did the great work in relativity, but by the old Einstein, the icon of poster and t-shirt, who failed in his scientific efforts to unify the physical laws. He was premature. But he was a moral compass -- an inspiration to scientists who were concerned with arms control. And perhaps the greatest living person is someone I'm privileged to know, Joe Rothblatt. Equally untidy office there, as you can see. He's 96 years old, and he founded the Pugwash movement. He persuaded Einstein, as his last act, to sign the famous memorandum of Bertrand Russell. And he sets an example of the concerned scientist. And I think to harness science optimally, to choose which doors to open and which to leave closed, we need latter-day counterparts of people like Joseph Rothblatt.
A nije ih inspirisao mladi Ajnštajn, koji je radio odličan posao s relativitetom, već stari Ajnštajn, legenda na posterima i majicama, koji u svojim naučnim naporima nije uspeo da ujedini fizičke zakone. Pojavio se prevremeno. Ali bio je moralni kompas - inspiracija naučnicima koji su se bavili kontrolom oružja. A možda najveći čovek je neko koga imam privilegiju da poznajem, Džo Rotblat. Podjednako neuredna kancelarija, kako vidite. Ima 96 godina i osnovao je pokret Pagvoš. Poslednja stvar koju je uradio bila je da ubedi Ajnštajna da potpiše čuveni memorandum Bertranda Rasela. On postavlja primer zabrinutog naučnika. Mislim, da bi se nauka optimalno iskoristila, da bi se odlučilo koja vrata otvoriti a koja ostaviti zatvorena, danas su nam potrebni ljudi kao Džozef Rotblat.
We need not just campaigning physicists, but we need biologists, computer experts and environmentalists as well. And I think academics and independent entrepreneurs have a special obligation because they have more freedom than those in government service, or company employees subject to commercial pressure. I wrote my book, "Our Final Century," as a scientist, just a general scientist. But there's one respect, I think, in which being a cosmologist offered a special perspective, and that's that it offers an awareness of the immense future. The stupendous time spans of the evolutionary past are now part of common culture -- outside the American Bible Belt, anyway -- (Laughter) but most people, even those who are familiar with evolution, aren't mindful that even more time lies ahead.
Ne trebaju nam samo fizičari koji vode kampanje, trebaju nam biolozi, kompjuterski stručnjaci, i oni koji se bave zaštitom sredine. Mislim da akademici i preduzetnici imaju posebnu obavezu jer imaju više slobode od onih pod državnom vlašću, ili zaposlenih koji su pod pritiskom trgovine. Napisao sam knjigu "Naš poslednji vek" kao naučnik, samo opšti naučnik. Ali s jedne strane, mislim, da mi je kosmlogija pružila posebnu perspektivu, koja omogućava svest o neizmernoj budućnosti. Ogromni vremenski periodi evolutivne prošlosti danas su deo kulture - izvan američkog Biblijskog pojasa, u svakom slučaju - (Smeh) ali većina ljudi, čak i oni upoznati sa evolucijom, nemaju na umu da još više vremena leži ispred nas.
The sun has been shining for four and a half billion years, but it'll be another six billion years before its fuel runs out. On that schematic picture, a sort of time-lapse picture, we're halfway. And it'll be another six billion before that happens, and any remaining life on Earth is vaporized. There's an unthinking tendency to imagine that humans will be there, experiencing the sun's demise, but any life and intelligence that exists then will be as different from us as we are from bacteria. The unfolding of intelligence and complexity still has immensely far to go, here on Earth and probably far beyond. So we are still at the beginning of the emergence of complexity in our Earth and beyond. If you represent the Earth's lifetime by a single year, say from January when it was made to December, the 21st-century would be a quarter of a second in June -- a tiny fraction of the year. But even in this concertinaed cosmic perspective, our century is very, very special, the first when humans can change themselves and their home planet.
Sunce sija već četiri i po milijarde godina, ali će sijati još šest milijardi pre nego što se ugasi. Na ovoj šematskoj slici, vrsti vremenske slike, mi smo na pola puta. I biće još šest milijardi pre nego što se to desi, i sav život na Zemlji nestane. Postoji nepromišljena sklonost ka zamisli da će ljudi biti tamo, doživljavajući propast sunca, ali život i inteligencija koji budu postojali tada biće drugačiji od nas isto koliko smo mi drugačiji od bakterija. Razvoj inteligencije i kompleksnosti ima još ogroman put da pređe, na Zemlji i verovatno negde daleko. Tako da smo i dalje na početku pojave složenosti na Zemlji i izvan nje. Kada bi predstavio život zemlje jednom godinom, gde je januar njen nastanak a decembar kraj, 21. vek bio bi četvrtina sekunde u junu - maleni komad godine. Čak i iz ove sažete kosmičke perspektive, naš vek je jako, jako poseban, vreme kada ljudi menjaju sebe i svoju planetu.
As I should have shown this earlier, it will not be humans who witness the end point of the sun; it will be creatures as different from us as we are from bacteria. When Einstein died in 1955, one striking tribute to his global status was this cartoon by Herblock in the Washington Post. The plaque reads, "Albert Einstein lived here." And I'd like to end with a vignette, as it were, inspired by this image. We've been familiar for 40 years with this image: the fragile beauty of land, ocean and clouds, contrasted with the sterile moonscape on which the astronauts left their footprints. But let's suppose some aliens had been watching our pale blue dot in the cosmos from afar, not just for 40 years, but for the entire 4.5 billion-year history of our Earth. What would they have seen? Over nearly all that immense time, Earth's appearance would have changed very gradually. The only abrupt worldwide change would have been major asteroid impacts or volcanic super-eruptions. Apart from those brief traumas, nothing happens suddenly.
Kako sam ovo ranije trebao prikazati, neće ljudi biti ti koji će gledati poslednje trenutke sunca; biće to stvorenja drugačija od nas koliko mi od bakterija. Kada je Ajnštajn umro 1955, jedno upečatljivo priznanje njegovom svetskom statusu bio je crtež u Vašington Postu koji je crtao Herblok. Na pločici piše, "Albert Ajnštajn je živeo ovde." Želim da završim sa dodatkom, takoreći, inspirisanim ovom slikom. Već 40 godina nam je poznata ova slika: nežna lepota zemlje, mora i oblaka, u kontrastu sa neplodnom površinom meseca na kojoj su astronauti ostavili otiske. Pretpostavimo da su neki vanzemaljci posmatrali našu bledu plavu tačku iz dalekog kosmosa, i ne samo 40 godina, već celih 4,5 milijardi godina zemaljske istorije. Šta bi videli? Za sve to ogromno vreme, Zemljin izgled bi se menjao jako postepeno. Jedine nagle svetske promene bile bi udari velikih asteroida ili ogromne vulkanske erupcije. Osim ovih kratkih povreda, ništa se ne dešava iznenada.
The continental landmasses drifted around. Ice cover waxed and waned. Successions of new species emerged, evolved and became extinct. But in just a tiny sliver of the Earth's history, the last one-millionth part, a few thousand years, the patterns of vegetation altered much faster than before. This signaled the start of agriculture. Change has accelerated as human populations rose. Then other things happened even more abruptly. Within just 50 years -- that's one hundredth of one millionth of the Earth's age -- the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere started to rise, and ominously fast.
Kontinentalne ploče su plovile unaokolo. Ledeni pokrivač je rastao i smanjivao se. Generacije novih vrsta su se pojavljivale, evoluirale i izumirale. Ali samo u jednom majušnom odsečku zemaljske istorije, poslednjem milionitom delu, par hiljada godina, obrasci vegetacije promenili su se brže nego ranije. Ovo je označilo početak poljoprivrede. Promena se ubrzavala kako su ljudske populacije rasle. Onda su se druge stvari desile još iznenadnije. Za samo 50 godina - to je stotina milionitog dela Zemljine starosti - količina ugljen-dioksida u atmosferi počela je da raste, zastrašujućom brzinom.
The planet became an intense emitter of radio waves -- the total output from all TV and cell phones and radar transmissions. And something else happened. Metallic objects -- albeit very small ones, a few tons at most -- escaped into orbit around the Earth. Some journeyed to the moons and planets. A race of advanced extraterrestrials watching our solar system from afar could confidently predict Earth's final doom in another six billion years. But could they have predicted this unprecedented spike less than halfway through the Earth's life? These human-induced alterations occupying overall less than a millionth of the elapsed lifetime and seemingly occurring with runaway speed? If they continued their vigil, what might these hypothetical aliens witness in the next hundred years? Will some spasm foreclose Earth's future? Or will the biosphere stabilize? Or will some of the metallic objects launched from the Earth spawn new oases, a post-human life elsewhere?
Planeta je postala ozbiljan odašiljač radio talasa - sve od televizora preko mobilnih telefona do radara. Još nešto se desilo. Metalni predmeti, iako mali, najviše nekoliko tona - pojavili su se u Zemljinoj orbiti. Neki su putovali do meseca i planeta. Rasa naprednih vanzemaljaca koji gledaju sunčev sistem izdaleka sigurno bi mogli predvideti Zemljino uništenje za 6 milijardi godina. A da li bi mogli predvideti ovaj jedinstveni porast na manje od polovine Zemljinog života? Ove promene izazvane čovekom koje zauzimaju manje od milionitog dela vremena koje je do sad prošlo i naizgled se dešavaju neverovatnom brzinom? Kada bi nastavili posmatranje, šta bi ovi hipotetički vanzemaljci doživeli u sledećih sto godina? Da li će neki grč uništiti Zemljinu budućnost? Ili će se biosfera stabilizovati? Ili će neki od metalnih predmeta lansiranih sa Zemlje stvoriti nove oaze, post-ljudski život negde daleko?
The science done by the young Einstein will continue as long as our civilization, but for civilization to survive, we'll need the wisdom of the old Einstein -- humane, global and farseeing. And whatever happens in this uniquely crucial century will resonate into the remote future and perhaps far beyond the Earth, far beyond the Earth as depicted here. Thank you very much.
Nauka kojom se bavio mladi Ajnštajn nastaviće da živi u našoj civilizaciji, ali da bi civilizacija preživela trebaće nam mudrost starog Ajnštajna - humanog, sveobuhvatnog i dalekovidog. Šta god da se desi u ovom jedinstveno presudnom veku, odjekivaće u budućnost, možda i van Zemlje, daleko van Zemlje kao što je ovde prikazano. Hvala vam puno.
(Applause)
(Aplauz)