Universe
Universe
Where do we come from? How did the universe begin?Why is the universe the way it is? How will it end?
All my life, I have been fascinated by the big questions that face us, and have tried to find scientific answers to them.If, like me, you have looked at the stars, and tried to make sense of what you see, you too have started to wonder what makes the universe exist. The questions are clear, and deceptively simple. But the answers have always seemed well beyond our reach. Until nOW.
The ideas which had grown over two thousand years of observation have had to be radically re-
vised. In less than a hundred years, we have found a new way to think of ourselves. From sitting at the center of the universe, we now find ourselves orbiting an average-sized sun, which is just one of millions of stars in our own Milky Way galaxy. And our galaxy itself is just one of billions of galaxies, in a universe that is infinite and expanding. But this is far from the end of a long history of inquiry.Huge questions remain to be answered, before we can hope to have a complete picture of the universe we live in.
I want you to share my excitement at the discoveries,past and present, which have revolutionized the way we think. From the Big Bang to black holes, from dark matter to a possible Big Crunch, our image of the universe today is full of strange sounding ideas, and remarkable truths. The story of how we arrived at this picture is the story of learning to understand what we see.
宇宙
我們來自何方?宇宙如何開始?為什么宇宙是這樣的?它將如何結(jié)束?
我一生都迷戀于我們所面臨的這些大問題并試圖找到他們科學(xué)的答案。如果你曾像我一樣觀察過星星，想了解你看見的東西，你也已經(jīng)對宇宙的起源產(chǎn)生了好奇。這些問題很清楚，其簡單卻是假象。問題的答案總是遙不可及。直到現(xiàn)在。
過去兩千多年的觀察所孕育出來的觀點不得不更改一新。在不到一百年的時間里，我們找到了審視我們自己的新方法。過去我們自認(rèn)為是宇宙的中心，現(xiàn)在發(fā)覺我們圍繞一顆體積中等的太陽在轉(zhuǎn)，而太陽只是銀河系中數(shù)百萬顆恒星中的一顆。而我們的星系又只是數(shù)百萬個星系中的一個，存在于無窮無盡、不斷擴展的宇宙中。但這遠沒有解決我們長久以來的疑問。很多重大問題尚未得到解決，更別說要完全了解我們生活的宇宙的全貌。
我希望你能分享我對過去及現(xiàn)在的發(fā)現(xiàn)的興奮之情，因為這些發(fā)現(xiàn)改變了我們的思考方式。從創(chuàng)世大爆炸到黑洞，從黑色物質(zhì)到可能出現(xiàn)的大坍縮，我們今天的宇宙觀充滿前所未知的觀點和引人注目的真知灼見。我們形成這樣的宇宙觀的過程也就是我們學(xué)會理解耳聞目睹的一切的過程。