TED演讲:创造历史的黑洞图像(2)

A few years ago, you embarked¹ on this mission to try and actually image one of these things.

几年前，你接受这项任务来尝试并且、构想出这些东西的样子。

And I guess you took -- you focused on this galaxy² way out there. Tell us about this galaxy.

我猜——你一直在研究宇宙中的这个星系。给我们介绍一下这个星系吧。

This is the galaxy -- we're going to zoom³ into the galaxy M87, it's 55 million light-years away.

这就是我研究的星系。我们现在要放大M87星系，它距离我们5500万光年。

Fifty-five million. Which is a long way. And at its heart, there's a six-and-a-half-billion- solar-mass black hole.

5500万。距离非常远。在这个星系的中心，有一个相当于65亿倍太阳质量的黑洞。

That's hard for us to really fathom⁴, right? Six and a half billion suns compressed into a single point.

对于我们而言很难准确测量其质量，对吧？65亿倍太阳质量的物质压缩在这一点。

And it's governing some of the energetics of the center of this galaxy.

并且这个黑洞掌管着这个星系中心的一部分能量。

But even though that thing is so huge, because it's so far away, to actually dream of getting an image of it,

虽然它这么大，但因为它距离地球很远，要想拍摄到它的照片，

that's incredibly hard. The resolution would be incredible that you need.

这非常困难。分辨率要求之高令人难以想象。

Black holes are the smallest objects in the known universe. But they have these outsize effects on whole galaxies⁵.

黑洞是宇宙中已知的最小的物质。但它们对于星系整体而言有着巨大的影响。

But to see one, you would need to build a telescope as large as the Earth,

想要看到它，你需要一个像地球那么大的望远镜，

because the black hole that we're looking at gives off copious⁶ radio waves.

因为我们正在观察的这个黑洞会发出大量的无线电波。

It's emitting all the time. And that's exactly what you did.

它无时无刻不在发出这些电波。这就是你所做的事。

Exactly. What you're seeing here is we used telescopes all around the world, we synchronized⁷ them perfectly⁸ with atomic clocks,

没错。你现在所看到的是我们部署在全球的望远镜，我们让它们与原子钟完美同步，

so they received the light waves from this black hole, and then we stitched all of that data together to make an image.

让它们接收黑洞发出的光波，然后我们将所有数据拼接在一起组成黑洞的照片。

To do that the weather had to be right in all of those locations at the same time, so you could actually get a clear view.

为了达成这个目标，所有望远镜所在地的天气状况都必须达到一定条件，这样你们才能有清晰的视角。

1 embarked   

乘船( embark的过去式和过去分词 )； 装载； 从事

参考例句：

• We stood on the pier and watched as they embarked. 我们站在突码头上目送他们登船。
• She embarked on a discourse about the town's origins. 她开始讲本市的起源。

2 galaxy   

n.星系；银河系；一群(杰出或著名的人物)

参考例句：

• The earth is one of the planets in the Galaxy.地球是银河系中的星球之一。
• The company has a galaxy of talent.该公司拥有一批优秀的人才。

3 zoom   

n.急速上升；v.突然扩大，急速上升

参考例句：

• The airplane's zoom carried it above the clouds.飞机的陡直上升使它飞到云层之上。
• I live near an airport and the zoom of passing planes can be heard night and day.我住在一个飞机场附近，昼夜都能听到飞机飞过的嗡嗡声。

4 fathom   

v.领悟，彻底了解

参考例句：

• I really couldn't fathom what he was talking about.我真搞不懂他在说些什么。
• What these people hoped to achieve is hard to fathom.这些人希望实现些什么目标难以揣测。

5 galaxies   

星系( galaxy的名词复数 )； 银河系； 一群（杰出或著名的人物）

参考例句：

• Quasars are the highly energetic cores of distant galaxies. 类星体是遥远星系的极为活跃的核心体。
• We still don't know how many galaxies there are in the universe. 我们还不知道宇宙中有多少个星系。

6 copious   

adj.丰富的，大量的

参考例句：

• She supports her theory with copious evidences.她以大量的例证来充实自己的理论。
• Every star is a copious source of neutrinos.每颗恒星都是丰富的中微子源。

7 synchronized   

同步的

参考例句：

• Do not use the synchronized keyword in Managed Objects. 不要在管理对象上使用synchronized关键字。 来自互联网
• The timing of the gun was precisely synchronized with the turning of the plane's propeller. 风门的调速与飞机螺旋桨的转动精确同步。 来自辞典例句

8 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。