纪录片《重力错乱》 第11期 一对近乎孪生的星系（在线收听）

But outside the weather's not good.

然而外面的天气不好。

They're not opening the telescopes tonight.

他们今晚不能打开望远镜。

But here's what they saw all those years ago.

然而这里是他们所有这么多年以来所看到的东西。

Astronomers were looking into the sky to find distant galaxies, billions of light years away.

天文学家深入天空寻找遥远的星系几十亿光年之外的。

And they found this. At first sight it looks like two different galaxies.

他们发现了这个乍看之下，就象是两个不同的星系。

In fact, they gave them different names, 957 and 561.

事实上，他们给它们取了不同的名字957和561。

But when they looked more closely they found that they look identical in every way.

但是当他们更接近地观察时，发现它们看上去个各方面都是完全一样的。

It's incredibly strange. It's almost like there are two twin galaxies,

怪异得出乎意料。几乎就象是一对孪生星系，

but actually they find the light was absolutely identical for which one and they seem distance apart.

但实际上他们发现它们各自发出的光完全相同，而且它们似乎距离遥远。

The interpretation is, this is a picture of one single galaxy.

解释是，这是一张单一的星系的写照。

This certainly confused the astronomers,

这当然把天文学家搞糊涂了，

but they soon realised that the cause of this strange cosmic mirage

但是他们很快就意识到了，造成这种奇怪的宇宙幻影的原因

had been predicted nearly a hundred years ago.

在大约100年前就已经被预测到了。

There's one man who, for me, really did think outside the box.

对我来说，有一个人已经从外部认识到了。

He was the first celebrity scientist, hailed by many as the greatest physicist of all time.

他是个首屈一指的科学家，他始终被许多人尊崇为最伟大的物理学家。

At the turn of the 20th century it was Albert Einstein

在20世纪初，是艾伯特.爱因斯坦

who opened our minds to a completely new way of looking at the universe.

解放了我们的思想，以一个全新的方法去观察宇宙。

Einstein's universe is made of something called space time.

爱因斯坦的宇宙是由所谓的时间和空间组成的。

Now, space is what we see around us - it's got length and breadth and height.

空间就是我们所看到周围的一切——有长度、宽度和高度。

And time... well, it just ticks along.

时间嘛……啊，只是时钟滴答不停而已。

But in Einstein's universe they're woven together into a fabric.

然而在爱因斯坦的宇宙里，它们交织在一起组成了构造。

Space and time are not separate, they're one and the same thing.

空间与时间不能分离，它们是同一个东西。

And that fabric is called spacetime.

那个构造称之为时空。