TED演讲:创造历史的黑洞图像(5)（在线收听）

You'll see here that some light from behind it gets lensed, and some light does a loop-the-loop around the entire orbit of the black hole.

你现在看到的是在黑洞后面的一些光透过它，有些光的确会一直绕着黑洞转。

But when you get enough light from all this hot gas swirling around the black hole,

但如果光足够多，它们来自黑洞周围的高温气体中，

then you wind up seeing all of these light rays come together on this screen, which is a stand-in for where you and I are.

那么最终你将看到这些光线以屏幕上所呈现的方式聚集在一起，就像你和我现在站在台上一样。

And you see the definition of this ring begin to come into shape. And that's what Einstein predicted over 100 years ago.

然后你会发现这个环逐渐成型。这就是爱因斯坦在百年前所预测的事情。

Yeah, that is amazing. So tell us more about what we're actually looking at here. First of all, why is part of it brighter than the rest?

这真是令人吃惊。现在，能不能再解释一下这张图片？首先，为什么有些地方比其他地方更亮呢？

So what's happening is that the black hole is spinning. And you wind up with some of the gas moving towards us below and receding from us on the top.

事实上这个黑洞正在旋转。最终靠近地球的气体运动到了下方，而远离地球的气体运动到了上方。

And just as the train whistle has a higher pitch when it's coming towards you, there's more energy from the gas coming towards us than going away from us.

正如火车的鸣笛，当它靠近你的时候，音高会增高，比起远离地球的气体，靠近的气体蕴含很多能量，

You see the bottom part brighter because the light is actually being boosted in our direction.

你可以看到下方更亮一点是因为下方光线正加速向我们靠近。

And how physically big is that? Our entire solar system would fit well within that dark region.

这个黑洞有多大？它能容下我们整个太阳系。

And if I may, that dark region is the signature of the event horizon.

并且，我想打断你一下，这个黑暗区域标志了事件视界。

The reason we don't see light from there, is that the light that would come to us from that place was swallowed by the event horizon.

我们之所以无法看到里面的光，是因为这里面朝地球靠近的光已经被事件视界吞噬了。

So that -- that's it. And so when we think of a black hole, you think of these huge rays jetting out of it,

这就是黑洞。所以，当我们谈起黑洞的时候，你想说的是它向外发射的射线，

which are pointed directly in our direction. Why don't we see them?

它们朝我们而来。为什么我们看不见他们呢？