TED演讲:创造历史的黑洞图像(7)（在线收听）

It's the red circle, that's terrifying. No, really. Black holes really are the central mystery of our age,

这个红色的圈太吓人了。你在开玩笑。黑洞可谓是我们这个时代的中心之谜，

because that's where the quantum world and the gravitational world come together. What's inside is a singularity.

因为它是量子世界与引力世界的交合点。黑洞的中心是一个奇点。

And that's where all the forces become unified, because gravity finally is strong enough to compete with all the other forces.

在这里所有的力都会趋于统一，因为引力是如此之大，其他力无法与之抗衡。

But it's hidden from us, the universe has cloaked it in the ultimate invisibility cloak. So we don't know what happens in there.

但它隐藏了起来，宇宙用终极隐形斗篷把它遮掩了起来。所以我们不知道在那里面究竟发生了什么。

So there's a smaller one of these in our own galaxy. Can we go back to our own beautiful galaxy?

所以在我们的星系中有一个较小的黑洞。可以回到我们自己美丽的星系吗？

This is the Milky Way, this is home. And somewhere in the middle of that there's another one, which you're trying to find as well.

这是银河，是我们的家。而在银河的某个地方，存在着另外一个黑洞，你正在努力把它找出来。

We already know it's there, and we've already taken data on it. And we're working on those data right now,

我们已经发现了它的存在，也已经采集到了它的数据。我们现在就在研究这些数据，

so we hope to have something in the near future, I can't say when.

希望在将来能够研究出结果，虽然我不敢对时间打包票。

It's way closer but also a lot smaller, maybe the similar kind of size to what we saw? Right.

这个黑洞距离较近，但体积较小，也许和我们现在看到的这个差不多大？是的。

So it turns out that the black hole in M87, that we saw before, is six and a half billion solar masses.

事实证明M87星系中的黑洞，就是我们之前看到的那个，重达65亿太阳的质量。

But it's so far away that it appears a certain size.

但由于它距离太远了，所以看起来很小。

The black hole in the center of our galaxy is a thousand times less massive, but also a thousand times closer. So it looks the same angular size on the sky.

我们星系里的这个黑洞比它小一千倍，但也比它近一千倍。所以它们两个在空中看起来差不多大小。

Finally, I guess, a nod to a remarkable group of people. Who are these guys?

最后，我猜，我们要认识一下一群了不起的人。他们是谁？

So these are only some of the team. We marveled at the resonance that this image has had.

这些仅是我们小组的部分成员。我们惊叹于这张照片所引起的反响。

If you told me that it would be above the fold in all of these newspapers, I'm not sure I would have believed you, but it was.

如果在过去你告诉我这张照片会占据所有报纸的头条，我觉得我可能不会相信你，但事实就是如此。

Because this is a great mystery, and it's inspiring for us, and I hope it's inspiring to everyone.

因为这是一项非常重大的谜题，它激励着我们，我希望它也能激励其他所有人。

But the more important thing is that this is just a small number of the team. We're 200 people strong with 60 institutes and 20 countries and regions.

但更重要的是，这只是我们团队的一小部分人。我们一共有200人，分别来自60个机构、20个国家和地区。

If you want to build a global telescope you need a global team.

如果你想建造一个国际望远镜，你就需要一个国际团队。

And this technique that we use of linking telescopes around the world kind of effortlessly sidesteps some of the issues that divide us.

我们用来连接全球望远镜的这项技术轻松地帮助我们回避了一些可能会导致我们分裂的问题。

And as scientists, we naturally come together to do something like this.

作为科学家，我们自然而然地聚集在了一起，来完成类似的任务。

Wow, boy, that's inspiring for our whole team this week. Shep, thank you so much for what you did and for coming here. Thank you.

哦，天呐，这对于我们所有人都有教育意义。谢普，非常感谢你所做的一切，同时感谢你今天来参加这个活动。谢谢。