BBC.地平线.2012.宇宙何其大

史上最宏伟的星图
The most ambitious map in history
将在我们眼前展开
is taking shape before our eyes.
科学家正驶向宇宙的尽头
And scientists are heading for the edge.
这可能是你见过的最神奇的星图
It may be the strangest map you'll ever see.
大到超乎想象
And it's bigger than you can believe.
它描绘了整个宇宙
It's a map of the entire universe.
我们准备绘制出
There's this whole pattern to the universe
宇宙的完整形态
we're starting to map out.
这张星图能让我们
Seeing it really brought home
更加了解宇宙运行的规律
the way the universe actually behaved,
这是任何数字和方程都无法做到的
in a way that all the numbers and equations never quite could.
宇宙学家正在解读这些惊人的发现
Cosmologists are making sense of startling discoveries.
中世纪地图将未知地域看作怪物出没地带
Medieval maps would say, "Here be monsters."
他们不完全是错的
They weren't entirely wrong.
宇宙学家甚至准备绘制出
They're even building pictures
肉眼无法观测到的部分
of the invisible.
对于无法看见的物体 如何确定其位置呢
How do you map something that you can't even see?
即使望远镜无法观测到
Our brains build maps
我们也能凭智慧绘制
even where our telescopes cannot reach.
这张星图包含了我们已知的一切
This is a map of everything we know.
它所含的内容在日益增长
And it's getting bigger every day.
它是如此宏伟壮观 让人惊叹不已
It kind of hits you, how magnificent it is.
它的浩瀚超乎我们的想象
It's bigger than we can actually really even imagine.
宇宙之浩瀚
The universe is so big,
无处寻尽头
we may never find the edge.
地平线
宇宙何其大
绘制宇宙星图是一项开拓性的工作
Mapping the universe is a job for pioneers.
尼克·赖辛格披荆斩棘 奔走于美国西南部
Nick Risinger is blazing a trail through the American south west.
你必须得有顽强的毅力
You have to be pretty persistent.
永不停歇
No stopping.
不断前进
You've got to keep going.
尼克想绘制出完整的星系
Nick wants to put our entire galaxy on the map.
他独自一人开始了拍摄银河系的工作
He's on a single-handed mission, to photograph the Milky Way.
新墨西哥州是个拍照的好地方
New Mexico is a great place to take photos.
那里气候干燥 海拔较高
It's dry, it's high,
周围城市较少
and there's not a whole lot of city around here.
要是天气晴朗
There's a break in the weather,
几乎一整晚都可以用来拍照
and you get a full, almost a full night in.
否则 一晚上只有十分之一的时间可以用
Other times, you only get, you know, 10% of the night.
但这全凭运气
But it's all luck of the draw.
那里看起来还不错
It's looking pretty good over there, actually.
在现代社会
In the modern world,
我们很少有机会能在漆黑的夜空中看见银河
few of us have skies dark enough to see the Milky Way.
但是尼克准备向我们展示
But Nick plans to show us our home galaxy
银河系不为人知的一面
like we've never seen it before.
我想要人们对头顶的夜空
I'm trying to give people that broad, big-picture understanding
尼克·赖辛格
有一个全面且宏观的认识
of the entire night sky where they fit into that.
我们的银河系有近五千亿颗恒星
Our galaxy has nearly half a trillion stars.
大多数由于太暗又太远 我们无法看到
Most of them are too dim and distant to see.
但是尼克的相机
But Nick's cameras
比裸眼灵敏两千多倍
are more than 2,000 times more sensitive than the naked eye.
如果我早知道这项工作如此繁琐艰巨
If I had known how much work it would be going into it,
我可能根本就不会开始
I probably wouldn't have even started.
但照我的性格 做事必须有始有终
But my personality is, once you start something, you finish it.
他花了两年时间拍摄了三万七千多张照片
After two years, he's photographed 20 million stars...
将它们拼接而成 最终得到两千万颗恒星
by stitching together more than 37,000 separate images.
有些人可能会被
Some people might be driven crazy
整晚的快门声逼疯
by hearing shutters clack all night long.
但我却很爱听
But it's actually music to my ears,
因为这说明它们在工作
because it means they're working.
通过组合六台不同相机上的数据
By combining data from six different cameras,
他捕捉到的景象 就连世界上
he's captured something that would tax
最强大的望远镜也望其项背
even the world's most powerful telescopes.
最后 他合成了有史以来最高清的
His final image is the highest definition,
全彩银河系全景图
true colour map ever made of the Milky Way.
然而他不单单绘制了星图
But he hasn't just mapped it...
他还制♥作♥了便携版的银河图
He's made a hand-held guide to the galaxy.
这就好像通往星空的天窗
This is like a window to the sky.
你可以将它对准任何方向
And you can point it in any direction
从中清晰地看到星空的实况
and be shown exactly what you're looking at.
现在 我们看到的是银河系的中心
So here, we're looking at the centre of our galaxy.
这就是我们的银河系
This is our Milky Way.
你可以看到这明亮的星团 它包含很多恒星
You can see this bright cluster of many small stars.
这幅星图可进一步放大并展现更多细节
The map reveals more features with every level of detail.
我们将银河系的中心部分放大
As we zoom in here to the centre of the galaxy,
我所指的这块黑暗的斑纹就是烟斗星云
I'll point out this dark patch here, this is the Pipe Nebula,
它是我在定位时最爱用的参照物之一
and it's one of my favourite landmarks to help me orient myself.
单是这幅图像的尺寸
But it's the sheer size of the image
就已经凸显出其宏伟广阔了
that reveals its true ambition.
从银河系一端到另一端
From one side to the other,
距离有十万光年
it's 100,000 light years.
这幅图像呈现了如此庞大的天体
This image is such a big subject,
你会觉得自己极其渺小
and it makes you feel so small.
十万光年啊
100,000 light years!
光是想象它的范围
It boggles the mind just trying to comprehend
就足以让我震惊
just how vast that is.
但事实上
But the fact is,
宇宙之图的绘制才刚刚开始
the map of the universe has barely begun.
安东尼·阿吉雷
Anthony Aguirre,
来自加利福尼亚大学圣克鲁兹分校
from the University of California in Santa Cruz,
是一名理论宇宙学家
is a theoretical cosmologist.
所以他习惯运用宏观思维
So he's used to thinking big.
现在 我们要走到室外
Now to say that we're going to go out
然后绘制一幅宇宙之图
and make a map of the universe,
这听起来很疯狂
it almost sounds crazy.
安东尼·阿吉雷教授
加利福尼亚大学圣克鲁兹分校
听起来特别狂傲 不是吗
It sounds like real hubris, right?
"我们要描绘出一张宇宙之图"
"We're going to go and map the universe!"
而事实证明
And yet the universe, as it turns out,
宇宙之图的确可能被绘制出来
is really amenable to mapping.
但你必须得动脑子 运用宏观思维
But you have to think big, and clever.
让我们借气球一用
And that's where the balloons come in.
因为宇宙之图不同于其他地图
Because the map of the universe isn't like other maps.
我们得换一种方式思考
We have to think in a different way,
我们不能只是走到室外
we can't just go out and
遥望宇宙 在纸上画些图案
look at the universe and draw things on paper
然后说 "这就是我们的宇宙之图"
and say, "There's our map of the universe."
宇宙是如此浩瀚无垠
The universe is so big
物理定律决定了我们无法看清它的全貌
that the laws of physics say we can't see all of it.
就好比我们站在一个巨型气球的中心
It's as if we're at the centre of a giant balloon,
无法看到外面的事物
and we can't see out.
我们只能看见光
We can only see light.
而光在以一定的速度运动
And light moves at a certain speed.
所以 我们看得越远
And so, as we look farther and farther away,
看到的事物也就越古老
we're looking farther and farther back in time
因为我们看到的光是很久以前发出的
because we're seeing light coming to us from long ago.
但是宇宙的历史是有限的
But there's only so far we can go back in time.
所以我们能看见的范围也很有限
So there's only so far we can see.
这称为 可观测宇宙
It's called the "Observable universe".
我们只能绘出在它范围内的物体
We can only map what's inside,
因为宇宙只有137亿年的历史
because the universe is only 13.7 billion years old.
在这范围之外可能还有更广阔的宇宙
There may well be a lot more universe outside,
但是它们发出的光还未到达地球
but the light hasn't had time to reach us yet.
过去的二十年间 我们掌握了许多知识
In the last 20 years, we've seen this tremendous expansion,
对可观测宇宙的了解
both in the amount and in the precision of knowledge
实现了量的积累和质的飞跃
that we have about the observable universe.
这为宇宙学家
This has allowed cosmologists
制♥作♥如此宏伟的星图奠定了基础
to make a map of unbelievable scale.
宇宙是银河系的
The Milky Way could fit inside
一千亿亿倍