Universe

　　Universe

　　Where do we come from? How did the universe begin?Why is the universe the way it is? How will it end?

　　All my life, I have been fascinated by the big questions that face us, and have tried to find scientific answers to them.If, like me, you have looked at the stars, and tried to make sense of what you see, you too have started to wonder what makes the universe exist. The questions are clear, and deceptively simple. But the answers have always seemed well beyond our reach. Until nOW.

　　The ideas which had grown over two thousand years of observation have had to be radically re-

　　vised. In less than a hundred years, we have found a new way to think of ourselves. From sitting at the center of the universe, we now find ourselves orbiting an average-sized sun, which is just one of millions of stars in our own Milky Way galaxy. And our galaxy itself is just one of billions of galaxies, in a universe that is infinite and expanding. But this is far from the end of a long history of inquiry.Huge questions remain to be answered, before we can hope to have a complete picture of the universe we live in.

　　I want you to share my excitement at the discoveries,past and present, which have revolutionized the way we think. From the Big Bang to black holes, from dark matter to a possible Big Crunch, our image of the universe today is full of strange sounding ideas, and remarkable truths. The story of how we arrived at this picture is the story of learning to understand what we see.

　　宇宙

　　我们来自何方?宇宙如何开始?为什么宇宙是这样的?它将如何结束?

　　我一生都迷恋于我们所面临的这些大问题并试图找到他们科学的答案。如果你曾像我一样观察过星星，想了解你看见的东西，你也已经对宇宙的起源产生了好奇。这些问题很清楚，其简单却是假象。问题的答案总是遥不可及。直到现在。

　　过去两千多年的观察所孕育出来的观点不得不更改一新。在不到一百年的时间里，我们找到了审视我们自己的新方法。过去我们自认为是宇宙的中心，现在发觉我们围绕一颗体积中等的太阳在转，而太阳只是银河系中数百万颗恒星中的一颗。而我们的星系又只是数百万个星系中的一个，存在于无穷无尽、不断扩展的宇宙中。但这远没有解决我们长久以来的疑问。很多重大问题尚未得到解决，更别说要完全了解我们生活的宇宙的全貌。

　　我希望你能分享我对过去及现在的发现的兴奋之情，因为这些发现改变了我们的思考方式。从创世大爆炸到黑洞，从黑色物质到可能出现的大坍缩，我们今天的宇宙观充满前所未知的观点和引人注目的真知灼见。我们形成这样的宇宙观的过程也就是我们学会理解耳闻目睹的一切的过程。

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