評論
打印
So that's your solar system. And what else is out there, beyond the solar system? Well, nothing and a great deal, depending on how you look at it.
這就是你所在的太陽系。太陽系之外還有別的什么？哎呀，也許什么也沒有，也許有很多東西，這取決于你怎么看這個問題。
In the short term, it's nothing. The most perfect vacuum ever created by humans is not as empty as the emptiness of interstellar space. And there is a great deal of this nothingness until you get to the next bit of something. Our nearest neighbor in the cosmos, Proxima Centauri, which is part of the three-star cluster known as Alpha Centauri, is 4.3 light-years away, a sissy skip in galactic terms, but that is still a hundred million times farther than a trip to the Moon.
從短期來說，什么也沒有。人類創造的最完美的真空，都不如星際空間那樣空空蕩蕩。那里有大量的這種"空空蕩蕩"，直到你抵達下一個"有點東西"。宇宙里我們最近的鄰居是比鄰星，它是那個三星云團的組成部分，名叫α星，位于4.3光年以外，這在星系用語中只是微不足道的一點時間，但仍然要比去月球旅行遠1億倍。
To reach it by spaceship would take at least twenty-five thousand years, and even if you made the trip you still wouldn't be anywhere except at a lonely clutch of stars in the middle of a vast nowhere. To reach the next landmark of consequence, Sirius, would involve another 4.6 light-years of travel. And so it would go if you tried to star-hop your way across the cosmos. Just reaching the center of our own galaxy would take far longer than we have existed as beings.
乘宇宙飛船去那里，至少要花25 000年；即使你真的做這次旅行，你仍然到不了任何地方，只會看到茫茫空間的中央懸著一簇寂寞的星星。若要抵達下一個有意義的陸標天狼星，還有4.6光年的行程。因此，如果你想要以"越星"的方式穿越宇宙的話，情況就會是這樣。即使抵達我們自己銀河系的中心，也要花上比我們作為人的存在長得多的時間。
Space, let me repeat, is enormous. The average distance between stars out there is 20 million million miles. Even at speeds approaching those of light, these are fantastically challenging distances for any traveling individual. Of course, it is possible that alien beings travel billions of miles to amuse themselves by planting crop circles in Wiltshire or frightening the daylights out of some poor guy in a pickup truck on a lonely road in Arizona (they must have teenagers, after all), but it does seem unlikely.
我再來重復一遍，空間是巨大的。恒星之間的平均距離超過30萬億公里。即使以光的速度去那里，這對任何想去旅行的個人來說都是極富挑戰性的距離。當然，為了逗樂，外星人有可能旅行幾十億公里來到威爾特郡種植莊稼，或者來到亞利桑那州哪一條人跡稀少的路上，把行駛中的小卡車上的哪個可憐蟲嚇得魂飛膽喪，但這種事似乎永遠不會發生。
