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Every object that has mass creates a little depression in the fabric of the cosmos.
凡有質量的物體在宇宙的底墊上都能造成一個小小的凹坑。
Thus the universe, as Dennis Overbye has put it, is "the ultimate sagging mattress."
因此，正如丹尼斯·奧弗比說的，宇宙是個“最終的下陷底墊”。
Gravity on this view is no longer so much a thing as an outcome,
從這個觀點來看，引力與其說是一種東西，不如說是一種結果，
"not a 'force' but a byproduct of the warping of spacetime," in the words of the physicist Michio Kaku, who goes on:
用物理學家米奇奧·卡庫的話來說：“不是一種‘力’，而是時空彎曲的一件副產品。”卡庫接著又說：
"In some sense, gravity does not exist; what moves the planets and stars is the distortion of space and time."
“在某種意義上，引力并不存在；使行星和恒星運動的是空間和時間的變形。”
Of course the sagging mattress analogy can take us only so far because it doesn't incorporate the effect of time.
當然，以下陷的底墊來作比喻，只能幫助我們理解到這種程度，因為沒有包含時間的作用。
But then our brains can take us only so far
話雖這么說，其實我們的大腦也只能想像到這個地步。
because it is so nearly impossible to envision a dimension comprising three parts space to one part time,
因為這幾乎是不可能的——若要想像空間和時間以3:1的比例
all interwoven like the threads in a plaid fabric.
像線織成一塊格子地墊那樣織成一份時空。
At all events, I think we can agree that this was an awfully big thought for a young man staring out the window of a patent office in the capital of Switzerland.
無論如何，我想我們會一致認為，對于一位凝視著瑞士首都專利局窗外的年輕人來說，這確實是個了不起的見解。
Among much else, Einstein’s general theory of relativity suggested that the universe must be either expanding or contracting.
愛因斯坦的廣義相對論提出了許多見解。其中，他認為，宇宙心總是或者膨脹或者收縮的。
But Einstein was not a cosmologist, and he accepted the prevailing wisdom that the universe was fixed and eternal.
但是，愛因斯坦不是一位宇宙學家，他接受了流行的看法，即宇宙是固定的，永恒的。
More or less reflexively, he dropped into his equations something called the cosmological constant,
多少出于本能，他在自己的等式里加進了他所謂的宇宙常數。
which arbitrarily counterbalanced the effects of gravity, serving as a kind of mathematical pause button.
他把它作為一種數學暫停鍵，武斷地以此來抵消引力的作用。
Books on the history of science always forgive Einstein this lapse,
科學史書總是原諒愛因斯坦的這個失誤，
but it was actually a fairly appalling piece of science and he knew it.
但這其實是科學上一件很可怕的事。
He called it "the biggest blunder of my life."
他把它稱之為“我一生中所犯的最大錯誤”。
