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Shortly after Copernicus, in the 1580s, an Italian friar, Giordano Bruno, suggested the stars were suns that likely had their own planets and that the universe was infinite.
哥白尼死后不久，在十六世紀80年代，意大利修道士焦爾達諾·布魯諾提出，太陽這樣的恒星都有自己的衛星，宇宙是無限的。
This idea didn't go over well.
這個理論推廣得并不好。
Bruno was burned at the stake for his radical suggestion.
布魯諾因他的激進言論被燒死在刑柱上。
Centuries later, the philosopher Rene Descartes proposed that the universe was a series of whirlpools, which he called vortices, and that each star was at the center of a whirlpool.
幾個世紀之后，哲學家勒奈·笛卡爾提出，宇宙是一系列的螺旋體，這些螺旋體被稱為漩渦，每個恒星都位于漩渦的中心。
In time, we realized there were far more stars than Aristotle ever dreamed.
隨著時間的推移， 我們發現星星的數量遠多于亞里士多德所能想到的。
As astronomers like William Herschel got more and more advanced telescopes, it became clear that our sun is actually one of many stars inside the Milky Way.
由于威廉·赫歇爾這樣的天文學家發明出了更加先進的望遠鏡，太陽實際是銀河系諸多恒星之一這個事實變得清楚。
And those smudges we see in the night sky?
那些我們在黑夜里看見的印跡呢？
They're other galaxies, just as vast as our Milky Way home.
它們其實是其他星系，它們與我們的母星系銀河一樣龐大。
Maybe we're farther from the center than we ever realized.
我們離宇宙中心的距離可能要比想象中遙遠多了。
In the 1920s, astronomers studying the nebula wanted to figure out how they were moving.
在20世紀20年代，研究星云的天文學家想弄明白它們的運動規律。
Based on the Doppler Effect, they expected to see blue shift for objects moving toward us, and red shift for ones moving away.
根據多普勒效應，他們預期向我們飛來的物體會呈現藍移，飛走的物體呈現紅移。
But all they saw was a red shift.
但所有觀測到的現象都是紅移。
Everything was moving away from us, fast.
所有星星都在快速遠離我們。
This observation is one of the pieces of evidence for what we now call the Big Bang Theory.
這些觀測結果構成了現在被我們稱為大爆炸理論的證據。
According to this theory, all matter in the universe was once a singular, infinitely dense particle.
根據這一理論，宇宙中的所有物質最初都源于一個密度無限高的單一粒子。
In a sense, our piece of the universe was once at the center.
從某種意義上說，我們所在的這部分宇宙曾處在中心。
But this theory eliminates the whole idea of a center since there can't be a center to an infinite universe.
但這個理論排除了”宇宙中心”的想法，因為無限宇宙根本沒法有中心。
The Big Bang wasn't just an explosion in space; it was an explosion of space.
大爆炸并不只是在空間的一次爆炸，而是空間本身的爆炸。
What each new discovery proves is that while our observations are limited, our ability to speculate and dream of what's out there isn't.
新的發現表明，雖然我們的探索有限，但我們探索和幻想更外層宇宙空間的能力是無限的。
What we think we know today can change tomorrow.
我們今天所認可的事實有可能很快就被改變。
As with many of the thinkers we just met, sometimes our wildest guesses lead to wonderful and humbling answers and propel us toward even more perplexing questions.
和我們剛剛看到的許多思想家一樣，有些時候人類最狂野的想象可以引領我們找到奇妙或屈辱的答案，并指導我們向更加復雜的問題發出挑戰。
