萬物簡史 第11期:如何營造一個宇宙(3)

In a single blinding pulse, a moment of glory muchtoo swift and expansive for any form of words, thesingularity assumes heavenly dimensions, spacebeyond conception. In the first lively second (asecond that many cosmologists will devote careers toshaving into ever-finer wafers) is produced gravityand the other forces that govern physics.

剎那間，一個光輝的時刻來到了，其速度之快，范圍之廣，無法用言語來形容，奇點有了天地之大，有了無法想像的空間。這充滿活力的第一秒鐘(許多宇宙學(xué)家將花費畢生的精力來將其分割成越來越小部分的1秒鐘)產(chǎn)生了引力和支配物理學(xué)的其他力。

In less than a minute the universe is a million billion miles across and growing fast. There is alot of heat now, ten billion degrees of it, enough to begin the nuclear reactions that create thelighter elements—principally hydrogen and helium, with a dash (about one atom in a hundredmillion) of lithium. In three minutes, 98 percent of all the matter there is or will ever be hasbeen produced. We have a universe. It is a place of the most wondrous and gratifyingpossibility, and beautiful, too. And it was all done in about the time it takes to make asandwich.

不到1分鐘，宇宙的直徑已經(jīng)有1600萬億公里，而且還在迅速擴大。這時候產(chǎn)生了大量熱量，溫度高達1000萬攝氏度，足以引發(fā)核反應(yīng)，其結(jié)果是創(chuàng)造出較輕的元素--主要是氫和氦，還有少量鋰(大約是1000萬個原子中有1個鋰原子)。3分鐘以后，98%的目前存在的或?qū)嬖诘奈镔|(zhì)都產(chǎn)生了。我們有了一個宇宙。這是個美妙無比的地方，而且還很漂亮。這一切都是在大約做完一塊三明治的時間里形成的。

When this moment happened is a matter of some debate. Cosmologists have long argued overwhether the moment of creation was 10 billion years ago or twice that or something in between.The consensus seems to be heading for a figure of about 13.7 billion years, but these thingsare notoriously difficult to measure, as we shall see further on.

這個重大時刻的發(fā)生時間還是個有點爭議的問題。宇宙到底是在100億年以前形成的，還是在200億年以前形成的，還是在100億年到200億年之間形成的，這個問題宇宙學(xué)家已經(jīng)爭論很長時間。大家似乎越來越贊成大約137億年這個數(shù)字。但是，我們在后面將會進一步看到，這種事情是極難計算的。

All that can really be said is that at some indeterminate point in the very distant past, forreasons unknown, there came the moment known to science as t = 0. We were on our way.

其實，我們只能說，在那十分遙遠的過去，在某個無法確定的時刻，由于不知道的原因，科學(xué)上稱之為t=0的時刻來到了。我們于是踏上了旅程。