【2011年，洛杉磯：女星簡(jiǎn)·芳達(dá)在一次電影試映會(huì)之后親吻了史蒂芬·霍金】

His career has shed light on the secrets of the universe, from the nature of space-time to the workings of black holes, but there is one conundrum that still baffles the world's most famous scientist.

他揭示了宇宙的奧秘，解決了諸如時(shí)空本質(zhì)、黑洞原理等一系列難題；但對(duì)于這位世界上最偉大的科學(xué)家來(lái)說(shuō)，還有一個(gè)課題讓他困擾不已。

In an interview to mark his 70th birthday this weekend, Stephen Hawking, the former Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, admitted he spent most of the day thinking about women. "They are," he said "a complete mystery."

本周末，斯蒂芬·霍金迎來(lái)了他的70歲生日。在一次采訪中，這位劍橋大學(xué)的前盧卡斯數(shù)學(xué)教授坦承，自己多數(shù)時(shí)間都在琢磨女人，表示“她們完全是個(gè)謎”。

Professor Hawking, whose stardom has included spots on The Simpsons and Star Trek, spoke to New Scientist magazine ahead of an international conference held in his honour that begins on Thursday in Cambridge.

霍金教授曾為《辛普森一家（The Simpsons）》中的自己配音，也曾在《星際迷航（Star Trek）》中本色出演。在這次《新科學(xué)家（New Scientist）》周刊的采訪之后，劍橋大學(xué)將于周三為他舉行國(guó)際盛會(huì)。

The meeting will culminate in a public symposium on Sunday when some of the world's most prominent physicists give a series of talks on the state of the universe. Among them will be Lord Rees, the Astronomer Royal, Saul Perlmutter, who won the Nobel prize in physics in 2011, and Kip Thorne at the California Institute of Technology.

本次盛會(huì)最精彩的環(huán)節(jié)，莫過(guò)于周日進(jìn)行的公眾研討會(huì)，屆時(shí)幾位世界上最為著名的物理學(xué)家，如皇家天文學(xué)家里斯勛爵（Lord Rees）、2011年諾貝爾物理學(xué)獎(jiǎng)獲得者索爾·珀?duì)栺R特（Saul Perlmutter）、加州理工學(xué)院的基普·索恩（Kip Thorne）等，將就劍橋大學(xué)的現(xiàn)況發(fā)表一系列演講。

Earlier this week, eminent researchers expressed admiration and respect for Professor Hawking, a scientist who inspired colleagues and students while forging ahead with fresh insights into some of the most intangible puzzles to hand.

本周初，幾位知名科學(xué)家向霍金表達(dá)了自己的敬仰之情，稱(chēng)他對(duì)最為難以捉摸的難題有著獨(dú)特的見(jiàn)解；而在不斷開(kāi)拓進(jìn)取的同時(shí)，這位偉人還激勵(lì)著自己的同事與學(xué)生。

Hawking has made a string of contributions to cosmology throughout a career that many doubted would last as long as it has after he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease at the age of 21. He worked on the inflation of the early universe, a quantum theory of gravity, and famously showed that black holes emit radiation and so slowly disappear.

霍金在21歲時(shí)不幸身患運(yùn)動(dòng)神經(jīng)元疾病，許多人都懷疑他的職業(yè)生涯會(huì)就此終止，但在患病之后他還是在宇宙學(xué)領(lǐng)域做出了一系列不朽的貢獻(xiàn)。他致力于早期宇宙膨脹說(shuō)和重力量子論的研究，并且提出了著名的黑洞理論，指出黑洞會(huì)散發(fā)射線，因此蒸發(fā)得十分緩慢。

Asked about the most exciting development in physics during the course of his career, Hawking mentioned the findings of Nasa's Cobe (Cosmic Background Explorer) spacecraft and subsequent confirmation by a later mission called the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). Together, they made a map of the heavens that revealed the afterglow of the big bang "in excellent agreement with the predictions of inflation", he told the magazine.

當(dāng)記者問(wèn)到在他的科研生涯中，哪些物理學(xué)領(lǐng)域的成果最令他激動(dòng)時(shí)，霍金提到了美國(guó)宇航局宇宙背景探測(cè)者（COBE）的發(fā)現(xiàn)，以及隨后威爾金森微波各向異性探測(cè)器（WMAP）觀察數(shù)據(jù)的證實(shí)。這兩臺(tái)探測(cè)器描繪出了宇宙天體圖，表明宇宙大爆炸冷卻后的“余暉”與“關(guān)于宇宙膨脹的預(yù)測(cè)完全吻合”。

As for his greatest mistake, Hawking said: "I used to think information was destroyed in black holes", a belief he later revised. "This was my biggest blunder, or at least my biggest blunder in science." But his work in the field led to the theoretical breakthrough, so far unconfirmed by experiment, that black holes leak information back into the universe through quantum mechanical effects.

在談及自己犯過(guò)的最嚴(yán)重的錯(cuò)誤時(shí)，霍金說(shuō)：“以前我認(rèn)為黑洞會(huì)吞噬物質(zhì)能量信息，這是我至少在科學(xué)領(lǐng)域犯過(guò)的最大的錯(cuò)誤?！爆F(xiàn)在他已經(jīng)推翻了這個(gè)理論，提出黑洞在吞噬物體之后，還會(huì)保留下該物體的些微痕跡，并會(huì)通過(guò)量子力學(xué)效應(yīng)“吐回”到宇宙中。盡管新理論尚未經(jīng)過(guò)試驗(yàn)證實(shí)，但霍金的研究也實(shí)現(xiàn)了該領(lǐng)域的理論突破。

The Large Hadron Collider at Cern, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva, could do more than anything else to revolutionise scientists' understanding of the universe, Hawking said. The machine could find "supersymmetric" particles, which are partners of the more familiar subatomic particles. Such a finding would be "strong evidence" for M-theory, a version of string theory that describes gravity and the other forces of nature in an 11-dimensional universe.

霍金還認(rèn)為，要徹底改變科學(xué)家們對(duì)宇宙的看法，歐洲粒子物理研究所（Cern，其實(shí)驗(yàn)室設(shè)在日內(nèi)瓦附近）的大型強(qiáng)子對(duì)撞機(jī)要比任何設(shè)備都來(lái)得有效。它可以找到“超對(duì)稱(chēng)”粒子，這種粒子與常規(guī)的亞原子粒子十分相似。如果實(shí)驗(yàn)證明這種超對(duì)稱(chēng)粒子真的存在，那么M-理論便找到了可靠依據(jù)。M理論是弦理論的另一版本，后者對(duì)十一維宇宙中的重力及其它自然力做了詳細(xì)描述。