The cosmos from a wheelchair------Stephen Hawking, physicist, died on March 14th, aged 76
輪椅上的小宇宙——著名物理學家史蒂芬·霍金于3月14日回歸星辰，享年76歲。
PREDESTINATION was not part of Stephen Hawking’s system of belief. It was mere coincidence that he was born 300 years to the day after Galileo Galilei died. But he did share something with him, other than being a great physicist; he became famous as much for his suffering as for his physics. His was caused not by ecclesiastical politicians who preferred obedience to free enquiry, but by muscle-wasting amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. It meant that he,too, had to fight to be heard.
史蒂芬·霍金的一生都不屈從于命運。他生在伽利略300年誕辰的日子，伽利略與他除了都是功勛卓著的物理學家以外，還都因為自身的遭際而聞名于世，但霍金并不是被教會禁錮了自由，而是被“肌肉萎縮側(cè)索硬化癥”而禁錮了身體。這意味著他要與命運而斗爭。
In youth he never lacked confidence. He once interrupted the great astrophysi-cist Fred Hoyle in mid-lecture, at the Royal Society, to correct him on the masses of particles. But once he could no longer write down equations, theories had to be translated into geometry in hi s head; and after a tracheotomy in 1985, the ocean of his thinking had to be forced through a cumbersome and narrow technological aperture. His words necessarily became so few that he had to stare hard at the universe in order to define, and refine as far as possible, the new things he had to say about it. His theories of everything emerged in a voice that was both robotic, and curiously laden with emotion.
年輕的時候，他一直是一個意氣風發(fā)的人。他曾經(jīng)在皇家學會里打斷過著名天體物理學家 Fred Hoyle 的課，糾正Fred先生在粒子上的錯誤?？墒牵髞硭麤]法用筆列等式了，他就得用大腦來轉(zhuǎn)換天體模型。1985年，他進行了氣管切開術(shù)，他思維的海洋只能通過一個笨拙又狹窄的小孔里向外傳達。他艱難的窺探著宇宙，并且用他寥寥可數(shù)的詞語盡可能精準的向人們傳達出他的想法。他的每一個音節(jié)都像機器人一樣的傳出來，還帶著感情。
His books, too, made his case even to the man in the street. “A Brief History of Time”, published in 1988, sol d in millions, though its difficulty meant that many copies languished on coffee tables. His “Briefer History” of 2005 was the same thing made plainer, at least to him. He hoped people would understand it, because it was important for scient ists to ex-plain what they were doing. His branch of science, cosmology, was now purporting to answer questions that were once asked of religion. In both books and several more he declared that the laws of science ex-plained everything, without any need to bring God into it. If string theory and its 11 dimensions were understood, for exam-ple, it might show how the universe began.
他的書也讓他成為了街頭巷尾的談資?！稌r間簡史》一書，成書于1988年，盡管這本書很難看懂，許多只能放在咖啡桌上裝裝逼，但是它的
銷量依舊是幾百萬。該書于2005年重新印刷，增加了大眾性，更加的淺顯易懂了。他希望大眾可以看得懂這本書，因為對于一個科學家來說，讓大眾知道他在做什么確實是太重要了。他的宇宙學學科體系幾乎是回答了宗教上的一些玄學的問題。在它的書中，他都在傳遞著一種思想：科學的規(guī)則可以解釋一切，沒有必要把上帝扯出來。如果他的線論和11維空間論成立，那么宇宙的起源就已經(jīng)很好地解釋了。
In his day job, as Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge University until he retired in 2009, it was black holes in particular that he worked on. He even proclaimed once that he was their master, added to his mystique. Black holes, which were predicted by maths before they were discovered in nature, are singularities—points where the familiar laws of physics cease to apply. They are surrounded, however, by surfaces known as event horizons.Anything crossing the event horizon is swallowed for ever.
他在劍橋擔任盧次卡數(shù)學教授，一直到2009年退休，期間他一直致力于研究黑洞。他一度宣稱他是黑洞的主人，這增加了它的神秘感。黑洞是先被數(shù)學計算出來的而后才在宇宙中被發(fā)現(xiàn)的，是許多物理學家所追逐的目標。黑洞的周圍被環(huán)繞我們視野之內(nèi)的存在物所環(huán)繞著，所有穿越期間的東西都會被吞噬。
This was a problem. The second law of thermodynamics, the strictest of nature’s constraints, says that entropy, a form of disorder, must always increase. But if high-entropy systems could be sucked into nothingness by black holes, that would not be the case. Dr Hawking solved this problem by showing that black holes themselves had entropy, and that the more they swallowed, the greater it got. This in turn implied that black holes had a temperature, and thus must give off radiation.
然而這又有一個問題了。熱力學第二定律是自然界里最嚴格的定律，它描述了熵總是在增加的。但是如果一個高熵系統(tǒng)可以被一個虛空的黑洞吸進去，這與定律違背，是不可能發(fā)生的。霍金用黑洞自身的熵數(shù)解釋了這個問題，他說他吸引的物質(zhì)越多，黑洞里的熵越高。這意味著黑洞是有溫度的，所以它會向外產(chǎn)生輻射。
He gave his name to it, but “Hawking ra-diation” surprised him as much as anyone; he claimed to have just tripped over it, to his annoyance. (His voice-synthesis ng machine included a button for jokes.) The radiation was not observed in his lifetime, which was why he never won a Nobel prize. But the link it provided between the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics and thermodynamics was rich food for physicists’imaginations.
他用自己的名字命名了這種輻射，即“霍金輻射”，但是這個明明既嚇到了別人，也嚇到了他自己。在他的發(fā)布會上，他宣稱剛剛被它絆倒。在他的一生中，都沒有發(fā)現(xiàn)這種輻射，由是他也一直沒有獲得諾貝爾獎。但是，他所揭示的相對論，量子力學和熱力學的關(guān)系，都足夠物理學家們?nèi)パ芯苛恕?/span>
