【原】考研英语阅读与翻译
The cosmos from a wheelchair------Stephen Hawking, physicist, died on March 14th, aged 76
轮椅上的小宇宙——著名物理学家史蒂芬·霍金于3月14日回归星辰，享年76岁。
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·霍金的一生都不屈从于命运。他生在伽利略300年诞辰的日子，伽利略与他除了都是功勋卓著的物理学家以外，还都因为自身的遭际而闻名于世，但霍金并不是被教会禁锢了自由，而是被“肌肉萎缩侧索硬化症”而禁锢了身体。这意味着他要与命运而斗争。
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.
年轻的时候，他一直是一个意气风发的人。他曾经在皇家学会里打断过著名天体物理学家 Fred Hoyle 的课，纠正Fred先生在粒子上的错误。可是，后来他没法用笔列等式了，他就得用大脑来转换天体模型。1985年，他进行了气管切开术，他思维的海洋只能通过一个笨拙又狭窄的小孔里向外传达。他艰难的窥探着宇宙，并且用他寥寥可数的词语尽可能精准的向人们传达出他的想法。他的每一个音节都像机器人一样的传出来，还带着感情。
His books, too, made his case even to the man in the street. “A Brief History of Time”, publishedin 1988, sol d inmillions, 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.
他的书也让他成为了街头巷尾的谈资。《时间简史》一书，成书于1988年，尽管这本书很难看懂，许多只能放在咖啡桌上装装逼，但是它的
销量依旧是几百万。该书于2005年重新印刷，增加了大众性，更加的浅显易懂了。他希望大众可以看得懂这本书，因为对于一个科学家来说，让大众知道他在做什么确实是太重要了。他的宇宙学学科体系几乎是回答了宗教上的一些玄学的问题。在它的书中，他都在传递着一种思想：科学的规则可以解释一切，没有必要把上帝扯出来。如果他的线论和11维空间论成立，那么宇宙的起源就已经很好地解释了。
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 theirmaster, 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.
他在剑桥担任卢次卡数学教授，一直到2009年退休，期间他一直致力于研究黑洞。他一度宣称他是黑洞的主人，这增加了它的神秘感。黑洞是先被数学计算出来的而后才在宇宙中被发现的，是许多物理学家所追逐的目标。黑洞的周围被环绕我们视野之内的存在物所环绕着，所有穿越期间的东西都会被吞噬。
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.
然而这又有一个问题了。热力学第二定律是自然界里最严格的定律，它描述了熵总是在增加的。但是如果一个高熵系统可以被一个虚空的黑洞吸进去，这与定律违背，是不可能发生的。霍金用黑洞自身的熵数解释了这个问题，他说他吸引的物质越多，黑洞里的熵越高。这意味着黑洞是有温度的，所以它会向外产生辐射。
He gave his name to it, but “Hawking ra-diation” surprised him as much as anyone; he claimed to havejust 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这种辐射，即“霍金辐射”，但是这个明明既吓到了别人，也吓到了他自己。在他的发布会上，他宣称刚刚被它绊倒。在他的一生中，都没有发现这种辐射，由是他也一直没有获得诺贝尔奖。但是，他所揭示的相对论，量子力学和热力学的关系，都足够物理学家们去研究了。
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