首张黑洞照片面世 来看看外媒怎么评论

　　北京时间4月10日晚9时许，包括中国在内，全球多地天文学家同步公布首张黑洞真容。这一由200多名科研人员历时10余年、从四大洲8个观测点“捕获”的视觉证据，有望证实爱因斯坦广义相对论在极端条件下仍然成立。

　　一时间引发外媒疯狂报道，下面我们来看看外媒怎么评论，附英文翻译↓

　　为什么这个看似貌不惊人、不明所以的照片会引起那么大的反响?答案是：这是人类史上首张黑洞照片。

　　BBC：

　　《纽约时报》：

　　ABC News：　

　　《赫芬顿邮报》：

　　这个黑洞照片到底有什么惊人之处?

　　Astronomers have taken the first ever image of a black hole, which is located in a distant galaxy.

　　天文学家首次拍摄到位于遥远星系中的黑洞的图像。

　　It measures 40 billion km across - three million times the size of the Earth - and has been described by scientists as "a monster".

　　它的直径达400亿公里——是地球的300万倍，被科学家称为“怪兽”。

　　The black hole is 500 million trillion km away and was photographed by a network of eight telescopes across the world.

　　这个黑洞距离地球5亿万亿公里(约5500万光年)，由全球不同地区的8个望远镜组合拍摄。

　　Details have been published today in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

　　4月10日，《天体物理学报》杂志上发表了这一发现的详细情况。

　　It was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a network of eight linked telescopes.

　　黑洞照片是由“事件视界望远镜(EHT)”捕获的，EHT是由8个望远镜联合组成。

　　▲ 事件视界望远镜项目

　　Prof Heino Falcke, of Radboud University in the Netherlands, who proposed the experiment, told BBC News that the black hole was found in a galaxy called M87.

　　荷兰拉德堡德大学的海诺·法尔克教授是这项实验的发起人，他在接受BBC新闻采访时表示，这个黑洞发现于M87星系。

　　"What we see is larger than the size of our entire Solar System," he said.

　　法尔克教授说：“我们看到的比整个太阳系都大。”

　　"It has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the Sun. And it is one of the heaviest black holes that we think exists. It is an absolute monster, the heavyweight champion of black holes in the Universe."

　　“它的质量是太阳的65亿倍。我们认为，这是现存最重的黑洞之一，堪称怪兽，是宇宙黑洞中的重量级冠军。”

　　The image shows an intensely bright "ring of fire", as Prof Falcke describes it, surrounding a perfectly circular dark hole. The bright halo is caused by superheated gas falling into the hole. The light is brighter than all the billions of other stars in the galaxy combined - which is why it can be seen at such distance from Earth.

　　这张图片呈现了一个非常明亮的“火圈”，就像法尔克教授描述的那样，围绕着一个完美的圆形黑洞。这个明亮的光晕是由于过热的气体掉进洞里造成的。这束光比银河系中其他数十亿颗恒星的总和还要亮——这就是为什么在离地球如此远的地方能看到它。

　　The edge of the dark circle at the centre is the point at which the gas enters the black hole, which is an object that has such a large gravitational pull, not even light can escape.

　　中心暗圆的边缘是气体进入黑洞之处，黑洞的引力如此之大，甚至连光都无法逃脱。

　　What is a black hole?

　　什么是黑洞?

　　Black holes are objects or regions of space that have collapsed in on themselves, which results in a huge amount of mass being concentrated in a very small area. Their gravity is so strong it pulls in everything around it, including light.

　　黑洞是空间的一些物体或区域，由于自身坍塌导致大量的质量都集中于一个小区域内。它们的引力非常强大，可以吸入周围一切东西，包括光。

　　There are two types of black holes, the garden-variety black holes, which are 20 times bigger than the sun and the supermassive black holes, which are at least a million times bigger.

　　黑洞可以分为两种：一种是一般黑洞，比太阳大20倍;一种是超大质量黑洞，至少比太阳大100万倍。

　　What black hole have scientists captured here?

　　科学家此次捕获了什么样的黑洞?

　　The image reveals the black hole at the centre of Messier 87, a massive galaxy in the constellation of Virgo. It is located 55 million light-years from Earth and has a mass 6.5-billion times larger than our solar system's sun.

　　图片显示这个黑洞位于梅西尔87(译者注：常称为“M87星系”)的中心位置，M87是位于室女座的一个巨大星系，距离地球5500万光年，比太阳系中的太阳大65亿倍。

　　How did this happen?

　　这个黑洞是怎样发现的?

　　This major breakthrough was the result of an international scientific collaboration called the Event Horizon Telescope project.

　　这一重大突破是一个名为“事件视界望远镜”项目的国际科学合作成果。

　　They established a network of eight telescopes across the world, which then scanned the black hole over a period of 10 days.

　　他们在全世界不同地区组合了8台望远镜，然后在10天观测窗口期内(译者注：每年只有大约10天时间能保证所有8个望远镜都能看到黑洞)扫描黑洞。

　　The telescopes are located at challenging high-altitude sites, including in the Spanish Sierra Nevada, volcanoes in Hawaii and Mexico, mountains in Arizona, the Chilean Atacama Desert, and Antarctica.

　　这些望远镜分布在多个具有挑战性的高海拔地区，包括西班牙的内华达山脉、夏威夷和墨西哥的火山、美国亚利桑那州的山脉、智利的阿塔卡马沙漠、南极等。

　　▲ 智利的阿塔卡玛大型毫米波阵列

　　How is it possible to photograph a black hole?

　　黑洞是如何拍摄到的?

　　The fact that black holes do not allow light to escape makes viewing them difficult.

　　由于光无法从黑洞逃逸，对黑洞进行观察变得极为困难。

　　The scientists look for a ring of light — disrupted matter and radiation circling at tremendous speed at the edge of the event horizon — around a region of darkness representing the actual black hole.

　　科学家们通过黑洞周围的光环——在事件视界(译者注：光线不能逃脱的临界范围被称为黑洞的半径或“事件视界”)边沿以极快速度运行的弥散物质和辐射，勾勒出的黑暗区域来显示实际的黑洞。

　　This is known as the black hole's shadow or silhouette.

　　这就是所谓黑洞的“阴影”或“轮廓”。

　　What has been the reaction?

　　各方反应如何?

　　Sheperd S. Doeleman, EHT project director

　　EHT 项目主任谢泼德·多尔曼

　　"We have achieved something presumed to be impossible just a generation ago. Breakthroughs in technology, connections between the world's best radio observatories, and innovative algorithms all came together to open an entirely new window on black holes and the event horizon."

　　“我们已经完成了一代人以前(约三十年前)认为不可能做到的事情。技术的突破、世界上最好的射电天文台之间的合作、创新的算法都汇聚到一起，打开了一扇关于黑洞和事件视界的新大门。”

　　Carlos Moedas, EU commissioner for science

　　欧盟研究科学创新执委会委员卡洛斯·莫达斯

　　“Fiction often inspires science, and black holes have long fueled our dreams and curiosity. Today, thanks to the contribution of European scientists, the existence of black holes is no longer just a theoretical concept. This amazing discovery proves again how working together with partners around the world can lead to achieving the unthinkable and moving the horizons of our knowledge.”

　　“小说常常激发科学灵感，而黑洞长期以来一直在激发我们的梦想和好奇心。今天，由于欧洲科学家的贡献，黑洞的存在不再仅仅是一个理论概念。这一惊人的发现再次证明，与世界各地的伙伴合作能够实现不可思议的目标、开拓知识视野。”

　　Dr Heino Falcke, professor of astroparticle physics at Radboud University, Nijmegen

　　荷兰奈梅亨的拉德堡德大学天体粒子物理学教授海诺·法尔克博士

　　"Black holes are one of the most extreme predictions of the theory of general relativity and this is something we can now test in detail. And in the future. This is so important because the two most fundamental theories of our universe, quantum physics, which describes the small things, and relativity, which describes the big universe, don't go together at the event horizon. And something has to happen there. Whether we'll be able to see what goes wrong I don't know but maybe eventually, at some point, we'll found out how to bring these two theories together."

　　“黑洞是广义相对论中最极端的预测之一，从现在到未来，我们可以对其进行详细的检测。这真的很重要，因为宇宙中最基本的两种理论——描述微观宇宙的量子物理学和描述宏观宇宙的广义相对论，在事件视界上并不能统一。这其中一定发生了什么。我不知道我们能否发现哪里出了问题，但也许最终，在某个时刻，我们会发现如何将这两种理论结合起来。”

　　Euronews' space correspondent Jeremy Wilks

　　欧洲新闻电视台太空通讯员杰里米·威尔克斯

　　"It really is a massive, massive moment for people in astrophysics.

　　“这对天体物理学家来说是一个非常非常重要的时刻。

　　"In the last few days, I've been speaking to some of them and you see the emotion in their eyes. They are incredibly excited about this. It's a kind of before and after in their careers.

　　“过去几天，我和一些天体物理学家聊过，从他们的眼神中就能体会到激动之情，黑洞照片对于他们来说可以算是职业生涯的分水岭。

　　"Just think about this: they've taken an image of the supermassive black hole in the galaxy M87, 55 million light-years from Earth. It is an object they knew was there but they were not able to see. Using this Event Horizon telescope they've managed to actually create this image. A real image of a supermassive black hole."

　　“想想吧，他们拍摄了一张距离地球5500万光年的M87星系超大质量黑洞的照片。他们知道黑洞就在那里，但却从未见过。通过使用事件视界望远镜，他们成功创造出这幅图像——一幅超大质量黑洞的真实图像。”