北京時間4月10日晚9時許，包括中國在內(nèi)，全球多地天文學(xué)家同步公布首張黑洞真容。這一由200多名科研人員歷時10余年、從四大洲8個觀測點“捕獲”的視覺證據(jù)，有望證實愛因斯坦廣義相對論在極端條件下仍然成立。

　　一時間引發(fā)外媒瘋狂報道，下面我們來看看外媒怎么評論，附英文翻譯↓

　　為什么這個看似貌不驚人、不明所以的照片會引起那么大的反響?答案是：這是人類史上首張黑洞照片。

　　BBC：

　　《紐約時報》：

　　ABC News：　

　　《赫芬頓郵報》：

　　這個黑洞照片到底有什么驚人之處?

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

　　天文學(xué)家首次拍攝到位于遙遠(yuǎn)星系中的黑洞的圖像。

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

　　它的直徑達(dá)400億公里——是地球的300萬倍，被科學(xué)家稱為“怪獸”。

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

　　這個黑洞距離地球5億萬億公里(約5500萬光年)，由全球不同地區(qū)的8個望遠(yuǎn)鏡組合拍攝。

　　Details have been published today in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

　　4月10日，《天體物理學(xué)報》雜志上發(fā)表了這一發(fā)現(xiàn)的詳細(xì)情況。

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

　　黑洞照片是由“事件視界望遠(yuǎn)鏡(EHT)”捕獲的，EHT是由8個望遠(yuǎn)鏡聯(lián)合組成。

　　▲ 事件視界望遠(yuǎn)鏡項目

　　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.

　　荷蘭拉德堡德大學(xué)的海諾·法爾克教授是這項實驗的發(fā)起人，他在接受BBC新聞采訪時表示，這個黑洞發(fā)現(xiàn)于M87星系。

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

　　法爾克教授說：“我們看到的比整個太陽系都大。”

　　"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."

　　“它的質(zhì)量是太陽的65億倍。我們認(rèn)為，這是現(xiàn)存最重的黑洞之一，堪稱怪獸，是宇宙黑洞中的重量級冠軍。”

　　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.

　　這張圖片呈現(xiàn)了一個非常明亮的“火圈”，就像法爾克教授描述的那樣，圍繞著一個完美的圓形黑洞。這個明亮的光暈是由于過熱的氣體掉進洞里造成的。這束光比銀河系中其他數(shù)十億顆恒星的總和還要亮——這就是為什么在離地球如此遠(yuǎn)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.

　　中心暗圓的邊緣是氣體進入黑洞之處，黑洞的引力如此之大，甚至連光都無法逃脫。

　　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.

　　黑洞是空間的一些物體或區(qū)域，由于自身坍塌導(dǎo)致大量的質(zhì)量都集中于一個小區(qū)域內(nèi)。它們的引力非常強大，可以吸入周圍一切東西，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.

　　黑洞可以分為兩種：一種是一般黑洞，比太陽大20倍;一種是超大質(zhì)量黑洞，至少比太陽大100萬倍。

　　What black hole have scientists captured here?

　　科學(xué)家此次捕獲了什么樣的黑洞?

　　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.

　　圖片顯示這個黑洞位于梅西爾87(譯者注：常稱為“M87星系”)的中心位置，M87是位于室女座的一個巨大星系，距離地球5500萬光年，比太陽系中的太陽大65億倍。

　　How did this happen?

　　這個黑洞是怎樣發(fā)現(xiàn)的?

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

　　這一重大突破是一個名為“事件視界望遠(yuǎn)鏡”項目的國際科學(xué)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.

　　他們在全世界不同地區(qū)組合了8臺望遠(yuǎn)鏡，然后在10天觀測窗口期內(nèi)(譯者注：每年只有大約10天時間能保證所有8個望遠(yuǎn)鏡都能看到黑洞)掃描黑洞。

　　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.

　　這些望遠(yuǎn)鏡分布在多個具有挑戰(zhàn)性的高海拔地區(qū)，包括西班牙的內(nèi)華達(dá)山脈、夏威夷和墨西哥的火山、美國亞利桑那州的山脈、智利的阿塔卡馬沙漠、南極等。

　　▲ 智利的阿塔卡瑪大型毫米波陣列

　　How is it possible to photograph a black hole?

　　黑洞是如何拍攝到的?

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

　　由于光無法從黑洞逃逸，對黑洞進行觀察變得極為困難。

　　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.

　　科學(xué)家們通過黑洞周圍的光環(huán)——在事件視界(譯者注：光線不能逃脫的臨界范圍被稱為黑洞的半徑或“事件視界”)邊沿以極快速度運行的彌散物質(zhì)和輻射，勾勒出的黑暗區(qū)域來顯示實際的黑洞。

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

　　這就是所謂黑洞的“陰影”或“輪廓”。

　　What has been the reaction?

　　各方反應(yīng)如何?

　　Sheperd S. Doeleman, EHT project director

　　EHT 項目主任謝潑德·多爾曼

　　"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."

　　“我們已經(jīng)完成了一代人以前(約三十年前)認(rèn)為不可能做到的事情。技術(shù)的突破、世界上最好的射電天文臺之間的合作、創(chuàng)新的算法都匯聚到一起，打開了一扇關(guān)于黑洞和事件視界的新大門。”

　　Carlos Moedas, EU commissioner for science

　　歐盟研究科學(xué)創(chuàng)新執(zhí)委會委員卡洛斯·莫達(dá)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.”

　　“小說常常激發(fā)科學(xué)靈感，而黑洞長期以來一直在激發(fā)我們的夢想和好奇心。今天，由于歐洲科學(xué)家的貢獻(xiàn)，黑洞的存在不再僅僅是一個理論概念。這一驚人的發(fā)現(xiàn)再次證明，與世界各地的伙伴合作能夠?qū)崿F(xiàn)不可思議的目標(biāo)、開拓知識視野。”

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

　　荷蘭奈梅亨的拉德堡德大學(xué)天體粒子物理學(xué)教授海諾·法爾克博士

　　"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."

　　“黑洞是廣義相對論中最極端的預(yù)測之一，從現(xiàn)在到未來，我們可以對其進行詳細(xì)的檢測。這真的很重要，因為宇宙中最基本的兩種理論——描述微觀宇宙的量子物理學(xué)和描述宏觀宇宙的廣義相對論，在事件視界上并不能統(tǒng)一。這其中一定發(fā)生了什么。我不知道我們能否發(fā)現(xiàn)哪里出了問題，但也許最終，在某個時刻，我們會發(fā)現(xiàn)如何將這兩種理論結(jié)合起來。”

　　Euronews' space correspondent Jeremy Wilks

　　歐洲新聞電視臺太空通訊員杰里米·威爾克斯

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

　　“這對天體物理學(xué)家來說是一個非常非常重要的時刻。

　　"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.

　　“過去幾天，我和一些天體物理學(xué)家聊過，從他們的眼神中就能體會到激動之情，黑洞照片對于他們來說可以算是職業(yè)生涯的分水嶺。

　　"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，他們拍攝了一張距離地球5500萬光年的M87星系超大質(zhì)量黑洞的照片。他們知道黑洞就在那里，但卻從未見過。通過使用事件視界望遠(yuǎn)鏡，他們成功創(chuàng)造出這幅圖像——一幅超大質(zhì)量黑洞的真實圖像。”