How will our universe come to an end? Will it rip to shreds in a flash? Collapse in on itself? Or will it slowly freeze to death? Scientists are imaging the unimaginable. And they’re coming up with some wild ideas about how it’s all going to end. This is the end of the universe. A battle is taking place in the farthest reaches of space. No one can see it, but scientists are certain that it’s happening and that the outcome is grim. The universe is going to end. It won’t happen for billions of years, but there is no way out. Working out how it will end is the challenge of astrophysicists around the world. They’re pointing high-tech equipment out toward the heavens to unlock the secret of our fate. The possibilities are frightening. In one scenario gravity pulls the universe back into itself similar to air being let out of an inflated balloon. The universe goes back to its original size. This is the Big Crunch. It’d be the end universe in a big fireball as all the matter collapses onto itself. That’d be pretty dramatic.
我們的宇宙會結束嗎？它會在閃光中撕成碎片？自己向內塌縮？或者會慢慢凍死？科學家正在想像無法想像的事，還提出了關於宇宙怎麼結束的驚人想法，這就是宇宙的終結。在最遙遠的太空中正在進行一場戰鬥，沒有人看得見它，但科學家確知戰鬥正在進行，而且結果令人膽寒。宇宙必將終結，雖然是幾十億年後才會發生的事，但卻無可避免。研究宇宙如何結束是全世界天文物理學家的挑戰，他們把高科技裝備瞄準天外，以求解開我們命運的祕密。可能的終結方式令人驚駭，其中一種情況是重力吸引宇宙收縮，類似於空氣從氣球中釋出，宇宙回到最初的大小，這就是大崩塌理論。一團大火球象徵宇宙的結束，物質全部塌縮到原點。那相當具戲劇性。
Then there’s the Big Chill. The universe expands until the nuclear furnaces that power all the stars burn out. The universe grows cold and dies. A second possibility is actually kind of sad. The universe will continue to expand forever and it will just grow into an increasingly cold and lonely place as the expansion removes our nearest neighbors from us and we just end up a single isolated community of stars and galaxies. Then again, there could be a much more spectacular end in which everything is ripped to shreds, down to the last atom. Think of it like a balloon that is filled with too much air. It pops. It’s much more dramatic than the Big Chill and just as fateful as the Big Crunch. The universe continues to expand, but at an ever-quickening pace. And in fact, the pace is so great that even the space-time fabric cannot hold the universe together. However the end comes, it will be a dramatic conclusion.
此外還有大寒冷理論。宇宙持續擴張，直到恆星的核反應爐耗盡燃料，宇宙變冷然後死亡。第二種可能性著實有點悲哀，宇宙永遠繼續擴張，而且變得愈來愈冷、愈孤獨，擴張使我們最近的鄰居遠離，終至成為孤立的恆星與星系群。但是還有更為壯觀的終結，所有物質的每個原子都被撕碎。想像一個裝了太多空氣的氣球會爆掉的情況。這比大寒冷激烈很多，就和大崩塌一樣致命。宇宙繼續擴張，但是速度愈來愈快。事實是，擴張的速度快到時空結構無法維持宇宙完整，不論終結怎麼來到，它將是戲劇化的結局。
To understand how it all could end, scientists turn to how it began. The mystery starts to be solved here at the Mount Wilson Observatory overlooking Pasadena, California. In 1929, while looking through what was then the world’s largest telescope, Edwin Hubble makes a strange discover. The universe is expanding. Before Hubble, scientists said that the universe was static and unchanging. Hubble’s discovery that the universe is expanding meant it had a starting point. A beginning. That brought the idea forward that, hey, what if we ran the film backward in time and found the point at which that began? And that was where the idea of a Big Bang came from. The Big Bang is that fraction of a second when the universe and everything in it exploded into existence from a point smaller than an atom. One common misconceptionabout the Big Bang is that we can identify a point in space where the Big Bang occurred. But in fact, it’s more appropriate to think of the Big Bang as a simultaneous creation everywhere of space, which is then continuing to expand until the present day.
為了了解宇宙可能的終結方式，科學家轉而研究宇宙怎麼開始，解謎的起點是俯瞰加州帕沙第納的威爾遜山天文臺。艾德溫•哈伯一九二九年使用當時最大的望遠鏡進行觀察時，發現了一件奇怪的事。宇宙正在擴張。在哈伯之前，科學家說宇宙是靜止、恆常的，哈伯發現宇宙正在擴張，意味著宇宙有起點，有一個開始。這讓人提出設想，如果回溯時光，找到宇宙的起點會怎樣？那就是大爆炸理論的來源。大爆炸是一剎那之間，整個宇宙和裡面的一切都從比原子更小的點爆炸所產生。一般對大爆炸的誤解，在於以為能指出大爆炸發生的點，但設想大爆炸是同時發生在各地的創造，然後繼續擴張至今才更為恰當。
The third-hottest July worldwide ended a string of record-breaking temperatures last month, but many regions were still devastated by extreme weather amplified by global warming, the European climate monitoring service said Thursday last week. Heavy rains flooded Pakistan and northern China; Canada, Scotland and Greece struggled to tame wildfires intensified by persistent drought; and many nations in Asia and Scandinavia recorded new average highs for the month. “Two years after the hottest July on record, the recent streak of global temperature records is over,” Carlo Buontempo, director of the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, said in a statement. “But that
A: Wow, Taiwanese pop band Sodagreen just held two concerts in Kaohsiung to mark the 20th anniversary of their debut. B: I’m glad they’re continuing to perform, even after taking several long breaks. A: Canadian singer Elijah Woods also staged a show in New Taipei on Tuesday, followed by US singer Camila Cabello, who is set to rock Kaohsiung tonight. B: I love Camila’s global hit Havana. It was the best-selling digital single of 2018, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). A: The singer with Cuban-Mexican heritage was born in Havana, and her music has been influenced by her roots. A:
Peacocks are among the most beautiful birds in the world. Their bright feathers and graceful movements have fascinated humans for centuries. These magnificent creatures belong to the pheasant family and are found in regions across Asia and Africa. Let’s explore peacocks’ unique characteristics and cultural significance. There are three main species of peacock: the well-known Indian peafowl, native to South Asia; the endangered green peafowl from Southeast Asia; and the rare Congo peafowl, found in African rainforests. Although the term “peacock” technically refers only to males, many people use it for both sexes. Male peacocks display their colorful tail feathers, which
A: Apart from US singer Camila Cabello, Singaporean pop diva Sun Yanzi has two concerts scheduled at the K-Arena this weekend. B: Having debuted in 2000, Sun is now touring again to celebrate her career that has spanned over a quarter century. A: I like all of her 13 albums, but she hasn’t released one since A Dancing van Gogh in 2017. B: I hear that her shows will feature videos made by generative AI that will look back on her albums. A: Really? That’s awesome. Her music can always bring back fans’ great memories. A: 除了美國歌手卡蜜拉，新加坡歌后孫燕姿本週末將在高雄巨蛋嗨唱2場。 B: 哇2000年出道的孫燕姿，終於再度展開世界巡演慶祝出道25年！ A: 她出的13張專輯我全都很喜歡，但自從2017年《No. 13作品––跳舞的梵谷》她就沒再出過專輯了。 B: 聽說演唱會還有生成式AI影片，回顧過去所有專輯的精彩片段。 A:
RSS