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Penrose announced this result that when stars collapse indefinitely.
当时彭罗斯告诉我这个结论 当恒星无限坍缩时
they will become singular as long as some very broad conditions are satisfied
他们会变得奇异 只需要满足一些很宽松的条件就会这样
that everybody would have regarded as reasonable.
很多人都同意这一点
And I remember Stephen Hawking, who was then approaching
我记得史蒂芬·霍金当时快要三年级了
his third year as a research student, saying What very interesting results.
他还是研究生 他说 多有趣的结果"
I wonder whether they could be adapted to understanding the origin of the universe.
我很好奇是否能应用它们 来理解宇宙的起源
And what he had in mind, you see, was that if, just mentally you reverse the sense of time.
他脑子里想的是 如果你像这样想像 让时光倒流
you can think of the expanding universe as a collapsing system.
那么这个正在膨胀的宇宙就会变成一个坍缩中的系统
It's a bit like a very giant star collapsing.
这就像一个异常巨大的恒星正在坍缩
Roger Penrose proved that a dying star, collapsing under its own gravity.
罗杰·彭罗斯证明了 一个垂死的恒星会在其自身重力的作用下坍缩
eventually shrinks to a singularity a point of infinite density and zero size.
最后变成一个奇点 一个拥有无穷大密度而没有体积的点
I realized that if I reversed the direction of time so that the collapse became an expansion.
我意识到 如果我颠倒时间进行的方向 那么这个坍缩的过程就变成膨胀
I could prove that the universe had a beginning.
于是我就能证明 宇宙确实是有起源的
But my proof based on Einstein's theory of general relativity
然而 我的证明 是建立在爱因斯坦广义相对论的基础上
also showed that we cannot understand how the universe began.
这同时也表明我们无法理解 宇宙究竟是如何起源的
because it showed that all scientific theories including general relativity itself break down at the beginning of the universe.
因为它表明 所有的科学理论 包括广义相对论本身 都会在宇宙起源时分崩离析
