1 Hello. My name is Stephen Hawking. Physicist, cosmologist and something of a dreamer. Although I cannot move and I have to speak through a computer, in my mind I am free. Free to explore the universe and ask the big questions, such as: is time travel possible? Can we open a portal to the past or find a shortcut to the future? Can we ultimately use the laws of nature to become masters of time itself? 
大家好，我是斯蒂芬-霍金，是物理学家、宇宙学家及梦想家，尽管身体不能活动，只能通过电脑与大家交流，但从内心中我是自由的，自由地探索宇宙，思考以下重大问题：时间旅行是否可行？能否打开一个回到过去的通道，或到通向未来的捷径？我们最终能否利用自然规律成为掌控时间的主人？
2 To see how this might be possible, we need to look at time as physicists do - at the fourth dimension. It's not as hard as it sounds. Every attentive schoolchild knows that all physical objects, even me in my chair, exist in three dimensions. Everything has a width and a height and a length. 
为了让这一切从虚幻变成现实，我们应以物理学家的角度来重新审视时间——即第四维。这个
问题没有听上去那么晦涩难懂。每个好学的孩子都知道，任何物体都以三维形式存在，包括坐在轮椅上的我。一切物体都有宽度、高度和长度。
3 But there is another kind of length, a length in time. While a human may survive for 80 years, the stones at Stonehenge, for instance, have stood around for thousands of years. And the solar system will last for billions of years. Everything has a length in time as well as space. Travelling in time means travelling through this fourth dimension. 
此外，还有一种长度——时间的长度。例如，虽然一个人可能活了80岁，但巨石阵的石头却数千年屹立不倒。太阳系的运行将持续数十亿年。一切物体都有时间以及空间的长度。时间旅行意味着我们要经过第四维。
4 To see what that means, let's imagine we're doing a bit of normal, everyday car travel. Drive in a straight line and you're travelling in one dimension. Turn right or left and you add the second dimension. Drive up or down a twisty mountain road and that adds height, so that's travelling in all three dimensions. But how on Earth do we travel in time? How do we find a path through the fourth dimension?
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要想搞明白这一点，我们可以想象正在从事一种日常活动，比如开车。开车沿直线行驶，是在一维中旅行。向左转或是向右转，则是二维旅行。驱车上下山路意味着又多增加了高度，所以是在三维空间内。那么我们怎样才能实现时间旅行？怎样才能发现穿越第四维的通道呢？
5 Let's indulge in a little science fiction for a moment. Time travel movies often feature a vast, energy-hungry machine. The machine creates a path through the fourth dimension, a tunnel through time. A time traveller, a brave, perhaps foolhardy individual, prepared for who knows what, steps into the time tunnel and emerges who knows when. The concept may be far-fetched, and the reality may be very different from this, but the idea itself is not so crazy. 
让我们暂时从科幻电影中寻答案吧。在此类电影中，通常会有一台巨大而高能耗的时间机器，这台机器产生通往第四维的通道——“时光隧道”。时光旅行者——勇敢但可能有些鲁莽的人，做好我们大家所知道的准备，然后走进时光隧道，来到一个他们想要到达的时间里。这一概念可能有些牵强，事实可能与之存在着天壤之别，但该想法本身不是那么的疯狂。
6 Physicists have been thinking about tunnels in time too, but we come at it from a different angle. We wonder if portals to the past or the future could ever be possible within the laws of nature. As it turns out, we think they are. What's more, we've even given them a name: wormholes. The truth is that wormholes are all around us, only they're too small to see. Wormholes are very tiny. They occur in nooks and crannies in space and time. You might find it a tough concept, but stay with me.
物理学家们也在思考时光隧道，但我们的角度不同。我们想搞清过去或未来的通道是否存在于自然规律中？事实证明，我们认为确实是这样的。而且，我们还给它们起了一个名字：虫洞。其实，虫洞无处不在，只是因为太小，我们肉眼看不到罢了。虫洞非常小，存在于时空的隐蔽处和缝隙里。你或许认为这是一个难以理解的概念，请耐心听我继续解释吧。
7 Nothing is flat or solid. If you look closely enough at anything you'll find holes and wrinkles in it. It's a basic physical principle, and it even applies to time. Even something as smooth as a pool ball has tiny crevices, wrinkles and voids. Now it's easy to show that this is true in the first three dimensions. But trust me, it's also true of the fourth dimension. Ther
e are tiny crevices, wrinkles and voids in time. Down at the smallest of scales, smaller even than molecules, smaller than atoms, we get to a place called the quantum foam. This is where wormholes exist. Tiny tunnels or shortcuts through space and time constantly form, disappear, and reform within this quantum world. And they actually link two separate places and two different times. 
任何物质都不是平整无暇和实心的，如果仔细观察，会发现它们上面都存在小孔和裂缝，这是一个基本的物理原理，同样适用于时间。即便是像台球一样的东西，上面也有裂缝、褶皱或空洞。现在容易说明这种情况也存在于第一个三维中。相信我，这一原理同样适用于第四维。时间也存在许多微小的裂缝、褶皱和空洞。在最小的刻度下——比分子甚至原子都小，我们来到一个称为量子泡沫(quantum foam)的地方，这是虫洞存在之处。时空中的微小隧道或捷径不停地在这个量子世界中形成、消失和重新形成。它们可以连接两个隔离的空间以及两个不同的时间。
8 Unfortunately, these real-life time tunnels are just a billion-trillion-trillionths of a centimetre across. Way too small for a human to pass through - but here's where the notion of wormho
le time machines is leading. Some scientists think it may be possible to capture a wormhole and enlarge it many trillions of times to make it big enough for a human or even a spaceship to enter. 
不幸的是，现实生活中这种时光隧道非常狭小，即使发现了它们，我们也不能从这个缝隙穿过——可这正是“虫洞时间机器”概念的前进方向。部分科学家认为，或许有一天捕捉到一个虫洞，将它放大数万亿倍，令其足够的大，能让人甚至飞船进入。
9  Given enough power and advanced technology, perhaps a giant wormhole could even be constructed in space. I'm not saying it can be done, but if it could be, it would be a truly remarkable device. One end could be here near Earth, and the other far, far away, near some distant planet. 

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