People think black hole, and so then you think sort of like a hole like Wile coyote fell into when he was chasing the roadrunner. But it’s not quite like that.

当我们想到黑洞，你会认为这是一个像狼人怀尔在追逐跑路者时掉进入的洞。但实际并非如此。

It’s four-dimensional just like we are. My name is Jedidah Isler.

它和咱们相同是四维的。我叫耶迪达·艾斯勒。

I have a PhD in astrophysics. And I

study supermassive, hyperactive, black holes called “blazars”.

我是天体物理学博士。我研讨的是特大质量、极度活泼的黑洞，叫做“耀变体”。

A black hole is an object that is so massive that not even light can escape it. A blazar is a special class of black hole that is super massive and by that, I mean something that’s a billion times the mass of the sun.

黑洞是一个无量到连光都无法逃脱的天体。耀变体黑洞是一类特别的黑洞，它的质量是太阳的十亿倍。

I study those and they’re special because somehow, somewhere near the black hole is able to spin up these jets of material that are going 99.99% of the speed of light. I like to think of it as a cosmic super soaker that’s just shooting out material.

我研讨过这些东西，它们很特别，因为出于某种缘由，黑洞邻近的某个当地，可以旋转出这些喷流的物质，它们的速度是光速的99. 99%。我喜爱把它愿望成一个世界超级浸水器，它在喷发物质。

And I think that’s super cool. What people are thinking when

they say black hole are thinking “oh when I look at it I see a void where nothing else is”.

我认为这非常酷。我们在说黑洞的时分所想的是 “哦，当我看到它的时分，我看到的是一个虚无的当地，其他啥都没有”。

But it’s not. . . it’s not a hole, it’s four-dimensional just like we are. The reason they’re black is because not even light can escape the pull that gravity provides from the black hole itself.

但它不是……它不是一个洞，它是四维的，就像咱们相同。它们之所所以黑色的，是因为即就是光也无法逃脱黑洞本身的引力。

Everything has gravity. But the more massive you are, the stronger that gravity is.

悉数物体都有重力。可是你的质量越大，引力就越强。

If you have things that are very massive and they are say orbiting one another and two black holes collide, that’s two massive bodies having huge eruptions of energy. They can actually cause a

ripple in space-time itself.

假定有非常无量的东西，说是彼此绕着对方的轨迹运转，那就是两个黑洞相撞，那就是两个无量的天体爆宣告无量的能量。它们实践上可以在时空中致使涟漪。

And that’s why it’s an amazing discovery! If you imagine sort of a pebble falling into a pond, space and time are that pond and the drop of the pebble is the first time the two black holes collide.

这就是为啥这是一个惊人的发现！假定你愿望一颗小石子掉进池塘，空间和时刻就是那个池塘，小石子的掉落是两个黑洞初度磕碰。

That ripple through the water is the ripple in space-time, except we would be sitting in the pond and feeling that ripple as well. My work is an important contribution to the world.

穿过水面的涟漪就是时空的涟漪，只不过咱们坐在池塘里也能感遭到它的涟漪。我的作业是对这个世界的重要奉献。

Because there’s so much to learn. So in some ways doing this

work at all, trying to understand how the universe works is a contribution to the larger body of knowledge that exists.

因为要学的东西太多。所以在某种程度上，做这项作业，企图了解世界是如何运作的是对存在的更大的常识体的一种奉献。