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Light travels at about 1 foot per nanosecond.
光的传播速度约为每纳秒1英尺。
Hold your hand up 12 inches from your face:
把手举到离脸12英寸的地方：
you’re seeing your hand as it was a nanosecond ago.
你看到的是一纳秒前的手。
Everything you look at is, to one degree or another, in the past.
你所看到的一切，在某种程度上都是过去的。
The farther away in space, the more ancient in time.
太空越远，时间越古老。
You can’t see the Sun as it is now, but you can see it as it was about 8 minutes ago.
你看不到现在的太阳，但你可以看到它大约8分钟前的样子。
You can’t see Alpha Centauri now, but you can see it 4.4 years ago.
你现在看不到半人马座阿尔法星，但你可以看到4.4年前的它。
You see the Andromeda Galaxy as it was 2.5 million years in the past. And so on.
你可以看到仙女座星系250万年前的样子。等等。
With powerful telescopes, we can see galaxies whose light has been traveling to us for more than 13 billion years.
借助强大的望远镜，我们可以看到130亿多年来一直向我们发出光的星系。
We see them shining in a universe that’s still young,
我们看到他们在一个还年轻的宇宙中闪耀，
where gravity has barely begun to pull matter together into stars and galaxies.
在那里，重力还没有开始把物质拉到一起形成恒星和星系。
But we can see something even more distant, and more ancient, than the first galaxies.
但是我们可以看到比第一个星系更遥远、更古老的东西。
If we peer out far enough, in between the galaxies, we can see parts of the Universe that are so far away,
如果我们看得足够远，在星系之间，我们可以看到宇宙中非常遥远的部分，
it has taken the light from that distance very nearly the entire age of the cosmos to reach us.
它把来自那个距离的光，几乎是整个宇宙年龄的光，带到我们这里。
When we look at the most distant parts of the cosmos, in every direction,
当我们从各个方向看到宇宙最遥远的地方，
we see parts of the Universe that are so far in the past,
我们看到的是宇宙中遥远的过去，
they’re still in the final stages of the Big Bang.
他们还在大爆炸的最后阶段。
So far away, so far back, the space is completely filled with a dense, roiling plasma, the fire of creation.
非常遥远，非常遥远，空间完全被稠密的、翻滚的等离子体所填满，这就是创造之火。
We are not the center of the Universe.
我们不是宇宙的中心。
But we are the center of our own perception as light reaches us from afar;
但当光线从远处照射到我们时，我们是自己感知的中心；
we lie embedded in nesting-doll layers of cosmic time. Each concentric sphere is an era.
我们躺在宇宙时间的嵌套娃娃里。每个同心圆都是一个时代。
like geological strata all around us.
就像我们周围的地质层一样。
The most distant layer of time that we can see is the light that has been traveling since the moment the primordial fire began to cool.
我们所能看到的最遥远的一层时间是从原始火焰开始冷却的那一刻起就一直在传播的光。
The cosmic microwave background surrounds us at every edge of our vision.
宇宙微波背景在我们视野的每一个角落环绕着我们。
We are embedded in shells of cosmic time, and the final one is fire.
我们被嵌在宇宙时间的外壳里，最后一个是火。
