Scientists made an extraordinary announcement today - for the first time, ripples known as gravitational waves have been observed in the fabric of spacetime.

科学家宣布了一条震惊世界的消息：人类第一次探索到了被称为引力波的时空涟漪。

The discovery of gravitational waves confirms a major prediction of Albert Einstein’s 1915 general theory of relativity, and opens an unprecedented new window onto the cosmos. "With this discovery, we humans are embarking on a marvelous new quest: the quest to explore the warped side of the universe," said LIGO co-founder Kip Thorne.

引力波的发现验证了爱因斯坦1915年提出的广义相对论的一个重要预言，并且为探索宇宙打开了一扇全新的窗户。LIGO联合创始人Kip Thorne 称：“有了这项发现，我们人类要开启一项非凡的新探索： 探索宇宙的弯曲面。”

However, the question on everybody’s lips was - does this mean time travel is now possible? Sadly, the answer is no. "It brings us a much deeper understanding of how warp spacetime behaves when it is extremely warped," says Thorne. "I don’t think it’s going to bring us any closer to being able to do time travel. I wish it would, but that’s a different direction."

但是，所有人都关心一个问题：这是否意味着时空穿越现在有可能实现？很可惜，答案是否定的。Thorne说：“这让我们更深入地了解到时空是怎样极度扭曲的。我不认为这可以增大实现时空穿越的可能性。虽然我希望如此，但是这是两码事。”

The gravitational waves were detected by scientists at the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) on 14 September 2015. They said the gravitational waves were produced during the final fraction of a second of the merger of two black holes to produce a single, more massive spinning black hole.

激光干涉引力波天文台LIGO的科学家于2015年9月14日探测到了引力波。科学家们称这次探索到的引力波是在两个黑洞的合并过程的最后若干分之一秒内产生的，两个黑洞合并成了一个质量更大的旋转黑洞。

This collision of two black holes had been predicted but never observed. Based on the observed signals, LIGO scientists estimate that the black holes for this event were about 29 and 36 times the mass of the sun, and the event took place 1.3 billion years ago.

黑洞的碰撞早已被预言但是一直没有被观测到。基于观测数据，LIGO的科学家估计参与这次碰撞的两个黑洞的质量分别为太阳的29倍和36倍，这次碰撞发生在13亿年前。

About 3 times the mass of the sun was converted into gravitational waves in a fraction of a second - with a peak power output about 50 times that of the whole visible universe.

大约三个太阳的质量在不到一秒的时间内转化成了引力波，释放功率峰值达到整个可见宇宙发光功率的50倍左右。