英语听力：2013-09-25 地平线：黑洞吞噬—3

 There’s nothing anywhere near as extreme as a black hole. 

 

The disturbing truth about black holes is that there are boundary between the known universe and the place that would forever lie beyond the reach of science. They are in an anomaly of gravity so strange that it is barely possible to comprehend. 

 

Black holes represent the regions where our current theories of physics completely fail. What actually happens there we don’t know. So it’s this very weird¹ situation where our own understanding kind of predicts its own failure. 

 

What gravity tells us is that everything at the centre of a black hole should get smashed together in a region smaller than even a proton or an electron or any kind of regular part of matter. If you were to fall inside what we call the radius² of the black hole, the event horizon, and then nothing could get out of that region. 

 

Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever. The great dream for astronomers³ is to see those final moments as it falls over the edge into a oblivion. 

 

The kind of ideal situation that we are aiming for is to really be able to see what happens very close to the event horizon of a black hole. This is not something we can do in a laboratory on earth. So the only hope is to use observations of black holes in the universe to actually see what’s happening. And that is kind of the Holy Grail of astronomical⁴ observations of black hole.

1 weird   

adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的

参考例句：

• From his weird behaviour,he seems a bit of an oddity.从他不寻常的行为看来，他好像有点怪。
• His weird clothes really gas me.他的怪衣裳简直笑死人。

2 radius   

n.半径，半径范围；有效航程，范围，界限

参考例句：

• He has visited every shop within a radius of two miles.周围两英里以内的店铺他都去过。
• We are measuring the radius of the circle.我们正在测量圆的半径。

3 astronomers   

n.天文学者，天文学家( astronomer的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Astronomers can accurately foretell the date,time,and length of future eclipses. 天文学家能精确地预告未来日食月食的日期、时刻和时长。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Astronomers used to ask why only Saturn has rings. 天文学家们过去一直感到奇怪，为什么只有土星有光环。 来自《简明英汉词典》

4 astronomical   

adj.天文学的，（数字）极大的

参考例句：

• He was an expert on ancient Chinese astronomical literature.他是研究中国古代天文学文献的专家。
• Houses in the village are selling for astronomical prices.乡村的房价正在飙升。