宇宙可能毁灭人类的五大方式

看起来宇宙生活相当平静，不是吗？白天，太阳有规律地发光，夜里，天空没有变化，令人安心。

Dream on. The Universe is filled to the brim with dangerous, nasty things, all jostling for position to be the one to wipe us off the face of the planet. Happily for us, they're all pretty unlikely—how many people do you know who have died by proton disintegration?—but if you wait long enough, one of them is bound to get us.

这是梦幻。其实，整个宇宙都充满着危险，充满险恶的事物，它们相互冲撞争夺地位，都是为了将我们扫出地球表面。幸运的是，它们成功的可能性都不大——有多少你认识的人是被质子分解致死的？——但是，如果你等待足够长的时间，它们中的一个必定会消灭我们。

But which one?

那么，是哪一个呢？

Death by Asteroid

致命小行星

(Photo by Stocktrek Images/Getty Images)

图片来源：Stocktrek Images/Getty Images

Of all the ways we might meet our untimely demise, getting wiped out by an asteroid is the most likely. Why? Because we sit in a cosmic shooting gallery, with 100 tons of material hitting us every day. The problem, though, occurs every few centuries when something big this way comes. If you could ask a dinosaur, I'd imagine they'd tell you to take this seriously.

我们可能遭遇非命死亡的所有方式中，最有可能的是被小行星彻底消灭。为什么？因为我们位于宇宙射击场，每天有100吨的物质射向我们。不过，每隔数百年，当这种大东西出现时，麻烦也发生了。如果你能问问恐龙，我想它们一定会让你认真对待这个问题。

And we do. The B612 Foundation is a collection of scientists dedicated to making sure we don't end up with our bones in some future museum. Their advice: no nukes! Instead, slam a spacecraft head-on into a dangerous rock to move it in a hurry, then fine-tune it with another spacecraft by using its gravity to pull the rock into a safe path. It sounds like sci-fi, but models show this is in fact our best bet to save the Earth.

我 们认真对待了。由一群科学家组成的B612基金会就致力于确保人类的命运不会以在未来的博物馆内陈列我们的骨骼而告终。他们建议：不用核武器！而用航天器 撞进危险的岩石，迅速移动它的位置，然后利用另一个航天器进行微调，并利用它的重力把这块石头拖进安全轨道。这听起来像是科学幻想，但是，模型显示，事实 上这是我们拯救地球最好的办法。

Death by Exploding Star

致命恒星爆炸

Supernova 1987A

超新星1987A

(X-ray: NASA/CXC/PSU/S.Park & D.Burrows.; Optical: NASA/STScI/CfA/P.Challis)

X光：NASA/CXC/PSU/S.Park & D.Burrows，可见光： NASA/STScI/CfA/P.Challis

When a massive star ends its life, it does so with a bang: a supernova, which sends death sleeting across space in the form of high-energy radiation. Numerous studies indicate that a supernova would have to be closer than about 75 light years to do us any harm. The good news: no stars that close are capable of the deed. But in the past things were different; there's evidence we got caught in a blast 2 to 3 million years ago. Of course, the fact that we're still here means we survived. And it'll be some time before another such event occurs. That's good: there's not a darn thing we could do about it anyway.

大 质量恒星结束生命时，会产生精彩的结果——超新星。超新星会以高能量辐射的形式将致命的碎屑撒遍太空。许多研究表明，超新星必须距离我们约75光年以内才 会危害我们。幸运的是：还没有恒星近到可能采取毁灭行动。但是，过去的情况不同。我们获得了两、三千年以前大爆炸的证据。当然了，我们还在这里的事实说明 我们幸存下来了。而且，在未来某个时间，这样的事件还会发生。好吧：反正我们不可能采取任何补救措施。

Death by Dying Sun

死于垂死的太阳

(Photo by NASA/STScl/ESA/K. Noll)

图片来源：NASA/STScl/ESA/K. Noll

The sun is kinda important to us; without it, we'd freeze. But the sun is also middle-aged: At 4.5 billion years old, it's already halfway to running out of fuel, swelling into a red giant, and cooking us to a fine crisp. Even long before then—in less than a billion years—it'll warm up enough to raise our average temperature and cause a runaway greenhouse effect, boiling our oceans.

对我们来说，太阳还挺重要。没有太阳，我们会冻死。可是，太阳也到中年了：年届45亿岁的太阳已经差不多耗尽燃料，膨胀为红巨星，要把我们烤成美味脆饼。甚至早在此之前——在不到一亿年后——它就会热到足以升高我们的平均气温，导致温室效应失控，煮沸我们的海洋。

Happily, that's a long time from now. I'll let my great-great-great-great-great^nth grandchildren worry about it.

幸运的是，那是从今往后漫长时间内的事。我会让我的曾曾曾曾曾N代曾孙去担心这件事。

Death by Black Hole

致命黑洞

(Photo by ESA/V. Beckmann/NASA-GSFC)

图片来源：ESA/V. Beckmann/NASA-GSFC

Black holes are misunderstood. They don't wander the galaxy looking for tasty snacks in the form of planets and stars; they orbit the Milky Way just like the hundreds of billions of other stars do. But it's possible that one could wander too close to us. If it did, planetary orbits would be disrupted, causing the Earth to drop into the sun or be tossed out into deep space. It's unlikely the black hole would swallow us whole, but given the alternatives it might be a blessing.

黑 洞是误解。它们并未以行星和恒星的形式在星系中漫游，寻找可口的小吃，而是像数百亿其它恒星那样环绕银河系运行。不过，其中一个有可能会漫游到过于接近我 们的地方。如果它做到了，就会破坏行星轨道，导致地球落进太阳或被甩进外太空。黑洞不可能完全吞噬我们，但是考虑其他选择也许有好处。

Note, though, that any object with lots of mass would be a problem, including normal everyday stars, and they are a lot more common! Given that it could be trillions of years or more before even that happens, we don't have to worry too much about rogue black holes.

不过，请注意，任何大质量物质都会惹麻烦，其中包括平时常见的恒星，它们有许多共同之处！鉴于发生这样的事可能需要数万亿年或更长时间，我们不必过于担心游手好闲的黑洞。

Death by Ennui

致命倦怠

Photo by NASA, ESA, & F. Paresce (INAF-IASF), R. O'Connell (U. Virginia), & the HST WFC3 Science Oversight Committee)

图片来源：NASA, ESA, & F. Paresce (INAF-IASF), R. O'Connell (U. Virginia), & the HST WFC3 Science Oversight Committee

All good things must come to an end, and that includes our Universe itself. It's 13 billion years old, but what will happen in a trillion years? A quintillion? A googol?

一切美好的事物都一定会走到尽头，其中包括我们的宇宙本身。它已经130亿岁了，不过，在一万亿年以后会发生什么呢？ 10000003 年之后呢？ 10 100 年之后呢？

That's a seriously long time from now. By then, all stars will be long dead, and (if modern quantum theory is right, and we're pretty sure it is) even black holes will have evaporated. Not only that, but matter itself will have fallen apart: protons, long thought to be utterly stable, may disintegrate after about 10 ^39 years. So in that long distant future, the Universe may be nothing more than an ultra-thin soup of electrons and low-energy photons bumping around an eternal nothingness.

那是从今往后极长的一段时间。到那时，所有的恒星早都消亡了，而且（如果现代量子理论是对的，我们相当肯定它是对的）甚至黑洞也会消失。不仅如此，物质本身也会土崩瓦解：长期以来被认为完全稳定的质子也许在约10 ^39 （1  ｘ 10 39 ）年后碎裂。因此在那么遥远的未来，宇宙也许只不过是 极其稀薄的 电子和低能量光子 雾 ，围绕永恒的虚无起伏 。

And while that's inevitable, it's so far in the future it makes the current age of the Universe seem like one beat of a mosquito's wings. There are certainly more pressing needs to attend to.

虽然那是不可避免的，但是那是如此遥远未来的事情，以致于目前宇宙的年龄看上去就像蚊子翅膀的一击。我们当然还有更需要迫切关注的事情。

My advice? Go outside, look up, enjoy the sun, the moon, and the stars. They may be there forever as far as any one of us is concerned… and forever is a long, long time.

我的建议？走出去，抬起头，享受阳光、月亮和恒星。就我们任何一个人来说，它们也许会永远存在……永远是很长很长的时间。