The Big Bang theory isn't about the bang itself but about what happened after the bang. 大爆炸理论并不是关于爆炸本身，而是关于爆炸以后发生的事。

Not long after, mind you. 注意，是爆炸以后不久。

By doing a lot of math and watching carefully what goes on in particle accelerators, scientists believe they can look back to 10-43seconds after the moment of creation, 科学家们做了大量计算，仔细观察粒子加速器里的情况，然后认为，他们可以回顾爆炸发生10^－43秒之后的情况，

when the universe was still so small that you would have needed a microscope to find it. 当时宇宙仍然很小，要用显微镜才看得见。

We mustn't swoon over every extraordinary number that comes before us, 对于每个出现在我们面前的非同寻常的数字，我们无须把自己搞得头昏脑涨，

but it is perhaps worth latching¹ on to one from time to time just to be reminded of their ungraspable and amazing breadth. 但有时候也许不妨理解一个，只是为了不忘其难以掌握、令人惊奇的程度。

Thus 10-43is 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000001, or one 10 million trillion trillion trillionths of a second. 于是，10^－43秒就是0.000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 1秒，或者是一千亿亿亿亿分之一秒。

Most of what we know, or believe we know, about the early moments of the universe is thanks to an idea called inflation theory first propounded² in 1979 by a junior particle physicist³, 我们知道的或认为知道的有关宇宙初期的大部分情况，都要归功于一位年轻的粒子物理学家于1979年首先提出的膨胀理论。

then at Stanford, now at MIT, named Alan Guth. 他的名字叫艾伦·古思，他当时在斯坦福大学工作，现在任职于麻省理工学院。

He was thirty-two years old and, by his own admission, had never done anything much before. 他当时32岁，自己承认以前从没有作出过很大的成绩。

He would probably never have had his great theory except that he happened to attend a lecture on the Big Bang given by none other than Robert Dicke. 要是他没有恰好去听那个关于大爆炸的讲座的话，很可能永远也提不出那个伟大的理论。开那个讲座的不是别人，正是罗伯特·迪克。

The lecture inspired Guth to take an interest in cosmology, and in particular in the birth of the universe. 讲座使古思对宇宙学，尤其是对宇宙的形成产生了兴趣。