I was glad that he did not know the subject of the talk I had just given
我很高兴他不知道 我刚给出的主题是
the possibility that the universe had no beginning no moment of creation.
宇宙没有起点的可能性 没有开天辟地的那一瞬间
There were theories in the early '70s the first type of creation theories
70年代早期有一些理论 第一种类型的创造论
where the people concerned started off with a fixed, external space and time which for eternity was empty
他们从一个 固定的外部时空出发 这个外部时空永远都是空的
and then suddenly, for some unknown reason, the universe nucleates at a particular point and then, bang, it blows apart.
然后 突然 因为某种未知的原因 宇宙到某个特定的点成核 砰 它爆炸了
But the trouble is that when space and time appear in the classical theory
但问题是 当时间和空间出现在经典理论中
that actual point itself is a singular point in the mathematics.
那个点本身是个数学上的奇点
Mathematics breaks down, and so you cannot use that to give you a creation theory.
数学无法处理了 所以 你不能用这个来得出创造论
If one goes back in time one comes to the Big Bang singularity where the laws of physics break down.
如果一个人回到从前 回到大爆炸的奇点 那里的物理法则就不复存在
But there's another direction of time that one can go in which avoids the singularity.
但是有另一个时间线的方向 可以顺着那个方向来避免奇点
This is called the imaginary direction of time.
这被称作时间的虚方向
In imaginary time there need not be any singularities which form a beginning or end to time.
在虚时间里 不需要 形成任何时间上有开始或结束的奇点