你想成为科学家吗？你是否觉得科学遥不可及，或者科学家都是天才？为了解答这些看似深奥的问题，我们请到了英国著名物理学家布莱恩·考克斯教授。他曾为英国广播公司和科学频道共同制作的节目《太阳系的奇迹》担任主持。他将告诉我们科学非但不可怕，而且还很有趣呢！
1. Science is about asking interesting questions...
The key point is to make sure that people understand that science is something they can do. You definitely don't have to be some kind of genius. What you need to do, 1)primarily, is be interested. I was always interested in 2)astronomy, and loads of kids are; it's just interesting.
You just have to notice these things: the 3)aurora borealis, what's that? How old is the universe? Is there 4)alien life out there somewhere? Those things are obviously interesting questions. No kid would think that “are there aliens?” is not an interesting question.
1. 科学的核心在于提出各种有趣的问题……
关键在于要让人们明白到科学是人人都能做到的事情。你根本不必是什么天才，你需要做的最基本的事情就是产生兴趣。我一直对天文学很感兴趣，很多小孩也很感兴趣，因为它确实很有意思。
你只需要注意到这样一些事情：北极光是什么？宇宙的历史有多长？外星生命存在吗？那些显然都是很有趣的问题。没有哪个小孩会认为“有外星人吗？”是一个无聊的问题。
2. ...and finding out how to answer them.
What's 5)vital to know is that you can have that as a job, if you want. So you can be one of the many people around the world who are building and designing spacecraft to go to Mars to look for life. I always knew this as a kid, that you had to do 6)physics, and I enjoyed it because I knew where it was going, as well as the process of doing it.
2. ……然后找出这些问题的答案。
要知道，如果愿意的话，你也可以把科学当成职业。也就是说，你可以成为世界上设计和建造航天飞机、去火星探测外星生命的众多科学家之一。我从小就知道我要研究物理学，我也很喜欢研究物理学，因为我知道它通往何方，也知道如何开展研究。
3. Science is all around you.
Because of the kind of science I do—astronomy, 7)particle physics, 8)cosmology and those things—I tend to come at it from the big questions. But the other approach is to say that your iPod works because of 9)quantum 10)mechanics. It's also worth saying, “How does my phone work?” because, in order to do that, you need to know about the structure of 11)atoms. That came from research into the way that atoms glow.
3. 科学就在你身边。
由于我所从事的是天文学、粒子物理学和宇宙学之类的学科，因此我通常会研究一些比较宏观的问题。其实另外一种途径就是探讨类似“你的iPod之所以能运转是因为量子力学”这样的小问题。“我的手机的工作原理是怎样的？”也是一个值得一提的问题，因为要回答这些问题，你需要了解原子的结构，答案可以通过研究原子发光的方式得出。
4. We are all particle physicists. 
The Internet was invented at CERN注1 in order to do particle physics. If you ask what is the major 12)contribution of particle physics to the world, it's probably the web, and therefore Facebook, Google, Amazon. All that money, all those things, came from Tim Berners-Lee注2 13)messing around at CERN.
One of the key things about doing big science is that, because it's difficult, you end up inventing things to do it, which then become useful. The medical imaging technology—those scanners that have 14)revolutionised medicine—came from particle physics. They were invented to see particles and explore the 15)subatomic world. Suddenly you find out it's good for medical 16)diagnosis. You can list a million different examples of that.
4. 我们都是粒子物理学家。
欧洲核子研究中心发明互联网是为了研究粒子物理学。如果你问粒子物理学为世界作出的主要贡献，答案大概就是网络了，以及由此衍生出来的脸书、谷歌和亚马逊网站等等，所有这些都源于蒂姆·伯纳斯-李在欧洲核子研究中心的“不务正业”。
从事宏观科学研究的重要一点是——由于这类科学都很高深，结果你要发明一些东西来研究它，这些东西后来往往很有实用性。医学成像技术——那些为医学带来革命的扫描仪——就来自粒子物理学。它原本是为了观察粒子和探索亚原子世界而发明的。但你突然发现它也可以用于医学诊疗。你可以列出上百万个这样的例子。
5. The solar system is full of amazing things.
The 17)sheer scale of the Sun, the fact that you could put a million Earths inside it, and it burns 600 million tons of 18)hydrogen every second. Six hundred million TONS of fuel a second! The SCALE of it!
And also, the 19)diversity of worlds out there. There are hundreds of them, all these little moons, and none of them are boring. They're all different, and interesting. So you've really got hundreds of places to go and explore and find things.
5. 太阳系充满了奇妙的事物。
单单说一下太阳的庞大——它足以容纳一百万个地球，并且每秒钟要燃烧六亿吨氢气。想想看，每秒钟六亿吨燃料！这是怎样一个规模！
再比如地球以外星体的多样性，成千上万的星体。所有这些小卫星，没有一个让人感到乏味无聊。它们各不相同，而且都很有意思。宇宙有很多星体可供你前往探索呢。
6. Doctor Who注3 is not a 20)documentary, but it's not dumb either.
I am completely un-21)pedantic about science fiction. I like science fiction. I think it's about ideas, and I have no 22)issue at all with it. It's not a documentary. Doctor Who is NOT a documentary and it never will be a documentary. And it shouldn't be. You watch Horizon注4 for that, or Wonders of the Solar System. 
Science fiction comes from the same source as scientific thought, which is the desire to explore, think and dream about the universe and what's out there.
6. 《神秘博士》虽然不是纪录片，但也不是胡闹。
我对科幻小说毫无陈腐之见，相反还很喜欢。其核心在于展现各种各样的想法，我对此没有意见。科幻小说不是纪录片。《神秘博士》并非纪录片，而且永远不是、也不应该成为一部纪录片。要看纪录片的话，你可以看《地平线》或者《太阳系的奇迹》。
科幻小说与科学思想系出同门，都源于一种对探索、思考和想象宇宙以及地球以外有什么的渴望。
7. You don't have to understand everything.
What I thought was good about Wonders was there was enough stuff in there for most people to say, “Well I didn't quite get all of that, but I enjoyed it.” And that's actually what you should aim for in a science documentary. I'm certainly opposed to the school of thought that thinks that viewers should be able to understand everything. A lot of people said to me that they watched it a few times, thinking, “Oh that's interesting, I didn't get that, I'll watch the repeat.”
7. 你不必明白一切事情。 
我想，《太阳系的奇迹》的优点在于其中展示了足够多的内容，人们（看完）会说：“虽然我不能完全看懂，但是我很喜欢这个节目。”而这正是你在看一部科学纪录片时应该追求的目标。有一派人认为观众应当能够理解全部内容，我非常反对这种观点。许多人对我说，他们反复看了几遍，心想：“哦，那真有意思。我没看明白，我要再看一遍。”
8. In ten years' time, you could probably get married in space.
You'll be able to fly on 23)commercial flights, weightless flights into space.
In ten years you'll be able to do that, and I suspect people will be able to get married on them. Around the Earth, not on the moon or anything like that, but in space.
8. 十年后，你的婚礼很可能在太空举行。
到时，你可以搭乘商业航班或无重力航班进入太空。
十年后你就可以做到这一点，我想人们能在这种太空船上举行婚礼——绕着地球，不是在月球之类的地方，而是在太空举行。
9. We can do anything we 24)set our minds to.
The planets are within our 25)grasp. We could certainly go to Mars. From a scientific 26)perspective, we want to go to them. We want to send something there to look at them. And I don't mind if I sit on Earth. In many ways it's better. It takes you a long time to fly to Mars, but someone should go. The Solar System isn't that far away. Even for humans, it's only far away because we can't be bothered going. It's not a technical issue. And even the nearest star, I think if we felt like it, we could start thinking about how to get there. 
My grandfather was born before the Wright brothers注5 and he saw us land on the moon. So we went from not-being-able-to-fly to landing on the moon in 60 years. So if we feel like it, we can do it.
9. 只要是下决心做的事，我们一定能做到。
这些行星都在我们触手可及之处。我们当然能去火星。从科学的角度而言，我们也想到各大行星去，我们想发射一些东西到那儿进行观测，不过我并不介意自己继续待在地球上。从很多方面来说，这样更好一些。飞到火星要很久，但总有人要去。太阳系并没有那么遥远。即便对于人类而言，这也不是一个技术问题，而是因为我们并不想费力那么做。即使是离我们最近的恒星，如果我们想的话，也可以开始考虑如何前往。
我的祖父比莱特兄弟出生得早一点，他已经看到我们登陆月球了。即是说，我们在六十年内就实现了从不能飞行到登陆月球的成就。所以只要我们愿意去努力，我们就能做到
