TED演讲之伟大预言 马丁·里斯:这是我们最后的世纪吗?(6)
We need not just campaigning physicists, but we need biologists, computer experts and environmentalists as well.
我们不仅需要参加竞选的物理学家，还需要有生物学家，计算机专家和环境保护者们共同参与。
And I think academics and independent entrepreneurs have a special obligation because they have more freedom than those in government service, or company employees subject to commercial pressure.
我认为专业学者和无党派企业家们有着特殊的义务，因为他们和政府部门工作人员或者那些有商业压力的公司雇员们相比有着更大的自由度。
I wrote my book, “Our Final Century,” as a scientist, just a general scientist.
我以一个科学家的身份写的“我们最后的世纪”这本书，一个普通意义上的科学家。
But there’s one respect, I think, in which being a cosmologist offered a special perspective, and that’s that it offers an awareness of the immense future.
但是作为一个宇宙学家，我同时也有着一个特别的视角，也就是对更广阔未来的洞察力。
The stupendous time spans of the evolutionary past are now part of common culture — outside the American Bible Belt, anyway —
进化发展的巨大时间跨度现在已经是人类的共识 – 至少是超出了美国圣经带地区-
but most people, even those who are familiar with evolution, aren’t mindful that even more time lies ahead.
但是大多数人，就算是那些熟悉进化理论的人，也常常会忽视有更多的时间摆在我们的前面。
The sun has been shining for four and a half billion years, but it’ll be another six billion years before its fuel runs out.
太阳已经照耀了45亿年，直到它的燃料耗尽还会有60亿年的时间。
On that schematic picture, a sort of time-lapse picture, we’re halfway. And it’ll be another six billion before that happens, and any remaining life on Earth is vaporized.
在这张时间似乎是永恒的图解上，我们处于中途。还有60亿年时间，地球上的一切生命才会蒸发。
There’s an unthinking tendency to imagine that humans will be there, experiencing the sun’s demise,
人们总是不加考虑地认为那时人类还会存在，去见证太阳的终结，
but any life and intelligence that exists then will be as different from us as we are from bacteria.
事实上如果那时尚存智慧生命的话，也会和我们有极大的不同，就像我们和细菌之间的不同。
The unfolding of intelligence and complexity still has immensely far to go, here on Earth and probably far beyond.
智能生命和复杂性的演变还有更远的路要走，不止在地球上，还在更遥远的地方。
So we are still at the beginning of the emergence of complexity in our Earth and beyond.
所以我们只是处在复杂性演变的开端，在地球上和地球之外。
If you represent the Earth’s lifetime by a single year, say from January when it was made to December, the 21st-century would be a quarter of a second in June —
如果用一年来代表地球的整个历史进程，也就是说把地球诞生视为一月直到它毁灭为十二月，21世纪相当于六月份中四分之一秒的时间-
a tiny fraction of the year. But even in this concertinaed cosmic perspective, our century is very, very special, the first when humans can change themselves and their home planet.
这象征性的一年中的短短一瞬。然而就算是从这一特殊视角来看，我们现在的世纪也是非常非常特殊的。它是首个人类可以改变自身和其家园的世纪。
演讲简介：
作为一个天文学家，同时作为人类社会中忧心忡忡的一员，马丁·里斯爵士从宇宙全景的视角考察我们的星球和其未来。他敦促要采取行动以避免科技发展过程中可能出现的毁灭性后果。