A Brief History of Time

Chapter 1 ?Our Picture of the Universe

1.spherical ?球形的

SYNONYM:ball-shaped,globular, rotund, round,

2.hull

the part of a ship or boat that floats on the water. 船殼

The front part is called the bow and the back part is called the stern .

3.heretic 異教徒

4.Copernicus 哥白尼

5.repugnant

?extremely unpleasant or offensive ?令人厭惡的

6.reconcile

使……一致，和諧

??? to find a way to make ideas, beliefs, needs etc that are opposed to each other capable of existing together

??? There seems to be no possibility of reconciling the two versions of what happened.

??? Management and labour are attempting to reconcile their differences.

??? reconcile something with something:

??? Research is being undertaken in how to reconcile conservation needs with growing demand for water.

7.postulate ?假定

??? to claim or imagine that something is true or that it exists

??? The theory postulates two reasons for the spread of the disease.

8.The story that Newton was inspired by an apple hitting his head is almost certainly apocryphal.

a‘pocryphal

probably not true, but believed by a lot of people to be true

不足憑信的

9.But he reasoned that if, on the other hand, there were an infinite number of stars, distributed more or less uniformly over infinite space, this would not happen, because there would not be any central point for them to fall to.

uniform

adj. the same everywhere

The policy ensures a uniform standard of health care throughout the country.

10.It is an interesting reflection on the general climate of thought before the twentieth century that no one had suggested that the universe was expanding or contracting.

??? climate: the general situation or attitudes that people have at a particular time

??? economic/?political/?moral/?intellectual climate:

??? We are unable to increase wages in the current economic climate.

??? climate of: The election is being organized in a climate of fear and mistrust.

??? the climate of opinion: The climate of opinion is now changing on that subject.

11.repulsive ?排斥的，斥力的

12.ascribe to

?? 1. to believe something is the cause of something else

??? Their defeat was ascribed to a poor defence.

??? 2.to believe that a particular person wrote a book or a piece of music, painted a picture etc so that people generally accept this to be true

??? Another objection to an infinite static universe is normally ascribed to the German philosopher Heinrich Olbers, who wrote about this theory in 1823.

13.Hubble’s observations suggested that there was a time, called the big bang, when the universe was infini'tesimally極小地 small and infinitely dense.

14.preclude

??? if one thing precludes another, the first thing prevents the second one from happening

??? This policy precludes the routine use of chemicals.

??? Tercek’s interviewing style precluded any long-winded answers.

15.Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it.

provisional

??? intended to be temporary, and likely to be changed when other arrangements are made

??? a provisional government

16.The eventual goal of science is to provide a single theory that describes the whole universe.

17.quantum mechanics 量子力學(xué) ：extremely small scales, such as a millionth of a millionth of an inch.

The general theory of relativity 廣義相對(duì)論 ：from only a few miles to as large as a million million million million (1 with twenty-four zeros after it) miles

Unfortunately, however, these two theories are known to be inconsistent with each other – they cannot both be correct.

quantum theory of gravity

18.inexplicable：impossible to explain