His career has shed light on the secrets of the universe, from the nature of space-time to the workings of black holes, but there is one conundrum that still baffles the world's most famous scientist.

他揭示了宇宙的奧秘，解決了諸如時空本質(zhì)、黑洞原理等一系列難題；但對于這位世界上最偉大的科學家來說，還有一個課題讓他困擾不已。

In an interview to mark his 70th birthday this weekend, Stephen Hawking, the former Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, admitted he spent most of the day thinking about women. "They are," he said "a complete mystery."

本周末，斯蒂芬·霍金迎來了他的70歲生日。在一次采訪中，這位劍橋大學的前盧卡斯數(shù)學教授坦承，自己多數(shù)時間都在琢磨女人，表示“她們完全是個謎”。

Professor Hawking, whose stardom has included spots on The Simpsons and Star Trek, spoke to New Scientist magazine ahead of an international conference held in his honour that begins on Thursday in Cambridge.

霍金教授曾為《辛普森一家（The Simpsons）》中的自己配音，也曾在《星際迷航（Star Trek）》中本色出演。在這次《新科學家（New Scientist）》周刊的采訪之后，劍橋大學將于周三為他舉行國際盛會。

The meeting will culminate in a public symposium on Sunday when some of the world's most prominent physicists give a series of talks on the state of the universe. Among them will be Lord Rees, the Astronomer Royal, Saul Perlmutter, who won the Nobel prize in physics in 2011, and Kip Thorne at the California Institute of Technology.

本次盛會最精彩的環(huán)節(jié)，莫過于周日進行的公眾研討會，屆時幾位世界上最為著名的物理學家，如皇家天文學家里斯勛爵（Lord Rees）、2011年諾貝爾物理學獎獲得者索爾·珀爾馬特（Saul Perlmutter）、加州理工學院的基普·索恩（Kip Thorne）等，將就劍橋大學的現(xiàn)況發(fā)表一系列演講。

Earlier this week, eminent researchers expressed admiration and respect for Professor Hawking, a scientist who inspired colleagues and students while forging ahead with fresh insights into some of the most intangible puzzles to hand.

本周初，幾位知名科學家向霍金表達了自己的敬仰之情，稱他對最為難以捉摸的難題有著獨特的見解；而在不斷開拓進取的同時，這位偉人還激勵著自己的同事與學生。

Hawking has made a string of contributions to cosmology throughout a career that many doubted would last as long as it has after he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease at the age of 21. He worked on the inflation of the early universe, a quantum theory of gravity, and famously showed that black holes emit radiation and so slowly disappear.

霍金在21歲時不幸身患運動神經(jīng)元疾病，許多人都懷疑他的職業(yè)生涯會就此終止，但在患病之后他還是在宇宙學領域做出了一系列不朽的貢獻。他致力于早期宇宙膨脹說和重力量子論的研究，并且提出了著名的黑洞理論，指出黑洞會散發(fā)射線，因此蒸發(fā)得十分緩慢。

Asked about the most exciting development in physics during the course of his career, Hawking mentioned the findings of Nasa's Cobe (Cosmic Background Explorer) spacecraft and subsequent confirmation by a later mission called the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). Together, they made a map of the heavens that revealed the afterglow of the big bang "in excellent agreement with the predictions of inflation", he told the magazine.

當記者問到在他的科研生涯中，哪些物理學領域的成果最令他激動時，霍金提到了美國宇航局宇宙背景探測者（COBE）的發(fā)現(xiàn)，以及隨后威爾金森微波各向異性探測器（WMAP）觀察數(shù)據(jù)的證實。這兩臺探測器描繪出了宇宙天體圖，表明宇宙大爆炸冷卻后的“余暉”與“關于宇宙膨脹的預測完全吻合”。

As for his greatest mistake, Hawking said: "I used to think information was destroyed in black holes", a belief he later revised. "This was my biggest blunder, or at least my biggest blunder in science." But his work in the field led to the theoretical breakthrough, so far unconfirmed by experiment, that black holes leak information back into the universe through quantum mechanical effects.

在談及自己犯過的最嚴重的錯誤時，霍金說：“以前我認為黑洞會吞噬物質(zhì)能量信息，這是我至少在科學領域犯過的最大的錯誤?！爆F(xiàn)在他已經(jīng)推翻了這個理論，提出黑洞在吞噬物體之后，還會保留下該物體的些微痕跡，并會通過量子力學效應“吐回”到宇宙中。盡管新理論尚未經(jīng)過試驗證實，但霍金的研究也實現(xiàn)了該領域的理論突破。

The Large Hadron Collider at Cern, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva, could do more than anything else to revolutionise scientists' understanding of the universe, Hawking said. The machine could find "supersymmetric" particles, which are partners of the more familiar subatomic particles. Such a finding would be "strong evidence" for M-theory, a version of string theory that describes gravity and the other forces of nature in an 11-dimensional universe.

霍金還認為，要徹底改變科學家們對宇宙的看法，歐洲粒子物理研究所（Cern，其實驗室設在日內(nèi)瓦附近）的大型強子對撞機要比任何設備都來得有效。它可以找到“超對稱”粒子，這種粒子與常規(guī)的亞原子粒子十分相似。如果實驗證明這種超對稱粒子真的存在，那么M-理論便找到了可靠依據(jù)。M理論是弦理論的另一版本，后者對十一維宇宙中的重力及其它自然力做了詳細描述。