查了一下霍金的原文，他很谦卑，没有让我失望。
我不是神的什么亲戚，只不过离神更近罢了。

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He
described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast
collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and
said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant
tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on.” “You’re very
clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”
Most people would find the picture of our universe as an infinite tower of tortoises rather ridiculous, but why do
we think we know better? What do we know about the universe, and how do we know it? Where did the
universe come from, and where is it going? Did the universe have a beginning, and if so, what happened
before
then? What is the nature of time? Will it ever come to an end? Can we go back in time? Recent breakthroughs
in physics, made possible in part by fantastic new technologies, suggest answers to some of these
longstanding questions. Someday these answers may seem as obvious to us as the earth orbiting the sun – or
perhaps as ridiculous as a tower of tortoises. Someday these answers may seem as obvious to us as the earth orbiting the sun – or
perhaps as ridiculous as a tower of tortoises.