不可思议的科学奇思:宇宙绝不止一个!

Ranga-Ram Chary, U.S. Planck Data Center's project manager in California, recently discovered a "mysterious glow" by mapping the Cosmic Microwave Background, otherwise known as the light that was left over from a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang.

最近，美国加州普朗克数据中心的项目经理Ranga-Ram Chary，在绘制宇宙微波背景辐射图时发现了一束“神秘亮光”，被认为是宇宙大爆炸几十万年后遗留的光线。

Ordinarily, Chary would have found nothing "except noise." But the spots of light were 4,500 times brighter than they should have been.

通常，Chary的发现除了噪音没有别的，但这一束光的亮度相比之前的高出4500多倍。

Chary concluded that the glow could represent matter from another universe "leaking" or colliding into ours. This would validate the hypothesis that our universe is merely "a region within an eternally inflating super-region," said Chary in an Astrophysical Journal study published in September.

Chary认为这束光代表着另一个宇宙的物质“泄露”或是闯入到了我们所在的宇宙，他在9月份发表《天文物理期刊》中称这一发现证实了之前的假设，即我们所在的宇宙空间存在于一个“不断膨胀的超级大空间”之中。

Cosmologists have speculated about multiple universes for years, but have thus far been unable to prove their existence. Chary's research is therefore significant because it could lend credence to the theory that cosmic inflation -- which is the notion that the universe began inflating right after the Big Bang -- led to multiple universes.

多年来宇宙学家一直在推测多重宇宙的存在，但至今都无法证实。因此Chary的研究意义重大，因为其证实了宇宙膨胀说，即宇宙在大爆炸之后开始不断膨胀，最终导致多重宇宙的产生。

However, this type of claim would "require a very high burden of proof," Chary wrote. There's a 30 percent chance that the glow is nothing out of the ordinary.

然而Chary还写道，这种论断“需要非常确凿的证据”，该光束是普通光线的几率仍然有30%。

Other scientists share this skepticism. Alexander Vilenkin, director of Tufts University's Institute of Cosmology, doesn't see how "this signal can be explained by a collision with another bubble universe." Any collisions must have been "more like little nudges," Vilenkin added. "But a collision that would greatly enhance the density of protons seems to require a much more violent encounter."

另外一些科学家对此持怀疑态度，塔夫斯大学宇宙学研究所主任Alexander Vilenkin认为，这束光线“无法解释为宇宙碰撞的线索”。他说：“任何碰撞都更像是微小的震动，但要使碰撞能够极大的增加质子密度，则需要更强烈的破坏力。”

"The supposed observations of a giant void and an apparently cold spot in the cosmic background radiation have so many types of potential explanations," said Jay Pasachoff, chair of the astronomy department at Williams College. He maintains that it's too premature to cite an alternate universe as the explanation.

威廉姆斯学院天文系主任Jay Pasachoff称：“在宇宙背景辐射中观察到的巨洞和类似的冰点都存在多种形式的解释。”他强调引用平行宇宙来解释这一发现还为时过早。

"But it could also be something new and unexpected," Vilenkin added.

Vilenkin最后说道：“然而，这束光线也有可能是新的未知事物。”