研究生科技英语阅读课文翻译对照(18)

为了让这一切从虚幻变成现实，我们应以物理学家的角度来重新审视时间——即第四维。这个问题没有听上去那么晦涩难懂。每个好学的孩子都知道，任何物体都以三维形式存在，包括坐在轮椅上的我。一切物体都有宽度、高度和长度。
But there is another kind of length, a length in time. While a human may survive for 80 years, the stones at Stonehenge, for instance, have stood around for thousands of years. And the solar system will last for billions of years. Everything has a length in time as well as space. Travelling in time means travelling through this fourth dimension.
此外，还有一种长度——时间的长度。例如，虽然一个人可能活了80岁，但巨石阵的石头却数千年屹立不倒。太阳系的运行将持续数十亿年。一切物体都有时间以及空间的长度。时间旅行意味着我们要经过第四维。
To see what that means, let"s imagine we"re doing a bit of normal, everyday car travel. Drive in a straight line and you"re travelling in one dimension. Turn right or left and you add the second dimension. Drive up or down a twisty mountain road and that adds height, so that"s travelling in all three dimensions. But how on Earth do we travel in time? How do we find a path through the fourth dimension?
要想搞明白这一点，我们可以想象正在从事一种日常活动，比如开车。开车沿直线行驶，是在一维中旅行。向左转或是向右转，则是二维旅行。驱车上下山路意味着又多增加了高度，所以是在三维空间内。那么我们怎样才能实现时间旅行？怎样才能发现穿越第四维的通道呢？