Have you ever heard of Steven Hawking? He is a scientist from England who knows a lot about the Universe. He has motor neuron disease which means he can hardly move and he has very limited powers of communication. This means that he can only talk through a computer.

你有听说过斯蒂芬•霍金吗？这位来自英国的科学家，对宇宙非常了解。他患有运动神经元疾病，几乎无法移动，也没有交流的能力。这使他只能通过计算机说话。

Hawking has just finished making a TV programme with the Discovery Channel where he talks about life in the Universe. The programme took him 3 years to make. He believes that there is definitely life in the universe because the numbers are so great. There are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the Universe and for Hawking this means that the chance of life is a very rational (adj.合理的) probability.

霍金刚刚和“探索频道”完成一套电视节目，在其中谈论到宇宙间的生命。节目共用去他3年时间。 他相信宇宙间确有生命，因为宇宙无穷无尽。在宇宙间有成千上万亿个星系，对于霍金来说，有生命的可能性是很合理的。

However, he stresses that we should not try to contact any aliens (n.外星人,局外人) out there. In fact, we should actively try to avoid contacting aliens because their arrival here would almost certainly mean the end for us. Hawking says that aliens’ arrival on earth would have the same effect as when Christopher Columbus landed in America.

但是，他强调说我们不应该去和那里的外星人进行联系。事实上，我们应该积极避免联系他们，因为他们的到来很有可能意味着我们的灭亡。霍金说，外星人抵达地球将和当年哥伦布登陆美洲会有一样的效果。

That’s a frightening thought!

那真是个令人恐惧的想法！