To ask that question after the passage of two centuries, says Pietro Nivola of the Brookings Institution, is to pose an impossible thought experiment.

都已经两世纪了，现在才来问这样的问题，根本就是摆出了不可能完成的想象实验，布鲁金斯研究所的彼得罗·尼沃拉(Pietro Nivola)如此表示。

youdao

In the 1976 Summer Olympics, Nadia Comaneci scored a perfect 10, which was thought impossible before.

在1976年夏季奥运会上，娜迪娅·科马内奇得到了满分10分，这在之前被认为是不可能的。

youdao

The woman is impossible, thought Francesca.

弗朗西丝卡暗自思忖，这个女人真让人受不了。

《柯林斯英汉双解大词典》

"The three laureates have accomplished what many scientists thought impossible, namely to determine the three- dimensional structure of the molecular machine that makes all the proteins in a cell, the so-called ribosome,"

VOA: standard.2009.10.07

but he's also insisting that this is an incredibly difficult, if not impossible, moment of thought.

但他同时坚持，如果可能，这对思维来说也是一个极其艰难的时刻。

耶鲁公开课 - 文学理论导论课程节选

It's not until Book Three of Paradise Lost that the poet explicitly reveals to us, to his readers, the fact of the physical handicap that might reasonably be thought to render impossible his composition of the poem.

直到失乐园第三卷,诗人才明确告诉读者们，自己失明的事实,这可能被合理的认为是他无法完成诗歌创作的原因。

耶鲁公开课 - 弥尔顿课程节选

To ask that question after the passage of two centuries, says Pietro Nivola of the Brookings Institution, is to pose an impossible thought experiment.

ECONOMIST: Lexington

They managed to do what had previously been thought impossible: they probed reality without disturbing it.

ECONOMIST: Physics and philosophy

The match was turning into a gripping affair, something Newcastle fans might have thought impossible just a few weeks ago.

BBC: Newcastle 3-0 Reading