万物简史 第43期:埃文斯牧师的宇宙(7)

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　　Zwicky also was the first to recognize that there wasn't nearly enough visible mass in the universe to hold galaxies³ together and that there must be some other gravitational influence—what we now call dark matter. One thing he failed to see was that if a neutron⁴ star shrank enough it would become so dense⁵ that even light couldn't escape its immense gravitational pull. You would have a black hole.

　　兹威基也是第一个认识到，宇宙里的可见物质远远不足以把宇宙连成一片，肯定有某种别的引力影响--就是我们现在所谓的暗物质。有一点他没有注意到，即中子星坍缩得很紧，密度很大，连光也无法摆脱它的巨大引力。这就形成了一个黑洞。

　　Unfortunately, Zwicky was held in such disdain⁶ by most of his colleagues that his ideas attracted almost no notice. When, five years later, the great Robert Oppenheimer turned his attention to neutron stars in a landmark⁷ paper, he made not a single reference to any of Zwicky's work even though Zwicky had been working for years on the same problem in an office just down the hall. Zwicky's deductions⁸ concerning dark matter wouldn't attract serious attention for nearly four decades. We can only assume that he did a lot of pushups in this period.

　　不幸的是，他的大多数同事都瞧不起他，因此他的思想几乎没有引起注意。5年以后，当伟大的罗伯特?奥本海默在一篇有划时代意义的论文中把注意力转向中子星的时候，他没有一次提到兹威基的成就，虽然兹威基多年来一直在致力于同一个问题，而且就在走廊那头的办公室里。在差不多40年的时间里，兹威基有关暗物质的推论没有引起认真的注意。我们只能认为，他在此期间做了许多俯卧撑。

 

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