万物简史 第158期:爱因斯坦的宇宙(1)

搜索关注在线英语听力室公众号：tingroom，领取免费英语资料大礼包。

　　第三部 一个新时代的黎明

　　A Physicist¹ is the atoms’ way of thinking about atoms. -Anonymous

　　物理学家就是以原子的方式来考虑原子的人。——无名氏

　　8 Einstein’s Universe

　　第八章　爱因斯坦的宇宙

　　As The Nineteenth century drew to a close, scientists could reflect with satisfaction that they had pinned down most of the mysteries of the physical world: electricity, magnetism², gases, optics, acoustics³, kinetics, and statistical⁴ mechanics, to name just a few, all had fallen into order before them. They had discovered the X ray, the cathode ray, the electron, and radioactivity, invented the ohm, the watt⁵, the Kelvin, the joule, the amp, and the little erg.

　　随着19世纪渐渐远去，科学家们可以满意地回想，他们已经解开物理学的大部分谜团。我们略举数例：电学、磁学、气体学、光学、声学、动力学及统计力学，都已经在他们的面前俯首称臣。他们已经发现了X射线、阴极射线、电子和放射现象，发明了计量单位欧姆、瓦特、开尔文、焦耳、安培和小小的尔格。

　　爱因斯坦

　　If a thing could be oscillated, accelerated, perturbed⁶, distilled⁷, combined, weighed, or made gaseous⁸ they had done it, and in the process produced a body of universal laws so weighty and majestic⁹ that we still tend to write them out in capitals: the Electromagnetic Field Theory of Light, Richter’s Law of Reciprocal Proportions, Charles’s Law of Gases, the Law of Combining Volumes, the Zeroth Law, the Valence Concept, the Laws of Mass Actions, and others beyond counting. The whole world clanged and chuffed with the machinery¹⁰ and instruments that their ingenuity¹¹ had produced. Many wise people believed that there was nothing much left for science to do.

　　凡是能被振荡的，能被加速的，能被干扰的，能被蒸馏的，能被化合的，能被称质量的，或能被变成气体的，他们都做到了；在此过程中，他们提出了一大堆普遍定律。这些定律非常重要，非常神气，直到今天我们还往往以大写来书写："光的电磁场理论"、"里氏互比定律"、"查理气体定律"、"体积结合定律"、"第零定律"、"原子价概念"、"质量作用定律"等等，多得数也数不清。整个世界丁丁当当、喀嚓喀嚓地回响着他们发明创造出来的机器和仪器的声音。许多聪明人认为，科学家们已经没有多少事可干了。

分享到：