【经济学人】虚空的物理学简史|2016.11.19|总第734期

MOST of the universe is empty. So it is natural that a great deal of modern physics concerns nothing—or rather the precise nature of the nothing that permeates the cosmos. Work in the past century in particular has shaken up scientists’ understanding of emptiness. Ideas about gravity and motion put in place by Isaac Newton in the 17th century were overturned by the work of Albert Einstein. The dawn of quantum mechanics revolutionised physicists’ understanding of the very small, but the theory’s conclusions were so counterintuitive that Einstein was never able to reconcile himself with them. James Owen Weatherall, a philosopher, now examines how scientists’ conceptions of supposedly empty space have changed in the light of these convulsions in his latest book, “Void”.

宇宙的大部分都是空的。自然而然许多现代物理学关心的就是虚无——更确切地说，是弥漫宇宙的虚空的精确规律。上世纪的研究成果尤其刷新了科学家们对于真空的认知。牛顿在17世纪时建立的重力和运动理念被爱因斯坦推翻。量子力学的出现彻底变革了物理学家们对微观事物的理解，但是这项学说的结论是如此违反直觉以致于爱因斯坦难以接受。现在哲学家詹姆士·欧文·韦瑟罗尔，在他最新的一本书《太空》中，剖析了科学家们对所谓虚空的理解在撼动之下如何变化。

• Uncanny 神秘的

• popping in 突然出现

• Counterintuitive 违反直觉的

Many people today imagine that, on a molecular scale, the air around them resembles a tumultuous three-dimensional game of billiards. Yet this picture, of molecules of nitrogen, oxygen and other gasses ricocheting through emptiness, is a mere 300 or so years old and has its roots in Newton’s theories. His law of universal gravitation described the attractive force between two masses in a void. But that void isfar from obvious. Before the publication of Newton’s “Principia Mathematica” in 1687, two of the most influential thinkers of the Western world, Aristotle and René Descartes, developed theories requiring space (for different reasons) to be filled with stuff of some sort.

如今许多人误认为，在分子尺度上，周围的空气类似一场激烈的三维桌球游戏。然而这幅氮氧和其他气体分子在真空中弹开的情景，仅仅有300年左右的时间并且扎根于牛顿的理论之中。他的万有引力定律描述真空中两个有质量物体之间的吸引力。但那个真空远远不是现在所公认的。在牛顿的《数学原理》于1687年出版之前，西方世界最具影响力的思想家中的两位——亚里士多德和笛卡尔，提出理论要求空间被某种物质填满（出于不同原因）。

• Tumultuous 狂暴的，激烈的

• Ricocheting 弹开

分子间有着不可描述的引力

In the late 19th century, the work of James Clerk Maxwell also seemed to rule out the notion that a vacuum was truly empty. Maxwell discovered that electricity and magnetism were linked, but he erroneously believed light waves were vibrations in an invisible “ aether ”. Based on this premise, he and his contemporaries incorrectly reasoned that the speed of light measured in laboratories on Earth could not be its true value since the Earth was moving through space relative to this aether.

19世纪晚期，麦克斯韦的研究似乎同样排除真空是真正的空的概念。麦克斯韦发现电与磁相互关联，但他错误地认为光波是看不见的以太中的震动。基于此前提，他和同代人做出错误推断：既然地球在和以太有关的空间中运动，在地球上的实验室里测出的光速不可能是真实值。

• rule out 排除可能性