萬物簡史 第12期:如何營造一個宇宙(4)

There is of course a great deal we don't know, andmuch of what we think we know we haven't known,or thought we've known, for long. Even the notion ofthe Big Bang is quite a recent one.

當(dāng)然，有大量的事情我們不知道，還有大量的事情我們現(xiàn)在或在過去很長時間里以為自己知道而其實(shí)并不知道。連大爆炸理論也是不久以前才提出來的。

The idea had been kicking around since the 1920s,when Georges Lemaitre, a Belgian priest-scholar,first tentatively proposed it, but it didn't reallybecome an active notion in cosmology until the mid-1960s when two young radio astronomersmade an extraordinary and inadvertent discovery.

這個概念自20世紀(jì)20年代以來一直很流行，是一位名叫喬治·勒梅特的比利時教士兼學(xué)者首先提出了這種假設(shè)。但是，直到20世紀(jì)60年代中，這種理論才在宇宙學(xué)界活躍起來。當(dāng)時，兩位年輕的射電天文學(xué)家無意中發(fā)現(xiàn)了一種非同尋常的現(xiàn)象。

Their names were Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson. In 1965, they were trying to make use of alarge communications antenna owned by Bell Laboratories at Holmdel, New Jersey, but theywere troubled by a persistent background noise—a steady, steamy hiss that made anyexperimental work impossible.

他們的名字分別叫做阿諾·彭齊亞斯和羅伯特·威爾遜。1965年，他們在美國新澤西州霍爾姆德爾的貝爾實(shí)驗(yàn)室，想要使用一根大型通信天線，可是不斷受到一個本底噪聲--一種連續(xù)不斷的蒸汽般的咝咝聲的干擾，使得實(shí)驗(yàn)無法進(jìn)行下去。

The noise was unrelenting and unfocused. It came from every point in the sky, day and night,through every season. For a year the young astronomers did everything they could think of totrack down and eliminate the noise.

那個噪聲是一刻不停的，很不集中的。它來自天空的各個方位，日日夜夜，一年四季。有一年時間，兩位年輕的天文學(xué)家想盡了辦法，想要跟蹤和除去這個噪聲。

They tested every electrical system. They rebuilt instruments, checked circuits, wiggled wires,dusted plugs. They climbed into the dish and placed duct tape over every seam and rivet.They climbed back into the dish with brooms and scrubbing brushes and carefully swept it cleanof what they referred to in a later paper as "white dielectric material," or what is known morecommonly as bird shit. Nothing they tried worked.

他們測試了每個電器系統(tǒng)。他們重新組裝了儀器，檢查了線路，察看了電線，撣掉了插座上的灰塵。他們爬進(jìn)拋物面天線，用管道膠布蓋住每一條接縫，每一顆鉚釘。他們拿起掃帚和抹布再次爬進(jìn)拋物面天線，小心翼翼地把他們后來在一篇論文中稱之為"白色電介質(zhì)"的、用更通常的說法是鳥糞的東西掃得干干凈凈?？墒撬麄兊呐z毫不起作用。