萬物簡史 第14期:如何營造一個(gè)宇宙(6)

Still unaware of what caused the noise, Wilson andPenzias phoned Dicke at Princeton and describedtheir problem to him in the hope that he mightsuggest a solution. Dicke realized at once what thetwo young men had found. “Well, boys, we've justbeen scooped,” he told his colleagues as he hung upthe phone.

彭齊亞斯和威爾遜仍然找不到噪聲的原因，便打電話給普林斯頓大學(xué)的迪克，向他描述了他們遇到的問題，希望他能作出一種解釋。迪克馬上意識(shí)到兩位年輕人發(fā)現(xiàn)了什么。"哎呀，好家伙，人家搶在我們前面了。"他一面掛電話，一面對(duì)他的同事們說。

Soon afterward the Astrophysical Journal published two articles: one by Penzias and Wilsondescribing their experience with the hiss, the other by Dicke's team explaining its nature.

此后不久，《天體物理學(xué)》雜志刊登了兩篇文章：一篇為彭齊亞斯和威爾遜所作，描述了聽到咝咝聲的經(jīng)歷;另一篇為迪克小組所作，解釋了它的性質(zhì)。

Although Penzias and Wilson had not been looking for cosmic background radiation, didn'tknow what it was when they had found it, and hadn't described or interpreted its character inany paper, they received the 1978 Nobel Prize in physics. The Princeton researchers got onlysympathy. According to Dennis Overbye in Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos , neither Penzias norWilson altogether understood the significance of what they had found until they read about it inthe New York Times .

盡管彭齊亞斯和威爾遜并不是在尋找宇宙的本底輻射，發(fā)現(xiàn)的時(shí)候也不知道是什么東西，也沒有發(fā)表任何論文來描述或解釋它的性質(zhì)，但他們獲得了1978年諾貝爾物理學(xué)獎(jiǎng)。普林斯頓大學(xué)的研究人員只獲得了同情。據(jù)丹尼斯·奧弗比在《宇宙孤心》一文中說，彭齊亞斯和威爾遜都不清楚自己這一發(fā)現(xiàn)的重要意義，直到看到《紐約時(shí)報(bào)》上的一篇報(bào)道。

Incidentally, disturbance from cosmic background radiation is something we have allexperienced. Tune your television to any channel it doesn't receive, and about 1 percent ofthe dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang. The nexttime you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth ofthe universe.

順便說一句，來自宇宙本底輻射的干擾，我們大家都經(jīng)歷過。把你的電視機(jī)調(diào)到任何接收不著信號(hào)的頻道，你所看到的鋸齒形靜電中，大約有1%是由這種古老的大爆炸殘留物造成的。記住，下次你抱怨接收不到圖像的時(shí)候，你總能觀看到宇宙的誕生。