萬物簡史 第32期:埃文斯牧師的宇宙(1)

Interestingly, Zwicky had almost no understanding ofwhy any of this would happen. According to Thorne, "he did not understand the laws of physics wellenough to be able to substantiate his ideas."Zwicky's talent was for big ideas. Others—Baademostly—were left to do the mathematical sweepingup."

有意思的是，茲威基幾乎不知道這一切發(fā)生的原因。據(jù)索恩說：“他不大懂物理學(xué)定律，因此不能證明他的思想。茲威基的才華是用來考慮大問題的，而收集數(shù)據(jù)是別人--主要是巴德--的事。”

Zwicky also was the first to recognize that there wasn't nearly enough visible mass in theuniverse to hold galaxies 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 neutron star shrankenough it would become so dense that even light couldn't escape its immense gravitationalpull. You would have a black hole.

茲威基也是第一個認識到，宇宙里的可見物質(zhì)遠遠不足以把宇宙連成一片，肯定有某種別的引力影響--就是我們現(xiàn)在所謂的暗物質(zhì)。有一點他沒有注意到，即中子星坍縮得很緊，密度很大，連光也無法擺脫它的巨大引力。這就形成了一個黑洞。

Unfortunately, Zwicky was held in such disdain by most of his colleagues that his ideasattracted almost no notice. When, five years later, the great Robert Oppenheimer turned hisattention to neutron stars in a landmark paper, he made not a single reference to any ofZwicky's work even though Zwicky had been working for years on the same problem in an officejust down the hall. Zwicky's deductions concerning dark matter wouldn't attract seriousattention for nearly four decades. We can only assume that he did a lot of pushups in thisperiod.

不幸的是，他的大多數(shù)同事都瞧不起他，因此他的思想幾乎沒有引起注意。5年以后，當偉大的羅伯特•奧本海默在一篇有劃時代意義的論文中把注意力轉(zhuǎn)向中子星的時候，他沒有一次提到茲威基的成就，雖然茲威基多年來一直在致力于同一個問題，而且就在走廊那頭的辦公室里。在差不多40年的時間里，茲威基有關(guān)暗物質(zhì)的推論沒有引起認真的注意。我們只能認為，他在此期間做了許多俯臥撐。