万物简史 第411期:生命的起源(5)

Without the cell, they are nothing more than interesting chemicals. 没有细胞，它们只是有意思的化学物质。 But without the chemicals, the cell has no purpose. 但要是没有这些化学物质，细胞就毫无用处。 As the physici

万物简史 第417期:生命的起源(11)

Fred Hoyle and his colleague Chandra Wickramasinghe further eroded enthusiasm for panspermia 我们已经在第三章里提到，弗雷德霍伊尔和他的同事钱德拉威克拉马辛格认为， by suggesting that outer space brought us not only

万物简史 第229期:马斯特-马克的夸克(1)

11 Muster Mark's Quarks 第十一章 马斯特马克的夸克 IN 1911, A British scientist named C. T. R. Wilson was studying cloud formations by tramping regularly to the summit of Ben Nevis, 1911年，一位名叫C.T.R.威尔逊的英国科学家经常

万物简史 第232期:马斯特-马克的夸克(4)

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is like a little city. Straddling the border of France and Switzerland, it employs three thousand people and occupies a site that is measured in square miles. CERN boasts a string of magnets that

万物简史 第235期:马斯特-马克的夸克(7)

The charged pion and antipion decay respectively into a muon plus antineutrino and an antimuon plus neutrino with an average lifetime of 2.603 x 10-8 seconds, the neutral pion decays into two photons with an average lifetime of about 0.8 x 10-16 seco

万物简史 第239期:马斯特-马克的夸克(11)

String theory has further spawned something called M theory, which incorporates surfaces known as membranesor simply branes to the hipper souls of the world of physics. I'm afraid this is the stop on the knowledge highway where most of us must get of

万物简史 第222期:把铅撵出去(11)

For seven years, first at the University of Chicago and then at the California Institute of Technology (where he moved in 1952), he worked in a sterile lab, making very precise measurements of the lead/uranium ratios in carefully selected samples of

万物简史 第219期:把铅撵出去(8)

Finally, and perhaps a little unexpectedly, readings can be thrown out by seemingly unrelated external factorssuch as the diets of those whose bones are being tested. One recent case involved the long-running debate over whether syphilis originated i

万物简史 第217期:把铅撵出去(6)

Up to this time, the oldest reliable dates went back no further than the First Dynasty in Egypt from about 3000B.C. No one could confidently say, for instance, when the last ice sheets had retreated or at what time in the past the Cro-Magnon people h

万物简史 第211期:威力巨大的原子(25)

Einstein disliked that, too. He devoted the rest of his life to searching for a way to tie up these loose ends by finding a grand unified theory, and always failed. From time to time he thought he had it, but it always unraveled on him in the end. As

万物简史 第205期:威力巨大的原子(19)

Finally, in 1926, Heisenberg came up with a celebrated compromise, producing a new discipline that came to be known as quantum mechanics. At the heart of it was Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, which states that the electron is a particle but a pa

万物简史 第203期:威力巨大的原子(17)

Meanwhile the tireless Rutherford, now back at Cambridge as J. J. Thomson's successor as head of the Cavendish Laboratory, came up with a model that explained why the nuclei didn't blow up. He saw that they must be offset by some type of neutralizing

万物简史 第170期:爱因斯坦的宇宙(13)

You may not feel outstandingly robust, but if you are an average-sized adult you will contain within your modest frame no less than 7 x 10 18 joules of potential energyenough to explode with the force of thirty very large hydrogen bombs, assuming you

万物简史 第174期:爱因斯坦的宇宙(17)

When a journalist asked the British astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington 有一位记者问英国天文学家阿瑟爱丁顿， if it was true that he was one of only three people in the world who could understand Einsteins relativity theories, 他是不是

万物简史 第179期:爱因斯坦的宇宙(22)

Slipher was the first to notice this effect with light and to realize its potential importance for understanding the motions of the cosmos. Unfortunately no one much noticed him. The Lowell Observatory, as you will recall, was a bit of an oddity than

万物简史 第183期:爱因斯坦的宇宙(26)

We now know that Cepheids throb as they do because they are elderly stars that have moved past their main sequence phase, in the parlance of astronomers, and become red giants. The chemistry of red giants is a little weighty for our purposes here (it

万物简史 第513期:丰富多彩的生命(9)

And that was just plants. 那只是植物部分。 There was also all the fauna of the new worlds kangaroos, kiwis, raccoons, bobcats, mosquitoes, and other curious forms beyond imagining. 还有新世界的全部动物群袋鼠呀，鹬鸵呀，浣熊

万物简史 第512期:丰富多彩的生命(8)

But Banks's grand cache was only part of the total haul in what was an almost absurdly acquisitive age. 但是，在一个渴求知识几乎到了荒唐程度的时代，班克斯的巨大收获只是总收获的组成部分。 Plant collecting in th

万物简史 第380期:进入对流层(21)

Altogether there is about twenty thousand times as much carbon locked away in the Earth's rocks as in the atmosphere. 总的来说，被关在地球岩石里的碳，大约相当于大气里的2000倍。 Eventually much of that limestone will end up

万物简史 第384期:浩瀚的海洋(3)

The hydrogen atoms cling fiercely to their oxygen host, but also make casual bonds with other water molecules. 氢原子死死地抓住其主子氧原子不放，而且与别的水分子的黏合也很随便。 The nature of a water molecule means th