The Century’s Greatest Minds Albert Einstein 本世紀最偉大的智者 阿爾伯特·愛因斯坦 The scientific touchstones of the modern age——the Bomb, space travel, electronics, Quantum physics——all bear his imprint. 原子彈、太空旅行、電子學、量子物理這些現代科學的代表都有賴於他的影響。 Einstein had conjured the whole business, it seemed. He did not invent the “thought experiment”, but he raised it to high art. Imagine twins , wearing identical watches; one stays home, while the other rides in a spaceship near the speed of light … little wonder that from 1919, Einstein was——and remains today——the world’s most famous scientist. 愛因斯坦好象改變了所有的事情。他沒發明什麼“思維的實驗”，但他將其提升到新高度：試想一對雙胞胎，帶着相同的手錶；一個呆在家裏，同時另一個在飛船中以近光速運動… …毫無疑問，自從1919年至今，愛因斯坦一直是世界最知名的科學家。 In his native Germany he became a target for hatred . As a Jew, a liberal, a humanist, an internationalist, he attracted the enmity of rationalist and anti-semites. His was now a powerful voice, widely heard, always attended to , especially after he moved to the U.S. He used it to promote zionism, pacifism, in his secret 1939 letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt, the construction of a uranium bomb. 在他出生的德國，他成爲了仇恨的對象。作爲一個猶太人，一個自由主義者，一個人道主義者，一個國際主義者，他招致了民族主義者和反猶太者的敵意。他的聲音當時是有影響力的，廣泛傳播且被重視的，尤其在他到了美國之後。他用它去提倡以色列的猶太人復國主義，和平主義和建造原子彈（在他39年給羅斯福的密信中）。 Meanwhile, like any demigod, he made bits of legend: that he failed math in school (not true). That he opened a book and found an uncashed $1,500 check he had left as a bookmark (maybe---he was absentminded about everyday affairs) he was careless about socks, collars, slippers … that he couldn’t even remember his address: 112 Mercer Street in Princeton, where he finally settled. 同時，像每個名人一樣，他製造了一些傳聞；在學校中數學不及格（八成不是真的）。他翻開書卻發現一張沒兌現的$1500的支票被當成書籤扔在裏面（或許他對日常的事務心不在焉）。他不在意自己的襪子，領口和拖鞋… …甚至他想不起自己最後定居的住址：普林斯頓莫色爾大街112號。 He died there in 1955 And after the rest of Einstein had been cremated, his brain remained, soaking for decades in a jar of formaldehyde belonging to Dr. Thomas Harvey. No one had bothered to dissect the brain of Freud, Stravinsky or Joyce, but in the 1980s, bits of Einsteinian gray matter were making the rounds of certain neurobiologists, who thus learned … absolutely nothing. It was just a brain——the brain that dreamed a plastic fourth dimension, that banished the ether, that released the pins binding us to absolute space and time, that refused to believe God played dice. 1955年他死在那裏。當他身體其餘部分被火化後，他的大腦被保存起來，在一瓶甲醛中侵了幾十年，現屬於托馬斯博士。沒人費心去解剖弗洛伊德、斯特拉文斯基或喬伊斯的大腦，但在80年代，一些神經生物學家爲搞清愛因斯坦的一些灰質大費周折，但最後一無所獲。那隻不過是一個大腦，它想象了一個可伸縮的第四維度，它推翻了以太學說，它使我們從絕對時空的束縛中解脫出來，它拒絕相信上帝在拋骰子。 In embracing Einstein, our century took leave of a prior universe and an erstwhile God. The new versions were not so rigid and deterministic as the Newtonian world. Einstein’s. God was no clockmaker, but the embodiment of reason in nature. This God did not control our actions or even sit in judgment on them. (“Einstein, stop telling God what to do,” Niels Bohr Finally retorted.) This God seemed rather kindly and absentminded, as a matter of fact . Physics was free, and we too are free, in the Einstein universe which is where we live. 因爲信奉了愛因斯坦，我們的世紀告別了原有的宇宙和上帝。新的宇宙和上帝不再那麼刻板、僵硬，象牛頓的世界那樣。愛因斯坦的上帝不是鐘錶匠而是自然定律的化身。這個上帝不控制我們的行動，更不對其加以判決。（“愛因斯坦，別再管上帝該幹什麼。”玻爾最終反駁道）這個上帝實際上似乎有些和善，心不在焉。在這個愛因斯坦的宇宙中，在這個我們生息繁衍的宇宙中，物理學沒有了束縛，我們也沒有了束縛。 Einstein’s Theory of Relativity 愛因斯坦的相對論 Special Relativity 狹義相對論 Relativity says that light always moves in a straight line through empty space, and always at the same speed in a vacuum, no matter what your observation point. From these simple claims follow bizarre consequence that challenge common sense and our perception of reality. 它指出光在真空中走直線，且在真空中光速恆定，不論你的觀測點如何。由這簡單的結論得出一些奇怪的推論，它們挑戰了我們對現實的日常感知。 * A moving clock runs slower than a stationary one from the perspective of a stationary observer. * 從固定的觀察者來看運動中的表比靜止的慢。 * A moving object appears to shrink in the direction of motion, as seen by a stationary observer * 固定的觀察者來看運動的物體，它在運動方向上似乎會縮小。 General Relativity 廣義相對論 In general relativity, time is considered a dimension like height, width and depth, creating a four dimensional universe called space-time. Einstein argued that gravity is really a warping of space-time,with the greatest distortions near the most massive objects. Because light travels in a straight line through the contours of space-time, a light beam will curve where space-time curves, this curving was first measured in 1919 在廣義相對論中，時間被看作和長寬高一樣的維度，並與它們構成了一個四維宇宙—被稱作時空。愛因斯坦提出萬有引力是一種時空變形，在巨大的物體附近有嚴重的變形。因爲光沿時空走直線，所以光線在時空彎曲的地方會彎曲。這現象在1919年首次被觀測到。
