本世纪最伟大的智者 阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦

The Century’s Greatest Minds

Albert Einstein

本世纪最伟大的智者

阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦

The scientific touchstones of the modern age——the Bomb, space travel, electronics, Quantum physics——all bear his imprint.

原子弹、太空旅行、电子学、量子物理这些现代科学的代表都有赖于他的影响。

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.

爱因斯坦好象改变了所有的事情。他没发明什么“思维的实验”，但他将其提升到新高度：试想一对双胞胎，带着相同的手表；一个呆在家里，同时另一个在飞船中以近光速运动… …毫无疑问，自从1919年至今，爱因斯坦一直是世界最知名的科学家。

 

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.

在他出生的德国，他成为了仇恨的对象。作为一个犹太人，一个自由主义者，一个人道主义者，一个国际主义者，他招致了民族主义者和反犹太者的敌意。他的声音当时是有影响力的，广泛传播且被重视的，尤其在他到了美国之后。他用它去提倡以色列的犹太人复国主义，和平主义和建造原子弹（在他39年给罗斯福的密信中）。

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).That he was careless about socks, collars, slippers … that he couldn’t even remember his address: 112 Mercer Street in Princeton, where he finally settled.

同时，像每个名人一样，他制造了一些传闻；在学校中数学不及格（八成不是真的）。他翻开书却发现一张没兑现的$1500的支票被当成书签扔在里面（或许他对日常的事务心不在焉）。他不在意自己的袜子，领口和拖鞋… …甚至他想不起自己最后定居的住址：普林斯顿莫色尔大街112号。

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年他死在那里。当他身体其余部分被火化后，他的大脑被保存起来，在一瓶甲醛中侵了几十年，现属于托马斯博士。没人费心去解剖弗洛伊德、斯特拉文斯基或乔伊斯的大脑，但在80年代，一些神经生物学家为搞清爱因斯坦的一些灰质大费周折，但最后一无所获。那只不过是一个大脑，它想象了一个可伸缩的第四维度，它推翻了以太学说，它使我们从绝对时空的束缚中解脱出来，它拒绝相信上帝在抛骰子。

 

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.

因为信奉了爱因斯坦，我们的世纪告别了原有的宇宙和上帝。新的宇宙和上帝不再那么刻板、僵硬，象牛顿的世界那样。爱因斯坦的上帝不是钟表匠而是自然定律的化身。这个上帝不控制我们的行动，更不对其加以判决。（“爱因斯坦，别再管上帝该干什么。”玻尔最终反驳道）这个上帝实际上似乎有些和善，心不在焉。在这个爱因斯坦的宇宙中，在这个我们生息繁衍的宇宙中，物理学没有了束缚，我们也没有了束缚。

 

Einstein’s Theory of Relativity

爱因斯坦的相对论

Special Relativity

狭义相对论

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线，且在真空中光速恒定，不论你的观测点如何。由这简单的结论得出一些奇怪的推论，它们挑战了我们对现实的日常感知。

* A moving clock runs slower than a stationary one from the perspective of a stationary observer.

* 从固定的观察者来看运动中的表比静止的慢。

* A moving object appears to shrink in the direction of motion, as seen by a stationary observer

* 固定的观察者来看运动的物体，它在运动方向上似乎会缩小。

General Relativity

广义相对论

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

在广义相对论中，时间被看作和长宽高一样的维度，并与它们构成了一个四维宇宙—被称作时空。爱因斯坦提出万有引力是一种时空变形，在巨大的物体附近有严重的变形。因为光沿时空走直线，所以光线在时空弯曲的地方会弯曲。这现象在1919年首次被观测到。