华人科学家高锟获2009诺贝尔物理学奖

Three scientists who harnessed the power of light in ways that turned the Internet into a global phenomenon and launched the digital camera revolution were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in physics.
三名物理学家因在驾驭光能方面作出了巨大贡献而共同获得了今年的诺贝尔物理学奖；他们的研究使得互联网成为一个全球性现象，带来了数码相机革命。

Charles Kao, who was born in Shanghai, China, and has both U.K. and U.S. citizenships, received half the total prize money of .4 million. Dr. Kao was lauded for a breakthrough that led to fiber-optic cables, the thin glass threads that carry a vast chunk of the world's phone and data traffic.
出生于中国上海的高锟拥有英国和美国双重国籍，他获得了总奖金140万美元中的一半。高锟获奖是为了表彰他在光纤电缆研究上取得的突破性成就，他的研究成果最终促成承载着全球巨大电话和数据通信量的光纤通信系统的问世。

The other half of the prize is shared by Willard Boyle and George Smith of Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., for work that led to the charge-coupled device, or CCD. The CCD sensor turns light into electrical signals and eliminates the need for capturing images on film, a far more cumbersome and expensive approach. Drs. Smith and Boyle are American; Dr. Boyle also holds Canadian citizenship.
另一半奖金将由新泽西州贝尔实验室的两位科学家威拉德·博伊尔和乔治·史密斯共享，以表彰他们发明了电荷耦合器件(CCD)图像传感器。CCD传感器通过电子信号捕获光线来替代以往远为繁琐和昂贵的胶片成像。博伊尔和史密斯都是美国公民。博伊尔还拥有加拿大国籍。

The Nobel committee described the three physicists as "masters of light".
诺贝尔奖评选委员会称这三位物理学家是“光学大师”。

Optical fibers, developed in the 1950s, had great theoretical potential. Because light has a very high frequency, it can carry a lot more data than microwaves or radio waves, which have much lower frequencies. However, there was a big hurdle: Impurities in the glass fibers of the time absorbed much of the light. For every meter traveled about 20% of the light was lost.
光纤技术研发开始于上世纪五十年代，这项技术拥有巨大的理论潜能。由于光的频率非常高，可以比频率低很多的微波或无线电波承载更多的数据。不过，光纤传输信号当时面临着一个巨大的障碍：由于当时的玻璃纤维纯度不高，因此会吸收很大一部分光。光纤信号每传导一米，就要损耗约20%的光。

In 1966, Dr. Kao, while working at Standard Telephones & Cables Ltd.'s laboratory in Harlow, England, tackled this problem.
1966年，当时就职于Standard Telephones & Cables在英国哈罗实验室的高锟解决了这一问题。

"His insight was that if you could get rid of the impurities, you could transmit light over many kilometers," says Jeff Scheck, who authored a history of fiber optics in 1999.
杰夫·切克在1999年写了一本关于光纤历史的书籍。他说，高锟通过研究洞察到，如果你可以去除玻璃中的杂质，那么就可以将光纤信号传输至很多公里之外。

Dr. Kao figured out a way to increase the distance to 100 kilometers. Manufacturing breakthroughs then opened the way for moving signals over far greater distances. The first ultrapure fiber was made just four years later, in 1970.
高锟想出了一种办法，将光纤的传输距离提高到了100公里。制造方面的突破随后为更远距离的光纤信号传输铺平了道路。仅仅四年之后，全球首个超纯纤维就于1970年问世。

Today, fiber-optic cables make up the circulatory system of the Internet, transporting words, sound and images from one end of the planet to the other in a split second. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences estimates that if all the glass fibers around the world were unraveled it would stretch to one billion kilometers. That's enough to encircle the globe more than 25,000 times, and its length is increasing by thousands of kilometers every hour.
现在光缆构成了互联网的循环系统，从地球的一端向另一端传输文字、声音和影像只需一瞬间。瑞典皇家科学院预计，如果将围绕全球的玻璃纤维展开，其长度将达到10亿公里，足以环绕地球25,000多次，而且其长度还在以每小时数千公里的速度增长。

Drs. Boyle and Smith's work transformed photography. By adopting aspects of the photoelectric effect--the breakthrough for which Albert Einstein won his physics Nobel in 1921--the two scientists designed an image sensor that could gather and read out the signals in a large number of pixels, or image points, very quickly.
博伊尔和史密斯的研究成就改变了摄影技术。两位科学家利用了爱因斯坦荣获1921年诺贝尔物理学奖的光电效应，设计出了一种影像传感器，能够非常迅速地以大量像素收集并读出信号。

The vast bulk of the image traffic that courses through the Internet is now made up of digital images. Images captured this way can be far more easily processed, stored and distributed than pictures caught on old-fashioned film. CCD technology is now used in point-and-shoot digital cameras, camcorders, high-definition TV, satellites and medical endoscopes. The technology has transformed modern astronomy, too. The Hubble Space Telescope uses a CCD as its main imaging device.
如今在互联网上传输的大部分图像都是由数码影像构成的。较之老式的胶片成像技术，这种方式捕获的影像可以非常便捷地进行处理、存储和传输。CCD技术如今被广泛应用于数码相机、摄像机、高清电视、卫星以及医疗成像中。这项技术还改变了现代天文学。哈勃空间望远镜就是使用CCD作为主要成像设备。

The two technologies are increasingly coming together as well. Most photographs taken today are captured digitally and then transmitted optically, via the Internet and other fiber-optic networks.
此外，这两项技术正变得越来越趋于融合。现在拍摄的大多数图片都是数码影像，随后便通过互联网和其他光纤网络进行传输。