经济学人下载:天文学 宇宙中的摇滚乐

Science and technology
科学技术

Astronomy
天文学

The cosmic boogie-box
宇宙中的摇滚乐

The sky, it seems, is filled with unexpected radio signals
看上去，太空中充满了我们意想不到的无线电讯号

WHISPER it not, but doing science can sometimes be a bit tedious.
可能你会在背后小声议论，但是科学本来就有些单调乏味。

Traditionally, a researcher postulates an idea, devises an experiment to test it and then reports the results.
一般说来，一名研究人员会做出一个假设，设计出一个实验来验证其正确性，然后再报告实验结果。

Sometimes those results confirm the postulate; sometimes they confound it.
有的时候这些结果和假设相符，有的时候与其相悖。

Occasionally, though, something unexpected happens, and that is when the tedious gets exciting.
但是，在极少数的情况下，会发生一些意想不到的事情；这时，单调乏味的科学就变得振奋轰动了。

One such shock was the discovery in 1964 of the cosmic microwave background, by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson,
一个轰动的例子就是1964年宇宙微波背景的发现。当时射电天文学家阿诺.彭齐亚斯和罗伯特.威尔逊正在对接收器进行测验，

a pair of radio astronomers who were testing a receiver they planned to use to search the sky for localised sources of microwaves.
他们计划用这部接收器来探寻局部的微波源。

The hiss they found at one particular frequency turned out to be evidence for the then-controversial idea that the universe had been born in a Big Bang.
这过程中，两位天文学家发现了某一特定频率的嘶音，恰好证明了当时争议不断的大爆炸理论。

A similarly strange result was reported this week by stargazers gathered at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, California.
本周在加州长滩举行的美国天文学会上，我们听到了一个有些类似的奇怪结果。

Some of them reckon that, besides microwaves, the sky reverberates with the din of radio waves as well.
其中一些天文学家认为，除了微波之外，宇宙还同辐射波的杂音一起发生反射。

If they are right, something very odd indeed is going on in the universe.
如果这种观点正确，那么宇宙中就存在一些非常不可思议的事情了。

The astronomers in question work for NASA, America’s space agency.
这些天文学家都在美国国家航天航空局工作：

Michael Seiffert is based at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and Alan Kogut at the Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland.
迈克尔.赛佛来自加州帕萨迪纳市的喷气动力实验室，艾伦.科格特来自马里兰州的哥达德太空飞行中心。

The postulate they had planned to test was that the first stars to form after the Big Bang would have left some signs of themselves in the form of radio waves.
原本，他们是为了验证大爆炸之后形成的第一批星球以辐射波的形式保留下了一些迹象；

Their experiment was designed to find these signs.
其设计的实验也是为了寻找这些迹象。

Their search used radio telescopes launched to the edge of the atmosphere on special balloons from a site in Palestine, Texas.
研究在德克萨斯的帕勒斯坦地区展开，他们把射电望远镜置于一些特殊的气球上，发射到大气层边缘。

The result they got was not, however, what they were looking for.
然而，所得的结果却并非他们的初衷。

The microwave background is the earliest snapshot of the universe, taken a mere 300,000 years after the Big Bang and almost 700,000 years before the first stars are thought to have coalesced.
微波背景是宇宙最早的形态，它发生在大爆炸之后仅仅300,000年；一般观点认为，其700,000年后第一批星球就已经结合。

It reveals the newborn universe to have been a remarkably uniform fireball.
这就说明，新生的宇宙是一个非常均匀的火球。

Dr Seiffert and Dr Kogut wanted to identify the point at which things stopped being so smooth and the universe started to develop the structures—galaxies, stars, planets and dust—that fill it today.
赛佛教授和科格特教授希望能够找出是从何时开始，宇宙开始从均匀的状态转变，发展成今天的多样结构——银河，星球，还有尘埃。

It was for this reason that they were searching for signs of stars.
因此，他们一直在寻找星球的迹象。

What they found, however, was a background hiss of radio noise, reminiscent of the hiss noticed by Dr Penzias and Dr Wilson.
但是，他们却发现了射电噪声的一种背景杂音，这让人联想到彭齐亚斯博士和威尔逊博士当时注意到的嘶声。

After ruling out nearby sources of radio waves, they concluded that their own hiss also comes from beyond the Milky Way and thus constitutes a cosmic radio background.
赛佛教授和科格特教授排除了附近辐射波的干扰，认为这种杂音同样来自银河之外，构成了一个辐射背景。

Four papers describing the telescopes, the observations and their possible interpretation have been submitted to the Astrophysical Journal.
他们写了四篇论文，对望远镜、观测结果以及有可能的解释进行描述，递交了《天体物理学杂志》。

Why a cosmic radio background should be there remains a mystery.
为什么那里会存在一个宇宙辐射背景呢？这还是一个谜。

It does not appear to be coming from the primordial stars sought by the astronomers—indeed, it completely drowns out any signs of the early stars that were the object of the original quest.
但是这看起来不像是天文学家所探寻的原始星球；实际上，这一背景的声音淹没了科学家意图探寻之星球的一切迹象。

Nor are there enough radio galaxies around to account for it.
周围也没有任何射电星系能够达到这一效果。

It looks, therefore, like the sign of a previously unknown phenomenon.
因此看起来，这是一个从前不为人所知现象的表现。

Of course, some as-yet unidentified error could have been made. In that case, it will be back to the tedium.
当然了，在这过程中也可能出现了一些迄今未被识别的错误。倘若如此，科学又回到了单调乏味。

But Dr Seiffert, Dr Kogut and their colleagues are hoping that will not be the case, and that their discovery really will turn out to be worth making a noise about.
但是赛佛教授、科格特教授以及他们的同事们不希望真的会有什么错误；他们希望，这一发现最终能够名声大“噪”。