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Physics and the law
Stranger than truth莫非在搞笑
Physics and the law物理学和法律
Stranger than truth莫非在搞笑Apr 3rd 2008
From The Economist print edition
Not an April fool, honestly真的,不是在开玩笑
IN THE weeks before Trinity, the first test of an atomic bomb, some of the physicists in the Manhattan Project fretted that their brainchild might set off a reaction that would burn up the Earth's atmosphere. Similarly, an experiment carried out in Long Island a few years ago, which was intended to produce a form of matter known as strange quarks, caused a few imaginative worrywarts to fear that the entire planet would be converted into subatomic particles called strangelets.
就在第一颗原子弹在Trinity试爆前的几周,一些曼哈顿计划的物理学家焦虑的指出 他们的这一智慧结晶可能引起一系列导致焚毁地球大气的反应。同样，在几年前长岛进行的产生一种名为奇夸克的物质的实验也引起了一些杞人忧天者的惊惧——它 所产生的奇异物质会不会囫囵吞掉地球呢？
Neither of these things came to pass, of course. But that does not stop people continuing to worry that esoteric phenomena at the edge of physics might spell The End Of Everything in a satisfyingly B-movieish cataclysm. The twist in the latest of these scares is that the worriers seem to think that a court in Hawaii is somehow empowered to stop events happening half a world away, on the Franco-Swiss border.
当然，两者都没有发生。但是这并没有阻止人们继续担心这样物理学边缘领域的深奥实验迟早会闹出B级片中的惊天大灾难。最近的一次风波正是一群忧心忡忡的夏威夷人把半个地球开外的法瑞边境上的量子实验告上了法庭。
The bugaboo this time is black holes. A black hole is an object so dense (and thus with such a strong gravitational field) that nothing—not even light—can escape it. Not surprisingly, no such object has ever been observed directly. However, the indirect effects of black holes can be seen all over the place, and the universe would not make sense without them, so there is little doubt that they really do exist.
这次闯祸的是黑洞。黑洞是一种密度极大（这也就产生了极强的引力场）以致于一切东西 ——包括光——都无法逃逸出来的天体。当然这也就不奇怪，我们为什么从来都无法直接观测到它们。但黑洞所产生的间接效应却弥漫于整个空间，没有这些宇宙也 就彻底不是今天我们看到的样子。所以学界对它的存在是鲜有异议的。
It would, nevertheless, be nice to have one to hand. And some physicists think that this will happen soon—when a machine called the Large Hadron Collider is switched on later this year. The LHC is the proud creation of CERN, Europe's main particle-physics laboratory, which is located near Geneva. It will create a zoo of new particles for those who study the fabric of reality to get to grips with. Among those objects may be some tiny black holes. The LHC's physicists are particularly excited by these because they will allow for the experimental examination of gravity. They may also allow Stephen Hawking, a well-known British physicist, to receive a much-deserved Nobel prize. That would almost certainly happen if he turns out to have been right in his prediction that tiny black holes will evaporate in a spectacular burst of energy that has come to be known as Hawking radiation.
但是如果能造一个在手边（《手心的黑洞》-嘿嘿）就更好了。一些物理学家相信这个梦想其实并不遥远——只要今年一台叫做大型强子对撞机（LHC）合闸开机就行。而LHC就是坐落在日内瓦附近欧洲粒子物理实验室的正宗产品。它可以产生一种可 供研究者探求扭结在一起组成现实世界的弦的秘密的粒子。同时还有一些副产品就是一个个小黑洞。LHC的物理学家对此倒是兴奋之至，因为这样他们就可以用实 验的方式直接检验引力的本质。同样如果这些黑洞在一场场壮观的被称做霍金射线的能量爆涨中蒸发掉的话，大名鼎鼎的英国物理学家霍金将无疑会得到一枚沉甸甸 的诺贝尔奖章。
Luis Sancho and Walter Wagner, however, are excited for a different reason. They fear that, far from evaporating in this way, any black holes created in the LHC will start sucking matter in—and will eventually swallow the Earth. This is despite the fact that if the LHC is, indeed, powerful enough to create such black holes, then so are the cosmic rays that continually bombard the Earth without noticeably sucking it into hideous doom.
但Luis Sancho和Walter Wagner却兴奋不起来。他们担心，LHC里产生的黑洞非但不会蒸发，反而会开始自己的饕餮大餐——直到吞下整个地球。但不知道他们是否想过，如果 LHC产生的黑洞都如此强大的话，地球早就被整日碰撞地球的宇宙射线吃的连渣都不剩了。
This week, Mr Sancho and Mr Wagner put their fears before a federal district court in Hawaii, asking for an injunction on CERN to stop the LHC opening. They also asked, perhaps with a fractionally higher hope of success, that America's main particle-physics laboratory, Fermilab, be forbidden to furnish its European friends and rivals with equipment.
本周，Sancho先生和Wagner先生向夏威夷地区联邦法庭提交了诉状，要求欧洲粒子物理实验室停止开启LHC。他们同时要求美国的主要粒子实验室，费迷实验室，停止为他们的欧洲同僚也是对手提供装备。这个诉讼可能还稍微着调。
Mr Wagner, a former nuclear-safety officer who now runs a botanical garden on Hawaii, has form in this area. It was he who led worries about the Long Island strangelets, to the extent of trying to get a similar restraining order imposed on Brookhaven National Laboratory, where the strange-matter experiment was to be conducted. Strange matter also features in his worries about the LHC. But his behaviour suggests that strange matter comes in many guises, not all of them within the purview of physicists.
Wagner先生，现在作为一位经营着一家植物园的前核安全官员，越来越多的涉足这一领域。也正是他引发了对长岛奇异物质实验的担忧，并试图以相似的方式延缓或阻止布鲁克黑文国家实验室（就坐落在长岛）的奇异物质实验——与对LHC措施如出一辙。但是他的种种怪异举动着堪称奇异——只是好象与物理学关系甚微。
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