万物简史(MP3+中英字幕) 第61期:事物的测定(8)

 At Principia's heart were Newton's three laws of motion (which state, very baldly, that a thing moves in the direction in which it is pushed; that it will keep moving in a straight line until some other force acts to slow or deflect¹ it; and that every action has an opposite and equal reaction) and his universal law of gravitation. This states that every object in the universe exerts a tug² on every other. It may not seem like it, but as you sit here now you are pulling everything around you—walls, ceiling, lamp, pet cat—toward you with your own little (indeed, very little) gravitational field. And these things are also pulling on you.

《原理》的核心是牛顿的三大运动定律（定律非常明确地指出，物体朝着推力的方向运动；它始终做直线运动，直到某种别的力起了作用，使它慢下来或改变它的方向；每个作用都有相等的反作用）以及他的万有引力定律。这说明，宇宙里的每个物体都吸引每个别的物体。这似乎不大可能，但当你在这里坐着的时候，你在用你自己小小的（的确很小）引力场吸引你周围的一切事物--墙壁、天花板、灯、宠物猫。而这些东西也在吸引你。

It was Newton who realized that the pull of any two objects is, to quote Feynman again, "proportional to the mass of each and varies inversely³ as the square of the distance between them." Put another way, if you double the distance between two objects, the attraction between them becomes four times weaker. This can be expressed with the formula F = Gmm/R^2 which is of course way beyond anything that most of us could make practical use of, but at least we can appreciate that it is elegantly compact. A couple of brief multiplications⁴, a simple division, and, bingo, you know your gravitational position wherever you go. It was the first really universal law of nature ever propounded⁵ by a human mind, which is why Newton is regarded with such universal esteem⁶.

是牛顿认识到，任何两个物体的引力，再用费曼的话来说，“与每个物体的质量成正比，以两者之间距离的平方反比来变化”。换一种说法，要是你将两个物体之间的距离翻一番，两者之间的引力就弱4倍。这可以用下面的公式来表示： F=Gmm/(R^2) 这个公式对我们大多数人来说当然是根本没有实际用途的，但至少我们欣赏它的优美，它的简洁。无论你走到哪里，只要做两个快速的乘法，一个简单的除法，嘿，你就知道你的引力状况。这是人类提出的第一个真正有普遍意义的自然定律，也是牛顿到处深受人们尊敬的原因。

 

1 deflect   

v.(使)偏斜，(使)偏离，(使)转向

参考例句：

• Never let a little problem deflect you.决不要因一点小问题就半途而废。
• They decided to deflect from the original plan.他们决定改变原计划。

2 tug   

v.用力拖(或拉)；苦干；n.拖；苦干；拖船

参考例句：

• We need to tug the car round to the front.我们需要把那辆车拉到前面。
• The tug is towing three barges.那只拖船正拖着三只驳船。

3 inversely   

adj.相反的

参考例句：

• Pressure varies directly with temperature and inversely with volume. 压力随温度成正比例变化，与容积成反比例变化。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The amount of force needed is inversely proportional to the rigidity of the material. 需要的力度与材料的硬度成反比。 来自《简明英汉词典》

4 multiplications   

增多( multiplication的名词复数 )； 增加； 乘； 繁殖

参考例句：

• The optimum paths for multiplications of 7 and 8 are depicted in Figure 6.17. 图6．17中描绘了倍增7倍和8倍的最优路径。

5 propounded   

v.提出（问题、计划等）供考虑[讨论]，提议( propound的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• the theory of natural selection, first propounded by Charles Darwin 查尔斯∙达尔文首先提出的物竞天择理论
• Indeed it was first propounded by the ubiquitous Thomas Young. 实际上，它是由尽人皆知的杨氏首先提出来的。 来自辞典例句

6 esteem   

n.尊敬，尊重；vt.尊重，敬重；把…看作

参考例句：

• I did not esteem him to be worthy of trust.我认为他不值得信赖。
• The veteran worker ranks high in public love and esteem.那位老工人深受大伙的爱戴。