英语词汇实用小百科 用《星际穿越》练听力

Xiaohua: Hello, and welcome to Round Table’s Word of the Week. This week we are going to talk about some science theories that are made known by the film Interstellar.

John: Yeah, not so much made known. I mean these are concepts and ideas that have been around for quite a long time even as early as the 1930s and 1940s, but really what we see with the movie Interstellar which I have not seen yet, we see just a kind of popularization of those ideas. Not to say that Interstellar is the first one to do so, but due to the popularity, especially here in the Mainland, without it we cannot talk about some of them. I want to take the time right now to first describe some very fundamental concepts in the world of mathematics, in physics that informs much of what we saw in Interstellar. So the first is general relativity and a simple explanation of general relativity is the idea on large scales, what happens with large bodies and their influence on other things. So by large bodies, I mean planets, suns, other stars, comets, and things like that. Large massive things in space and how they affect each other, mostly looking at gravity and time.

Xiaohua: 广义相对论general relativity基本上讲的就是在广大的空间内的一些高密度的天体是怎样互相之间作用而影响我们的。

John: Then there is quantum physics. So general relativity is attributed to Einstein in the 1930s and 1940s somewhere around there. And then there was quantum physics which was popularized especially in the 1960s and 1970s. So general relativity has everything to do with large massive bodies, again planets, stars, things like that. Quantum physics has everything to do with small things. Things that we cannot perceive with the naked eye, so quantum physics tries to answer the question how is it that an atom stays in atom, how does a molecule¹ stay a molecule, even going future down how does a proton stay a proton.

Xiaohua: 在相对论之后，又有了著名的量子理论quantum physics。

John: The problem for theoretical physicists² so the people who are doing all the math and trying to figure how the math works is that if you try to apply the ideas in mathematics of general relativity to very small things, everything breaks down. And if you try to apply the mathematics of quantum physics and quantum theory on a larger scale, everything breaks down. And so what theoretical physicists had to do was come up with a completely separate system of math and a completely separate idea of how things work. And they call that string theory. So string theory has not been experimentally proven. However, this point is accepted by a wide number of theoretical physicists and mathematicians³ as a very elegant way of bringing general relativity and quantum physics together.

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Xiaohua: 由于广义相对论和量子理论在很多地方是不能同时成立的，于是理论物理学家们又延伸出一个新的学科，那就是弦理论，也就是string theory。

John: Right, so the idea behind string theory is that you have strings⁴ of different shapes and sizes vibrating at certain frequencies. This can be very, very small, smaller than electron, than the smallest particle we know of. Everything basically is made up of different types of strings vibrating at different frequencies and this is where the ideas of branes or membranes⁶ and worm holes really start to take shape and actually start to make sense in terms of the mathematics and the actual theory.

Xiaohua: 弦理论的一个基本观点就是说自然界的基本单元不是点状粒子，而是很小很小的线状的弦string，而弦之间的不同震动就产生出不同的基本粒子。另外在弦理论里面还有一个brane, right?

John: Yeah, brane. It’s just the shortening of the word membrane⁵. The idea there is that the membrane is actually a very elongated⁷ string that also has its own vibration⁸. And the idea is all theory. None of this is proven. It’s that our universe in fact could be either just on one brane or could be that we are on many different branes, so the idea is that somehow you take one membrane and you fold it around. It should be theoretically possible to create some kind of gateway⁹ between those two. That’s really where the idea of a worm hole really starts to make sense, so people used to think there was this science fiction idea that black holes could somehow be a worm hole, but as far as we know, the physics of that just make no sense, because the black hole is a star that collapses¹⁰ upon itself so quickly because of the way that these forces work, that it just sucks in everything else around it and the thing is as far as we can tell, if everything is actually sucked into the black hole, there is no way that a human could actually survive.

Xiaohua: 而弦理论的存在使得平行空间，也就是虫洞的存在产生了可能。以前有人认为黑洞和虫洞也许是一种东西，但其实我们现在知道黑洞是一种超高密度的天体，那么所有的物体在被吸入黑洞之后都没有办法逃脱出来，所以黑洞和虫洞其实是不一样的。

John: I want to talk about the speed of light, in about relativity in that sense, because the whole thing with one of the big discoveries of Albert Einstein in terms of relativity was the speed of light. So a lot of science fiction looks at faster than light travel, sometimes abbreviated¹¹ into FTL. The thing is right now, and this is why worm holes and things like that are so attractive, because according to the physics that in our understanding of the universe now it is virtually impossible to ever actually travel at the speed of light or even faster than the speed of light using what we now have in terms of propulsion technology. Because according to E=mc*2, as you get closer to the speed of light, the energy required increase in such an exponential fashion.

1 molecule   

n.分子，克分子

参考例句：

• A molecule of water is made up of two atoms of hygrogen and one atom of oxygen.一个水分子是由P妈̬f婘̬ 妈̬成的。
• This gives us the structural formula of the molecule.这种方式给出了分子的结构式。

2 physicists   

物理学家( physicist的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• For many particle physicists, however, it was a year of frustration. 对于许多粒子物理学家来说，这是受挫折的一年。 来自英汉非文学 - 科技
• Physicists seek rules or patterns to provide a framework. 物理学家寻求用法则或图式来构成一个框架。

3 mathematicians   

数学家( mathematician的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Do you suppose our mathematicians are unequal to that? 你以为我们的数学家做不到这一点吗？ 来自英汉文学
• Mathematicians can solve problems with two variables. 数学家们可以用两个变数来解决问题。 来自哲学部分

4 strings   

n.弦

参考例句：

• He sat on the bed,idly plucking the strings of his guitar.他坐在床上，随意地拨着吉他的弦。
• She swept her fingers over the strings of the harp.她用手指划过竖琴的琴弦。

5 membrane   

n.薄膜，膜皮，羊皮纸

参考例句：

• A vibrating membrane in the ear helps to convey sounds to the brain.耳膜的振动帮助声音传送到大脑。
• A plastic membrane serves as selective diffusion barrier.一层塑料薄膜起着选择性渗透屏障的作用。

6 membranes   

n.（动物或植物体内的）薄膜( membrane的名词复数 )；隔膜；（可起防水、防风等作用的）膜状物

参考例句：

• The waste material is placed in cells with permeable membranes. 废液置于有渗透膜的槽中。 来自辞典例句
• The sarcoplasmic reticulum is a system of intracellular membranes. 肌浆网属于细胞内膜系统。 来自辞典例句

7 elongated   

v.延长，加长( elongate的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Modigliani's women have strangely elongated faces. 莫迪里阿尼画中的妇女都长着奇长无比的脸。
• A piece of rubber can be elongated by streching. 一块橡皮可以拉长。 来自《用法词典》

8 vibration   

n.颤动，振动；摆动

参考例句：

• There is so much vibration on a ship that one cannot write.船上的震动大得使人无法书写。
• The vibration of the window woke me up.窗子的震动把我惊醒了。

9 gateway   

n.大门口，出入口，途径，方法

参考例句：

• Hard work is the gateway to success.努力工作是通往成功之路。
• A man collected tolls at the gateway.一个人在大门口收通行费。

10 collapses   

折叠( collapse的第三人称单数 )； 倒塌； 崩溃； （尤指工作劳累后）坐下

参考例句：

• This bridge table collapses. 这张桥牌桌子能折叠。
• Once Russia collapses, the last chance to stop Hitler will be gone. 一旦俄国垮台，抑止希特勒的最后机会就没有了。

11 abbreviated   

adj. 简短的，省略的 动词abbreviate的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• He abbreviated so much that it was hard to understand his article. 他的文章缩写词使用太多，令人费解。
• The United States of America is commonly abbreviated to U.S.A.. 美利坚合众国常被缩略为U.S.A.。