文艺；书评；基础物理学；宇宙大爆炸；

　　Popular physics has enjoyed a new-found regard. Now comes a brave attempt to inject mathematics into an otherwise fashionable subject

　　科普物理再次得到新的关注。如今，学者大胆的尝试将数学引入另外一个流行学科；

　　The Quantum Universe: Everything That Can Happen Does Happen. By Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw.

　　量子宇宙：一切可能发生的的确发生。布莱恩·考克斯和杰夫·福肖著。

　　Previously the preserve of dusty, tweed-jacketed academics, physics has enjoyed a surprising popular renaissance over the past few years. In America Michio Kaku, a string theorist, has penned several successful books and wowed television and radio audiences with his presentations on esoteric subjects such as the existence of wormholes and the possibility of alien life. In Britain Brian Cox, a former pop star whose music helped propel Tony Blair to power, has become the front man for physics, which recently regained its status as a popular subject in British classrooms, an effect many attribute to Mr Cox's astonishing appeal.

　　从前的学者保持着蓬头垢面、身着花呢夹克的形象。在过去几年里，物理学迎来了惊人的全面复兴。在美国，弦论学家米奇霍·卡库创作出数本反响不错的书。他对诸如虫洞及外星生命存在的可能性等小众课题的介绍赢得了电视观众和电台听众的赞赏。在英国，其作品曾帮助托尼·布莱尔登上大宝的前流行歌星布莱恩·考克斯，现在成了物理学的领军人物。近来物理学在英国学生中再次获得了受欢迎的科目的地位。产生这样的效果很大程度上归功于考克斯先生惊人的感召力。

　　Mr Cox, a particle physicist, is well-known as the presenter of two BBC television series that have attracted millions of viewers (a third series will be aired next year) and as a bestselling author and public speaker. His latest book, “The Quantum Universe”, which he co-wrote with Jeff Forshaw of the University of Manchester, breaks the rules of popular science-writing that were established over two decades ago by Stephen Hawking, who launched the modern genre with his famous book, “A Brief History of Time”.

　　粒子物理学家考克斯先生，因推荐了两部吸引了数百万观众的BBC电视剧而知名（第三部将于明年开播）。他同样是畅销书作者兼公开演讲家。他的新书《量子宇宙》，是由他和曼彻斯特大学的杰夫·福索合著的。该书打破了20年前由史蒂芬·霍金创立的科普写作规范。霍金以其著作《时间简史》开创了这一现代写作流派。

　　Mr Hawking's literary success was ascribed to his eschewing equations. One of his editors warned him that sales of the book would be halved by every equation he included; Mr Hawking inserted just one, E=mc2, and, even then, the volume acquired a sorry reputation for being bought but not read. By contrast, Mr Cox, whose previous book with Mr Forshaw investigated “Why does E=mc2?” (2009), has bravely sloshed a generous slug of mathematics throughout his texts.

　　霍金在文学上的成功归因于他避开了方程式。一位编辑曾警告他，每个写进书中的方程式都会让销量减半。霍金就插了一个：E=Mc2。即使那样，让人感到遗憾的是，该书是靠购买量而非阅读量赢得声誉。相比之下，在上一本旨在探寻“为什么是E=Mc2”（2009）的书中，考克斯与福索就已经大胆地通篇砍掉冗长的数学公式。

　　The difficulties in explaining physics without using maths are longstanding. Einstein mused, “The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility,” and “the fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle.” Yet the language in which the world is described is that of maths, a relatively sound grasp of which is needed to comprehend the difficulties that physicists are trying to resolve as well as the possible solutions. Mr Cox has secured a large fan base with his boyish good looks, his happy turns of phrase and his knack for presenting complex ideas using simple analogies. He also admirably shies away from dumbing down. “The Quantum Universe” is not a dry undergraduate text book, but nor is it a particularly easy read.

　　不用数学解释物理知识所造成的困难由来已久。爱因斯坦语重心长地说过：“世间永恒的神秘在于它的可了解性。”“可以了解这一事实本身就是一个奇迹。”然而，用于描述世界的语言就是数学。在理解物理学家试图解决的困难及可能的解决方案时，数学是一个相对合理的必要的抓手。凭借其大男孩般的优质外表、习语的运用、简单类比解释复杂概念的窍门，考克斯拥有了一大帮粉丝。他同时成功避免过度简化。《量子宇宙》非一本干巴巴的大学教材，但也不是特别容易读懂。

　　The subject matter is hard. Quantum mechanics, which describes in subatomic detail a shadowy world in which cats can be simultaneously alive and dead, is notoriously difficult to grasp. Its experiments yield bizarre results that can be explained only by embracing the maths that describe them, and its theories make outrageous predictions (such as the existence of antimatter) that have nevertheless later been verified. Messrs Cox and Forshaw say they have included the maths “mainly because it allows us to really explain why things are the way they are. Without it, we should have to resort to the physicist-guru mentality whereby we pluck profundities out of thin air, and neither author would be comfortable with guru status.”

　　有关物质的课题是艰涩的。众所周知，用于详细描述原子内部这个猫亦生亦死的虚无世界的量子力学很难领会。要解释实验产生的奇异结果，只能运用描述这些结果的数学。虽然量子力学理论对诸如反物质的存在所做出的预测是匪夷所思的，但这些预测后来得到了证实。考克斯和福索称他们之所以在书中加入数学主要是因为数学让我们真正去解释为什么事物是以这样一种方式存在。没了数学，我们不得不依靠物理大师般的心智，由是，我们凭空捏造出奥义，而任何一个作者都不会对这样的大师头衔心安理得。

　　That stance might comfort the authors, but to many readers they will nonetheless seem to pluck equations out of thin air. Yet their decision to include some of the hard stuff leaves open the possibility that some readers might actually engage in the slog that leads to higher pleasures. For non-sloggers alternative routes are offered: Messrs Cox and Forshaw use clockfaces to illustrate how particles interact with one another, a drawing of how guitar strings twang and a photograph of a vibrating drum. A diagram, rather than an equation, is used to explain one promising theory of how matter acquires mass, a question that experiments on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, will hopefully soon answer.

　　这样的立场也许会使作者感觉不错，但对很多读者来说，他们似乎还是想凭空弄出方程式。作者决定加入一些生涩的东西，这样就给一些苦心钻研并从中获得更多快感的读者留下了余地。他们还为一般读者提供了另一条途径：考克斯和福索以表盘为例说明粒子是如何相互作用的，一副有关吉他琴弦如何发出声音的图画，一张振动的鼓的照片。他们用图表，而非公式去解释物质是如何获得质量这一前沿理论。在邻近日内瓦的粒子物理实验室，即欧洲核子研究委员会的巨型强子对撞机上进行的实验产生的这个问题有望很快得出答案。

　　The authors have wisely chosen to leaven their tome with amusing tales of dysfunctional characters among scholars who developed quantum mechanics in the 1920s and beyond, as well as with accounts of the philosophical struggles with which they grappled and the occasional earthy aside. Where the subject matter is a trifle dull, Messrs Cox and Forshaw acknowledge it: of Heinrich Kayser, who a century ago completed a six-volume reference book documenting the spectral lines generated by every known element, they observe, “He must have been great fun at dinner parties.” And they make some sweeping generalisations about their colleagues who pore over equations, “Physicists are very lazy, and they would not go to all this trouble unless it saved time in the long run.”

　　为了加强这个大部头的影响力，两位作者明智地选择了一些有趣的段子：在20世纪20年代以及更早时候发展量子力学的学者的怪癖；他们设法解决的哲学问题；间或出现的通俗旁白。有关物质的课题是枯燥的，考克斯和福索承认：海因里希·凯瑟在一个世纪前完成了6部用以证明光谱是由每个已知元素产生的参考著作，据他们观察，“他肯定在晚宴上很开心。”他们也对专注方程式的同事进行了高度概括：“物理学家非常懒惰，除非从长远看这节约时间，他们不会招惹这些麻烦”。

　　Whether or not readers of “The Quantum Universe” will follow all the maths, the authors' love for their subject shines through the book. “There is no better demonstration of the power of the scientific method than quantum theory,” they write. That may be so, but physicists all over the world, Messrs Cox and Forshaw included, are longing for the next breakthrough that will supersede the claim. Hopes are pinned on experiments currently under way at CERN that may force physicists to rethink their understanding of the universe, and inspire Messrs Cox and Forshaw to write their next book—equations and all.

　　不论《量子宇宙》的读者是否会关注所有与之相关的数学知识，作者对专业的热爱贯穿整部作品。他们写道：“没有比量子理论更能展现科学方法的力量。”也许吧。但包括考克斯和福索在内的所有物理学家都渴望有新的突破去取代这一论断。大家寄希望于目前在欧洲核子研究委员会进行的实验，该实验也许会迫使物理学家重新思考他们对宇宙的理解，并激励考克斯和福索写下一本书——方程式及所有其它的。