英雄如此：一人之力守护引力波科学

Imagine spending 40 years and more than a billion dollars on a gamble.

想象一下，花40年时间和10多亿美元在一场赌博上。

That's what one U.S. government science agency did.

这就是一家美国政府科学机构所做的。事情

It's now paying off big time, with new discoveries about black holes and exotic neutron stars coming almost every week.

现在，随着几乎每周都有关于黑洞和奇异中子星的新发现，这一努力正在取得重大成果。

And while three physicists shared the Nobel Prize for the work that made this possible, one of them says the real hero is a former National Science Foundation staffer named Rich Isaacson, who saw a chance to cultivate some stunning research and grabbed it.

三位物理学家共同获得了诺贝尔奖，以表彰他们为实现这一目标所做的工作。其中一位物理学家说，真正的英雄是前美国国家科学基金会，工作人员里奇·艾萨克森，他看到了培养一些令人惊叹的研究成果的机会，并抓住了这个机会。

"The thing that Rich Isaacson did was such a miracle," says Rainer Weiss, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the 2017 Nobel laureates.

“里奇·艾萨克森所做的是一个奇迹，”麻省理工学院物理学家、2017年诺贝尔奖得主之一雷纳·韦斯说。

"I think he's the hero. He's a singular hero. We just don't have a good way of recognizing people like that. Rich was in a singular place fighting a singular war that nobody else could have fought."

“我认为他是英雄。他是个非凡的英雄。我们只是没有一个很好的方法来认识这样的人。里奇身处一个独特的地方，打着一场其他人没有打过的独特战争。”

Without him, Weiss says, "we would've been killed dead on virtually every topic."

韦斯说，如果没有他，“几乎在每个课题上我们都会都死掉。”

He and his fellow laureate Kip Thorne recently donated money to create a brand-new American Physical Society award in Isaacson's honor.

最近，他和同为诺贝尔奖得主的基普·索恩捐钱创建了一个全新的美国物理学会奖，以纪念艾萨克森。

This unlikely story begins back in the 1960s, when Isaacson was a doctoral student and got interested in one of Albert Einstein's predictions.

这个不太可能的故事始于上世纪60年代，当时艾萨克森还是一名博士生，对阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦的一项预测产生了兴趣。

In 1916, Einstein theorized that any time two massive objects crash together, shock waves should move through the very fabric of the universe.

1916年，爱因斯坦提出理论，当两个巨大的物体碰撞在一起时，冲击波应该会穿过宇宙的整个结构。

These gravitational waves through space and time are like the ripples you see in water when you toss in a pebble.

这些穿越时空的引力波就像你扔进卵石时在水中看到的涟漪。

"For my thesis, I showed how gravitational waves behave like other kinds of waves, like light and radar, X-rays," Isaacson says.

艾萨克森说:“在我的论文中，我展示了引力波如何表现得像其他类型的波，比如光、雷达、x射线等。”

His calculations showed that these waves weren't just some mathematical obscurity but something that conceivably could be measured.

他的计算表明这些波不仅仅是数学上的怪论，而且是可以被测量的。

"It showed exactly how Einstein's theory worked in detail in making gravitational waves," Weiss says.

韦斯说:“它精确地展示了爱因斯坦的理论是如何在产生引力波的过程中发挥作用的。”

"And it was done in such a way that it was mathematically correct and nobody could dispute it anymore."

“这样做的方式在数学上是正确的，没有人能再提出异议。”

Einstein, who'd gone back and forth on the question of gravitational waves, thought that they'd most likely never be detected — the distortions they create in space are just too tiny.

爱因斯坦曾在引力波的问题上反复思考，他认为引力波极有可能永远不会被探测到——引力波在太空中造成的扭曲实在是太小了。

Isaacson was more optimistic.

艾萨克森则更为乐观。

"I imagined that sometime in my career, we would see it," he says.

他说:“我想，在我职业生涯的某个时候，我们会看到它。”

He just didn't realize that trying to see it would become his career.

他只是没有意识到试着去看到引力波会成为他的职业。

Back in the early 1970s, Isaacson took a job at the fledgling National Science Foundation, working to review funding proposals.

早在20世纪70年代初，艾萨克森就在刚刚起步的美国国家科学基金会工作，负责审查基金提案。

And Weiss wanted money for a crazy idea he was pursuing: trying to detect gravitational waves using lasers.

韦斯想要为他所追求的一个疯狂的想法筹集资金:尝试用激光探测引力波。

Lasers could, in theory, be used to measure very, very small distortions in space — like changes that were a thousandth of the width of an atomic nucleus.

理论上，激光可以用来测量空间中非常非常小的畸变——比如原子核宽度的千分之一。

"Most people said, 'Holy mackerel! He must be nuts. You can't do that,' " Weiss recalls.

“大多数人都说，'天哪!他一定是疯了。你不能那样做，’”韦斯回忆道。

The technology was just too hard.

技术太难了。

Plus, no one even knew what in the universe could spew out gravitational waves strong enough to be measured like that.

此外，甚至没有人知道宇宙中有什么东西能喷出足够强的引力波来进行这样的测量。

Normally, says Weiss, "with those two things ... that proposal would have been dead on arrival. But it wasn't that way with Rich."

韦斯说，正常情况下，“有了这两件事……那项提议一般就会胎死腹中。但里奇的情况不是这样的。”

Because Isaacson had studied gravitational waves, he saw the potential.

因为艾萨克森研究过引力波，他看到了这种可能性。

So he personally shepherded this research for almost three decades.

所以他亲自守护了这项研究将近30年。

It became the biggest project the National Science Foundation had ever funded.

这成为美国国家科学基金会有史以来资助的最大项目。

"He sat in the NSF and single-handedly — I mean single-handedly — convinced everybody in the NSF this was the right thing for the NSF to support and the science was going to be spectacular if it should succeed," says Weiss.

韦斯说:“他坐在国家科学基金会里，单枪匹马地——我的意思是单枪匹马地——说服了国家科学基金会的每一个人，这是国家科学基金会应该支持的正确的事情，如果它成功了，科学结果将会是惊人的。”

"And he made the argument stick."

“他坚持了自己的观点。”

He made it stick through years of prototype tests and expert review panels and feasibility studies and management nightmares.

在多年的原型测试、专家评审小组、可行性研究和管理难题里，他一直坚持着。

Lots of people worked on this project, of course, but Weiss says that "the elegance of Rich was the fact that he knew how the system worked and he knew the science."

当然，很多人都参与了这个项目，但韦斯说，“里奇的杰出之处在于，他知道这个系统是如何运作的，他也懂得科学。”

"He was an advocate, like a messiah, for this whole idea of detecting gravitational waves. And then he became more of a strategist for it," Weiss explains.

“他像弥赛亚一样，倡导探测引力波的整个理念。然后他就变成了一个战略家，”韦斯解释道。

"Now imagine the guy running the program in the NSF becoming the major advocate for it and also the guy who did most of the strategizing for it. To me, that was a miracle. And it is the thing that made it so that the field survived."

“现在想象一下，在国家科学基金会运行这个项目的人成为这个项目的主要倡导者，也是为这个项目做了大部分战略规划的人。对我来说，这是个奇迹。正是它使得这个领域得以存活。”

After all, plenty of people thought it was insane to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build giant detectors that might never detect anything — especially astronomers, who worried that the money would get diverted from sure bets, such as building new telescopes.

毕竟，很多人认为花费数亿美元建造可能永远探测不到任何东西的巨型探测器是愚蠢的——尤其是天文学家，他们担心这些钱会从诸如建造新望远镜等有把握的赌注中转移。

"There's always a danger that the project can get stopped," Isaacson says.

艾萨克森说:“这个项目总是有被叫停的危险。”

"And like all of the big projects in science, it's a roller coaster ride."

“就像科学领域的所有大型项目一样，这是一趟过山车之旅。”

Officially, Isaacson never worked on this more than about half time.

官方的说法是，艾萨克森在这方面的工作从来没有超过一半的时间。

In reality, it was all consuming.

实际上，这一切都很消耗精力。

The long workdays took a toll.

长时间的工作使人付出了代价。

At one point, his blood pressure went sky high and his doctor became alarmed.

有一段时间，他的血压飙升，他的医生开始警惕起来。

Isaacson says he feels lucky to have been in a position to try to change history.

艾萨克森说，他很幸运能有机会改变历史。

"But history demands you pay a price for that privilege, in terms of all the stress and agony and lifestyle and family events," he says.

“但历史要求你为这种特权付出代价，包括所有的压力、痛苦、生活方式和家庭事件，”他说道。

"If you're willing to pay the price, OK, you've got this chance and you can go ahead and maybe it will work. Maybe it won't."

“如果你愿意付出代价，好吧，你有这个机会，你可以继续，也许会成功，又或许不会。”

In 2002, Isaacson retired.

2002年，艾萨克森退休。

That was also the year the NSF started searching the sky with its brand-new Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO): two massive detectors, one in Washington state and one in Louisiana.

也是在那一年，国家科学基金会开始用它全新的激光干涉仪引力波天文台搜索天空:两个巨大的探测器，一个在华盛顿州，一个在路易斯安那州。

Each has lasers that travel down pipes 2 1/2 miles long.

每一个都有激光沿着2.5英里长的管道传播。

For years, these detectors hunted for gravitational waves ... and found nothing.

多年来，这些探测器一直在寻找引力波……但什么也没发现。

Scientists stuck with it.

科学家们却没有放弃。

They improved the detectors' instruments.

他们改进了探测器的仪器。

And in 2015, Isaacson traveled to Maine for a getaway with Weiss and another colleague, who opened up a laptop to reveal measurements that were made just a couple of days before.

2015年，艾萨克森与韦斯和另一名同事前往缅因州度假，韦斯打开笔记本电脑，显示了几天前的测量结果。

It was the first-ever detection of gravitational waves, from two black holes that collided over a billion light-years away.

这是首次探测到引力波，引力波来自10亿光年之外的两个黑洞。

"It was absolutely clear that this fantastic thing had just happened," Isaacson recalls.

“很明显，奇迹发生了，”艾萨克森回忆道。

The realization produced "a little warm glow," he says.

他说，这种认识产生了“一点暖意”。

"I guess now that I'm a few years away from it, I'm beginning to feel it more."

“我想现在我离看到引力波还有几年的时间，我开始有更多的预感了。”

Asked about the chances that a government-funded science project like this could happen today, he says: "Zero."

当被问及像这样一个由政府资助的科学项目如果放在今天发生的可能性时，他说:“零。”

"We live in a very different time," Isaacson says.

“我们现在生活在一个非常不同的时代，”艾萨克森说。

"Nobody can, I think, take such large-scale, high-risk, long-term research."

“我认为，没有人能够进行如此大规模、高风险、长期的研究。”

Gravitational wave science has given astronomers an unprecedented ability to see some of the most powerful and exotic events in the universe.

引力波科学让天文学家们有了一种前所未有的能力，可以看到宇宙中一些最强大、最奇异的事件。

In 2017, for example, the LIGO detectors registered a collision between two neutron stars, and telescopes were then able to find the cosmic fireworks and watch them in real time.

例如，在2017年，LIGO探测器记录了两颗中子星之间的碰撞，然后望远镜发现了这次宇宙烟火并实时观察它们。

Just last month, researchers started up the massive detectors after another major hardware upgrade.

就在上个月，研究人员在另一次重大的硬件升级之后重新启动了这种大型探测器。

They've already detected at least five more gravitational wave events.

他们已经探测到至少5个引力波事件。

Isaacson keeps an eye on the science, but in retirement he's finally free to fully pursue another love: antique textiles from Central Asia.

艾萨克森一直关注科学，但退休后，他终于可以完全追求另一种爱好:来自中亚的古董纺织品。

He has even written a book on the decorated bands that wrap around nomadic tents.

他甚至写了一本关于环绕游牧帐篷的环带的书。

He likes carpets and weavings with geometric designs.

他喜欢几何图案的地毯和织物。

"Since modern physics is highly geometrical, it's not all that different," Isaacson says.

艾萨克森说:“由于现代物理学是高度几何的，所以并没有太大的不同。”

"Except that physicists work in somewhere between four or 10 dimensions, usually. So for a retirement career, working in two dimensions is a piece of cake."

“只不过物理学家通常在四维或十维之间工作。所以对于退休后的职业来说，在两个方面工作是小菜一碟。”

He unrolls a red carpet made by an Uzbek tribe in the mid-19th century and says the forgotten artisans who made work like this, usually women, were a hundred years ahead of famous modern art celebrities.

他铺开一条由乌兹别克部落在19世纪中叶制作的红地毯，说制作这种作品的被遗忘的工匠，通常是女性，比现代艺术名人早100年。

"They were anonymous," Isaacson says, "and they were completely ignored.

“她们没有留下名字，”艾萨克森说，“她们完全被忽视了。

But they were doing beautiful things."

“但她们创造出来这种美丽的作品。”

问题

艾萨克森支持的LIGO项目首次检测到引力波，是来自哪种天文学事件？

留言回复正确答案，前十名朋友可以获得红包奖励哦，赶快来试试吧！

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