好英语网新粒子发现或推动人类宇宙认知
ASPEN, Colo. — Physicists working at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider said today that they had discovered a new particle that looks for all the world like the Higgs boson, a long sought particle that is a key to understanding why elementary particles have mass and indeed to the existence of diversity and life in the universe.
科罗拉多州阿斯彭——今天，在欧洲核子研究中心(CERN)操作大型强子对撞机(Large Hadron Collider) 实验的物理学家们说，他们极有可能已经发现了被称作希格斯玻色子(Higgs boson)的新粒子。长期以来，科学家一直都在追寻希格斯玻色子的踪迹，因为它不仅是理解基本粒子如何获得质量的关键，还确确实实地是宇宙中多样化和生命存在的关键。
“I think we have it,” said Rolf Heuer, the director general of CERN in an interview from his office outside of Geneva. His words signaled what is probably the beginning of the end of the longest most expensive manhunt in the history of science and, if scientists are lucky, could lead to a new understanding of how the universe began.
“我认为我们找到它了，”CERN的主任罗尔夫·霍伊尔(Rolf Heuer) 在自己日内瓦郊外的办公室里接受的采访时说。他的言论标志着，科学史上耗时最长、耗资最大的“搜索活动”可能已接近终点。如果科学家们运气不错，这场大搜索可能将导向对宇宙起源的全新理解。
Dr. Heuer and others said that it was too soon to know for sure whether the new particle, which weighs in at 125 billion electron volts, the heaviest subatomic particle yet, fits the simplest description given by the Standard Model, the theory that has ruled physics for the last half century, or whether it is an imposter, a single particle or even the first of many. The latter possibilities are particularly exciting to physicists since they could point the way to new deeper ideas, beyond the Standard Model, about the nature of reality.
这种新粒子的质量为1250亿电子伏特，是迄今为止发现的最重的亚原子粒子。霍伊尔博士和其他科学家说 ， 要确切地判定新粒子是否符合标准模型理论(Standard Model)的基本表述，还是仅为冒牌货，或是单一的粒子，甚至是一组未知新粒子中的其中一颗，都还为时尚早。最后一种可能性尤其让物理学家激动，因为这样就可能指明一条道路，超越标准模型理论，从而创造出全新的更深层次的理论来理解世界的本质。而标准模型理论在过去半个世纪中一直处于物理学界的统治地位。
For now, some physicists are calling it a “Higgslike” particle.
目前，部分物理学家暂时称它为“类希格斯”粒子。
“It’s great to discover a new particle, but you have find out what its properties are,” said John Ellis, a theorist at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
“发现新粒子是一件很棒的事情，但你还得确定它的属性，” CERN的理论科学家约翰·埃利斯（John Ellis）说道。
Joe Incandela, of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and spokesperson for one of two groups reporting data, Wednesday called the discovery, “ very, very significant. It’s something that may, in the end, be one of the biggest observations of any new phenomena in our field in the last 30 or 40 years, going way back to the discovery of quarks, for example.”
有两个研究小组共同报告CERN的研究数据，加州大学圣芭芭拉分校的(University of California, Santa Barbara) 的乔·英坎德拉(Joe Incandela)是其中一组的发言人。他周三称这项发现“非常、非常地重要。最终，它可能会成为过去三四十年内、我们领域里观察到的所有物理现象中最重大的发现。上次这种量级的进展可能还要追溯到夸克的发现。”
Here at the Aspen Center for Physics, a retreat for scientists that will celebrate its 50th birthday Saturday, bleary-eyed physicists watched their colleagues read off the results in a webcast from CERN. That was a scene that was duplicated in Melbourne, Australia, where physicists had gathered for a major conference, to Los Angeles to Chicago to Princeton, New York City, London, and beyond, everywhere that members of a curious species have dedicated their lives and fortunes to the search for their origins in a dark universe.
阿斯彭物理中心(Aspen Center for Physics)是一个可以让科学家放松休养的地方，它即将在周六迎来50周年庆。睡眼惺忪的物理学家们在这里盯着CERN传来的网络视频，看着他们的同行宣读结果。同样的情形可以在澳大利亚的墨尔本看到。物理学家已经因为一个学术大会聚集在那里。无论是洛杉矶、芝加哥、普林斯顿、纽约、伦敦，还是其他地方，只要这个神秘族群的成员身在那里，这一场景就会纷纷上演。这些人为探讨黑暗宇宙中的万物起源贡献了毕生精力和财富。
At CERN itself, 1,000 people stood in line all night to get into the auditorium, according to Guido Tonelli, a CERN physicist who said the atmosphere was like a rock concert. Peter Higgs, the University of Edinburgh theorist for whom the boson is named, entered the meeting to a standing ovation.
CERN的物理学家圭多·托内利(Guido Tonelli)表示，研究中心有1000名科学家整夜都在排队等候进入礼堂，气氛就像一场摇滚音乐会。爱丁堡大学(the University of Edinburgh)的理论科学家彼得·希格斯(Peter Higgs)进入会场时，全场起立欢迎。这一玻色子就是以他的名字命名的。
Confirmation of the Higgs boson or something very much like it would constitute a rendezvous with destiny for a generation of physicists who have believed in the boson for half a century without ever seeing it. And it affirms a grand view of a universe ruled by simple and elegant and symmetrical laws, but in which everything interesting in it, like ourselves, is a result of flaws or breaks in that symmetry.
在过去的半个世纪里，整整一代的物理学家一直相信希格斯玻色子的存在，尽管他们从未见过它。对于他们来说，对希格斯玻色子或与之非常类似的粒子的确认堪称是与命运的一次交汇。与此同时，这一发现也肯定了一个由简单、典雅、对称的法则所支配的宇宙的壮观景象。然而，在这样一个对称的宇宙里，所有有意思的事物，就像我们自己一样，都是对称破缺的结果。
According to the Standard Model, which has ruled physics for 40 years, the Higgs boson is the only visible and particular manifestation of an invisible force field, a cosmic molasses that permeates space and imbues elementary particles that would otherwise be massless with mass. Particles wading through it would gain heft.
根据统治物理学界40年之久的标准模型理论，希格斯玻色子是一个无形力场唯一可见且特殊的表现。这个力场好比是一摊宇宙蜜糖，弥漫在整个空间，将质量赋予原本没有质量的基本粒子。粒子穿过力场时，会获得质量。
Without this Higgs field, as it is known, or something like it, physicists say all the elementary forms of matter would zoom around at the speed of light, flowing through our hands like moonlight. There would be neither atoms nor life.
人们称之为希格斯场。科学家称，如果没有希格斯场，也没有与之类似的东西，物质的所有基本形式都会以光速旋转，像月光一样穿过我们的双手。那样就不会有原子，也不会有生命。
Physicists said that they would probably be studying the new Higgs particle for years. Any deviations from the simplest version of the boson — and there are hints of some already — could open a gateway to new phenomena and deeper theories that answer questions left hanging by the Standard Model: What, for example, is the dark matter that provides the gravitational scaffolding of galaxies?
物理学家称，他们可能会花好几年时间来研究新的希格斯粒子。任何偏离最简单形式的玻色子——已经有迹象表明这样的粒子确实存在——都可能开启通往新现象和深层理论的大门，这些理论有望解答标准模型理论遗留下来的种种问题。问题之一便是，为星系提供引力脚手架的暗物质是什么？
Physicists had been holding their breath and perhaps icing the Champagne ever since last December. Two teams of about 3,000 physicists each operate giant detectors in the Large Hadron Collider, the world's biggest physics machine, which collides protons and sorts the debris from the primordial fireballs left afterward. Last winter they both reported hints of the same particle. They were not able, however, to rule out the possibility that it was a statistical fluke.
自去年12月以来，物理学家一直都在屏息等待，没准儿还冷冻了香槟。大约3000名物理学家组成的两个小组分别在大型强子对撞机上操作大型检测器。大型强子对撞机是世界上最大的物理机器，可以对撞质子，并对对撞产生的原始火球留下的残骸进行分类。去年冬天，两个小组都报称发现了这一粒子存在的迹象。然而，他们无法排除这只是统计学上的巧合的可能性。
Since then the collider has more than doubled the number of collisions it has recorded.
自那时起，对撞机的对撞次数是有记录以来的两倍还多。
Both groups said that the likelihood that their signal was a result of a chance fluctuation was less than one chance in 3.5 million, so-called “five sigma,” which is the gold standard in physics for a discovery.
两个小组都表示，他们的信号产生于偶然波动的可能性低于350万分之一，也就是所谓的5-西格玛。这是确定物理学新发现的黄金标准。
On that basis, Dr. Heuer said that he had decided only Tuesday afternoon to call the Higgs result a “discovery.”
霍伊尔表示，正是为了满足这一标准，他等到周二下午才决定称这一次的希格斯研究结果为一项“发现。”