美国国家公共电台 NPR Billion-Dollar Gamble: How A 'Singular Hero' Helped Start A New Field In Physics

 

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

Imagine spending 40 years and a billion dollars on a gamble, a scientific gamble. That's what one government agency did thanks, in large part, to a staffer there who saw a chance to cultivate some stunning¹ research. As NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce reports, it was a huge risk. And it's paying off big time.

NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE, BYLINE²: Richard Isaacson and I are wearing the same socks - black with gold toes. I know this because our shoes are off so we can walk around on one of his fabulous³ antique carpets. He likes ones with geometric designs. Collecting textiles from Central Asia is what he does now. But he used to do physics.

RICHARD ISAACSON: Since modern physics is highly geometrical, it's not all that different except that physicists⁵ work in somewhere between four or 10 dimensions usually. So for a retirement⁶ career, working in two dimensions is a piece of cake.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: He unrolls a red carpet made by an Uzbek tribe in the mid-19th century. He thinks the forgotten weavers⁷ who made this were a hundred years ahead of famous modern art celebrities⁸.

ISAACSON: They were anonymous⁹ women. And they were completely ignored. But they were doing beautiful things.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: The reason I'm here is that Isaacson is also kind of anonymous. And he also did a lot of painstaking¹⁰ work that resulted in something beautiful. It all started back in the 1960s, when he was a Ph.D. student. He got interested in a prediction made by Albert Einstein. Einstein said anytime two massive objects crash together, shock waves should move through the very fabric¹¹ of the universe. These gravitational waves are like the ripples¹² you see in water when you toss in a pebble¹³.

ISAACSON: For my thesis, I showed how gravitational waves behave like other kinds of waves, like light and radar¹⁴ and X-rays.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: Now, Einstein thought that gravitational waves would most likely never be detected. They're just too tiny. Isaacson was more optimistic.

ISAACSON: So I imagined that sometime in my career we would see it.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: He was right. The first detection was made just a few years ago. This has opened up a whole new way to find and study some of the most powerful extreme events in the universe. It was such a huge deal that the work almost immediately got a Nobel Prize. Rai Weiss is a physicist⁴ at MIT, 1 of the 3 people who won the prize. He says lots of people helped pull off this historic feat¹⁵.

RAI WEISS: Why should I have a Nobel Prize when there were at least 20 other people who have had equivalent input¹⁶ into this thing, too?

GREENFIELDBOYCE: Still, he thinks one person does deserve special recognition. He thinks it's Rich Isaacson.

WEISS: Rich was in a singular place, fighting on a singular war that nobody else could have fought. I think he's the hero. You know, he is the singular hero. We just don't have a good way of recognizing people like that.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: He says in the early 1970s, Isaacson was working at the National Science Foundation. And Weiss wanted this fledgling agency to fund a kind of crazy idea. Weiss thought it could be possible to detect gravitational waves using lasers. Lasers could, in theory, measure very, very small distortions in space, like changes that were a thousandth of the width of an atomic nucleus¹⁷.

WEISS: Most people have said, holy mackerel, that - he must be nuts. You can't do that.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: The technology was just too hard. Plus, no one even knew what in the universe could spew out gravitational waves strong enough to be measured like that.

WEISS: With those two things, you would have normally - if that was now the situation in the NSF, that proposal would have been dead on arrival. But it wasn't that way with Rich.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: Because Rich Isaacson had previously¹⁸ studied gravitational waves, he saw the potential. So Weiss says Isaacson personally shepherded this research for almost 30 years. It became the biggest project the National Science Foundation had ever funded.

WEISS: 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. And he made the argument stick.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: He made it stick through prototype tests and expert review panels and feasibility studies and management nightmares. Isaacson says lots of people thought it was crazy to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build giant detectors¹⁹ that might never detect anything.

ISAACSON: There is always a danger that the project can get stopped. And like all of the big projects in science, it's a roller coaster ride.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: Officially, Isaacson never worked on this more than half time. In reality, it was all-consuming. The long workdays took a toll²⁰. At one point, his blood pressure went sky high, and his doctor became alarmed. Isaacson told me he felt lucky to have been in a position to help change history.

ISAACSON: But history demands you pay a price for that privilege, you know, in terms of all the stress and agony and lifestyles, you know, family events. And if you're willing to pay the price, OK, then you've got this chance. And you can go ahead, and maybe it'll work - maybe it won't.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: In 2002, Isaacson retired²¹. That was also the year the agency started searching with its brand new Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory²², two massive detectors - one in Washington state and one in Louisiana. Each has lasers that travel down pipes 2 1/2 miles long. As Isaacson focused on his beloved textiles, these detectors hunted for gravitational waves and found nothing.

For years, scientists stuck with it. They improved the detectors' instruments. And in 2015, Isaacson traveled to Maine for a vacation getaway with Weiss and another colleague who opened up a laptop to reveal measurements that were made just a couple days before - the first-ever detection of gravitational waves from two black holes that collided over a billion light years away.

ISAACSON: It was absolutely clear that this fantastic thing had just happened.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: Did you feel, like, different in any way?

ISAACSON: Well, a little warm glow. I guess now that I'm a few years away from it, I'm beginning to feel it more.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: I asked him what he thinks the chances are that a project like this could happen today.

ISAACSON: Zero. We live in a very different time. Nobody can, I think, take such large-scale, high-risk, long-term research.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: Just last month, researchers started up the massive detectors after another major hardware upgrade. They've already detected at least five more gravitational wave events. Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF SPUNKSHINE'S "JAMBIC REEL")

1 stunning   

adj.极好的；使人晕倒的

参考例句：

• His plays are distinguished only by their stunning mediocrity.他的戏剧与众不同之处就是平凡得出奇。
• The finished effect was absolutely stunning.完工后的效果非常美。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 fabulous   

adj.极好的；极为巨大的；寓言中的，传说中的

参考例句：

• We had a fabulous time at the party.我们在晚会上玩得很痛快。
• This is a fabulous sum of money.这是一笔巨款。

4 physicist   

n.物理学家，研究物理学的人

参考例句：

• He is a physicist of the first rank.他是一流的物理学家。
• The successful physicist never puts on airs.这位卓有成就的物理学家从不摆架子。

5 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。

6 retirement   

n.退休，退职

参考例句：

• She wanted to enjoy her retirement without being beset by financial worries.她想享受退休生活而不必为金钱担忧。
• I have to put everything away for my retirement.我必须把一切都积蓄起来以便退休后用。

7 weavers   

织工，编织者( weaver的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The Navajo are noted as stockbreeders and skilled weavers, potters, and silversmiths. 纳瓦霍人以豢养家禽，技术熟练的纺织者，制陶者和银匠而著名。
• They made out they were weavers. 他们假装是织布工人。

8 celebrities   

n.（尤指娱乐界的）名人( celebrity的名词复数 )；名流；名声；名誉

参考例句：

• He only invited A-list celebrities to his parties. 他只邀请头等名流参加他的聚会。
• a TV chat show full of B-list celebrities 由众多二流人物参加的电视访谈节目

9 anonymous   

adj.无名的；匿名的；无特色的

参考例句：

• Sending anonymous letters is a cowardly act.寄匿名信是懦夫的行为。
• The author wishes to remain anonymous.作者希望姓名不公开。

10 painstaking   

adj.苦干的；艰苦的，费力的，刻苦的

参考例句：

• She is not very clever but she is painstaking.她并不很聪明，但肯下苦功夫。
• Through years of our painstaking efforts,we have at last achieved what we have today.大家经过多少年的努力，才取得今天的成绩。

11 fabric   

n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织

参考例句：

• The fabric will spot easily.这种织品很容易玷污。
• I don't like the pattern on the fabric.我不喜欢那块布料上的图案。

12 ripples   

逐渐扩散的感觉( ripple的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The moon danced on the ripples. 月亮在涟漪上舞动。
• The sea leaves ripples on the sand. 海水在沙滩上留下了波痕。

13 pebble   

n.卵石，小圆石

参考例句：

• The bird mistook the pebble for egg and tried to hatch it.这只鸟错把卵石当蛋，想去孵它。
• The pebble made a ripple on the surface of the lake.石子在湖面上激起一个涟漪。

14 radar   

n.雷达，无线电探测器

参考例句：

• They are following the flight of an aircraft by radar.他们正在用雷达追踪一架飞机的飞行。
• Enemy ships were detected on the radar.敌舰的影像已显现在雷达上。

15 feat   

n.功绩；武艺，技艺；adj.灵巧的，漂亮的，合适的

参考例句：

• Man's first landing on the moon was a feat of great daring.人类首次登月是一个勇敢的壮举。
• He received a medal for his heroic feat.他因其英雄业绩而获得一枚勋章。

16 input   

n.输入(物)；投入；vt.把(数据等)输入计算机

参考例句：

• I will forever be grateful for his considerable input.我将永远感激他的大量投入。
• All this information had to be input onto the computer.所有这些信息都必须输入计算机。

17 nucleus   

n.核，核心，原子核

参考例句：

• These young people formed the nucleus of the club.这些年轻人成了俱乐部的核心。
• These councils would form the nucleus of a future regime.这些委员会将成为一个未来政权的核心。

18 previously   

adv.以前，先前（地）

参考例句：

• The bicycle tyre blew out at a previously damaged point.自行车胎在以前损坏过的地方又爆开了。
• Let me digress for a moment and explain what had happened previously.让我岔开一会儿，解释原先发生了什么。

19 detectors   

探测器( detector的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The report advocated that all buildings be fitted with smoke detectors. 报告主张所有的建筑物都应安装烟火探测器。
• This is heady wine for experimenters using these neutrino detectors. 对于使用中微子探测器的实验工作者，这是令人兴奋的美酒。 来自英汉非文学 - 科技

20 toll   

n.过路(桥)费；损失，伤亡人数；v.敲(钟)

参考例句：

• The hailstone took a heavy toll of the crops in our village last night.昨晚那场冰雹损坏了我们村的庄稼。
• The war took a heavy toll of human life.这次战争夺去了许多人的生命。

21 retired   

adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的

参考例句：

• The old man retired to the country for rest.这位老人下乡休息去了。
• Many retired people take up gardening as a hobby.许多退休的人都以从事园艺为嗜好。

22 observatory   

n.天文台，气象台，瞭望台，观测台

参考例句：

• Guy's house was close to the observatory.盖伊的房子离天文台很近。
• Officials from Greenwich Observatory have the clock checked twice a day.格林威治天文台的职员们每天对大钟检查两次。