How Fast Is the Universe Really Expanding?

One of the biggest mysteries in cosmology seems to keep getting bigger.

宇宙学中最大的谜团之一似乎越来越大。

Astronomers have known since the 1930s that the universe is expanding, but in the 1990s, the discovery that this expansion is accelerating rather than slowing down came as a huge shock to the field.

自 20 世纪 30 年代以来，天文学家就知道宇宙正在膨胀，但在 20 世纪 90 年代，宇宙膨胀正在加速而不是减速的发现给该领域带来了巨大冲击。

Something had to be driving that acceleration, and dark energy was proposed as the cause.

一定有某种东西在推动这种加速，而暗能量被认为是原因。

What began as a seismic shock in cosmology eventually led to a Nobel prize .

最初的宇宙学震动最终导致了诺贝尔奖。

But this story has a sequel, and it comes with another major plot twist.

但这个故事还有续集，而且还有另一个重大的情节转折。

The two main methods for estimating the universe’s present-day expansion rate are producing significantly different answers.

估计宇宙当前膨胀率的两种主要方法产生了截然不同的答案。

As a result, how fast the universe is really expanding has become a matter of considerable debate — with no small amount of angst — and the discrepancy has become known as the Hubble tension.

因此，宇宙膨胀的速度到底有多快已经成为一个颇具争议的问题——其中不乏焦虑——这种差异被称为哈勃张力。

Perhaps most surprising of all is that one of the loudest voices raising concern is Adam Riess , the astrophysicist whose Nobel Prize-winning work helped ignite the acceleration debate in the first place.

也许最令人惊讶的是，引起关注的最响亮的声音之一是天体物理学家亚当·里斯(Adam Riess)，他的诺贝尔奖获奖作品首先引发了关于加速的争论。

Riess joined co-host Steven Strogatz on The Joy of Why to explain how we got to this point, what the Hubble tension might be telling us, and what may happen next.

里斯与联合主持人史蒂文·斯特罗加茨 (Steven Strogatz) 一起在《为什么的喜悦》中解释了我们是如何走到这一步的、哈勃张力可能告诉我们什么，以及接下来可能会发生什么。

Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , TuneIn or your favorite podcasting app, or you can stream it from Quanta .

在 Apple 播客、Spotify、TuneIn 或您最喜爱的播客应用程序上收听，或者您也可以从 Quanta 进行流式传输。

I think it was because of you, to be honest.

老实说，我认为这是因为你。

I remember vividly sitting in that class.

我清楚地记得坐在那堂课上。

You were a young professor.

你是一位年轻的教授。

And I remember one day sitting there puzzled and getting ready to raise my hand, and you said, “Adam, you look bothered by this concept.

我记得有一天，我困惑地坐在那里，准备举手，你说：“亚当，你看起来对这个概念感到困扰。

Is there something about it that bothers you?”

有什么事情让你烦恼吗？”

And I was amazed.

我很惊讶。

No professor, first of all had ever said my name, let alone actually gauged the expression on my face and cared that something was disturbing me.

首先，没有一位教授曾说过我的名字，更不用说真正观察过我脸上的表情并关心是否有什么事情打扰了我。

And, you know, we got right into it.

而且，你知道，我们马上就开始了。

And, so that course was great.

而且，所以那门课程很棒。

I’d like to say that I spent the rest of my career focused on that material, but I moved over towards physics.

我想说的是，我职业生涯的剩余时间都专注于这些材料，但我转向了物理学。

I mean, I think I’ve taught a few thousand students now so I don’t remember all my students, but I do remember the ones that win Nobel prizes and I think you might be the only one.

我的意思是，我想我现在已经教了几千名学生，所以我不记得我所有的学生，但我确实记得那些获得诺贝尔奖的学生，我想你可能是唯一的一个。

So it’s really very—I’m very proud of you.

所以这真的非常——我为你感到骄傲。

I’m thrilled to be able to talk to you now.

我很高兴现在能够与您交谈。

Anyway, it’s great.

无论如何，这很棒。

So you say you moved into physics after, or I guess you were already probably pretty intensely interested in physics at that point?

所以你说你后来进入了物理学，或者我猜你当时可能已经对物理学非常感兴趣了？

I was fascinated by the discovery that the universe is expanding.

我对宇宙正在膨胀的发现很着迷。

I just think that’s amazing.

我只是觉得这太棒了。

As a kid, it’s not what I would’ve expected.

作为一个孩子，这不是我所期望的。

I would’ve expected, the universe is just the thing that’s always been there.

我本以为宇宙就是一直存在的东西。

It’s like the bedrock, you know, it’s eternal, it’s unchanging.

它就像基岩，你知道，它是永恒的，它是不变的。

And so that was amazing to learn and then to further learn that we still don’t understand that much about the universe.

所以这是令人惊奇的学习，然后进一步了解我们仍然对宇宙了解不多。

And so by watching it expand, by measuring it expand, by seeing its expansion history, we can deconstruct the nature of the universe.

因此，通过观察它的膨胀，通过测量它的膨胀，通过查看它的膨胀历史，我们可以解构宇宙的本质。

We can figure out how old it is, we could figure out what its ultimate fate is.

我们可以算出它的年龄，我们可以算出它的最终命运是什么。

We could figure out what it’s composed of.

我们可以弄清楚它是由什么组成的。

And so those are all really, to me, the questions that I wanted to have answered.

所以对我来说，这些都是我真正想要回答的问题。

It just turns out the means to do that is to have reliable tracers of the expanding universe.

事实证明，做到这一点的方法是拥有膨胀宇宙的可靠示踪剂。

So objects in the universe that act like test particles that we could watch.

因此，宇宙中的物体就像我们可以观察的测试粒子一样。

And it just so happens when I started graduate school that exploding stars, supernovae, became some of the best tracers right at that time.

当我开始读研究生时，爆炸的恒星、超新星成为了当时最好的示踪剂之一。

Because they’re so luminous, you could see them far away.

因为它们非常明亮，你可以在很远的地方看到它们。

So you could see far into the history, the past.

所以你可以看到很远的历史、过去。

But also, and this is the most important point, which I’m sure we’ll talk about, to measure the expansion of the universe, you need to measure two aspects of your tracer.

而且，这是最重要的一点，我相信我们会讨论这一点，为了测量宇宙的膨胀，您需要测量示踪剂的两个方面。

You need to measure what’s called the red shift, which is essentially, the stretching of the wavelengths of light emitted by that tracer because of expansion.

您需要测量所谓的红移，本质上是示踪剂因膨胀而发出的光波长的拉伸。

So it’s a direct measure of the expansion of the universe, but then the other that you have to measure is how far away those supernovae are, which is telling you how far back in time you are looking so that you’re essentially tracking the expansion history of the universe the same way you would, you know, if you were to mark the height of a growing child on a door frame.

所以它是对宇宙膨胀的直接测量，但你必须测量的另一个是那些超新星的距离，它告诉你你所看到的时间有多远，这样你基本上就是在跟踪宇宙的膨胀历史，就像你在门框上标记一个成长中的孩子的高度一样。

Right, you would wanna mark their height and you’d wanna mark the time when they were at that height.

是的，你会想要标记他们的高度，并且你会想要标记他们达到那个高度的时间。

And so those two quantities are how we chart the expansion of the universe.

所以这两个量就是我们绘制宇宙膨胀图的方式。

And those are observationally challenging.

这些在观察上都是具有挑战性的。

It so happens, in my case, I tended to study various classes of stars exploding, pulsating as those critical tracers.

碰巧的是，就我而言，我倾向于研究各种类型的爆炸恒星，这些恒星像那些关键的示踪剂一样脉动。

I would love you to give us a little tutorial about how it is that people can estimate how far away galaxies are because it’s not an obvious thing and you have a lot of different techniques, whether using trigonometry — very near and dear to my heart — or your concept of standard candles.

我希望你能为我们提供一些关于人们如何估计星系距离的小教程，因为这不是一件显而易见的事情，而且你有很多不同的技术，无论是使用三角学（非常接近我的心）还是标准蜡烛的概念。

Just give me a little basics of the cosmic ladder.

请给我一些宇宙阶梯的基础知识。

The hard part is the distances.

困难的部分是距离。

This is many have called the biggest challenge in all of cosmology is to figure out how far away things are.

许多人称宇宙学中最大的挑战是弄清楚事物有多远。

And, it’s a really fundamental problem.

而且，这是一个非常根本的问题。

It goes back to, you know, almost being a little kid.

这可以追溯到，你知道，几乎是一个小孩子的时候。

You look out at the sky and everything looks very two dimensional, right?

你望向天空，一切看起来都很二维，对吧？

And you have no sense of depth.

而且你没有深度感。

The depth perception is completely absent.

深度知觉完全不存在。

And so, we’re in awe, but we’d be in more awe if we just understood how far away things were, how far back in time.

所以，我们很敬畏，但如果我们知道事情离我们有多远，时间有多远，我们就会更加敬畏。

So how do you lick that problem?

那么你如何解决这个问题呢？

And as you said, we start out with the things we know, which is geometry.

正如你所说，我们从我们知道的东西开始，那就是几何。

And so we measure parallaxes when we can.

因此，我们会尽可能测量视差。

And so just like we have two eyes and we get a vantage point from each of them on nearby objects, and the changing perspective or angle of something nearby, relative to far away, allows our brain and eye to do the geometry and estimate how far away something is.

就像我们有两只眼睛一样，我们可以从每只眼睛中获得附近物体的有利位置，并且附近物体相对于远处事物的视角或角度的变化使我们的大脑和眼睛能够进行几何计算并估计物体有多远。

The problem is that space objects become very, very far away so that angle either becomes very tiny or you need a much bigger baseline, a separation between the two perspectives.

问题是空间物体变得非常非常远，因此角度要么变得非常小，要么需要更大的基线，即两个视角之间的分离。

And the best one, the biggest one we get is when the Earth goes around the sun and we could view a nearby star relative to a distant star, let’s say in January when we’re on one side of the sun and in July when we’re on the other.

我们得到的最好的、最大的观测是当地球绕太阳运行时，我们可以看到一颗附近的恒星相对于一颗遥远的恒星，比方说一月份我们在太阳的一侧，七月我们在太阳的另一侧。

And if you’re lucky, you might be able to tease out the little change in angle of that nearby star.

如果你幸运的话，你也许能够弄清楚附近恒星角度的微小变化。

And so you can gauge the distance to some of the nearest stars.

这样你就可以测量到一些最近的恒星的距离。

And we do this with space satellites and things like that.

我们用太空卫星和类似的东西来做到这一点。

The problem is we’re after deeper waters.

问题是我们追求的是更深的水域。

This is only a technique we can apply within the Milky Way galaxy.

这只是我们可以在银河系内应用的技术。

I remember making a gorgeous color image and putting it on my wall as the first supernova I ever observed.

我记得制作了一张华丽的彩色图像并将其挂在墙上，作为我观察到的第一颗超新星。

I’ll never forget its name and number and distance and everything.

我永远不会忘记它的名字、号码、距离以及一切。

To be able to measure the distance to galaxies — which are thousands, millions, billions of times further away than anything in the Milky Way — that parallax angle would become imperceptibly small.

为了能够测量到星系的距离（比银河系中的任何物体都要远数千、数百万、数十亿倍），视差角将变得小得难以察觉。

So we have to switch to a completely different method.

所以我们必须改用一种完全不同的方法。

And the method we use most commonly is what ship captains know to use at night, which is the brightness of a lighthouse, right?

而我们最常用的方法就是船长知道的夜间使用的方法，就是灯塔的亮度，对吧？

So, you know, if you’re a ship captain at night, you wanna make sure you’re far enough away from a rocky shore.

所以，你知道，如果你是夜间的船长，你会想确保自己距离岩石海岸足够远。

So you look at a lighthouse and you look for it to be faint, telling you that it’s far away that the light attenuates or dilutes as one over distance squared.

所以你看着一座灯塔，你会发现它是微弱的，告诉你距离很远，光线会随着距离的平方而衰减或稀释。

That’s geometry too, of course, but it requires some understanding of what it is you’re looking at.

当然，这也是几何学，但它需要对你正在看的东西有一定的了解。

That it’s a truly luminous object, a lighthouse, not a little pen light.

它是一个真正发光的物体，一座灯塔，而不是一个小笔灯。

And then you can gauge distances.

然后你就可以测量距离。

And so that method astronomers call “standard candles,” the lighthouses.

天文学家将这种方法称为“标准蜡烛”，即灯塔。

And they look for objects in space that can serve that role.

他们在太空中寻找可以发挥这一作用的物体。

And as I started graduate school, there was great recognition that a certain class of exploding stars, called Type IA supernovae could serve as outstanding lighthouses.

当我开始读研究生时，人们认识到一类被称为 IA 型超新星的爆炸恒星可以作为杰出的灯塔。

They were very homogeneous, very uniform.

它们非常同质、非常统一。

They had small differences.

他们之间存在着微小的差异。

But they gave you what was a pretty standard light source that was maybe 4 or 5 billion solar luminosity in total output for a few weeks.

但他们给了你一个相当标准的光源，几周内的总输出可能是 4 到 50 亿太阳光度。

So that allows you to see very deep into space.

这样你就可以看到太空深处。

So, it is a big boom.

所以，这是一个大繁荣。

It’s sort of like, you know, the difference between driving a car with a gas tank, little bit of gas at a time, versus lighting the gas tank on fire.

这有点像，你知道，驾驶一辆有油箱的汽车，一次加一点油，与点燃油箱之间的区别。

It’s just all of the fuel just goes up.

只是所有的燃料都在上升。

But this one kind of supernova, which there’s still some debate about this, but generally the general principle is it’s the center, the core of an old star called a white dwarf star, which is holding itself up against its crushing gravity by a kind of quantum mechanical pressure called electron degeneracy pressure.

但这是一种超新星，对此仍有一些争论，但一般来说，一般原则是它是一颗被称为白矮星的老恒星的中心，它通过一种被称为电子简并压力的量子力学压力来抵抗其压倒性的引力。

And this is something that the great Indian astrophysicist, Chandrasekhar first showed was stable only at a certain critical mass known as Chandrasekhar’s limit.

这是伟大的印度天体物理学家钱德拉塞卡首次证明，只有在一定的临界质量（称为钱德拉塞卡极限）下才稳定。

So it’s 1.4 times the mass of our sun.

所以它的质量是太阳质量的 1.4 倍。

And so that means that if a star exceeds that limit — if it’s sitting there at Chandrasekhar’s limit, and let’s say it has a friend, another star orbiting it, and material gets transferred from one star onto the other — if it gets close to or even exceeds Chandrasekhar’s limit, then you will get runaway thermonuclear explosion because this electronic degeneracy pressure is no longer strong enough to hold back gravity.

因此，这意味着，如果一颗恒星超过了这个极限——如果它处于钱德拉塞卡极限，假设它有一个朋友，另一颗恒星围绕它运行，物质从一颗恒星转移到另一颗恒星上——如果它接近甚至超过钱德拉塞卡极限，那么就会发生失控的热核爆炸，因为这种电子简并压力不再强大到足以阻止重力。

And it will compress and crush the star, giving you the property necessary for fusion and basically doing thermonuclear fusion over all remaining fuel.

它会压缩并粉碎恒星，为您提供聚变所需的属性，并基本上对所有剩余的燃料进行热核聚变。

So as I said, there’s some debate about exactly the details, but this is the general broad-brush picture that gives you a fairly uniform explosion, far more uniform than anything else we know on a kind of macroscopic scale.

正如我所说，关于细节存在一些争论，但这是一个总体的粗略图景，它给你一个相当均匀的爆炸，比我们在宏观尺度上知道的任何东西都均匀得多。

The question in the 1990s was: Is the universe heavy enough to stop its expansion or is it light enough for the universe to expand forever?

20 世纪 90 年代的问题是：宇宙是否重到足以停止膨胀，或者是否轻到足以让宇宙永远膨胀？

That if you think of a kind of a standard light bulb, like a 60-watt light bulb — I don’t know if kids still know.

如果你想到一种标准灯泡，比如 60 瓦灯泡——我不知道孩子们是否还知道。

But you could imagine some are 58 and some are 62, ’cause the factory doesn’t make them all the same.

但你可以想象有些是 58，有些是 62，因为工厂生产的它们并不完全相同。

And that could fool you into misestimating the distance a little bit.

这可能会欺骗你，让你稍微错误地估计距离。

’Cause you may be seeing one that looks a little fainter, ’cause it was 58 watts, but instead you’re, you think, oh, it’s further away, but it isn’t.

因为你可能会看到一个看起来有点暗的东西，因为它是 58 瓦，但相反，你会想，哦，它更远，但事实并非如此。

How do you figure out from here which ones are intrinsically bright or intrinsically faint, given a little bit of distribution?

考虑到一点分布，你如何从这里找出哪些本质上是明亮的，哪些是本质上微弱的？

And one of the things that was discovered in the early 1990s and became part of my thesis was the ones that are more powerful, rise more slowly and fall more slowly, to reach their peak than the ones that are more dim.

在 20 世纪 90 年代初发现并成为我论文一部分的事物之一，是那些比那些更暗淡的事物更强大、上升和下降更缓慢、达到顶峰的事物。

And another confounding effect, we sometimes have to look at a supernova through a galaxy that has dust in it and that dust can obscure the light.

另一个令人困惑的效应是，我们有时必须透过其中有尘埃的星系来观察超新星，而尘埃会遮挡光线。

So going back to my analogy of a lighthouse, it would be like looking at a lighthouse on a foggy night, right?

那么回到我对灯塔的比喻，就像在雾蒙蒙的夜晚看灯塔一样，对吗？

It could make the lighthouse look dimmer and fool you into thinking it was further away than it really was.

它可能会让灯塔看起来更暗，让你误以为它比实际距离更远。

But the dust in galaxies also shifts the colors of the supernova light.

但星系中的尘埃也会改变超新星光的颜色。

And so if you could simultaneously measure the light curve shape that tells you whether it’s a bright or dim light bulb, and the colors that tell you how much dust is in the way, you could tease out these competing effects and get back to what you wanted, which was to figure out how far away the supernova was.

因此，如果你能同时测量光曲线形状（告诉你灯泡是亮还是暗）和颜色（告诉你路上有多少尘埃），你就可以梳理出这些相互竞争的效应，并得到你想要的结果，即计算出超新星距离我们有多远。

And that was the subject of my doctoral thesis when I moved to Harvard, in the early 1990s.

这就是 20 世纪 90 年代初我转到哈佛大学时我的博士论文的主题。

There is one in a galaxy like ours about once a century.

像我们这样的星系中大约每个世纪就会出现一次。

And so, you know, if you wanna find a supernova, you just pick a nearby galaxy and you stare at it, you’re very unlikely to find a supernova.

所以，你知道，如果你想找到超新星，你只需选择附近的一个星系并盯着它，你不太可能找到超新星。

The breakthrough came in the 1990s, when astronomers began to build telescopes that had wide angles, and they had detectors that they could cover the focal plane with, so that you could take a single image that might contain hundreds of thousands of galaxies in one frame.

突破出现在 20 世纪 90 年代，当时天文学家开始建造广角望远镜，他们拥有可以覆盖焦平面的探测器，这样你就可以拍摄一张图像，在一帧中可能包含数十万个星系。

Then you take another image, maybe a month later.

然后你再拍一张照片，也许一个月后。

And by math, you’re sure that one of those galaxies will have had a supernova over that month.

通过数学计算，您可以确定其中一个星系将在该月发生超新星爆发。

Because you’ve just bought so many lottery tickets that you’re bound to win the lottery.

因为你刚刚买了很多彩票，你一定会中奖。

And in the 1990s we learned to collect such images, digitally subtract one from another and find a new point of light.

在 20 世纪 90 年代，我们学会了收集此类图像，以数字方式将一幅图像与另一幅图像相减，并找到新的光点。

And then the supernova, it’s what we call its light curve.

然后是超新星，这就是我们所说的光变曲线。

It usually takes about two or three weeks to go from explosion, when you don’t see it at all, to reach its maximum output, which is the sort of standard candle, if you will.

从爆炸（当你根本看不到它时）到达到最大输出（如果你愿意的话），这通常需要大约两到三周的时间。

The distance indicator.

距离指示器。

And then it will fade over the course of months.

然后它会在几个月内消失。

After a few months, it’ll be about 100 times fainter.

几个月后，它会暗淡约100倍。

And so what’s also so fascinating in this field is not only is it kind of mind blowing, but it has this kind of fire drill aspect to it where everything has to be done very fast and timely because these things are fading away.

这个领域的迷人之处不仅在于它令人兴奋，而且还具有消防演习的特点，一切都必须非常快速和及时地完成，因为这些事情正在逐渐消失。

You can’t say, “Uh, we’ll put that observation off a couple of weeks and come back and figure out what we wanna do.” No, you have to be, like, figuring out exactly what measurements you wanna make before the supernova fades away.

你不能说，“呃，我们会把观察推迟几周，然后回来弄清楚我们想做什么。”不，你必须，比如，在超新星消失之前弄清楚你想要进行什么测量。

Now, as you place the galaxy further and further away, and as we talk about the accelerating universe, we look so far back that this whole image shrinks to just a few pixels, so that you’re saying, “Okay, that pixel looks a little brighter than that pixel.” But when they’re nearby, they’re some of the most beautiful objects you could see with a telescope.

现在，当你把星系放得越来越远，当我们谈论加速宇宙时，我们回望太远，以至于整个图像缩小到只有几个像素，所以你会说，“好吧，那个像素看起来比那个像素亮一点。”但当它们在附近时，它们是您可以用望远镜看到的最美丽的物体之一。

I ran the calculations after doing the analysis and I came out with a crazy result that ultimately showed the universe was accelerating, not decelerating.

分析后我进行了计算，得出了一个疯狂的结果，最终表明宇宙正在加速，而不是减速。

It turns out Type IA’s produce a lot of silicon and sulfur in their explosions.

事实证明，IA 型在爆炸时会产生大量硅和硫。

And so you look for the signature of silicon and sulfur and I remember making a gorgeous color image and putting it on my wall as the first supernova I ever observed.

所以你寻找硅和硫的特征，我记得制作了一张华丽的彩色图像并将其挂在我的墙上，作为我观察到的第一颗超新星。

And, yeah, I’ll never forget its name and number and distance and everything.

是的，我永远不会忘记它的名字、号码、距离等等一切。

But then there were many more after that.

但在那之后还有更多。

But then your question might be, you know, is that rate speeding up?

但你的问题可能是，你知道，这个速度是否在加快？

Is it slowing down?

速度变慢了吗？

What is the ultimate fate of the universe depends on how this story is changing.

宇宙的最终命运是什么，取决于这个故事将如何变化。

And so there’s a great trick that cosmologists can use to answer that, to figure out how it’s changing.

因此，宇宙学家可以用一个很棒的技巧来回答这个问题，弄清楚它是如何变化的。

We can look further out to look further back in time and make essentially the same set of measurements, not measuring now how fast the universe is expanding today, but using distant objects to tell us how fast it was expanding in the past, and then ideally how much that expansion is changing.

我们可以更进一步地回顾过去，并进行基本相同的测量，不是现在测量宇宙今天膨胀的速度，而是使用遥远的物体来告诉我们它过去膨胀的速度有多快，然后理想情况下膨胀发生了多少变化。

Now, the prevailing wisdom, I would say, up and through the 1990s was that the expansion of the universe would be slowing down because after the Big Bang, you would have the attraction of the gravity of all the objects in the universe — the mass of the universe itself would act like a brake — and it would slow the expansion.

现在，我想说的是，从 20 世纪 90 年代开始，普遍的观点是宇宙的膨胀将会减慢，因为大爆炸之后，宇宙中所有物体的引力都会受到吸引——宇宙本身的质量会起到刹车的作用——这会减慢膨胀速度。

Just like if I toss a ball into the air, the gravitational pull to the Earth will cause it to decelerate.

就像我把一个球扔到空中一样，地球的引力会导致它减速。

And if I measure that deceleration, I could essentially weigh the Earth.

如果我测量这个减速度，我基本上可以称量地球的重量。

And I can also, if I carefully measure that, figure out whether that ball will land on the Earth or maybe it was thrown with escape velocity and that there isn’t enough mass to pull it back and it will leave.

如果我仔细测量，我还可以弄清楚那个球是否会降落在地球上，或者它是否以逃逸速度被抛出，并且没有足够的质量将其拉回并离开。

And so the question in the 1990s was: Is the universe heavy enough to stop its expansion or is it light enough for the universe to expand forever?

因此，20 世纪 90 年代的问题是：宇宙是否足够重以阻止其膨胀，或者是否足够轻以使宇宙永远膨胀？

And the way to answer this was to see how much the expansion was now slowing down.

回答这个问题的方法是看看扩张现在放缓了多少。

And so after developing the techniques to measure how fast the universe is expanding with these supernovae, two teams of astronomers — a team I was on called the High Z supernova team, and a competing team called the Supernova Cosmology Project — were the first to look for and find ultra distant Type IA supernovae, which exploded eight to 10 billion years ago.

因此，在开发出测量宇宙因这些超新星而膨胀的速度的技术后，两个天文学家团队——我所在的一个团队称为高Z超新星团队，另一个团队称为超新星宇宙学项目——是第一个寻找并发现超遥远的IA型超新星的人，它在八到一百亿年前爆炸。

So looking now halfway, two-thirds of the way, through the history of the universe to measure the change in the expansion rate.

所以现在看一半，三分之二的路程，通过宇宙的历史来测量膨胀率的变化。

And as I said, we thought it would be slowing down.

正如我所说，我们认为它会放缓。

And circa 1997, 1998 when we first got our large collection of data, and I was very fortunate to be picked to lead the analysis of the first large tranche of data, I ran the calculations after doing the analysis and I came out with a crazy results that ultimately showed the universe was accelerating, not decelerating.

大约在 1997、1998 年，当我们第一次收集到大量数据时，我非常幸运地被选来领导第一批数据的分析，我在分析后进行了计算，得出了一个疯狂的结果，最终表明宇宙正在加速，而不是减速。

And so yeah, it was very worrisome for a while.

是的，有一段时间非常令人担忧。

So I did a lot of cross checks — because it’s always better to find your own mistake.

所以我做了很多交叉检查——因为发现自己的错误总是更好。

Then finally willing to share with the team and let them find the mistake.

然后终于愿意与团队分享，让他们发现错误。

And then, you know, everybody cross-checked everything we could and we could not find the mistake.

然后，你知道，每个人都尽可能地交叉检查，但我们找不到错误。

And then we started getting comfortable with the possibility that it was real, that this was the signal on the sky and that there was a deep physics reason why this was.

然后我们开始接受这样的可能性：它是真实的，这是天空上的信号，并且有一个深刻的物理原因。

And that is that in Einstein’s theory of general relativity, gravity has another option.

那就是，在爱因斯坦的广义相对论中，引力还有另一种选择。

It has another kind of gear.

它有另一种装备。

You know, in Newton’s theory, it’s only attractive.

要知道，在牛顿的理论中，它只是有吸引力。

It only pulls stuff together, right?

它只是把东西放在一起，对吗？

In Einstein’s theory, the gravity of empty space can be repulsive.

在爱因斯坦的理论中，真空的引力可能是排斥的。

Something he called the cosmological constant, and even invoked at one point to try to keep the universe in balance when he thought it wasn’t expanding.

他称之为宇宙学常数，甚至在他认为宇宙没有膨胀时曾一度援引它来试图保持宇宙平衡。

The interpretation we came to was that apparently Einstein was onto something, and that introducing [dark energy] gave a good fit to the data.

我们得出的解释是，显然爱因斯坦有所发现，并且引入[暗能量]与数据非常吻合。

And it’s always been around.

而且它一直存在。

Physicists later interpreted this as the energy of the vacuum of space, or what we now call dark energy, and it can go the other way.

物理学家后来将其解释为空间真空的能量，或者我们现在所说的暗能量，但它也可以反过来。

And so the interpretation we came to was that apparently Einstein was onto something, and that introducing this term gave a good fit to the data.

因此，我们得出的解释是，显然爱因斯坦是有观点的，并且引入这个术语与数据非常吻合。

Leaving it out gave a bad fit to the data.

忽略它会导致数据不合适。

They got it for the observations of the supernovae, which is really interesting, and the accelerated expansion.

他们得到它是为了观察超新星，这真的很有趣，还有加速膨胀。

And I think that’s consistent with the Nobel philosophy that they award prizes for verified results.

我认为这与诺贝尔奖的哲学是一致的，即为经过验证的结果颁奖。

Now, we don’t know anything about dark energy, so there’s no Nobel prize for that.

现在，我们对暗能量一无所知，因此没有诺贝尔奖。

The best we can do is give it this proxy name.

我们能做的最好的事情就是给它指定这个代理名称。

Other than calling it dark energy and musing that maybe it’s the energy of empty space, maybe it’s not.

除了称其为暗能量并思考它也许是真空的能量，也许不是。

So, it remains to be an award to be doled out one day if somebody actually discovers what the dark energy is.

因此，如果有一天有人真正发现了暗能量是什么，它仍然是一项可以颁发的奖项。

His Nobel prize — I’m just chuckling because was so sure it was coming that he could promise it to his wife.

他的诺贝尔奖——我只是咯咯地笑，因为我确信它会到来，所以他可以向他的妻子承诺。

Do you not know this story?

你不知道这个故事吗？

So you mentioned the cosmological constant.

所以你提到了宇宙常数。

It’s often going back to Einstein himself.

这常常要追溯到爱因斯坦本人。

In his notation, he used the Greek letter lambda to insert what some people, dismissively or sarcastically, will call a fudge factor.

在他的符号中，他使用希腊字母 lambda 来插入一些人轻蔑或讽刺地称之为“捏造因素”的东西。

But it was something that was allowed by the equations of general relativity.

但这是广义相对论方程所允许的。

As you say, Einstein wanted it at first because he couldn’t believe at the time that the universe was expanding.

正如你所说，爱因斯坦一开始想要它，因为他当时不相信宇宙正在膨胀。

We, for now, treat each of those — dark matter, dark energy — in their most vanilla form because we haven’t yet found any sprinkles on them, but we’re looking.

目前，我们以最普通的形式对待每一种——暗物质、暗能量——因为我们还没有在它们上面发现任何痕迹，但我们正在寻找。

And the reason they did was because at that time, it was before the discovery even that galaxies were outside the Milky Way.

他们这样做的原因是因为当时，星系甚至都在银河系之外，这还没有被发现。

And so astronomers thought of the universe as the Milky Way itself.

因此天文学家认为宇宙就是银河系本身。

And when he asked about what the Milky Way was doing — was it expanding, contracting — they were like, the motions are pretty modest, doesn’t seem like it’s expanding or contracting.

当他问银河系在做什么时——它在膨胀还是收缩——他们的反应是，这些运动相当温和，看起来不像是在膨胀或收缩。

And this would’ve been confusing to him because, if you had a collection of masses and it was static and you let go.

这会让他感到困惑，因为如果你有一组质量并且它是静态的，那么你就放手。

Right?

正确的？

They would fall together.

他们会一起倒下。

And so what was keeping it static?

那么是什么让它保持静态呢？

And so he saw, as you said in his equations, that there was an option for something to counterbalance the attractive gravity.

所以他看到，正如你在他的方程中所说的，有一个选择可以抵消吸引力的引力。

And so he took it and set it to his, you know, as we would say, boundary condition that the universe be static.

所以他把它设置为他的，你知道，正如我们所说的，宇宙是静态的边界条件。

There were two problems, of course: One was the universe is expanding, and so that’s not the right boundary condition.

当然，有两个问题：一是宇宙正在膨胀，所以这不是正确的边界条件。

The other is it’s an unstable equilibrium.

另一个是这是一个不稳定的平衡。

It’s like taking a marble and putting it on top of a basketball.

这就像拿一块弹珠并将其放在篮球上。

Yes, in principle it could sit there, but if you push it off, if there’s a slight difference, it’ll run away in one direction or the other.

是的，原则上它可以坐在那里，但如果你把它推开，只要有一点点不同，它就会朝一个方向或另一个方向跑掉。

And so when he saw the universe was expanding, when Hubble and others showed it, he famously said this was the biggest blunder of his career, was to introduce this concept.

因此，当他看到宇宙正在膨胀时，当哈勃和其他人展示它时，他著名地说这是他职业生涯中最大的错误，就是引入这个概念。

And yet there’s no getting rid of it.

但仍然无法摆脱它。

Like a lot of mathematics and physics, it’s allowed to be in the equations unless you have some knowledge that it can’t exist.

就像许多数学和物理学一样，它可以出现在方程中，除非你知道它不存在。

And so here we were some, oh, 80 years later saying, actually it looks like the universe is accelerating, which would be as if that repulsive type gravity actually was now winning over the attractive gravity of matter.

所以，哦，80 年后，我们有些人说，实际上看起来宇宙正在加速，就好像排斥型引力现在实际上战胜了物质的吸引力。

But I think I would like to go in a different direction to talk about the Lambda Cold Dark Matter model, the Lambda CDM model, because I mean, I realize that you’re gonna want to tell us, there may be some tweaks needed to it, or maybe more than tweaks, but why don’t we first make the case that this is a really interesting, powerful, standard model.

但我想我想从不同的方向来谈论 Lambda 冷暗物质模型，即 Lambda CDM 模型，因为我的意思是，我意识到你会想告诉我们，它可能需要一些调整，或者可能不仅仅是调整，但为什么我们不首先证明这是一个非常有趣、强大的标准模型。

Tell us what this model is and what makes it compelling.

告诉我们这个模型是什么以及它的吸引力是什么。

What are some of its great successes?

它有哪些伟大的成功？

But in the case of the universe, what people are familiar with the elements in the periodic table of elements.

但就宇宙而言，就是人们熟悉的元素周期表中的元素。

That’s the small stuff that’s like 4% of the universe.

这是相当于宇宙 4% 的小东西。

And the rest is dark.

其余的都是黑暗的。

Dark meaning it doesn’t emit light.

黑暗意味着它不发光。

And so we can’t see it directly.

所以我们无法直接看到它。

We have to infer it by its gravity.

我们必须根据它的引力来推断它。

And so from the 1930s to the 1970s and later astronomers came to understand that there was a lot of matter in the universe that had attractive gravity, but was dark, was not emitting light, called dark matter.

因此，从20世纪30年代到1970年代以及后来的天文学家开始认识到，宇宙中有很多物质具有吸引力，但它们是黑暗的，不发光，称为暗物质。

It makes galaxies spin much faster than the luminous matter would indicate otherwise.

它使星系的旋转速度比发光物质显示的速度快得多。

Stars would just zing away from their galaxies.

星星会离开它们的星系。

It makes galaxies orbit other galaxies and clusters, which again, they would just fly away if there wasn’t the extra gravitational glue.

它使星系围绕其他星系和星团运行，如果没有额外的引力胶，它们就会飞走。

There’s bending of light called lensing.

光线会发生弯曲，称为透镜效应。

All of these techniques allow us to figure out that the universe is about 25% dark matter and about…

所有这些技术使我们能够弄清楚宇宙大约由 25% 的暗物质组成，并且大约......

maybe 26%…

也许26%……

and about 4% normal matter.

和大约4%的正常物质。

So 30% there and then.

所以当时就占了30%。

With our results in the 1990s and then quickly followed up by observations of the cosmic microwave background radiation showed the other 70% is this dark energy.

根据我们在 20 世纪 90 年代的研究结果以及随后对宇宙微波背景辐射的快速观测，结果表明另外 70% 就是这种暗能量。

So we get a sort of full universe that explains what we see, but 96% of it is dark.

所以我们得到了一个完整的宇宙来解释我们所看到的，但其中 96% 是黑暗的。

And to be clear, when we talk about it, we talk about its sort of gravitational action, but what we don’t talk about really, or can yet, is the microphysics, the details.

需要明确的是，当我们谈论它时，我们谈论的是它的引力作用，但我们没有真正谈论或还不能谈论的是微观物理和细节。

Dark matter, we think it’s a particle, but we don’t know the nature of the particle.

暗物质，我们认为它是一个粒子，但我们不知道粒子的本质。

We don’t know if it’s stable, if it has other interactions.

我们不知道它是否稳定，是否有其他相互作用。

For dark energy, we sort of generally wave our hands and say it’s the energy of the vacuum.

对于暗能量，我们通常会挥手说它是真空的能量。

But, people who do quantum mechanical calculations try to estimate how much that should be, and they get an answer that’s 120 orders of magnitude off from what we get.

但是，进行量子力学计算的人们试图估计这个值应该是多少，他们得到的答案与我们得到的答案相差 120 个数量级。

So what we have is a very good, I’m gonna say just-so-story, you know, a phenomenological model grounded on lots of strong physics concepts.

所以我们拥有的是一个非常好的，我想说的只是故事，你知道，一个基于许多强大的物理概念的现象学模型。

But it’s still a model.

但它仍然是一个模型。

It’s not the physics itself.

这不是物理学本身。

It’s not a description of those items themselves.

这不是对这些项目本身的描述。

We, for now, treat each of those — dark matter, dark energy — in their most vanilla form because we haven’t yet found any sprinkles on them, but we’re looking.

目前，我们以最普通的形式对待每一种——暗物质、暗能量——因为我们还没有在它们上面发现任何痕迹，但我们正在寻找。

People should understand this model is very successful.

人们应该明白这个模式是非常成功的。

It explains a lot…

它解释了很多……

But we’ve begun to see some hints of cracks in the model as well which we’re still wrestling with.

但我们也开始在模型中看到一些裂缝的迹象，我们仍在努力解决这些问题。

So it explains a lot of what we see, and it should because it is developed as we look at the universe and we have added to it or changed it to match what we see.

所以它解释了我们所看到的很多东西，而且它应该是这样的，因为它是在我们观察宇宙时发展起来的，并且我们已经添加或改变了它以匹配我们所看到的东西。

And so I would say up until the early 2000s, maybe even 2010, it fit everything really.

所以我想说，直到 2000 年代初期，甚至可能是 2010 年，它确实适合一切。

But because we have these deep questions, we’re not just looking for a model, we’re looking for the physics.

但因为我们有这些深刻的问题，所以我们不仅仅是在寻找模型，我们还在寻找物理学。

People continue to do more precise experiments because the nature of science has always been that you have a model and it’s the best approximation for reality.

人们继续进行更精确的实验，因为科学的本质始终是你有一个模型，并且它是现实的最佳近似。

But inevitably it has some shortcomings, which maybe you haven’t seen yet or understood.

但它不可避免地有一些缺点，也许你还没有看到或理解。

In the case of Lambda-CDM as we call it, the shortcomings are partly theoretical that we don’t understand these dark parts.

就我们所说的 Lambda-CDM 而言，其缺点部分是理论上的，因为我们不了解这些黑暗部分。

But observationally, it was excellent.

但从观察来看，这非常好。

And then as the 2010s went on, people did try to do more and more precise experiments to test this model, because we want to tease out is dark energy really a constant or is it something that varies over time?

然后随着 2010 年代的继续，人们确实尝试做越来越精确的实验来测试这个模型，因为我们想弄清楚暗能量是否真的是一个常数，还是会随着时间的推移而变化？

There’s some precedent in the universe for there was an episode shortly after the Big Bang we call inflation that also would’ve been dark energy, a different dark energy that would’ve appeared and disappeared over time.

宇宙中有一些先例，在大爆炸后不久，我们称之为暴胀，这也可能是暗能量，一种会随着时间的推移出现和消失的不同暗能量。

We’re wondering, is our dark energy today disappearing or getting stronger?

我们想知道，今天我们的暗能量是消失了还是变得更强了？

We would like to know that.

我们想知道这一点。

We would like to know more about the nature of dark matter, and so therefore, while we do theory, we also do better experiments to try to tell us more.

我们想更多地了解暗物质的本质，因此，在我们研究理论的同时，我们也做了更好的实验来尝试告诉我们更多信息。

I mean, I was in the middle of using the Hubble Space Telescope, how cool is that, to look at for distant, exploding stars and pulsating stars and mapping the expansion history of the universe.

我的意思是，我正在使用哈勃太空望远镜，观察遥远的爆炸恒星和脉动恒星并绘制宇宙膨胀历史，这真是太酷了。

I decided that the only way forward after that trip to Stockholm was to try to push out as much as I could all those speaking things and try to really focus on the science because, you know, once you stop it’s hard to go back.

我决定，在斯德哥尔摩之行之后，唯一的出路就是尽我所能地抛开所有那些谈论的事情，并尝试真正专注于科学，因为，你知道，一旦你停下来就很难回头。

And if it’s some kind of field in space — think of a field you know of, the electric field, the magnetic field — this would be a different field, but it would’ve energy and its energy would act like dark energy, then it might not be minus one, it might be some other number.

如果它是太空中的某种场——想想你知道的场，电场、磁场——这将是一个不同的场，但它会有能量，而且它的能量会像暗能量一样起作用，那么它可能不会负一，它可能是其他数字。

And there’s been a lot of effort in space missions built to try to study this W number.

为了研究这个 W 数，人们在太空任务中付出了很多努力。

And I saw one of the better ways to do this would be to measure the Hubble Constant, the actual present expansion rate of the universe, and compare that to the predicted value it should have following both this model Lambda-CDM and this exquisite cosmic microwave background data, that was coming from new space satellites like WMAP and Planck, flown by NASA and ESA.

我发现更好的方法之一是测量哈勃常数，即宇宙当前的实际膨胀率，并将其与根据 Lambda-CDM 模型和精致的宇宙微波背景数据得出的预测值进行比较，这些数据来自 NASA 和 ESA 飞行的 WMAP 和普朗克等新太空卫星。

And I began a new project, called SHOES to leverage the Hubble Space Telescope and try to improve the measurement from 10% precision, which had been before to try to reach 1% precision.

我开始了一个名为“SHOES”的新项目，利用哈勃太空望远镜，尝试将测量精度从之前的 10% 提高到 1%。

I think one of the fun things in science is the adventure and the mystery of it, that this is the process.

我认为科学中有趣的事情之一就是它的冒险和神秘，这就是这个过程。

Every, everybody in the past who called something a standard model eventually had to revise it.

过去每一个称之为标准模型的人最终都必须对其进行修改。

And at first it was going really well [laughs].

起初进展非常顺利[笑]。

We were getting measurements that were smaller and smaller uncertainties, and they were matching the cosmic microwave background to the most part.

我们得到的测量结果的不确定性越来越小，而且它们在很大程度上与宇宙微波背景相匹配。

And then, a funny thing happened.

然后，有趣的事情发生了。

It was about a little more than 10 years ago, it was 2013, and Planck, the new cosmic microwave background experiment from the European Space Agency, very state-of-the-art, came out with a pretty large adjustment of the predicted value of the Hubble Constant.

大约十多年前，也就是2013年，欧洲航天局的新宇宙微波背景实验普朗克非常先进，它对哈勃常数的预测值进行了相当大的调整。

Our measurements typically had been in the low 70s in these arcane units that astronomers use, kilometers per second per mega parsec, which is a very strange number, but it’s the inverse of time.

我们的测量值通常在天文学家使用的这些神秘单位的 70 左右，即公里每秒每兆秒差距，这是一个非常奇怪的数字，但它是时间的倒数。

And so if you inverted it, it actually tells you the approximate age of the universe.

所以如果你把它倒过来，它实际上会告诉你宇宙的大致年龄。

And so the classic number from local measurements had always been in the low 70s — 70 to 75.

因此，当地测量的经典数字一直在 70 左右——70 到 75。

And we were honing in on around 73 plus or minus two.

我们正在磨练大约 73 正负 2。

And that all looked okay with the previous cosmic microwave background data.

与之前的宇宙微波背景数据相比，这一切看起来都不错。

But when better cosmic microwave background data came out, it was suddenly, “Oh no, it’s gotta be more like 67, plus or minus 0.5.”

但当更好的宇宙微波背景数据出来时，人们突然说：“哦不，它必须更像 67，正负 0.5。”

Now, this might sound like a small difference.

现在，这听起来可能只是一个小小的差异。

Again, back to your statement earlier, this is a good model, right?

再次回到你之前的陈述，这是一个很好的模型，对吧？

We’re trying to thread a needle from the other side of the universe.

我们正试图从宇宙的另一边穿针。

You know, we’re starting at the moment of the Big Bang and asking how fast the universe will be expanding some 13 to 14 billion years later.

你知道，我们从大爆炸那一刻开始，询问大约 13 到 140 亿年后宇宙膨胀的速度有多快。

And we’re like, we’re off by 8 or 9%.

我们感觉，我们的价格下降了 8% 或 9%。

That’s pretty good predictive work, I would say in almost any other field.

我想说，在几乎任何其他领域，这都是相当好的预测工作。

But we’re rigorous about this.

但我们对此很严格。

And our error bars are small and their error bars are small.

而且我们的误差线很小，他们的误差线也很小。

And the only thing connecting them is the theory, the model, tells us how to explain the trajectory of the universe from the Big Bang to the present time.

连接它们的唯一的东西就是理论、模型，它告诉我们如何解释宇宙从大爆炸到现在的轨迹。

And something has to give either the cosmic microwave background measurement is wrong or the local measurement is wrong, or the story that connects them is not quite right.

必须有某种原因要么是宇宙微波背景测量是错误的，要么是本地测量是错误的，或者是连接它们的故事不太正确。

We’ve all been doing deep dives over the last decade, redoing the measurements very carefully.

在过去的十年里，我们一直在进行深入研究，非常仔细地重新进行测量。

I’ve been using the James Webb Space Telescope now instead of the Hubble Space Telescope, but getting the same answer.

我现在一直在使用詹姆斯·韦伯太空望远镜而不是哈勃太空望远镜，但得到了相同的答案。

People have been doing a lot of work on the cosmic microwave background side, getting the same answer.

人们在宇宙微波背景方面做了很多工作，得到了同样的答案。

The community has poured over this and scrutinized over it.

社会各界对此进行了广泛关注和审查。

And so it’s gotten a name called the Hubble tension, which is, as it sounds, it’s a tension between what you think the Hubble constant should be based on the model and the early universe and what it actually appears to be.

因此它得到了一个名字，叫做哈勃张力，顾名思义，它是你认为应该基于模型和早期宇宙的哈勃常数与它实际看起来的样子之间的张力。

And it has surpassed what we call five sigma, which, in physics talk means the discrepancy is five times larger than the error bar on the experiment, which is the point at which we say, “Hey, something’s going on.” And so it’s been a lot of fun, I would say, to try to figure out what that something is.

它已经超过了我们所说的五西格玛，在物理学中，这意味着差异比实验误差线大五倍，也就是我们说“嘿，有事情发生了”的点。所以我想说，尝试弄清楚那是什么东西是非常有趣的。

And you might say, “Hey, maybe somebody took that baby picture of you wrong or they were using the wrong tape measure or something.” And that’s the stuff we sort of know how to do, that we know how to double-check experiments, do it with different telescopes, have different groups of people do it, different tools, different tracers.

你可能会说，“嘿，也许有人把你的婴儿照片拍错了，或者他们使用了错误的卷尺或其他东西。”这就是我们知道如何做的事情，我们知道如何仔细检查实验，用不同的望远镜来做，让不同的人做，使用不同的工具，不同的示踪剂。

So that work has gone on for a decade and nobody has found the problem with the measurements.

这项工作已经持续了十年，但没有人发现测量的问题。

And so then you start to wonder, is it the growth chart, the story that we tell the model.

然后你开始想知道，这是否是生长图表，即我们向模型讲述的故事。

And on the one hand you say, that should be pretty easy to play with.

一方面，你说，这应该很容易玩。

You told me this dark stuff is so vanilla that you don’t know what dark energy and dark matter are.

你告诉我这种暗物质太普通了，以至于你不知道暗能量和暗物质是什么。

Can’t you just turn some knobs, some features on those that change it, give yourself an extra couple growth spurts during your teenage years, and suddenly you’re seven feet tall?

难道你不能只转动一些旋钮，改变它的一些功能，在你的青少年时期给自己额外的几次成长突增，然后突然你就长到七英尺高了吗？

And the problem is it’s a fairly over-constrained problem that we do have a lot of data at other junctures along the way.

问题是，这是一个相当过度约束的问题，我们在其他时刻确实有大量数据。

And so it’s a wrestle both from the theory to come up with ideas that can do it, and from the observations to find out if there’s anything amiss with the observations.

因此，从理论上提出可以做到这一点的想法，以及从观察中找出观察结果是否有问题，都是一场斗争。

And so, that is one that I’ve been wrestling with a lot.

所以，这是我一直在努力解决的一个问题。

The problem is that science is not history.

问题是科学不是历史。

You actually have to do the work, you have to do the experiments, you have to have the critical thoughts.

你实际上必须做工作，你必须做实验，你必须有批判性的想法。

That’s what makes science so much fun.

这就是科学如此有趣的原因。

But I have to publish those results and other people check them.

但我必须公布这些结果并让其他人检查。

Meanwhile, somebody on the other side of the planet can analyze that same pile of data and they may come to a different conclusion.

与此同时，地球另一端的人可以分析同一堆数据，他们可能会得出不同的结论。

And if everybody’s coming to a different conclusion, we haven’t discovered anything.

如果每个人都得出不同的结论，那么我们还没有发现任何东西。

And so the important element of independent verification done by many people in all kinds of places over the planet with different backgrounds and whatnot.

因此，独立核查的重要组成部分是由世界各地不同背景的许多人进行的。

Then we come in with other telescopes.

然后我们带着其他望远镜进来。

So I’ve talked about, we use ground-based telescopes.

所以我说过，我们使用地面望远镜。

We see the same with the Hubble Space Telescope.

我们用哈勃太空望远镜看到了同样的情况。

We see the same with the James Webb Space Telescope.

我们在詹姆斯·韦伯太空望远镜中也看到了同样的情况。

And so the sheer redundancy and cross-checking in this, when people get an alternative answer, we also have to run that down too and say, “Why did they get a different answer?”

因此，当人们得到替代答案时，我们也必须进行彻底的冗余和交叉检查，并说：“为什么他们得到了不同的答案？”

So more recently, there are results from the DESI experiment, which is measuring the three-dimensional positions of galaxies over the whole universe and, compared to the cosmic microwave background, suggests that dark energy doesn’t look like the cosmological constant.

最近，DESI 实验得到了结果，该实验正在测量整个宇宙中星系的三维位置，与宇宙微波背景相比，表明暗能量看起来不像宇宙学常数。

Looks like there’s some change going on there.

看起来那里正在发生一些变化。

There is the way we measure the clumpiness of matter in the nearby universe that, again, based on the way the universe looked shortly after the Big Bang in the model, we thought it would look clumpier than it does.

我们测量附近宇宙中物质的团块程度的方法是，根据模型中大爆炸后不久宇宙的样子，我们认为它看起来会比实际情况更团块。

Instead, it looks smoother.

相反，它看起来更光滑。

So there are these hints which on the one hand could be cracks and if, you know, a really clever person eventually puts them all together might change the story.

因此，这些暗示一方面可能是裂缝，如果，你知道，一个真正聪明的人最终将它们全部放在一起可能会改变故事。

These could be the loose thread on the sweater that you pull on and might unravel the sweater, or you just pluck it off and you’re like, “Okay, that was not that big a deal.” I think we don’t know, but I think one of the fun things in science is the adventure and the mystery of it, that this is the process.

这些可能是毛衣上松散的线，你拉上毛衣可能会解开毛衣，或者你只是把它拔下来，然后你会想，“好吧，这没什么大不了的。”我想我们不知道，但我认为科学中有趣的事情之一就是它的冒险和神秘，这就是这个过程。

Every, everybody in the past who called something a standard model eventually had to revise it.

过去每一个称之为标准模型的人最终都必须对其进行修改。

The cavalry is coming.

骑兵来了。

In this case, it’s many great observatories, which I’m very excited are coming online.

在这种情况下，有很多很棒的天文台，我很高兴它们即将上线。

It was traveling too fast, and it was traveling too slow, and there was a speculation by scientists that there was another planet, which became Neptune, that was further out and it was pulling on Uranus, that they couldn’t see it.

它运行得太快，运行得太慢，科学家们猜测还有另一颗行星，即海王星，距离更远，它正在拉动天王星，所以他们看不到它。

So they calculated with pure math where it should be and then looked for it with a telescope and found it, okay?

所以他们用纯数学计算了它应该在哪里，然后用望远镜寻找它并找到了它，好吗？

So that was great.

所以那太好了。

So Newton’s theory was fine.

所以牛顿的理论是没有问题的。

It was just some missing stuff.

这只是一些丢失的东西。

And then later in the century, Mercury was the one that was misbehaving, the innermost planet.

然后在本世纪后期，水星是行为不端的一颗，是最里面的行星。

It travels in an elliptical orbit, and that orbit is not supposed to precess or rotate itself at the rate that it was, and people struggled with that.

它在椭圆轨道上运行，而该轨道不应该以原来的速度进动或自转，人们为此苦苦挣扎。

They came up with the same idea: “Oh, look, it’s gotta be a missing planet.

他们提出了同样的想法：“哦，看，这一定是一颗失踪的行星。

We’ve seen this movie before.” And they imagined a planet called Vulcan that was between Mercury and the Sun.

我们以前看过这部电影。”他们想象了一个位于水星和太阳之间的名为火神星的行星。

They looked for it.

他们寻找它。

They couldn’t find it.

他们找不到它。

Fifty years later, Einstein changes gravity and shows that Mercury will precess in general relativity, his theory of gravity.

五十年后，爱因斯坦改变了引力，并表明水星将在广义相对论（他的引力理论）中进动。

And as you say, what looks like kind of a small little observational crack or, you know, loose thread on a sweater unravels the thing.

正如你所说，看起来像是观察到的一个小裂缝，或者你知道，毛衣上的松线就能解开这个问题。

And so that’s why it’s hard to tell.

这就是为什么很难说的原因。

Is this a Neptune or is this a, you know, general relativity?

这是海王星还是广义相对论？

I really don’t know.

我真的不知道。

Okay.

好的。

So as you say, it’s an adventure, this great enterprise we’re in — science — and always progressing.

正如你所说，这是一次冒险，我们所处的伟大事业——科学——而且总是在进步。

There’s something else coming along the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

南希·格雷斯·罗马太空望远镜还有其他东西。

It can collect in a single image about 100 times the field of view of Hubble, and it operates very quickly too.

它可以收集约 100 倍哈勃视场的单张图像，而且运行速度也非常快。

So it’s going to have a kind of collecting power that’s about 1,000 times faster than Hubble.

因此，它将拥有比哈勃望远镜快约 1000 倍的收集能力。

And so with this large amount of data, we hope to tease out more information about the recent expansion history of the universe, if dark energy is changing and any other sort of hints we can get.

因此，通过如此大量的数据，我们希望能够梳理出有关宇宙最近膨胀历史的更多信息，暗能量是否正在变化以及我们可以获得的任何其他类型的提示。

Yeah, so we’ll learn things about exoplanets and galaxies, all kinds of things, but this really should be a quantum leap in terms of our data capability and, as long as I’ve been in this field, data has really been crucial to making the kinds of breakthroughs that we have.

是的，所以我们将了解有关系外行星和星系的知识，以及各种各样的知识，但这确实应该是我们数据能力方面的巨大飞跃，只要我一直在这个领域，数据对于我们取得的各种突破来说确实至关重要。

And the fact that with science and with these capabilities that we could address really profound, big questions and do it in a kind of methodical way and get real answers.

事实上，借助科学和这些能力，我们可以解决真正深刻、重大的问题，并以一种有条不紊的方式去做，并得到真正的答案。

Yes, we end up with new questions.

是的，我们最终会提出新问题。

It doesn’t all come as one answer, like the famous number 42 in Hitchhiker’s Guide .

它并不像《漫游指南》中著名的数字 42 那样只有一个答案。

It ends up being a kind of a riddle, but I like that.

它最终成为一种谜语，但我喜欢这样。

The fact that somehow nature’s put out just enough of a popcorn trail for us to follow, who doesn’t wanna follow that popcorn trail and see where it leads?

事实上，不知何故，大自然为我们提供了足够的爆米花小道供我们遵循，谁不想跟随那条爆米花小道，看看它通向何方呢？

This just kind of blew my mind.

这让我大吃一惊。

And he would say, “In fact, the stars might not even be there anymore, and we won’t know about that for millions of years.” And just this idea there’s information that’s traveling to us, the story’s changed along the way, we’re still seeing this old story.

他会说，“事实上，星星可能已经不存在了，而且我们在数百万年内都不会知道这一点。”只是这个想法就有信息向我们传播，故事一路上发生了变化，我们仍然看到这个古老的故事。

How could that be?

怎么可能呢？

Could I catch up to that light?

我能赶上那道光吗？

These are profound things that raise a feeling of awe in me and I think a lot of people.

这些意义深远的事情让我和很多人都感到敬畏。

And so, you know, back to that kid in the Woody Allen movie, I mean, there’s kind of two perspectives there, right?

所以，你知道，回到伍迪·艾伦电影中的那个孩子，我的意思是，那里有两种观点，对吧？

The people who have awe and are curious, and more power to them.

那些有敬畏心、好奇心的人，他们的力量就更大。

I’m that kind of person, too.

我也是这样的人。

And then the people who are like, “Hey, it’s not expanding in Brooklyn.

然后有人会说，“嘿，它没有在布鲁克林扩张。

Get back to work.” And I get that, too.

回去工作吧。”我也明白这一点。

I mean, we still need to eat, and we still need to do a lot of other things.

我的意思是，我们仍然需要吃饭，我们仍然需要做很多其他事情。

But to those who have that awe gene or that curious gene, right, you know, once you look up and you know what’s out there, and you know the questions, you’re hooked.

但对于那些拥有敬畏基因或好奇基因的人来说，是的，你知道，一旦你抬起头，你知道外面有什么，你知道问题，你就会被迷住。

And, you know, the fact that somehow nature’s put out just enough of a popcorn trail for us to follow, who doesn’t wanna follow that popcorn trail and see where it leads?

而且，你知道，事实上，大自然以某种方式提供了足够的爆米花小道供我们遵循，谁不想跟随那条爆米花小道，看看它通向何方呢？

It’s only because we’re in an era of absolute precision cosmology that we’re able to look at the negative space and determine that actually we’re only 5%, you know?

只是因为我们处在一个绝对精确宇宙学的时代，我们才能看到负空间并确定我们实际上只有 5%，你知道吗？

We’re just a little bit.

我们只是一点点。

We’re just a little residue.

我们只是一点残留。

It’s amazing.

太棒了。

The Joy of Why is produced by PRX Productions.

《为什么的喜悦》由 PRX Productions 制作。

The production team is Caitlin Faulds, Jade Abdul-Malik, Genevieve Sponsler, and Merritt Jacob.

制作团队包括 Caitlin Faulds、Jade Abdul-Malik、Genevieve Sponsler 和 Merritt Jacob。

The executive producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales.

PRX Productions 的执行制片人是乔斯林·冈萨雷斯 (Jocelyn Gonzales)。

Edwin Ochoa is our project manager.

埃德温·奥乔亚是我们的项目经理。

From Quanta Magazine , Simon Frantz and Samir Patel provided editorial guidance with support from Samuel Velasco, Simone Barr, and Michael Kanyongolo.

Quanta 杂志的 Simon Frantz 和 Samir Patel 在 Samuel Velasco、Simone Barr 和 Michael Kanyongolo 的支持下提供了编辑指导。

Samir Patel is Quanta’s editor-in-chief.

萨米尔·帕特尔 (Samir Patel) 是广达的主编。

The episode art is by Chanelle Nibbelink, and our logo is by Jaki King and Kristina Armitage.

剧集艺术由 Chanelle Nibbelink 创作，我们的徽标由 Jaki King 和 Kristina Armitage 创作。

Special thanks to Garth Avery at the Cornell Broadcast Studio.

特别感谢康奈尔广播工作室的 Garth Avery。

I’m your host, Steve Strogatz.

我是你们的主持人，史蒂夫·斯特罗加茨。

If you have any questions or comments, please email us at [email protected] .

如果您有任何问题或意见，请发送电子邮件至 [email protected]。

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获取发送到您的电子邮件收件箱的最重要新闻的摘要

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《Quanta》杂志对评论进行审核，以促进知情、实质性、文明的对话。

Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected.

辱骂、亵渎、自我推销、误导、语无伦次或偏离主题的评论将被拒绝。

Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (New York time) and can only accept comments written in English.

版主在正常工作时间（纽约时间）有工作人员，并且只能接受英文评论。