第3000期:Exploring the origin of the universe

This looks like a spaceship and just like a spaceship, this machine is helping scientists go where they've never gone before,这看起来像一艘宇宙飞船，正如宇宙飞船一样，这台机器正在帮助科学家前往他们从未涉足的领域，in the quest to decipher what science has never been able to explain, the origins of the universe.致力于破解科学至今无法解释的谜题——宇宙的起源。They can confirm the existence of the smallest particles that theoretical physicists have predicted, and accelerate protons, one of the building blocks of atoms to nearly the speed of light, and they can create antimatter.它们能够证实理论物理学家预言的最小粒子的存在，将原子基本构成之一的质子加速至接近光速，还能制造出反物质。But this doesn't mean they understand everything yet.但这并不意味着他们目前理解了一切。Scientists think that at the beginning of things, the so-called Big Bang, matter and antimatter, negative matter, were created in equal amounts.科学家们认为，在万物初始之时，即所谓的大爆炸时期，物质与反物质（负物质）是等量产生的。In principle if the difference between the two is only the charge, they should have just recombine and leave nothing but rejection, okay?原则上，如果两者之间的差异仅仅在于电荷，那么它们应该只是重新结合，除了相互排斥之外不会留下任何东西，对吗？However, we are here, I'm talking with you right now, so it means that at some point matter took over the antimatter, and this must be, because there are some differences between matter and antimatter that we don't know about.然而，我正在与你交谈， 这意味着物质在某种程度上接管了反物质，而这必然是因为物质与反物质之间存在一些我们尚不了解的差异。Searching for those differences is one of the tasks for the people at CMS, the Compact Muon Solenoid, one of four main research points around the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.寻找这些差异是紧凑渺子线圈（CMS）研究人员的任务之一，CMS是欧洲核子研究组织（CERN）大型强子对撞机周围四个主要研究点之一。Packets of protons race around the circle in beams traveling clockwise and counterclockwise.质子束以顺时针和逆时针方向绕着环形轨道飞驰。And when the physicists are ready, the beams are focused and made to collide at one of four experiment locations around the circle.当物理学家准备好后，粒子束会被聚焦，并引导至环形轨道上的四个实验地点之一进行碰撞。If I would collide the beam unfocused, the probability of my fingers colliding here is very low.如果我发射未聚焦的粒子束，就像我的手指这样，那么碰撞的概率是非常低的。And then on either end of the experiments, we will switch from focusing magnets so that the beams squeezes into a small dimension, and therefore, the probability of collision increases.在实验的两端，我们将切换聚焦磁铁，使粒子束压缩到更小的尺寸，从而增加碰撞的概率。Out of the 200 billion protons in the two beams rushing around the circuit, only 100 will collide.在环绕轨道飞驰的两束质子流中，2000亿个质子仅有100个会发生碰撞。But right now the Collider and the experiments around it are in the midst of a two-year shut down for maintenance and upgrades, something that happens every three years.但目前，大型强子对撞机及其周边的实验设备正处于为期两年的停机维护和升级阶段，这种维护每三年会进行一次。For VOA, that meant a chance to get a rare glimpse of a world not many get to see. For the scientists, it's a chance to recharge.对于美国之音来说，这意味着有机会一窥常人难以得见的秘境世界。对科学家而言，这正是一次难得的充电良机。I would say it for us it's an opportunity. We're looking at ways of making the detector better, repairing things, putting in new detectors, and preparing for the future runs, which the experiment will be running until we hope till 2035.对我们来说，这是一个机会。我们正在研究如何改进探测器、修复设备、安装新的探测器，以及为未来的实验运行做准备，我们希望这个实验能一直运行到2035年。The CMS collaboration includes some 4,000 scientists from more than 50 countries from all over Europe, from India, China, Korea, Egypt, other parts of the Middle East and Russia.CMS汇集了来自欧洲、印度、中国、韩国、埃及、中东其他地区以及俄罗斯等50多个国家的约4000名科学家。McBride says that while the scientists loved when the experiments confirmed their predictions, they also loved it when things don't match up,麦克布莱德说，虽然科学家们喜欢实验证实他们的预测，但当结果与预期不符时，他们同样感到兴奋，because that might be saying something very fundamental about how the universe is put together, because many things cannot yet be explained.因为这可能揭示了宇宙构成的基本原理，毕竟许多现象至今仍无法解释。