酷我-北美枫

[东西]

Cosmic Gall by John Updike


Neutrinos, they are very small.
They have no charge and have no mass
And do not interact at all.
The earth is just a silly ball
To them, through which they simply pass,
Like dustmaids down a drafty hall
Or photons through a sheet of glass.
They snub the most exquisite gas,
Ignore the most substantial wall,
Cold shoulder steel and sounding brass,
Insult the stallion in his stall,
And scorning barriers of class,
Infiltrate you and me! Like tall
and painless guillotines, they fall
Down through our heads into the grass.
At night, they enter at Nepal
and pierce the lover and his lass
From underneath the bed-you call
It wonderful; I call it crass.



Chinese Translation:

宇宙惱人之物

微中子，它們極其細小；
既沒有電荷也沒有質量，
因此彼此之間不曾互動。
對它們而言，地球只不過是個愚笨的球體，
它們能輕易地穿透；
就像清潔婦掃過通風的走廊，
或像光子穿透一片玻璃。
它們輕看精緻的氣體，
輕忽最牢固的牆，
冷眼對待鋼鐵與發出聲響的銅，
侮辱馬廄中的種馬，
並且嘲笑階級的障礙
穿透了你和我！像座高大
且無痛的斷頭臺，它們直落
穿過我們的頭顱並掉到草地上。
在夜晚時，進入尼泊爾；
且從床底下刺透
戀愛中的男人和其愛人--
你認為這種行為
棒透了；但我卻視其為愚笨。
_________________
East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.

[[东西]]

Cosmic Gall by John Updike


Neutrinos, they are very small.
They have no charge and have no mass
And do not interact at all.
The earth is just a silly ball
To them, through which they simply pass,
Like dustmaids down a drafty hall
Or photons through a sheet of glass.
They snub the most exquisite gas,
Ignore the most substantial wall,
Cold shoulder steel and sounding brass,
Insult the stallion in his stall,
And scorning barriers of class,
Infiltrate you and me! Like tall
and painless guillotines, they fall
Down through our heads into the grass.
At night, they enter at Nepal
and pierce the lover and his lass
From underneath the bed-you call
It wonderful; I call it crass.



Chinese Translation:

宇宙惱人之物

微中子，它們極其細小；
既沒有電荷也沒有質量，
因此彼此之間不曾互動。
對它們而言，地球只不過是個愚笨的球體，
它們能輕易地穿透；
就像清潔婦掃過通風的走廊，
或像光子穿透一片玻璃。
它們輕看精緻的氣體，
輕忽最牢固的牆，
冷眼對待鋼鐵與發出聲響的銅，
侮辱馬廄中的種馬，
並且嘲笑階級的障礙
穿透了你和我！像座高大
且無痛的斷頭臺，它們直落
穿過我們的頭顱並掉到草地上。
在夜晚時，進入尼泊爾；
且從床底下刺透
戀愛中的男人和其愛人--
你認為這種行為
棒透了；但我卻視其為愚笨。
_________________
East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.

[东西]

It was one of the few poems ever mentionned during a Nobel Lecture.


The Nobel Prize in Physics 1995

Discovery of the neutrino

The neutrino is very reluctant to react with its environment. A very intensive neutrino source and a very heavy target are needed to capture even a few neutrinos.

With the advent of the first nuclear reactors in the 1940's it was realised that they could serve as intensive neutrino sources with a flow of approximately 1012 -1013 per second per cm2. This was many orders of magnitude greater than what was obtained from naturally radioactive substances.

Frederick Reines and his colleage Clyde L. Cowan, Jr. proposed in 1953 a reactor experiment to capture neutrinos through the reaction:

(anti)neutrino + proton –› neutron + positron.

Reines and Cowan realised the importance of detecting both the neutron and the positron to reduce the risk of incorrect interpretation. Despite the large flow of neutrinos from the reactor, a low counting rate was expected. But Reines and Cowan succeeded finally in recording a few events per hour.

The observation of neutrinos was a pioneering contribution that paved the way for the "impossible" neutrino experiments. These attempt to capture neutrinos from cosmic radiation. The neutrinos may originate in the sun or in supernovas (exploding stars). Their reluctance to react with atomic nuclei or electrons, thus allowing themselves to be captured, necessitates very large detector volumes: many thousand cubic metres of liquid or large regions of sea or ice.
_________________
East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.

[[东西]]

It was one of the few poems ever mentionned during a Nobel Lecture.


The Nobel Prize in Physics 1995

Discovery of the neutrino

The neutrino is very reluctant to react with its environment. A very intensive neutrino source and a very heavy target are needed to capture even a few neutrinos.

With the advent of the first nuclear reactors in the 1940's it was realised that they could serve as intensive neutrino sources with a flow of approximately 1012 -1013 per second per cm2. This was many orders of magnitude greater than what was obtained from naturally radioactive substances.

Frederick Reines and his colleage Clyde L. Cowan, Jr. proposed in 1953 a reactor experiment to capture neutrinos through the reaction:

(anti)neutrino + proton –› neutron + positron.

Reines and Cowan realised the importance of detecting both the neutron and the positron to reduce the risk of incorrect interpretation. Despite the large flow of neutrinos from the reactor, a low counting rate was expected. But Reines and Cowan succeeded finally in recording a few events per hour.

The observation of neutrinos was a pioneering contribution that paved the way for the "impossible" neutrino experiments. These attempt to capture neutrinos from cosmic radiation. The neutrinos may originate in the sun or in supernovas (exploding stars). Their reluctance to react with atomic nuclei or electrons, thus allowing themselves to be captured, necessitates very large detector volumes: many thousand cubic metres of liquid or large regions of sea or ice.
_________________
East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.

[Champagne]

Although written in the 1960s long before the discovery of the neutrino, Updike’s description of it, relatively speaking, quite accurate and more importantly, it is portrayed in a humorously poetic way.


Every second, hundreds of billions of these neutrinos pass through each square inch of our bodies, coming from above during the day and from below at night, when the sun is shining on the other side of the earth!

-- From An Explanatory Statement on Elementary Particle Physics by M. A. Ruderman and A. H. Rosenfeld, in American Scientist.
_________________
I'm Champagne,
Bottled poetry with sparkling joy.

[[Champagne]]

Although written in the 1960s long before the discovery of the neutrino, Updike’s description of it, relatively speaking, quite accurate and more importantly, it is portrayed in a humorously poetic way.


Every second, hundreds of billions of these neutrinos pass through each square inch of our bodies, coming from above during the day and from below at night, when the sun is shining on the other side of the earth!

-- From An Explanatory Statement on Elementary Particle Physics by M. A. Ruderman and A. H. Rosenfeld, in American Scientist.
_________________
I'm Champagne,
Bottled poetry with sparkling joy.

[ericcoliu]

[[ericcoliu]]

[christine]

[[christine]]

[浴恩福]

[[浴恩福]]

[dundas]

[[dundas]]

[东西]

[[东西]]