萬物簡史 第63期:事物的測定(21)

Not everyone was satisfied with the results, however.The shortcoming of the Schiehallion experimentwas that it was not possible to get a truly accuratefigure without knowing the actual density of themountain. For convenience, Hutton had assumedthat the mountain had the same density as ordinarystone, about 2.5 times that of water, but this waslittle more than an educated guess.

然而，不是人人都對結果感到很滿意。斯希哈林山實驗的不足之處在于，你不知道該山的真正密度，因此不可能得出一個真正確切的數(shù)字。為了方便起見，赫頓假設這座山的密度與普通石頭相等，即大約是水的密度的2.5倍，但這不過是根據(jù)經(jīng)驗所作的估計。

One improbable seeming person who turned his mind to the matter was a country parsonnamed John Michell, who resided in the lonely Yorkshire village of Thornhill. Despite his remoteand comparatively humble situation, Michell was one of the great scientific thinkers of theeighteenth century and much esteemed for it.

有一個人把注意力轉(zhuǎn)向這個問題。他是個鄉(xiāng)下牧師，名叫約翰·米歇爾，家住約克郡人跡稀少的桑希爾村。盡管環(huán)境偏僻而簡陋，米歇爾卻是18世紀一位偉大的科學思想家，深受人們的尊敬。

Among a great deal else, he perceived the wavelike nature of earthquakes, conducted muchoriginal research into magnetism and gravity, and, quite extraordinarily, envisioned thepossibility of black holes two hundred years before anyone else—a leap of intuitive deductionthat not even Newton could make. When the German-born musician William Herschel decidedhis real interest in life was astronomy, it was Michell to whom he turned for instruction inmaking telescopes, a kindness for which planetary science has been in his debt ever since.

尤其是，他認識到地震的波動性質(zhì)，對磁場和引力進行了大量創(chuàng)造性的研究，比任何人都早200年設想過黑洞的存在，這是相當了不起的--連牛頓都跨不出這么一大步。當?shù)聡錾囊魳芳彝?middot;赫歇爾認為自己生活中的真正興趣是天文學的時候，他就是向米歇爾討教了天文望遠鏡的制作方法。自那以來，行星科學界一直對他懷有感激之情。