In the late 19th century, scientists were trying to solve a mystery.
19世纪晚期，科学家在试图破解一个迷。
They found that if they had a vacuum tube like this one and applied a high voltage across it, something strange happened.
他们发现，如果有一个像这样的真空管，在上面施加高压，会产生奇怪的现象。
They called them cathode rays. But the question was: What were they made of?
他们称之为阴极射线。但问题是：它是由什么构成的？
In England, the 19th century physicist, J.J. Thompson, conducted experiments using magnets and electricity, like this.
在19世纪的英国，物理学家J.J.汤普森用磁铁和电源做了个实验，就像这样。
And he came to an incredible revelation.
他从中得到了一个不可思议的真相。
These rays were made of negatively charged particles around 2,000 times lighter than the hydrogen atom, the smallest thing they knew.
这些射线是由某种带负电荷的粒子构成的，大约比当时他们所知的最小的粒子，氢原子，还轻2000倍。
So Thompson had discovered the first subatomic particle, which we now call electrons.
于是汤普森发现了第一个亚原子粒子，也就是我们现在所称的电子。
Now, at the time, this seemed to be a completely impractical discovery.
在当时，这似乎就是个百无一用的发现。
I mean, Thompson didn't think there were any applications of electrons.
我意思是，汤普森并不认为电子能做什么用途。
Around his lab in Cambridge, he used to like to propose a toast: "To the electron. May it never be of use to anybody."
在他位于剑桥的实验室里，他过去常常邀杯道：“为电子而干杯，希望它永远不会对任何人有用。”
He was strongly in favor of doing research out of sheer curiosity, to arrive at a deeper understanding of the world.
他纯粹是因为好奇，为了更深入地了解世界而投身于研究工作。
And what he found did cause a revolution in science.
他的发现确实引发了一场科学革命。
But it also caused a second, unexpected revolution in technology.
但它也引发了另外一场意料之外的技术革命。
Today, I'd like to make a case for curiosity-driven research,
今天，我想为由好奇心驱动的研究提供充分理由，
because without it, none of the technologies I'll talk about today would have been possible.
因为如果没有它，我们今天讨论的所有技术都不可能存在。
Now, what Thompson found here has actually changed our view of reality.
汤普森的这个发现真正地改变了我们对现实的看法。
I mean, I think I'm standing on a stage, and you think you're sitting in a seat.
我指的是，我认为我现在站在台上，你们认为你们坐在座位上。
But that's just the electrons in your body pushing back against the electrons in the seat, opposing the force of gravity.
实际情况是：你身体里的电子正把椅子上的电子往下挤，以此对抗重力。
You're not even really touching the seat. You're hovering ever so slightly above it.
你甚至没有真正碰到座位。你只是一直在它上面稍高一点的地方悬浮。
But in many ways, our modern society was actually built on this discovery.
但在很多方面，我们现代社会其实是建立在这个发现之上的。
I mean, these tubes were the start of electronics.
我是说，这些管子是电子学的开端。
And then for many years, most of us actually had one of these, if you remember, in your living room, in cathode ray tube televisions.
以及在以前，很长一段时间，如果你还记得，在你的起居室中，我们大多数人都拥有它的产物，一台阴极射线管电视。
But -- I mean, how impoverished would our lives be if the only invention that had come from here was the television?
但是--我的意思是，即使有了这个发现，但如果电视只是这唯一的发明，我们的生活将会多么困顿？
Thankfully, this tube was just a start,
幸运的是，这个真空管只是一个开始，
because something else happens when the electrons here hit the piece of metal inside the tube.
因为当电子撞到管子里的金属片时会发生别的事情。
Let me show you. Pop this one back on. So as the electrons screech to a halt inside the metal,
让我给你们演示。重新打开它。所以随着电子“嘎吱一声”急停在金属内部时，
their energy gets thrown out again in a form of high-energy light, which we call X-rays.
它们的能量以高能光束的方式被释放出来，也就是X射线。
And within 15 years of discovering the electron, these X-rays were being used to make images inside the human body,
在发现电子后的15年内，这些X射线被用来拍摄人体内部的影像，
helping soldiers' lives being saved by surgeons, who could then find pieces of bullets and shrapnel inside their bodies.
帮助拯救士兵生命的外科医生，这样他们就能够在士兵身体中找到子弹和弹片。
But there's no way we could have come up with that technology by asking scientists to build better surgical probes.
但是回到最初，如果命令科学家发明出更好的手术探针，这种技术就能凭空出现，这是不可能的。
Only research done out of sheer curiosity, with no application in mind, could have given us the discovery of the electron and X-rays.
只有纯粹出于好奇做的研究，而不考虑任何实际用途，才能让我们发现电子和X射线。
Now, this tube also threw open the gates for our understanding of the universe and the field of particle physics,
现在，这个真空管也为我们理解宇宙和粒子物理领域打开了一扇门，
because it's also the first, very simple particle accelerator.
因为它也是第一个粒子加速器，结构堪称简陋。
Now, I'm an accelerator physicist, so I design particle accelerators, and I try and understand how beams behave.
嗯，我是加速器物理学家，因此我设计粒子加速器，我试着理解粒子束的行为。
And my field's a bit unusual, because it crosses between curiosity-driven research and technology with real-world applications.
我的领域有点不一般，因为它的研究不仅是由好奇心驱动的，而且也与现实世界的应用技术相关。
But it's the combination of those two things that gets me really excited about what I do.
但这两者的结合让我对我的工作感到非常兴奋。
Now, over the last 100 years, there have been far too many examples for me to list them all.
嗯，在过去100年中，有太多的案例，数不胜数。
But I want to share with you just a few.
但我想给你们分享其中几个。
In 1928, a physicist named Paul Dirac found something strange in his equations.
1928年，一位名叫保罗·狄拉克的物理学家在他的方程中发现了一些奇怪的东西。

And he predicted, based purely on mathematical insight, that there ought to be a second kind of matter,
仅仅基于数学的洞察，他预测，应该有第二种物质，
the opposite to normal matter, that literally annihilates when it comes in contact: antimatter.
与正常物质相反的物质，当它们相互接触时就会湮灭：反物质。
I mean, the idea sounded ridiculous. But within four years, they'd found it.
我是说，这个想法听起来很荒谬。但在4年之内，他们证实了它。
And nowadays, we use it every day in hospitals, in positron emission tomography, or PET scans, used for detecting disease.
如今，我们每天都在医院使用它，正电子发射断层扫描，或叫PET扫描，用于检测疾病。
Or, take these X-rays. If you can get these electrons up to a higher energy, so about 1,000 times higher that this tube,
或者，拿这些X光来说。如果你可以把这些电子加速到更高能量，例如，比这个管子里的高1000倍，
the X-rays that those produce can actually deliver enough ionizing radiation to kill human cells.
由此产生的X射线实际上可以释放足够强的电离辐射，杀死人体细胞。
And if you can shape and direct those X-rays where you want them to go, that allows us to do an incredible thing:
如果你能够按照实际需求调整X射线的形状和方向，就可以实现不可思议的事情：
to treat cancer without drugs or surgery, which we call radiotherapy.
无须药物或手术就可以治疗癌症，这就是我们说的放射疗法。
In countries like Australia and the UK, around half of all cancer patients are treated using radiotherapy.
在澳大利亚和英国这样的国家，大约一半的癌症病人使用放射疗法。
And so, electron accelerators are actually standard equipment in most hospitals.
电子加速器实际上是很多医院的标准配备。
Or, a little closer to home: if you have a smartphone or a computer
或者，在日常生活中：如果你有智能手机或电脑，
and this is TEDx, so you've got both with you right now, right?
在TEDx，大家都带着它们，对吧？
Well, inside those devices are chips that are made by implanting single ions into silicon, in a process called ion implantation.
嗯，这些设备中的芯片，是在“离子注入工序”中通过将单个离子注入硅来制造的。
And that uses a particle accelerator.
这就需要粒子加速器。
Without curiosity-driven research, though, none of these things would exist at all.
没有由好奇心驱动的研究，这些东西没有一个会存在。
So, over the years, we really learned to explore inside the atom.
那么，多年来，我们真正学会了探索原子内部。
And to do that, we had to learn to develop particle accelerators.
要做到这一点，我们必须研究发展粒子加速器。
The first ones we developed let us split the atom.
我们开发的第一个加速器让我们分裂原子。
And then we got to higher and higher energies;
然后我们得到越来越高的能量；
we created circular accelerators that let us delve into the nucleus and then create new elements, even.
我们创造了圆形加速器，让我们深入原子核然后甚至产生了新的元素。
And at that point, we were no longer just exploring inside the atom.
在那一刻，我们不再只是探索原子内部。
We'd actually learned how to control these particles.
我们学会了控制这些粒子。
We'd learned how to interact with our world on a scale that's too small for humans to see or touch or even sense that it's there.
我们学会了在一个人类无法看到、触摸甚至感知到的微观层面上与世界互动。
And then we built larger and larger accelerators, because we were curious about the nature of the universe.
然后我们建造越来越大的加速器，因为我们对宇宙的本质充满好奇。
As we went deeper and deeper, new particles started popping up.
随着我们越钻越深，新的粒子接连被发现。
Eventually, we got to huge ring-like machines that take two beams of particles in opposite directions,
最终，我们建造了一个巨大的环状机器，它把两束粒子从相反的方向
squeeze them down to less than the width of a hair and smash them together.
压缩到不到一根头发那么细的宽度，然后使它们对撞。
And then, using Einstein's E=mc2, you can take all of that energy and convert it into new matter,
然后，根据爱因斯坦质能方程E=mc^2，你得到了所有的能量，并把它转化为新的物质，
new particles which we rip from the very fabric of the universe.
我们从宇宙的特定基本结构中提取的新的粒子。
Nowadays, there are about 35,000 accelerators in the world, not including televisions.
如今，全世界有35000台加速器，不包括电视。
And inside each one of these incredible machines, there are hundreds and billions of tiny particles,
在这些神奇的机器里面，有数千亿的微小粒子，
dancing and swirling in systems that are more complex than the formation of galaxies.
在比星系的组成还复杂的系统中跳舞和旋转。
You guys, I can't even begin to explain how incredible it is that we can do this.
各位，我甚至都无法解释，我们能做到这一点是多么的不可思议。
So I want to encourage you to invest your time and energy in people that do curiosity-driven research.
所以我想鼓励你们投入时间和精力，支持人们去做由好奇心驱动的研究。
It was Jonathan Swift who once said, "Vision is the art of seeing the invisible."
乔纳森·斯威夫特曾经说过，“远见是见人所未见的艺术。”
And over a century ago, J.J. Thompson did just that, when he pulled back the veil on the subatomic world.
一个多世纪前，当汤普森揭开亚原子世界的面纱时，他就是这么做的。
And now we need to invest in curiosity-driven research, because we have so many challenges that we face.
现在，对于由好奇心驱动的研究，我们需要进行投入，因为我们面对着如此多的挑战。
And we need patience; we need to give scientists the time, the space and the means to continue their quest,
我们需要耐心；我们需要提供给科学家时间、场所以及继续他们的探求的工具，
because history tells us that if we can remain curious and open-minded about the outcomes of research,
因为历史告诉我们：如果我们能够对研究的结果保持好奇和开放的心态，
the more world-changing our discoveries will be. Thank you.
我们的发现就越能改变世界。谢谢。