50．The time zones around the world
were used .
A．in 1883 B．in early 1800s C．before 1800s D．in 1884
C
Have you
seen the film Star Wars? If you have, you’ll know what an evergy – gun is, and
a light – sword too. The gigantic space ship in Star Wars can destroy a whole
planet in a second or two, and it does so. Fortunately, it isn’t our planet; it
belongs to a distant system, far out in space.
The great
empty spaces of the universe are no problem in star Wars. The fighters know how
to fold space over, like a sheet of paper, so that very distant stars are
brought close together; they call it “hyperspace”. This means, of course, that
their ships don’t have to creep along at the speed of light. If they did that,
they would take years, even centuries, to reach the battlefield. Hyperspace
allows them to travel as “supralight” speed and get there in a couple of hours.
It’s good clean fun (健康无害的娱乐) though.
We certainly
don’t know all about physics yet, but we do have the work of Albert Einstein.
He asked us to believe that nothing could travel faster than light through an
empty space – but don’t let that miserable idea spoil the film for you, even
though all our observations up to now have shown that Einstein was dead right –
forget it. Sit back and watch those energy – shells blow up the hated enemy.
The Star Wars princess is extremely beautiful.
The more we “discover”,
the more we must admire Einstein. He knew it all before us – by about 1910 in fact. We observe certain very high
speed particles (微粒), and they
behave exactly as Einstein predicted they would. We can give them a speed
almost equal to light, but they never quite reach light speed. He predicted
that a very fast – moving object, as it flashed by a stationary (静止的) observer, would seem to have
much greater weight than usual. And that, too, was proved correct.
So far as scientific theory or evidence is concerned, there is no
such thing as hyperspace, no such speed as supralight. Space is as we know it, and
light speed is the highest possible speed. “But,” say the story – writers, “that’s
only true at present. We don’t know all about physics yet. Who knows – who
knows if there isn’t another set of facts just waiting to be discovered;
another universe perhaps, just round the corner?”
Einstein seems to have been prepared for that too. In his theories
he emphasized the word “relative”. Everything – speed, weight, time, etc. – is
relative to something else. Nothing, by itself is real or absolute. So it there
is another universe somewhere, we shall only know about it relative to
ourselves. So far there’s no sign of it. But for the future, well, who knows?
