小職員，大遺澤
- 1905年，瑞士專利局一位職員的沉思改變了世界。他的智識遺產對競尋統一理論的新一代物理學家來說，依然彌足珍貴。
- In 1905 the musings of a functionary in the Swiss patent office changed the world forever. His intellectual bequest remains for a new generation of physicists vying to concoct a theory of everything
作者╱斯蒂克斯 ( Gary Stix )
譯者╱王孫崇
愛因斯坦留下的諸多理論，帶給了後世極大的影響。這位偉大的理論物理學家，是如何改變全世界的？
愛因斯坦（Albert Einstein）可說是20世紀物理學的代表人物，其成就徹底改變我們對世界的看法。當愛因斯坦的相對論全然推翻時空的絕對性時，他內心請求牛頓的諒解。在此之前，時空具絕對性的論點主宰了物理學界達兩世紀之久。
Albert Einstein looms over 20th-century physics as its defining, emblematic figure. His work altered forever the way we view the natural world. "Newton, please forgive me," Einstein begged as relativity theory wholly obliterated the absolutes of time and space that the reigning arbiter of all things physical had embraced more than two centuries earlier.
當時，這位26歲的專利局辦事員除了幾年前才被退回的博士論文之外，並沒有什麼研究成果；他也只在閒暇時間，或在上班時間偷空從事物理研究。但是他卻魯 莽地宣稱當代物理學家膚淺，並且努力驗證他的論點。除了狹義及廣義相對論之外，他的其他著作也推動了量子力學及現代統計力學的發展。愛因斯坦的研究還提供 分子存在及其行為的證據，讓化學及生物科技受益匪淺。
With little more to show than a rejected doctoral thesis from a few years before, this 26-year-old patent clerk, who practiced physics in his spare time and on the sly at work, declared brashly that the physicists of his day were "out of [their] depth" and went on to prove it. Besides special and general relativity, his work helped to launch quantum mechanics and modern statistical mechanics. Chemistry and biotechnology owe a debt to studies by Einstein that supplied evidence of the existence of molecules and the ways they behave.
讓人訝異的是，這些高見有許多都是出現在1905年這奇蹟的一年中，愛因斯坦所發表的一 系列論文裡。如此豐碩的個人科學成就，史上僅有一例可與之比擬，就是最早被稱為奇蹟年的1665~66年，那時牛頓待在家鄉躲避瘟疫，因而開始他在微積 分、重力論及色彩理論的奠基工作。國際物理學界已經宣佈2005年為世界物理年，以紀念愛因斯坦的百年貢獻。
What is even more amazing is that he purveyed many of these insights through a series of papers that appeared during a single miraculous year, 1905. No other comparably fertile period for individual scientific accomplishment can be found except during 1665 and 1666, the original annus mirabilis, when Isaac Newton, confined to his country home to escape the plague, started to lay the basis for the calculus, his law of gravitation and his theory of colors. The international physics community has set aside 2005 as the World Year of Physics as a tribute to Einstein's centennial.
物理及工程界裡諸多領域的科學家，窮盡整個20世紀來測試、瞭解並應用愛因斯坦的想法。眾所周知，愛因斯坦的質能互換公式（E=mc2）是原子彈原理，以及所有因原子彈而衍生之歷史故事的核心。愛因斯坦對光電效應的解釋，也為光電二極體和電視映像管等技術奠下了基礎（參見36頁〈 天天遇見愛因斯坦〉）。100年後的今天，科技人員仍然在嘗試利用愛因斯坦的理論來開發新事物。
Scientists in many realms of physics and engineering spent the 20th century testing, realizing and applying the ideas falling out of Einstein's work. As everybody knows, Einstein's E = mc2 formula was a key to the atomic bomb—and all the history that sprang from it. Einstein's explanation of the photoelectric effect underpinned technologies ranging from photodiodes to television camera tubes [see "Everyday Einstein," by Philip Yam, on page 50]. A hundred years later technologists are still finding new ways to harvest novel inventions from Einstein's theories.
透過實驗充份探究一項新理論所需的時間長短，可當做衡量一個天才的標準；從這角度來看，愛因斯坦的評價還在往上衝：一個用來檢驗廣義相對論各項預測的探 測器最近才發射。然而，物理學家並不會等到所有答案都出現了才問下一個問題。目前物理學界最熱切的目標，就是超脫於愛因斯坦之外：超越愛因斯坦的想法，並 解開愛因斯坦花了30年直到臨終仍未能解決的難題。
One mark of genius relates to the length of time needed to fully explore, through experimentation, the implications of a new theory. In that sense, Einstein is still going strong. A recently launched space probe will examine various predictions of general relativity. But physicists are not waiting until the answers are all in before asking what comes next. Much of the most exciting work in physics now has the more ambitious aim of going beyond Einstein—of transcending his ideas and achieving a task akin to the one to which he devoted the last 30 years of his life, right to his deathbed, without success.
很明顯的，廣義相對論和粒子物理並無法完整描述物理學，因為粒子物理的本質是量子力學，把 廣義相對論和量子放在一起，就像油和水般不相容。愛因斯坦努力了數十年，卻仍然找不到能夠統合相對論與電磁學的理論架構。他希望找出具確定性的物理學，而 不像量子力學是架構在或然率和非因果性之上，也因為如此，所以他離開了量子力學這個他協助建立的學科。然而，現今一代的科學家對基本作用力的瞭解比愛因斯 坦更全面，而且面對挑戰時也不會對量子力學預設偏見，因此他們正奮力發展自己的統合理論。至於成功的獎勵，對勝出的物理學家來說，就是如同愛因斯坦和牛頓 般英名不朽；對一般人而言，則是得以一窺宇宙的本質和嶄新的技術，雖然這些內容對我們來說，就像黑洞與量子電腦對於百年前的人一樣，是那麼的深奧難懂。
It is clear that general relativity and particle physics form an incomplete description of physics, because the latter is fundamentally quantum-mechanical, and general relativity and the quantum go together like oil and water. Despite decades of effort, Einstein was never able to find a theoretical framework for uniting relativity and electromagnetism. He had hoped to formulate a physics based on certitudes, not the probabilities and acausal realities of quantum mechanics—just the things that had turned him away from a field he helped to found. A current generation of scientists is laboring on their own theories of everything, armed with a much more complete description of fundamental physical forces than Einstein used, while approaching the challenge without a preexisting bias against quantum mechanics. The rewards for succeeding in this endeavor? For the physicist who prevails, they might include immortality of the kind attached to the names Einstein and Newton. For the rest of us, they may provide a glimpse into nature and new technologies as incomprehensible to us now as black holes and quantum computers would have been 100 years ago.
想超越愛因斯坦，就必須瞭解他的所有成就。1905年春天，這位自嘲是「專利局奴役」的年輕人，寫了一封信給朋友哈比希特（Conrad Habicht），說他有一堆不重要的嘮叨要發，意指他將寄出一系列論文。其中他唯一指稱「很有革命性」的一篇，與相對論無關，但卻為他贏得1921年諾 貝爾獎，並於1922年領獎。那就是1905年3月完成的〈一個關於光的產生與轉換的啟發性看法〉，將普朗克（Max Planck）的量子理念加以推廣。所謂普朗克量子說，是指發熱物體的能量具有特定的不連續能階，因此其發射或吸收的能量是不連續的。
To go beyond Einstein, one must first understand the totality of his accomplishments. In the spring of 1905 the young "patent slave," as Einstein called himself, sent a letter to his friend Conrad Habicht to tell him that he had some "inconsequential babble," a reference to a series of papers that he was going to send him. The only one of the bunch he called "very revolutionary" did not deal with relativity, but it did gain him the 1921 Nobel Prize, awarded in 1922. "On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light," completed in March, expropriates and extends Max Planck's idea of quanta—that energy from hot objects can be emitted or absorbed only in certain discrete bundles.
這是 1905年愛因斯坦發表的五篇重要論文之一，他利用量子概念來解釋光電效應，說明帶靜電的金屬被光照射時會釋放電子的原因。他認為光是由粒子（即後來所知的光子）組成，這與當時認為光是波的主流思想大相逕庭。這篇論文發表於1905年6月的《物理年報》，為光的粒子波動二重性鋪下道路，而這二重性正是量子力學的基礎。後來，光電效應也成為許多技術的根基。
In the paper, one of five major offerings during 1905, Einstein applied the concept of quanta to explain the photoelectric effect, how a piece of metal charged with static electricity would discharge electrons when exposed to light. He suggested that the beam of light is made up of particles, later known as photons, thus contradicting the prevailing notion that light was only wavelike. The paper, published in June in Annalen der Physik, paved the way for the acceptance of the dual nature of light as both particle and wave, which became a foundation of quantum mechanics. The photoelectric effect went on to become the basis for various technologies.
那時愛因斯坦還沒有拿到博士學位。瑞士蘇黎士大學退回了他在1901年遞交的博士論文，那 是關於氣體運動理論的尋常研究。愛因斯坦幾乎放棄了他稱為「喜劇」的博士學位計畫，但1905年他決定再試一次。根據他的妹妹馬雅所說，愛因斯坦先遞出他的狹義相對論，但是蘇黎士大學覺得這「有點不可思議」。於是他就挑了4月30日完成的〈決定分子維度的新方法〉，這篇終於在7月被接受。據說這篇論文的靈感，是愛因斯坦在他與好友貝索（Michele Besso）茶敘時得到的，席間愛因斯坦沉思液體黏度與被溶解的糖分子大小的相關性。他詳加思索大量的這類分子後，推導出一個量度擴散速度的數學項，然後從擴散係數和溶液的黏度，就可以導出糖分子的大小。
At that time, Einstein still had not yet received a doctorate. The University of Zurich had rejected a thesis he had submitted in 1901—an unexceptional work on the kinetic theory of gases. Einstein had all but discarded the idea of undergoing what he called the "comedy" of getting his advanced degree. But he decided to try again in 1905. According to his sister, Maja, he first submitted his paper on special relativity, but the university found it a "little uncanny." He then picked "A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions," which he finished on April 30 and which was accepted in July. It was reportedly inspired by a conversation over tea with his best friend, Michele Besso, in which Einstein mused about relating the viscosity of the liquid to the size of the dissolved sugar molecules. By considering a collection of such molecules, Einstein derived a mathematical term that measured the speed of diffusion. It was then possible to elicit the size of the sugar molecules by contemplating the diffusion coefficient and the viscosity of the solution.
A few days after completing this article, Einstein finished a related paper that was also intended to provide a guarantee of "the existence of atoms of definite size"—atoms were a still controversial idea in some circles. "On the Motion of Small Particles Suspended in Liquids at Rest Required by the Molecular-Kinetic Theory of Heat," published in July in Annalen, supplied a prediction of the number and mass of molecules in a given volume of liquid—and how these molecules would flit around. The erratic movements were known as Brownian motion, after the observation by Robert Brown in the early 19th century of the irregular zigs and zags of particles inside pollen grains in water. Einstein suggested that the movements of the water molecules would be so great that they would jostle suspended particles, a dance that could be witnessed under a microscope. This paper, an important contribution to modern statistical mechanics, derived methods that can be used to simulate the behavior of airborne pollutants or the ways in which the stock market fluctuates [see "Atomic Spin-offs for the 21st Century," by W. Wayt Gibbs, on page 56].
他的下一篇論文完成於6月底，標題是〈關於移動中物體的電動力學〉。早在愛因斯坦之前幾百年就有了相對論，伽利略於1632年就說，無論你的移動狀態為 何，只要運行速度保持不變，所有的物理定律就不會改變。例如，在一艘定速航行的船上，一顆從船桅上掉落的石頭，站在甲板上看來會是筆直落下；就如同船是靜 止不動時所發生的一樣。這個相對論適用於17世紀中葉牛頓所提出的力學，但在19世紀末電磁學出現後，卻遭受到嚴厲的挑戰。因為馬克士威（James Clerk Maxwell）的方程式顯示，電磁輻射在空間中以波的方式移動。物理學家假想電磁波是經由以太（ether）這種介質來傳播，就像聲波是透過空氣傳音一 樣。馬克士威論證，相對於以太裡的某靜止參考點，光和其他電磁波在真空中以每秒三億公尺的速度前進。然而，在一個以太的世界裡，相對論卻不適用於光，一旦 你不再靜止不動，光速就不再是每秒三億公尺。但實驗學家卻無法量到那預期的光速差異，光的速度始終維持不變。
The next paper, completed in late June, was entitled "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies." Relativity predated Einstein by hundreds of years. In 1632 Galileo suggested that all physical laws are the same regardless of your state of motion, as long as the velocity at which you cruise along does not change: viewed from the deck of a steadily moving ship, a rock dropped from the mast falls straight down, the same as it would if the ship were at rest. That relativity principle held for the laws of mechanics put forward by Newton in the mid-17th century. But this tidiness was upset in the late 19th century with the emergence of electromagnetism. Because the equations of James Clerk Maxwell showed that electromagnetic radiation moves through space in waves, physicists assumed that it coursed through a medium, the ether, the same way that sound waves do through air. Maxwell demonstrated that light and other electromagnetic waves race along at 300 million meters per second in a vacuum relative to the frame of reference of someone at rest in the ether. In an ether world, however, relativity would not hold for light. As soon as you budge from a state of rest, the speed of light would not measure 300 million meters per second anymore. Experimentalists, however, could never find the expected differences for moving objects. The speed of light always remained the same.
愛因斯坦解決了這項電磁學與其他 物理學不調和的問題。對於這樣一位極具美感的科學家來說，他無法忍受這種相對論可解釋牛頓力學，卻不能解釋電磁學的情形。這篇發表在1905年9月《物理年報》的狹義相對論論文，把相對論應用在電磁學，並建立光速的恆常性，來重申相對論適用於所有的物理學。這篇論文解決了與相對論的衝突，卻製造出另一個有 違直覺常識的新衝突：不論是對一個坐在門前搖椅，或是待在以趨近光速飛馳的太空船裡的人而言，光速都是相同的。
It was this inability to reconcile electromagnetism and the rest of physics that Einstein addressed. A scientist with a deep sense of aesthetics, he could not abide that the relativity principle did not account for electromagnetism as it did for Newtonian mechanics. The 1905 paper on special relativity, published in September of that year, reaffirms the principle for all of physics by applying it to electromagnetism and also establishes that the speed of light is a constant. While resolving the relativity paradox, the paper presented a new one, which strains our commonsense intuition of how things work: the speed of light remains the same whether someone is sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch or zooming along steadily in a futuristic spacecraft approaching light speed.
This constancy for light wreaked havoc with our idea of time and space as unchanging absolutes. Velocity boils down to distance divided by time. For light speed to remain unchanging on its side of the equation, both distance (length) and time had to be altered on the other when an observer in one frame of reference (the rocking chair) is watching someone move in another (astronauts in a spacecraft). Specifically, the man in a rocking chair will perceive time passing more slowly for the astronauts overhead. To him, the spacecraft will also shorten in the direction of motion.
如果坐搖椅的人可以測量飛馳中太空船裡太空人的質量，他會發現太空人的質量比起飛前增加了。在那奇蹟年愛因斯坦提出的第五篇、也是最後一 篇論文，發表在11月的《物理年報》，是他對先前那篇狹義相對論作品的補充，文中他說：「物體的質量是其能量的刻度。」1907年，愛因斯坦將這個概念以 另一種方式描述，而成為有史以來最有名的科學方程式，E=mc2。它也適用於動能，也就是運動的能量。相對於搖椅中的人，當太空船跑得越快，它的動能就越大，質量也越大，於是再加速的難度也增大。當船速已接近光速時，要再增速所需要的能量極為巨大，加速變成太空船越來越大的負擔。這就是超光速飛船至今仍被歸為科幻的原因。
If the rocking-chair man could somehow measure the mass of the astronauts as the spacecraft coursed along, he would also notice that they had gained mass since before its liftoff. The fifth and last paper of Einstein's miraculous year, published in November in Annalen, served as an addendum to his special relativity opus. In it, he stated that the "mass of a body is a measure of its energy content," a concept that Einstein rephrased in 1907 as the most famous scientific equation of all time. E = mc2 also applies to kinetic energy, the energy of motion. The faster the spaceship goes relative to the man in the rocking chair, the greater its kinetic energy and the greater its mass, making it increasingly difficult to accelerate. As the ship approaches the speed of light, the increments of energy needed to go faster are so large that additional acceleration becomes more and more onerous, one reason that a faster-than-light rocket ship remains only within the realm of science fiction.
過了1905年，最精彩的才要到來。廣義相對論發表於1916年，這項智慧成就讓愛因斯坦（或牛頓以外的任何物理學家）先前和之後所有工作都黯然失色（見102頁〈 愛因斯坦vs.牛頓〉）。 數學家龐卡赫若不是拒絕放棄以太這最後的關鍵，幾乎可以贏過愛因斯坦的狹義相對論。狹義相對論調和了牛頓力學與電磁學的不相容之處，但是只適用於等速直線 運動的物體。然而，真實世界中的物體是會改變速度與方向的，因此我們需要一個適用於真實世界的廣義相對論。也就是說，這個理論必須考慮到加速度，包括那無 所不在的重力加速度。牛頓視重力為越過長距離而瞬間起作用的力，愛因斯坦則把它想像為時空的一項內在性質。一顆恆星或是任何重的物體，都會使其周圍的時空 彎曲，而行星就在這彎曲的時空連續體中運行。
After 1905, the best was yet to come. As an intellectual achievement, the general theory of relativity, published in 1916, outshines anything that Einstein (or any physicist except maybe Newton) had done before or since then [see "Einstein and Newton: Genius Compared," by Alan Lightman, on page 108]. Mathematician Henri Poincaré almost beat Einstein to special relativity but refused to take the final but vital step of discarding the ether. The special theory had reconciled disparities in Newtonian mechanics and Maxwellian electromagnetism, but only for bodies in uniform motion, those traveling at constant speeds in straight lines. A general relativity theory was needed for the real world in which bodies change speed and direction—in other words, it would have to take into account the effects of acceleration, including that most universal of accelerations, gravity. Newton saw gravity as a force acting instantaneously over long distances, but Einstein reimagined it as an intrinsic property of space and time. A star or any massive body curves Einstein's space and time around it. Then planets move along the curved pathways in the spacetime continuum.
美國自然史博物館天體物理組主任夏拉（Michael Shara），是不久前愛因斯坦展覽會的負責人，他說：「質量會彎曲時空，以及彎曲的時空會告訴質量如何運動，這樣的觀念真是天才。物理學家終究會從衛星 和波霎的測量中，發現廣義相對論的效應，但那或許是20世紀末的事了。即便那時，愛因斯坦對重力的簡潔幾何描述，或許還沒能被全然仿製。」
"The idea that mass warps spacetime and that warped spacetime tells mass how to move is pure genius," says Michael Shara, chair of the department of astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History and curator of a recent exhibit on Einstein. "Physicists would eventually have discovered general relativistic effects on the basis of satellite and pulsar measurements but probably not until late in the 20th century. Even then, Einstein's elegant geometrical description of gravity might not have been fully replicated."
Soon after his general relativity paper, a 1919 experiment observed the sun's gravitational field deflecting rays of starlight passing through it during a solar eclipse, a prediction of the general theory. The evidence for general relativity made Einstein an instant media star, even though many in the crowds that thronged to see him would be hard-pressed to explain what the scientist had achieved. Apocryphally, Einstein was quoted as saying that only 12 people in the world understood relativity. Even if he really said it, the tiny number is a bit of an exaggeration. A devoted pack of Einstein aficionados emerged immediately. Scientific American even sponsored a contest, drawing hundreds of entrants for a $5,000 prize for the most understandable explanation of relativity. Einstein joked that he was the only one in his circle of friends not to participate. "I don't believe I could do it," he quipped. (See "A Century of Einstein," by Daniel C. Schlenoff, on page 102.)
1916~25年，愛因斯坦為量子論做出了新貢獻，包括最終導致雷射的受激輻射的研究。但當量子力學對次原子粒子世界的描述，竟是擁抱統計機率而不是因 果關係，他便清醒過來。在愛因斯坦生命的後期，直到他1955年去世前，他一直專注於發展一個統一的場論，不僅要闡釋重力場和電磁場是一體的兩面，還要解 釋基本粒子以及電子電荷和光速等常數的存在。
From 1916 to 1925, Einstein made new contributions to quantum theory, including the work on stimulated emission of radiation that eventually resulted in the laser. But he became disenchanted with quantum mechanics as it embraced statistical probabilities instead of causal explanations to delineate what was happening in the world of subatomic particles. For the latter part of his life, until his death in 1955, Einstein concentrated on a unified field theory, which would not only reveal gravitational and electromagnetic fields as two aspects of the same thing but also explain the existence of elementary particles and constants such as the electron's charge or the speed of light.
這些後來證明是徒勞無功。一部份原因是愛因斯坦拒絕量子物理採用的新方向，另一部份原因是一直到 他死後幾年，強核力與弱核力這兩種基本核作用力才得到較充份的理解。佛興（Albrecht Fölsing）在1993年的一篇傳記中這麼說到：「即使是愛因斯坦的忠實崇拜者也不否認，要不是這位當時無可爭議的最偉大科學家，把他最後30年的光 陰（大約從1926年開始）浪費在航行上，物理的進展也不會那麼不順遂。」帆船是愛因斯坦的一項嗜好。其他人比較寬大，認為可能是這位物理學家已經超越了 他的時代。曾擔任愛因斯坦論文解說員的羅森克蘭斯（Ze'es Rosenkranz）評論：「持續追尋統一的理論，是愛因斯坦留給科學界最有意義的遺產。」
These labors proved to be a dead end—in part because Einstein rejected the new turn that quantum physics had taken and in part because two fundamental nuclear forces (the strong and the weak) were not well understood until years after his death. "Even devoted admirers of Einstein would not dispute that the progress of physics would not have suffered unduly if the indisputably greatest scientist among them had spent the final three decades of his life—roughly from 1926 on—sailing," noted Albrecht Fölsing in a 1993 biography, referring to one of Einstein's hobbies. Others are more charitable. The physicist may simply have been ahead of his time: "The ongoing quest for a theory of everything is Einstein's most significant legacy to science," observes Ze'ev Rosenkranz, former curator of the Einstein papers.
這種追尋至今仍是理論物理學界一些頂尖人員的研究主題。物理學家持續糾集複雜的數學，來解釋自然界的所有作用力。他們甚至引用卡魯扎（Theodor Kaluza）及克萊恩（Oskar Klein）的五維宇宙想法，並加以延伸。那個五維宇宙的想法，在愛因斯坦探尋統一場論的過程中，也曾引起他的注意（見66頁〈一統宇宙的弦論〉）。另一方面，持續尋找相對論的衝突，也可能是一條最佳途徑，可提供實驗線索，把量子力學和重力融合成為一個單一理論（見84頁〈 找相對論的碴！〉）。還有，重振愛因斯坦的宇宙常數（一種產生排斥力的能量），對試圖找出暗能量關鍵的宇宙學來說，仍是首要的課題（見58頁〈 宇宙常數，敗部復活〉）。
That search still serves as the main focus of a prominent sector of the theoretical physics community. Physicists continue to marshal sophisticated mathematics to explain all the forces of nature. They have even picked up on the labors of Theodor Kaluza and Oskar Klein, extending the two men's thinking about a five-dimensional universe, a proposal that intrigued Einstein in his own search for a unified theory [see "The String Theory Landscape," by Raphael Bousso and Joseph Polchinski, on page 78]. Separately, the ongoing search for violations of relativity may provide one of the best routes to experimental hints about how to meld quantum mechanics and gravity into a single seamless theory [see "The Search for Relativity Violations," by Alan Kostelecký, on page 92]. And the revival of Einstein's cosmological constant, a form of energy that creates a repulsive force, remains at the forefront of the cosmology that is trying to find the keys to "dark energy" [see "A Cosmic Conundrum," by Lawrence M. Krauss and Michael S. Turner, on page 70].
如果說愛因斯坦對統一場論的追求是早熟的，那麼他晚年則成功利用他的名望來推銷他所關切的事務。他無法理解為什麼全世界的人這麼著迷於相對論，它敘述的 是物理世界，並且與文化相對論者對時空的主觀心理觀點無關。他評論道：「相對論的概念和問題都與實際生活距離這麼遙遠，我從來不瞭解為什麼它會在廣泛人群 間引起這麼久的熱烈迴響。」
If his search for a unified theory was premature, Einstein experienced more success in later life by using his fame to advocate causes about which he felt passionately. He had difficulty understanding why the rest of the world was so fascinated by relativity. It described the physical world and had nothing to do with subjective psychological viewpoints of time and space purveyed by cultural relativists. "I never understood," he commented, "why the theory of relativity with its concepts and problems so far removed from practical life should for so long have met with a lively, or indeed passionate, resonance among broad circles of the public."
他的名聲確實讓他暢談和平主義、世界政府，以及反對納粹發展原子彈計畫的必要性。引領他從結合了牛頓力學與馬克士 威電磁學的相對論，到一個統一場論的這種渴望，也同樣注入到他的生活之中。美國哈佛大學著名的愛因斯坦學者霍頓（Gerald Holton）表示：「愛因斯坦的政治理念、社交活動，乃至日常生活也都和他的科學一樣，處在一種強制的統一之中。」
His renown, though, did let him speak out on pacifism, world government, and the need to counter the Nazis' efforts to develop a nuclear bomb. The same longing that took him from the theory of relativity—a joining of Newtonian mechanics and Maxwellian electromagnetism—to an all-encompassing field theory carried over into the rest of his life. "As in his science, Einstein also lived under the compulsion to unify—in his politics, in his social ideals, even in his everyday behavior," acknowledges Gerald Holton, a preeminent Einstein scholar at Harvard University.
假如愛因斯坦突然從扭曲 的時空跑到現世，他可能根本不會對全世界都在慶祝奇蹟年感到驚喜。對想法比對媒體有興趣的他，可能會從耶路撒冷、蘇黎士、柏林或普林斯頓的物理年慶祝活動，轉而徵詢廣義相對論預測之重力波的最新探測結果；然後再向科學家探詢美國航太總署重力探測B人造衛星的成果。該衛星可提供座標拖曳的證據，而座標拖曳 是相對論的一項預測，指的是一個旋轉的重物（例如地球）會拉扯其週遭的時空。
If Einstein were suddenly to return through some magical post-mortem warping of time and space, he might be less than wowed by the worldwide celebrations of his Year of Miracles. More interested in ideas than the media circuit, he might well divert from commemorative Year of Physics ceremonies in Jerusalem, Zurich, Berlin or Princeton to consult about the latest efforts to detect the gravity waves postulated by general relativity. And he might then go on to palaver with scientists about results from NASA's Gravity Probe B, which may provide evidence for frame dragging, the relativistic prediction that a rotating massive body, such as Earth, lugs space and time with it.
愛因斯坦一定會好奇，他捨棄已久的宇宙常數居然敗部復活，被用來解釋宇宙的加速膨脹。他也可能會對超弦、膜、M理論和環圈量子重力等，這些試圖合併量子力學與廣義相對論中重力概念的理論感到驚奇。無疑地，他會對超越他 的物理進展感到高興，因為這種進展是由他分享給大家、引發一種貫穿次原子到全宇宙之世界觀的慾望所驅動。
Certainly he would be intrigued by the revival of his long-discarded cosmological constant as a means of helping to explain why the expansion of the universe is accelerating. He might express fascination at a distance for work on super-strings, branes, M-theory and loop quantum gravity, all attempts to merge quantum mechanics with the gravity packaged in his general relativity. He would undoubtedly be pleased to see that physics is pushing beyond his mark, impelled by the desire he shared to elicit a coherent worldview that explains things starting at the level of subatom and working up to an integral cosmos.
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