万物简史 第221期:把铅撵出去(10)（在线收听） |
But there were many technical difficulties to overcome. Holmes also needed—or at least would very much have appreciated—sophisticated gadgetry of a sort that could make very fine measurements from tiny samples, and as we have seen it was all he could do to get a simple adding machine. So it was quite an achievement when in 1946 he was able to announce with some confidence that the Earth was at least three billion years old and possibly rather more. Unfortunately, he now met yet another formidable impediment to acceptance: the conservativeness of his fellow scientists. Although happy to praise his methodology, many maintained that he had found not the age of the Earth but merely the age of the materials from which the Earth had been formed. 但是，有许多技术上的困难需要克服。霍姆斯还需要──至少会很高兴拥有──一种能对细小样品进行精密测量的先进仪器，而我们已经知道，他所能得到的不过是一台简单的加法机。因此，他竟然能在1946年较有把握地宣布，地球至少已经存在30亿年，很可能还要长。这是一项相当了不起的成就。不幸的是，他又一次遇到了巨大的障碍：他的科学界同行们非常保守，对他的成就拒不承认。许多人尽管乐意赞赏他的方法，却认为他得出的不是地球的年龄，而只是组成地球的材料的年龄。
铅的危害
It was just at this time that Harrison Brown of the University of Chicago developed a new method for counting lead isotopes in igneous rocks (which is to say those that were created through heating, as opposed to the laying down of sediments). Realizing that the work would be exceedingly tedious, he assigned it to young Clair Patterson as his dissertation project. Famously he promised Patterson that determining the age of the Earth with his new method would be "duck soup." In fact, it would take years.
就在这个时候，芝加哥大学的哈里森·布朗发明了一种统计火成岩（即通过加热形成的岩石，而不是通过沉积形成的岩石）里铅同位素的新方法。他意识到这项工作相当乏味，便把它交给了年轻的克莱尔·彼得森，作为他的论文项目。他向彼得森保证，以他的新方法来测定地球的年龄会“易如反掌”。实际上，这项工作花了几年时间。
Patterson began work on the project in 1948. Compared with Thomas Midgley's colorful contributions to the march of progress, Patterson's discovery of the age of the Earth feels more than a touch anticlimactic.
1948年，彼得森着手从事这个项目。与托马斯·米奇利丰富多彩、不断推动历史前进的贡献相比，彼得森测定地球年龄的工作有点儿平平庸庸的味道。 |
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