The Color Of The Universe
宇宙的颜色
When we look up into the night sky it seems black, but scientists have observed something different. In this Moment of Science we discuss the color of the universe.
当我们仰望夜空的时候，它看上去似乎是漆黑一片，但是科学家们却观测到了一些不同之处。本期的科学一刻，我们来探讨一下宇宙的颜色。
Colors
颜色
Recently, scientists have concluded that the color of the universe is beige. That’s right, scientists from Johns Hopkins gathered detailed data measuring light from over two hundred thousand galaxies, some of which are up to several billion light years away from earth. They processed this data and broke the light down into different optical wavelengths– much like how a prism breaks white light into various colors.
最近，科学家们推断宇宙是米黄色的。没错，来自约翰·霍普斯金的科学家们搜集详细数据测量了从20多万个星系发出的光线，这其中有些星系远离地球达数十亿光年。他们对这些数据进行处理，并将这些光分解成不同的波长，就像棱镜将白光分解成其他各种颜色的光一样。
The scientists used a computer program to analyze the results obtained with a modern prism. Then they replaced each wavelength with the color the human eye sees at that wavelength to construct what they called a “cosmic spectrum” to represent all that energy. Finally, they varied the intensity of each color on the spectrum in proportion to that wavelength’s intensity in the universe.
科学家们用电脑程序来分析这些通过这个现代棱镜得到的结果。然后，他们在每个波长里用人类肉眼能看到的颜色来代替这个波长，从而构成了一个他们所谓的“宇宙光普”，并用它来代表所有的能量。最后，他们改变宇宙光谱中每种颜色的强度，使之与宇宙中的波长的强度成比例。
So, It’s Beige?
所以，宇宙是米黄色的？
And after all that, they concluded that the average wavelength is most similar to a nondescript beige. However, researchers initially did think the color of the universe was closer to a turquoise, but then it turned out that the computer program they were using calculated the colors incorrectly.
在此之后，他们推断出平均波长最接近普通米黄色光的波长。然而，研究人员最初认为宇宙更接近蓝绿色，但随后的事实证明，他们用电脑程序计算出来的宇宙颜色并非蓝绿色。 |