新奇事件簿 僵尸可在100天内消灭人类（在线收听）

Everyone knows that zombies only exist in horror movies. Or do they? A new article in the University of Leicester's 'Journal of Physics Special Topics' predicts that zombies would kill almost everyone on Earth in just 100 days. Students predicted there would only be 273 survivors after three months of a zombie apocalypse. The students were not, of course, using real zombies found in fiction. Instead, they pretended that a deadly virus had infected someone and then spread around the world. They decided that one person with the virus would have a 90 per cent chance of infecting another person every day. They calculated that at that rate, the human population would fall to just 273 people by day 100.

大家都知道，僵尸只存在于恐怖电影中。僵尸真的存在吗？莱斯特大学《物理学特别话题期刊》上一篇新的文章预测，僵尸可以在100天的时间内把地球上所有人消灭殆尽。学生们预测，僵尸进行三个月的毁灭行动后，地球上可能只有273名幸存者。当然，学生们使用的并不是科幻小说中真正的僵尸。他们假设一种致命病毒感染了某个人，然后在世界上迅速传播。他们假设，感染了这种病毒的人每天感染另外一人的几率为90%。按照这个比率，他们计算出，100天之后，全世界人口总数将下降到273人。

A professor at the university, Mervin Roy, explained why students did research into a zombie apocalypse, even though zombies do not exist. He said: "Every year we ask students to write short papers for the Journal of Physics Special Topics. It lets the students show off their creative side and apply some of the physics they know to the weird, the wonderful, or the everyday." He also said it gives students valuable practice in writing and reviewing academic papers. He added that the annual research tested the ability of students to apply their understanding of physics to hypothetical scenarios (imaginary situations). This could help in the future to prepare us for real-life disasters.

这所大学一位教授Mervin Roy解释了为何学生们研究僵尸毁灭地球的问题，尽管僵尸并不存在。他说：“每年我们都要求学生为《物理学特别话题期刊》写一篇简短的论文。要求学生们展示出有创意的一面，使用他们知道的物理学知识来解释一些怪异的，精彩的或者日常的话题。”他还表示，这让学生有了书写和审查学术论文的珍贵的体验。他补充说，这种一年一度的调查研究检验了学生们应用对物理学知识的理解来假设情景的能力。这可以帮助我们应对未来真实生活中的灾难。