Frank Wilczek

弗兰克·维尔切克是麻省理工学院物理学教授、量子色动力学的奠基人之一。因在夸克粒子理论（强作用）方面所取得的成就，他在2004年获得了诺贝尔物理学奖。

作者 | Frank Wilczek

翻译 | 梁丁当、无尘衣

配音 | 李娜（蔻享学术）

物理学家的一周

当太阳在斯德哥尔摩升起-不到凌晨四点-我开始上网搜寻音乐视频。我这是在为英国广播公司 (BBC) 的“独有的激情”(Private Passions) 节目做准备。作为嘉宾和受访者，我需要为节目挑选半小时的音乐，主要是倾向古典风格的音乐。四小时后，我还没挑好。我太享受这个过程了：只是不停地搜索，而不进行挑选。走路去校园时，我还在哼着这些曲子。

As the sun rises over Stockholm- a bit before 4 a.m.- I surf the Internet to check out music videos. I'm preparing to appear on the BBC radio show "Private Passions" as a guest DJ, and they' ve asked me to choose half an hour of music, mostly classicalish. Four hours later, I'm not done. I'm having too much fun: exploring, not selecting. I walk to campus humming.

一个来自北京的优秀学者告诉我一个神奇的发现（我们都在访问北欧理论物理研究所，这个研究所是斯堪的纳维亚献给物理界的礼物）。他找到了一个方法，可以让量子计算机搜遍一长串数据几乎和搜遍一串短数据一样快。这似乎好得令人难以置信。量子计算机还没造出来；即使造出来了，人们也并不完全清楚量子计算机的好处在哪里。

A brilliant visitor from Beijing shows me a fantastic discovery. (We are both guests of the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics, a gift from Scandinavia to the physics world.) He has found a method, using quantum computers, to search through long lists almost as quickly as short ones. It seems too good to be true. Quantum computers use some of the weirdest, most delicate aspects of quantum behavior to compute in new ways. Such computers don’t really exist yet, and it isn’t entirely clear what they’ll be good for when they do.

如果成立，他的算法将是计算机算法里的点金石，让很多以前完全无法解决的难题迎刃而解。他令人信服地回答着我的问题，但就差那么一点，证明里有一个漏洞。

His algorithm would be the Philosopher’s Stone of computing, changing many intractable problems into easy ones. He answers all my questions convincingly—almost. There’s a crucial gap in the proof.

我跟妻子贝蒂 • 德望 (Betsy Devine) 说了音乐视频的事。她给了一个很好的建议：挑选那些你“表演”过的音乐。只有在妻子的眼里，我才“表演”过这些音乐。其实，我只是偶尔当着几个人的面唱过Queen 的摇滚，Gilbert 和 Sullivan 的歌剧 , Iris DeMent 的民谣；我也弹奏过一些钢琴曲；在无人看见时我还和着贝多芬的曲子跳过舞。当然忘不了门德尔松的“婚礼进行曲”，我和贝蒂的婚礼用曲。

I take my music problem to my wife, Betsy Devine. She suggests picking things I’ve performed. By stretching the definition of “perform,” I work in some Queen, Gilbert and Sullivan, and Iris DeMent—things I’ve sung in small revues—as well as some piano pieces I play and some Beethoven I’ve danced to when no one is looking. Also, Mendelssohn’s "Wedding March," to which we wedding marched.

我白天大部分时间都在思考如何扩展人的知觉。这个问题最近一直萦绕在我的脑海。正常人眼的视觉能力其实非常弱。卑微的螳螂虾有一打或更多的颜色受体；人类只有三个。诗人William Blake 和歌手Jim Morrison 都说过要打开“知觉之门”。我正在尝试各种方法和器件去实现它，基本思路是利用变动的色感来体现和存储我们丢弃的信息。看起来非常有希望，很快会有结论的。

I spend most of the day on my recent obsession: expanding perception. Even normal human color vision is impoverished. The eye of the humble mantis shrimp has a dozen or more distinct color receptors; ours have only three. I’ve been developing tricks and devices to open “the doors of perception,” as William Blake (or Jim Morrison) would say, using dynamic textures to encode and restore discarded information. They look promising. We’ll see.

我思考的另外一个问题可以被看作某种神秘的知觉。大约30年前，我预言了一种奇怪而美妙的粒子，它叫任意子(anyons)。只有在量子的世界里才能找到它们。材料的缺陷，稍不小心的操作都会毁掉它的所有踪迹。关于它的理论似乎越来越完美，但实验上还是没找到它的踪迹。真是令人头痛。

This alternates with research into more esoteric kinds of perception. About 30 years ago, I predicted the existence of weird, wonderful particles called anyons. Their manifestations lie deep within the quantum world. Imperfect materials or clumsy manipulations destroy all signs of them. The underlying ideas look better than ever, but the particles remain unseen. It is galling.

我们需要新的实验，我不懈地思索着新的方案。我失败的方案也不是一无是处，它们有很多有益的“副产品”：方案里的某些方法可能帮助我们建造量子计算机。

We’ll need new experiments to settle the issue, so I keep at it. My failures are getting more interesting, and they’ll have useful spinoffs: Tricks to help us nail anyons might help us to build quantum computers.

在走回旅馆的路上，我的思绪回到了那个量子算法的漏洞上。我看到了一个补救办法。带着这个想法，我睡着了。醒来时，我试着在纸上写下来仔细推敲。漏洞补上了。但似乎还是好得令人难以置信。我把这个想法告诉了那个优秀的学者，他高兴地飞回了北京。

As I’m walking back to our hotel, my mind wanders back to the gap in the algorithm. I see a possible fix. I sleep on it. When I wake up, I write out proper equations. They work. It still seems too good to be true, but I explain the fix to my brilliant visitor. He flies back to China a happy man.

晚餐时，我和贝蒂来到了处于繁华的奥斯特莫穆区的一个泰国饭馆。味道非常不错，但餐馆的环境和气氛更有意思：馆内按照圣诞树的方式挂满了数不清的小彩灯。它们按照固定但有趣的节奏闪烁着。彩灯让屋里充满了紫外光，让含磷的装饰、菜单和食客的白色衣服发出一种奇异的光泽。

Betsy and I have dinner at a Thai restaurant in the prosperous Östermalm district. The food is excellent, but the real fun is the atmosphere: Myriad little colored bulbs are strung Christmas tree style through the interior. They flash in interesting patterns, and we' re bathed in ultraviolet light, lending an eerie glow to phosphorescent decorations, menus and customers' white clothes.

这些炫彩而跳动的灯光是我眼睛的音乐。如果白天我看过很多跳动的画面，我晚上就会做梦，梦中的灯光和这非常相似。突然，所有的彩灯都变暗了，雷声和暴雨包围了我们。幸好这只是模拟，但感觉非常真实。

All this is music to my eyes. After playing with dynamic images all day, I’ve often dreamed about them at night, and the dreams look like this. Suddenly, all the lights go dim. Thunder and the sound of torrential rain surrounds us. It is a simulated thunderstorm, uncannily real.

我聪明的朋友从中国给我发来电子邮件。他在我补救他漏洞的方法里发现了一个漏洞。我们再次臣服于特雷曼 (Treiman) 定理：不可能的事通常不会发生。

My brilliant friend emails me from China. He has discovered a gap in my fix to his gap. We have run into Treiman’s theorem: Impossible things usually don’t happen.

周五的晚上，我们一群物理学家来到了欧培拉酒馆(Café Opera)。帅哥美女经常来这里欢庆聚会。我们跳了几个小时的舞。舞步有些笨拙，但充满了欢乐，至少没人试图把我们轰走。（完）

On Friday night, a bunch of us physicists go to the Café Opera, where the beautiful people party. We dance for hours with joy, if not skill. Nobody throws us out. (end)

声明：该文章曾于2016年—2017年间以专栏形式发表于《赛先生》公众号，后经作者授权发布于蔻享学术平台。

关于“墨子沙龙”

墨子沙龙是由中国科学技术大学上海研究院主办、上海市浦东新区科学技术协会及中国科大新创校友基金会协办的公益性大型科普论坛。沙龙的科普对象为对科学有浓厚兴趣、热爱科普的普通民众，力图打造具有中学生学力便可以了解当下全球最尖端科学资讯的科普讲坛。