Directions: Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese. Your translation should be written neatly on the ANSWER SHEET. (10 points)
Will teleportation become a reality in time for General Relativity’s 100th birthday?
THE YEAR 2015 is the 100th anniversary of the publication of Albert Einstein’s first papers on relativity. (46)
This revolutionary theory of physics changed our view of the Universe and opened up many possibilities, such as the use of atomic energy, which had never been dreamed of before.
Teleportation is one dream that’s yet to be achieved. In science fiction, teleportation means disintegrating an object in one place while a perfect replica appears somewhere else. The transporter of Star Trek is probably the best-known example. Ironically, a limited kind of teleportation has been achieved through relativity’s “rival” of quantum theory. (47)
As reported in Focus 272, quantum teleportation involves transferring information on a quantum system—that is, a small a simple system such as a single photon—from one place to another. Such experiments may lead to advances in communications and computing: we may even see a “quantum internet”.
(48)
But these experiments have yet to be scaled up to a system as large as a molecule, let alone Captain Kirk. Besides, Star Trek transporters don’t seem to work on quantum effects. In one Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, Data explains that transporter work by converting someone into an energy beam, then back to their original pattern. Einstein’s relativity did prove that energy and mass are equivalent. But in The Physics of Star Trek (1995), physicist Lawrence Krauss shows that to beam a human might require 10,000 times the current power output of Earth.
Teleportation is a stubborn dream. Stories of matter transmitters go back to Edward Page Mitchell’s 1877 novel The Man Without A Body, with roots in myths like the “seven-league boots” of European folklore. If we ever could build a teleporter, what would we do with it?
Larry Niven’s 1973 novel Flash Crowd showed a 2015 transformed since “displacement booths” were introduced back in 1990. (49)
As you no longer needed to live close by your place of work, cities and suburbs dissolved, while property values soared and crashed. The title relates to a kind of permanent floating riot that is drawn to disturbances.
In the Doctor who serial The Seeds of Death (1969), an UN-run global teleportation called Travel-mat (T-mat) is the world’s sole means of transportation. (50)
The network is creaking because of human frailty and mistakes, even before disaster strikes in the form of an invasion of Ice Warriors from Mars. When T-mat is shut down, within hours “a total breakdown of social order (is) predicted”. This story is a metaphor for the dangers of over-reliance on a single technological system.
