万物简史 第63期:事物的测定(21)

Not everyone was satisfied with the results, however.The shortcoming of the Schiehallion experimentwas that it was not possible to get a truly accuratefigure without knowing the actual density of themountain. For convenience, Hutton had assumedthat the mountain had the same density as ordinarystone, about 2.5 times that of water, but this waslittle more than an educated guess.

然而，不是人人都对结果感到很满意。斯希哈林山实验的不足之处在于，你不知道该山的真正密度，因此不可能得出一个真正确切的数字。为了方便起见，赫顿假设这座山的密度与普通石头相等，即大约是水的密度的2.5倍，但这不过是根据经验所作的估计。

One improbable seeming person who turned his mind to the matter was a country parsonnamed John Michell, who resided in the lonely Yorkshire village of Thornhill. Despite his remoteand comparatively humble situation, Michell was one of the great scientific thinkers of theeighteenth century and much esteemed for it.

有一个人把注意力转向这个问题。他是个乡下牧师，名叫约翰·米歇尔，家住约克郡人迹稀少的桑希尔村。尽管环境偏僻而简陋，米歇尔却是18世纪一位伟大的科学思想家，深受人们的尊敬。

Among a great deal else, he perceived the wavelike nature of earthquakes, conducted muchoriginal research into magnetism and gravity, and, quite extraordinarily, envisioned thepossibility of black holes two hundred years before anyone else—a leap of intuitive deductionthat not even Newton could make. When the German-born musician William Herschel decidedhis real interest in life was astronomy, it was Michell to whom he turned for instruction inmaking telescopes, a kindness for which planetary science has been in his debt ever since.

尤其是，他认识到地震的波动性质，对磁场和引力进行了大量创造性的研究，比任何人都早200年设想过黑洞的存在，这是相当了不起的--连牛顿都跨不出这么一大步。当德国出生的音乐家威廉·赫歇尔认为自己生活中的真正兴趣是天文学的时候，他就是向米歇尔讨教了天文望远镜的制作方法。自那以来，行星科学界一直对他怀有感激之情。