Lesson one: New challenges require new ways of thinking

1.面對(duì)新挑戰(zhàn)，要有新思路

Part car, part jet fighter, part spaceship, Bloodhound SSC aims to be the first land vehicle to break the 1,000mph barrier. One of the key challenges has been to design the wheels. How do you create the fastest wheels in history, make them stable and reliable at supersonic speeds, and with limited resources?

部分汽車、部分噴氣式飛機(jī)、部分宇宙飛船，獵犬號(hào)超級(jí)汽車的目標(biāo)是做世界上第一輛時(shí)速突破1000英里的汽車。而這面臨的一項(xiàng)關(guān)鍵挑戰(zhàn)是車輪的設(shè)計(jì)。如果換做是你，你會(huì)如何在有限的資源下發(fā)明出超音速汽車上用的輪子呢?

After much deliberation, and devising ideas that pushed the boundaries of material technology, Mark Chapman, chief engineer of the Bloodhound project said the team decided to take a step back and change the way they were trying to solve problems. “There’s very little we’ve actually developed that’s new,” he says, “what’s unique is how we apply technologies.”

獵犬號(hào)項(xiàng)目的總工程師馬克·查普曼思來想去，覺得材料還是不夠好。最后他和他的團(tuán)隊(duì)決定退回一步、換個(gè)角度看有沒有別的辦法?！拔覀儗?shí)際創(chuàng)新的東西并不多”，馬克說：“我們的獨(dú)特之處在于應(yīng)用技術(shù)的方式別具一格?！?/p>

They adopted an approach called the design of experiments – a mathematical technique of problem solving through doing lots of little experiments and then looking at the statistics all glued together. “All of a sudden, where we’d been knocking our head against the wall for maybe two, three, four months, we came up with a wheel design that would hold together and was strong enough,” he says.

他們采用實(shí)驗(yàn)設(shè)計(jì)的方法做了很多的小實(shí)驗(yàn)，綜合所得的數(shù)據(jù)再得出精確設(shè)計(jì)。“花了三四個(gè)月絞盡腦汁做盡各種實(shí)驗(yàn)之后，很突然地我們做出了一個(gè)大膽的設(shè)計(jì)：把各種可用的(飛機(jī)、飛船所用的)技術(shù)都融合在一輛車上，從而使它足夠強(qiáng)大?！瘪R克說。

Lesson two: Let evidence shape your opinion

2.觀點(diǎn)要用證據(jù)來證明

Like his peers, geophysicist Steven Jacobsen from Northwestern University believed that water on Earth originated from comets. But by studying rocks, which allow scientists to peer back in time, he discovered water hidden inside ringwoodite, which lies in the Earth’s mantle, and which suggests that the oceans gradually made its way out of the planet’s interior many centuries ago.

美國西北大學(xué)地球物理學(xué)家史蒂文·雅各布森曾認(rèn)為，地球上的水源于彗星。但通過對(duì)巖石的研究，他發(fā)現(xiàn)地幔的林伍德石里面也藏有水，這一發(fā)現(xiàn)表明或許在N個(gè)世紀(jì)之前，海洋是從地球內(nèi)部自己慢慢溢出來的。

“I had a pretty hard time convincing others,” he admits. Yet two key pieces of evidence uncovered this year seem to support his point of view. Time will tell whether the new theories are true, and there may be further twists to the tale. “But thinking about the fact that you may be the first person to see something for the first time doesn’t happen very often,” he says. “When it does it’s thrilling.”

“那時(shí)候我難說服別的學(xué)者相信這個(gè)。”史蒂文說。但是今年新發(fā)現(xiàn)的兩個(gè)關(guān)鍵證據(jù)似乎支持了他的理論。所以，一個(gè)新理論的正確與否可能需要時(shí)間來慢慢印證，在被世人接受前可能會(huì)經(jīng)歷很多曲折?！暗侨绻惆l(fā)現(xiàn)你是第一個(gè)發(fā)現(xiàn)這個(gè)規(guī)律的人，且時(shí)間又證明你是對(duì)的之后，你會(huì)倍受鼓舞的。”史蒂文說。

　Lesson three: It really is 99% perspiration

　3.天才的99%確實(shí)是汗水

Sheila Nirenberg at Cornell University is trying to develop a new prosthetic device for treating blindness. Key to this was cracking the code that transmits information from the eye to the brain. “Once I realised this, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep – all I wanted to do was work,” says Nirenberg.

康奈爾大學(xué)希拉·尼倫伯格正在研究治療失明的新型假體，其中解除眼睛與大腦的信息交流密碼是最關(guān)鍵的?！拔乙庾R(shí)到這一點(diǎn)之后，就吃不下飯、睡不著覺，只想全身心投入工作?！蹦醾惒裾f。

“Sometimes I’m exhausted and I get burnt out,” she adds. “But then I get an email from somebody in crisis or somebody who’s getting macular degeneration, and they can’t see their own children’s faces, and it is like, ‘How can I possibly complain?’ It gives me the energy to just go back and keep doing it.”

“每次覺得筋疲力盡、江郎才盡的時(shí)候，我都會(huì)收到一些到正處于危險(xiǎn)狀態(tài)馬上要失明的、或是患有黃斑部退化癥的病人的郵件，這些人將沒辦法看清自己孩子的長相、無法看這五顏六色的世界。每當(dāng)這個(gè)時(shí)候，我就跟自己說‘我怎么能夠抱怨呢’，然后就又動(dòng)力十足的繼續(xù)工作。”

Lesson four: The answer isn’t always what you expect

　4.結(jié)果并不總是和預(yù)想的一樣

Sylvia Earle has spent decades trying to see the ocean with new eyes. Her “dream machine” is a submarine that could take scientists all the way to the bottom of the deepest ocean floor. What sort of material could best withstand the types of pressure you would encounter thousands of miles below the ocean surface? “It could be steel, it could be titanium, it could be some sort of ceramic, or some kind of aluminium system,” says Earle. “But glass is the ultimate material.” By her estimates, a glass sphere about four-to-six inches (10-15cm) thick should be able safely explore the ocean depths she dreams of exploring.

西爾維亞·厄爾花了幾十年的時(shí)間試圖讓人們用新的方式親近海底，她的“夢想號(hào)”潛艇可以讓科學(xué)家潛入到最深的海底。那種材料才能夠承受住深海的巨大壓力呢?厄爾說：“我想過用鋼、鈦、陶瓷等，但最終發(fā)現(xiàn)其實(shí)玻璃才是終極王者。”根據(jù)她的預(yù)計(jì)，一塊10-15厘米厚的玻璃板就能讓她進(jìn)入夢寐以求的那片深海世界。

Glass is the oldest material known to man and one of the least understood, says Tony Lawson, Earle’s engineering director at Deep Ocean and Exploration Research Marine. “It has a higgledy-piggledy molecular structure a bit like a liquid, rather than the ordered lattices often found in other solids. As a result, when glass is evenly squeezed from all sides – as it would be under the ocean – the molecules cram closer together and form a tighter structure.

厄爾的項(xiàng)目技術(shù)總監(jiān)稱，雖然玻璃是人類已知的最古老材料，但是我們對(duì)它的了解卻甚少?！安ＡУ姆肿咏Y(jié)構(gòu)有點(diǎn)像是液體，排列方式?jīng)]有一般固體的有規(guī)律。因此，當(dāng)玻璃被海洋里的壓力從四面八方壓迫時(shí)，它的分子會(huì)被壓在一起，形成更緊密的結(jié)構(gòu)?！?/p>

Lesson five: A little luck goes a long way

　5.偶爾的一點(diǎn)好運(yùn)也可以維持很久

It was hailed as one of the biggest success stories in the history of space exploration – 20 years of planning ended earlier this year with the Philae lander rendezvousing with Comet 67P over 300 million miles (480 million kilometres) away from Earth.

菲萊探測器被譽(yù)為太空探索史上最大跨越之一，歷經(jīng)20年的策劃期終于在年初發(fā)射并成功在離地球四億八千萬公里的67P彗星上著陸。

The biggest challenge, says Stephan Ulamec, manager of the Philae lander programme, was how to design a probe to land on a body whose makeup they had little knowledge about. “We had no idea of the size, we had no idea of the day-night cycle, which influences the thermal design, we had no idea of the gravity, so how fast would the lander impact, we had no idea how the surface looked,” he says.

據(jù)菲萊項(xiàng)目的負(fù)責(zé)人斯蒂芬介紹，在這20年里遇到的最大挑戰(zhàn)是對(duì)彗星構(gòu)造了解較少，不知道該如何設(shè)計(jì)這個(gè)探測器?！拔覀儾恢厘缧堑臅円寡h(huán)情況會(huì)影響保熱設(shè)計(jì)，不知道彗星的重力也無法預(yù)測探測器著陸后對(duì)轉(zhuǎn)速的影響，甚至不清楚彗星表面的樣子?！?/p>

They needed to create design parameters that could cope with an extremely wide range of possible comet structures – but banked on the comet being a relatively even potato shape with enough flat surfaces for the probe to land on. Even then, not everything went to plan, and two decades of meticulous planning could have failed within minutes at touchdown. Philae's anchoring harpoons didn't fire as planned, and it bounced off the comet before settling onto its icy surface and successfully beaming data back to its relieved creators.

科學(xué)家們需要建立盡可能符合多種彗星結(jié)構(gòu)的設(shè)計(jì)參數(shù)，但是還是得寄希望于彗星的表面要夠平坦?？杉幢闶腔?0年設(shè)計(jì)、縝密計(jì)劃過的菲萊還是在著陸的幾分鐘里有點(diǎn)小失敗：“魚叉”系統(tǒng)未如計(jì)劃打開，無法準(zhǔn)確釘入彗星表面。不過幸運(yùn)的是，菲萊還是成功地把數(shù)據(jù)發(fā)回了地球。

Lesson six: Genius is indefinable

　6.“天才”定義不明

“It’s a funny word: the word ‘genius’,” says Nirenberg. “I just sort of ignore it and just go on with life. You just do what you do independent of whatever label’s attached to you. I don’t know really how else to explain it.”

“天才這個(gè)詞很有趣”，尼倫伯格說，“我常常忽略這個(gè)標(biāo)簽繼續(xù)走自己的路。只需要拋掉別人在你身上貼的各種標(biāo)簽做自己想做到的事就好了。因?yàn)樗^天才真是判斷標(biāo)準(zhǔn)不一、無法解釋的事情。”