Well, indeed, I'm very, very lucky. My talk essentially got written by three historic events that happened within days of each other in the last two months -- seemingly unrelated, but as you will see, actually all having to do with the story I want to tell you today. The first one was actually a funeral -- to be more precise, a reburial. On May 22nd, there was a hero's reburial in Frombork, Poland of the 16th-century astronomer who actually changed the world. He did that, literally, by replacing the Earth with the Sun in the center of the Solar System, and then with this simple-looking act, he actually launched a scientific and technological revolution, which many call the Copernican Revolution. Now that was, ironically, and very befittingly, the way we found his grave. As it was the custom of the time, Copernicus was actually simply buried in an unmarked grave, together with 14 others in that cathedral. DNA analysis, one of the hallmarks of the scientific revolution of the last 400 years that he started, was the way we found which set of bones actually belonged to the person who read all those astronomical books which were filled with leftover hair that was Copernicus' hair -- obviously not many other people bothered to read these books later on. That match was unambiguous. The DNA matched, and we know that this was indeed Nicolaus Copernicus.
我很幸運,因為 我的演講稿是由 過去兩個月中,連續發生的三件 和歷史相關的新聞事件 所串連而成 看起來沒關連 但是接下來你們會明白 它們其實全都和我今天所要講的故事有關 第一個事件是一個喪禮 精確一點的說,是「重埋」 5月22號 在波蘭的弗龍堡 有位16世紀天文學英雄,獲得重埋 他,曾因為確立了 太陽系的「日心說」 取代「地心說」 改變了世界 簡單的一個觀點改變 引發了科技革命 你可以稱之為 哥白尼革命 那革命 和後來怎樣找到哥白尼本人的墳墓 非常有關 按哥白尼時代的風俗 他和其他14個人 無名無姓的 一同合葬在 天主教堂地窖墳墓中 而DNA比對,正是 他所發動的這場400年革命 所留下最偉大的 劃時代特徵印記之一 最終也成為,幫我們找到 他本人骸骨的關鍵 從他讀過的天文學書籍中 所遺留的頭髮 比對過DNA後 我們在一堆骸骨中確認哪些屬哥白尼所有 而不可能是其他人 畢竟在他之後,舊的天文學書也無人再看 鑑定結果,很明確是吻合 DNA比對 使我們確實知道 哪些骨頭是屬於尼古拉哥白尼本人所有
Now, the connection between biology and DNA and life is very tantalizing when you talk about Copernicus because, even back then, his followers very quickly made the logical step to ask: if the Earth is just a planet, then what about planets around other stars? What about the idea of the plurality of the worlds, about life on other planets? In fact, I'm borrowing here from one of those very popular books of the time. And at the time, people actually answered that question positively: "Yes." But there was no evidence. And here begins 400 years of frustration, of unfulfilled dreams -- the dreams of Galileo, Giordano Bruno, many others -- which never led to the answer of those very basic questions which humanity has asked all the time. "What is life? What is the origin of life? Are we alone?" And that especially happened in the last 10 years, at the end of the 20th century, when the beautiful developments due to molecular biology, understanding the code of life, DNA, all of that seemed to actually put us, not closer, but further apart from answering those basic questions.
不過,生物學和DNA 及生命之間有關連性 並且 和哥白尼有所相關是怎麼回事呢? 我們知道,即便是在哥白尼時代 他的跟隨者也已經知道 下一步邏輯推論必然是 「如果,地球只是繞行太陽的行星 那麼其他繞行其他恆星的行星在哪裡呢?」 「世界」這個概念,從此成為複數而非單數嗎? 還有,在其他那些星球上的生命是什麼樣的呢? 我在這裡所借用的當時看法 都參考自哥白尼時相當受歡迎的一本書 當時的人們 對於這個問題的答案 肯定的回答了:「是」 但沒有任何證據 接下來的400年 人類仍因苦無證據而深感挫折 這伽利略、布魯諾和其他人 空有偉大的理想 卻對人類最基本的問題 無從回答 人類向來不停的追問 生命是什麼?生命從何而來? 人類是唯一而孤單的嗎? 尤其來到20世紀末 的最後10年 分子生物學 有了璀璨的發現 使我們了解生命的密碼、DNA 所有這些發現非但 未能使人類更靠近答案 反而更進一步將我們推離 距離這些基本答案越來越遠
Now, the good news. A lot has happened in the last few years, and let's start with the planets. Let's start with the old Copernican question: Are there earths around other stars? And as we already heard, there is a way in which we are trying, and now able, to answer that question. It's a new telescope. Our team, befittingly I think, named it after one of those dreamers of the Copernican time, Johannes Kepler, and that telescope's sole purpose is to go out, find the planets that orbit other stars in our galaxy, and tell us how often do planets like our own Earth happen to be out there. The telescope is actually built similarly to the, well-known to you, Hubble Space Telescope, except it does have an additional lens -- a wide-field lens, as you would call it as a photographer. And if, in the next couple of months, you walk out in the early evening and look straight up and place you palm like this, you will actually be looking at the field of the sky where this telescope is searching for planets day and night, without any interruption, for the next four years.
然後,好消息開始 集中在去年當中相繼出現 我們從行星開始講起 從哥白尼所問的問題 是否有行星繞行其他恆星? 我們都知道 有一種方式 正在嘗試 回答這個問題 一架新的望遠鏡 我們恰如其分的 依一位哥白尼時代的夢想家 為它命名 (約翰尼斯)「開普勒望遠鏡」 這座望遠鏡的唯一目的就是 出發,去尋找 銀河系中繞行 除太陽以外其他恆星的行星 並捎回信息告訴我們說 銀河系裡,還有多少類似地球的行星 這座望遠鏡 和知名的 哈柏太空望遠鏡很類似 但它捨棄了哈柏其中一個 寬視角鏡頭 (或稱為照相機) 接下來幾個月 入夜後你可走到戶外 抬頭仰望向天 並將你的手掌像這樣舉起 那塊天空正是 這座望遠鏡 未來四年將日以繼夜的 不停的搜索的區域
The way we do that, actually, is with a method, which we call the transit method. It's actually mini-eclipses that occur when a planet passes in front of its star. Not all of the planets will be fortuitously oriented for us to be able do that, but if you have a million stars, you'll find enough planets. And as you see on this animation, what Kepler is going to detect is just the dimming of the light from the star. We are not going to see the image of the star and the planet as this. All the stars for Kepler are just points of light. But we learn a lot from that: not only that there is a planet there, but we also learn its size. How much of the light is being dimmed depends on how big the planet is. We learn about its orbit, the period of its orbit and so on. So, what have we learned? Well, let me try to walk you through what we actually see and so you understand the news that I'm here to tell you today.
我們所使用的方式是 「凌日法」 是迷你級的日蝕現象 發生在行星飛越過恆星面前時 不見得所有行星都允許我們有 如此純屬偶然的機會可以觀察到此現象 但如果觀測1百萬顆恆星 以此方式應該也能偵測到不少行星 雖然在此你可以看到恆星和行星的清晰影像 但開普勒要偵測的只是 來自恆星的光由亮轉暗的現象 我們並不是要看看到恆星和行星的清晰影像 所有恆星對開普勒而言都僅只是光點而已 但從光點的資料使我們能明白很多 不僅只是那裏有一顆行星而已,還有尺寸大小 光變暗的程度高低 取決於行星是大還小 也能得知它的軌道 軌道的週期如何等等 所以結論是 我接下來解釋我們的研究方法 然後你會明白 我最後要分享的新聞 那是今天的重點
What Kepler does is discover a lot of candidates, which we then follow up and find as planets, confirm as planets. It basically tells us this is the distribution of planets in size. There are small planets, there are bigger planets, there are big planets, okay. So we count many, many such planets, and they have different sizes. We do that in our solar system. In fact, even back during the ancients, the Solar System in that sense would look on a diagram like this. There will be the smaller planets, and there will be the big planets, even back to the time of Epicurus and then of course Copernicus and his followers. Up until recently, that was the Solar System -- four Earth-like planets with small radius, smaller than about two times the size of the Earth -- and that was of course Mercury, Venus, Mars, and of course the Earth, and then the two big, giant planets. Then the Copernican Revolution brought in telescopes, and of course three more planets were discovered. Now the total planet number in our solar system was nine. The small planets dominated, and there was a certain harmony to that, which actually Copernicus was very happy to note, and Kepler was one of the big proponents of. So now we have Pluto to join the numbers of small planets. But up until, literally, 15 years ago, that was all we knew about planets. And that's what the frustration was. The Copernican dream was unfulfilled.
開普勒望遠鏡所做的事情就是 發現許多行星「候選人」的資料 追蹤看看它們到底是不是 行星 基本上他告訴我們 行星大小的分佈情形如何 行星有大也有小 我們可以數一數各種行星 大小不同 我們先是針對太陽系做這件事情 事實上在古代 太陽系的行星數量圖 看起來會像是這樣 即便是在伊比鳩魯時代 人們就已知行星是有小,有大的 或哥白尼時期的人 當然也知道 稍後有了有太陽系概念 共有4個類似地球的行星 半徑較小,小於地球兩倍以下的就算小 這包括了水星 金星,火星 以及地球本身 以及兩顆巨型行星 哥白尼帶來 望遠鏡革命 然後又有兩三個行星被發現 當時太陽系行星數量 是9個 大多數以小行星為主 哥白尼很開心的注意到 大小比例之間有某種合諧性 開普勒望遠鏡是這個假設的大力支持者 當時冥王星仍被歸為小行星一類 但直到15年前 我們對行星的知識僅止於此 哥白尼的夢想 仍然沒能實現
Finally, 15 years ago, the technology came to the point where we could discover a planet around another star, and we actually did pretty well. In the next 15 years, almost 500 planets were discovered orbiting other stars, with different methods. Unfortunately, as you can see, there was a very different picture. There was of course an explanation for it: We only see the big planets, so that's why most of those planets are really in the category of "like Jupiter." But you see, we haven't gone very far. We were still back where Copernicus was. We didn't have any evidence whether planets like the Earth are out there. And we do care about planets like the Earth because by now we understood that life as a chemical system really needs a smaller planet with water and with rocks and with a lot of complex chemistry to originate, to emerge, to survive. And we didn't have the evidence for that.
15年前,我們的技術 終於達到一個程度 能夠發現一個行星圍繞另一顆恆星 一切進行的相當不錯 15年來,透過各種不同方法發現 一共將近500個行星 這些行星環繞其他恆星 不過,從這邊你會發現到 這個景象和我們所期待的非常不同 我們只看到大的行星 這現象背後,當然有可解釋的原因 但,總之,大部分我們觀測到的行星 都歸在類木星這一類 無論如何其實我們仍在原地踏步 離哥白尼時期已經400年,進展卻不多 我們仍然沒有證據可以顯示 像地球一樣的行星確實存在 這件事對我們很重要,因為 現在我們所明白的是,生命 有如一個化學體系般 它需要比較小的行星 有水有土壤岩石 以及一些相當複雜的化學 然後生命得以起源,出現,生存 但我們獨缺證據
So today, I'm here to actually give you a first glimpse of what the new telescope, Kepler, has been able to tell us in the last few weeks, and, lo and behold, we are back to the harmony and to fulfilling the dreams of Copernicus. You can see here, the small planets dominate the picture. The planets which are marked "like Earth," [are] definitely more than any other planets that we see. And now for the first time, we can say that. There is a lot more work we need to do with this. Most of these are candidates. In the next few years we will confirm them. But the statistical result is loud and clear. And the statistical result is that planets like our own Earth are out there. Our own Milky Way Galaxy is rich in this kind of planets.
今天我在這裡要向各位說明的就是 最新的開普勒望遠鏡 在過去幾週當中的新發現 非常令人驚訝的,你將看到 我們回到了哥白尼所夢想的 大小行星,呈現 均勻分佈狀態 小行星佔多數 標示為「類地球」的行星 比其他任何一類 的行星都多 這是第一次我們可肯定的說 關於這些結果還有很多後續工作要做 這些大部分只是符合初步條件的候選人 還需要幾年才能確認結果 但統計結果 會大聲而很清楚的說話 統計數字說明 類似地球的行星 有滿多的 我們銀河系就有很多
So the question is: what do we do next? Well, first of all, we can study them now that we know where they are. And we can find those that we would call habitable, meaning that they have similar conditions to the conditions that we experience here on Earth and where a lot of complex chemistry can happen. So, we can even put a number to how many of those planets now do we expect our own Milky Way Galaxy harbors. And the number, as you might expect, is pretty staggering. It's about 100 million such planets. That's great news. Why? Because with our own little telescope, just in the next two years, we'll be able to identify at least 60 of them. So that's great because then we can go and study them -- remotely, of course -- with all the techniques that we already have tested in the past five years. We can find what they're made of, would their atmospheres have water, carbon dioxide, methane. We know and expect that we'll see that.
問題是:下一步又如何? 第一步我們先研究 已知它們所在的位置 得知它是否符合可居住的條件 也就是,它的條件 和我們在地球上生活 所體驗的條件相類似? 因為一些複雜的化學在特定條件下才可以發生 我們可以推測 這樣的行星 在銀河系裡有多少 而這個答案是 您或許已經猜的出來 是頗為驚人的: 大約有一億顆! 這是大好的消息,不是嗎? 運用這樣小小的望遠鏡 短短兩年的觀測 就發現了60個初步符合條件的行星 這當然是好消息 因為我們會繼續 當然是,用遠距的方式 用一些現有的技術 在過去五年中已經測試過的 可以了解它的組成成分 大氣層有無水份,二氧化碳,甲烷 經由了解然後,期待能看見
That's great, but that is not the whole news. That's not why I'm here. Why I'm here is to tell you that the next step is really the exciting part. The one that this step is enabling us to do is coming next. And here comes biology -- biology, with its basic question, which still stands unanswered, which is essentially: "If there is life on other planets, do we expect it to be like life on Earth?" And let me immediately tell you here, when I say life, I don't mean "dolce vita," good life, human life. I really mean life on Earth, past and present, from microbes to us humans, in its rich molecular diversity, the way we now understand life on Earth as being a set of molecules and chemical reactions -- and we call that, collectively, biochemistry, life as a chemical process, as a chemical phenomenon.
這聽起來很棒,但他還不算是全部 這還不是今天所要講的重點 今天要談的是我們的下一步 是真正令人振奮的好消息 這下一步 能帶領我們預備好迎接更後面將來的 那就是生物 在生物學領域,還有基本問題 仍然未獲解答 而那就是 「如果其他星球上是有生命的話 我們是否認為它會和地球生物一樣?」 我想先表達一件事 這裡所說「生命」,並非 等同於「快樂生活著」這種人類的生命 我所指的生命是: 過去,現在和未來在地球上 從微生物到人類 具有豐富的分子多樣性 以我們現在所明白的在地球上的生命形式 有著成組的分子和彼此化學反應 我們統稱為,生物化學 生命是一個化學過程 是一個化學上的現象
So the question is: is that chemical phenomenon universal, or is it something which depends on the planet? Is it like gravity, which is the same everywhere in the universe, or there would be all kinds of different biochemistries wherever we find them? We need to know what we are looking for when we try to do that. And that's a very basic question, which we don't know the answer to, but which we can try -- and we are trying -- to answer in the lab. We don't need to go to space to answer that question. And so, that's what we are trying to do. And that's what many people now are trying to do. And a lot of the good news comes from that part of the bridge that we are trying to build as well.
所以問題是 這樣的化學現象是否具有普及全宇宙皆準的一致性? 抑或是 它將因個別星球而異? 它會像重力原理一樣 在宇宙中任何一處都適用? 還是宇宙間充滿形形色色,大異其趣的許多生物化學 各隨其所在環境而變異? 在我們嘗試新探索以前 必須先知道我們想要找的是什麼 那是非常基礎,而我們不知道其答案為何的問題 但可以嘗試 可以先在實驗室裡嘗試 不需要在太空中嘗試 有些問題是可以先取得答案的 那就是我們所在做的試驗 也是許多人正在努力嘗試的 這像是一座通往某處的橋樑 在一邊造橋的過程,我們已經聽見有些好消息傳來
So this is one example that I want to show you here. When we think of what is necessary for the phenomenon that we call life, we think of compartmentalization, keeping the molecules which are important for life in a membrane, isolated from the rest of the environment, but yet, in an environment in which they actually could originate together. And in one of our labs, Jack Szostak's labs, it was a series of experiments in the last four years that showed that the environments -- which are very common on planets, on certain types of planets like the Earth, where you have some liquid water and some clays -- you actually end up with naturally available molecules which spontaneously form bubbles. But those bubbles have membranes very similar to the membrane of every cell of every living thing on Earth looks like, like this. And they really help molecules, like nucleic acids, like RNA and DNA, stay inside, develop, change, divide and do some of the processes that we call life.
這裡有一個例子 我想和各位分享 我們一向以為 要起始生命這種奇妙的現象 分室作用是必須的 它會把對生命而言,有重要性的分子 個別包裹在膜裡面 使它與週遭環境隔絕開來 但我們發現,在一個環境中 這些分子事實上可以一起共同產生 這是由我們的一個實驗室 傑克史塔克實驗室 過去四年 進行一系列的實驗中所得到的發現 有些和地球環境 條件相類似的行星 在那裡 有些水,和土壤 然後 很自然的有些分子出現 自發性的形成了泡沫 這些泡沫所具有的膜 和每一個地球生物所具有的 細胞的膜是非常類似 像這樣 這對於分子形成 對核酸,核糖核酸和DNA 在其中發展 變化,分裂 以及進行一些我們稱為生命的過程都很有幫助
Now this is just an example to tell you the pathway in which we are trying to answer that bigger question about the universality of the phenomenon. And in a sense, you can think of that work that people are starting to do now around the world as building a bridge, building a bridge from two sides of the river. On one hand, on the left bank of the river, are the people like me who study those planets and try to define the environments. We don't want to go blind because there's too many possibilities, and there is not too much lab, and there is not enough human time to actually to do all the experiments. So that's what we are building from the left side of the river. From the right bank of the river are the experiments in the lab that I just showed you, where we actually tried that, and it feeds back and forth, and we hope to meet in the middle one day.
這是其中一個例子 用來說明我們前進所採取途徑 是我們用來宏觀回答 生命現象具有什麼普遍原則的途徑之一 某種程度上,你可以將目前 世界各地人們為此所進行的這些相關工作 比喻成搭建一座橋樑 彼此各從河的兩岸搭一座橋 一方,在左岸 有些研究行星的人,如我 試著定義生命合適的環境為何 可能性太多,我們不能盲目以赴 實驗室的資源 人力時間 都不允許我們一一完成所有實驗 這就是左岸的工作人員在努力嘗試的部份 從右岸 有我剛剛展現給各位看的那種實驗正在進行 我們可以試圖看這樣來回互通有無 希望有一天能在中間點相會
So why should you care about that? Why am I trying to sell you a half-built bridge? Am I that charming? Well, there are many reasons, and you heard some of them in the short talk today. This understanding of chemistry actually can help us with our daily lives. But there is something more profound here, something deeper. And that deeper, underlying point is that science is in the process of redefining life as we know it. And that is going to change our worldview in a profound way -- not in a dissimilar way as 400 years ago, Copernicus' act did, by changing the way we view space and time. Now it's about something else, but it's equally profound. And half the time, what's happened is it's related this kind of sense of insignificance to humankind, to the Earth in a bigger space. And the more we learn, the more that was reinforced. You've all learned that in school -- how small the Earth is compared to the immense universe. And the bigger the telescope, the bigger that universe becomes. And look at this image of the tiny, blue dot. This pixel is the Earth. It is the Earth as we know it. It is seen from, in this case, from outside the orbit of Saturn. But it's really tiny. We know that. Let's think of life as that entire planet because, in a sense, it is. The biosphere is the size of the Earth. Life on Earth is the size of the Earth. And let's compare it to the rest of the world in spatial terms. What if that Copernican insignificance was actually all wrong? Would that make us more responsible for what is happening today? Let's actually try that.
但是,請問你為什麼要聽我 對你兜售一個才建了一半 一半都還不到的橋? 靠我的帥氣魅力嗎? 原因有很多 今天的短講中 有一部分原因你已經聽過了 對化學的更多了解 事實上不僅在日常生活上 能幫助我們 它其實是有更豐富 更深層的意義 這更深層的基本論點是在於: 科學 就是將已知的生命定義 重新定義的一個過程 這將極大的改變我們的 世界觀 與400年前的世界觀 真正有所不同 哥白尼的革命 改變了我們 看待時間和空間的觀點 現在這個新革命,重點雖不同 但意涵很豐富是無庸置疑的 一半 是關於 人類的 渺小 小地球和大宇宙 無可比擬的微不足道 所知越多 渺小感越發強烈 學校老師都敎過我們 和無垠的宇宙相比 地球有多麼渺小 而望遠鏡越大 宇宙就更大 你看這顆小藍點的影像 這一粒畫素就是地球 就是我們所熟悉認識的地球 這張圖是由土星軌道以外的拍攝點 看見的地球 真的很渺小 這是我們所清楚知道的 且若我們把生命當作是這整顆星球 因為就某種意義而言,它確實就是如此 地球多大,生物圈就是多大 並且地球上的生命 大小不超過地球本身 倘若我們將它和世界相比較 與「宇宙規模」的世界相比 如果像這樣的,哥白尼所引領 我們去感受到的渺小感 竟然其實全是錯誤的話,會如何呢? 是否,我們對於今天 會更負責一點? 如果會的話,我們何不嘗試看看?
So in space, the Earth is very small. Can you imagine how small it is? Let me try it. Okay, let's say this is the size of the observable universe, with all the galaxies, with all the stars, okay, from here to here. Do you know what the size of life in this necktie will be? It will be the size of a single, small atom. It is unimaginably small. We can't imagine it. I mean look, you can see the necktie, but you can't even imagine seeing the size of a little, small atom. But that's not the whole story, you see. The universe and life are both in space and time. If that was the age of the universe, then this is the age of life on Earth. Think about those oldest living things on Earth, but in a cosmic proportion. This is not insignificant. This is very significant. So life might be insignificant in size, but it is not insignificant in time. Life and the universe compare to each other like a child and a parent, parent and offspring.
看到在太空中,地球真的很小 能想像的到嗎? 我來試試看 這是 我們觀測到的 宇宙的大小長度 包括所有星系 所有恆星 從這裡到這裡 你知道生命的體積長度 在這條領帶上佔多少比例嗎? 它將會是 單一一顆原子的大小 無法想像的微小 幾乎無法想像的程度 你看的見整條領帶 但你怎能想像看的見 其中一顆原子呢? 但故事的全貌不止如此 宇宙和生命 同樣存在於空間,以及「時間」中 如果宇宙的時間 長度像這樣 這是地球的生命 你可以想像地球上最古老的生命 有著遍及全宇宙的蹤跡 這就不再渺小了 這是非常有意義且重要 從大小來看,生命或許渺小微不足道 而從時間來看,意義卻大不相同 生命和宇宙 像一個孩子和父母親相比 父母和他所生的後代
So what does this tell us? This tells us that that insignificance paradigm that we somehow got to learn from the Copernican principle, it's all wrong. There is immense, powerful potential in life in this universe -- especially now that we know that places like the Earth are common. And that potential, that powerful potential, is also our potential, of you and me. And if we are to be stewards of our planet Earth and its biosphere, we'd better understand the cosmic significance and do something about it. And the good news is we can actually, indeed do it. And let's do it. Let's start this new revolution at the tail end of the old one, with synthetic biology being the way to transform both our environment and our future. And let's hope that we can build this bridge together and meet in the middle.
這對我們有什麼意義? 它的意義是 從哥白尼時代開始灌輸我們 這種「渺小感」的示範演譯 這樣的既有模型 其實,全是錯誤的! 宇宙中的生命不僅是大有潛能 並且沒有止盡,強而有力 尤其是現在我們已能肯定 宇宙中,還有許多環境和地球類似的星球 因而,在那些地方,生命的潛在可能 是大有可為的存在著可能性 這些全都是你的,和我的未來無限可能 如果我們要當 地球的管理者 在地球的生物圈中扮演好管理者的角色 我們最好明白 如此廣及全宇宙的重大意義 並且急起努力直追 而好消息正是,這是我們能夠做的 我們真的能夠做得到 所以,我們出發吧 讓我們展開另一個革命 此刻正是舊的革命將近尾聲 而合成生物學又即將 開始轉化我們的 環境和 未來的此刻 我們可以滿懷期待 我們會將兩岸的橋搭起,並且期待彼此相連
Thank you very much.
謝謝大家
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