So I want to talk a little bit about seeing the world from a totally unique point of view, and this world I'm going to talk about is the micro world. I've found, after doing this for many, many years, that there's a magical world behind reality. And that can be seen directly through a microscope, and I'm going to show you some of this today.
那麼,我想稍微談一談 從獨一無二的角度來看世界 而我所要談的世界是指「顯微世界」 我在這行做了很多很多年之後,發現 事物本體背後還有一個神奇的世界 而那個世界可以透過顯微鏡直接看到 今天我就要展示一些給大家看
So let's start off looking at something rather not-so-small, something that we can see with our naked eye, and that's a bee. So when you look at this bee, it's about this size here, it's about a centimeter. But to really see the details of the bee, and really appreciate what it is, you have to look a little bit closer. So that's just the eye of the bee with a microscope, and now all of a sudden you can see that the bee has thousands of individual eyes called ommatidia, and they actually have sensory hairs in their eyes so they know when they're right up close to something, because they can't see in stereo.
那麼我們從一些不是那麼小的東西開始看吧 一些我們可以用肉眼看到的東西 這是一隻蜜蜂。你看到的這隻蜜蜂 大概這麼大,大概是一公分吧 但是要能真確看到蜜蜂的細節,要能真的 欣賞到牠的樣子,你得更近一點看 這就是以顯微鏡看到的蜜蜂眼睛 突然間你可以看到這隻蜜蜂擁有 成千上萬的小眼睛,稱作复眼 他們的眼睛上的確長了感覺髮細胞 所以他們會知道他們接近了物體 因為他們看東西沒有立體感
As we go smaller, here is a human hair. A human hair is about the smallest thing that the eye can see. It's about a tenth of a millimeter.
現在我們來看更小的物體,這是人的毛髮 人的毛髮大概是肉眼所能見的最小物體 大約是十分之一公釐
And as we go smaller again, about ten times smaller than that, is a cell. So you could fit 10 human cells across the diameter of a human hair.
我們再看更小的 比毛髮再小約十倍的東西,就是細胞 所以你把十個人體細胞橫排 就是一根頭髮的直徑大小
So when we would look at cells, this is how I really got involved in biology and science is by looking at living cells in the microscope. When I first saw living cells in a microscope, I was absolutely enthralled and amazed at what they looked like. So if you look at the cell like that from the immune system, they're actually moving all over the place. This cell is looking for foreign objects, bacteria, things that it can find. And it's looking around, and when it finds something, and recognizes it being foreign, it will actually engulf it and eat it. So if you look right there, it finds that little bacterium, and it engulfs it and eats it. If you take some heart cells from an animal, and put it in a dish, they'll just sit there and beat. That's their job. Every cell has a mission in life, and these cells, the mission is to move blood around our body. These next cells are nerve cells, and right now, as we see and understand what we're looking at, our brains and our nerve cells are actually doing this right now. They're not just static. They're moving around making new connections, and that's what happens when we learn.
所以當我們看細胞,這也是我如何 跨入生物學界及科學界,就是 以顯微鏡看活細胞 當我第一次以顯微鏡看活細胞 我完全被吸引住,訝異於它們的樣子 如果你看像這樣來自免疫系統的細胞 它們其實是到處移動的 這個細胞正在尋找外來物體 譬如細菌這些它能找到的東西 它四處尋找,當它找到什麼 並且辨識它為外來物體 這細胞就把它吞沒,吃掉 所以如果你看那裡,它找到了那個小細菌 就把它吞沒,吃掉了 如果你拿一些動物的心臟細胞 放在盤子上,它們就會在那裡跳動 這是它們的工作。每個細胞都有自己的使命, 而這些細胞,它們的使命就是 在我們的身體裡輸送血液。 接下來看的是神經細胞,而就是現在 就在我們看著某樣東西並試著理解時 我們的腦部及神經細胞就在做這件事 就是現在。它們並非靜止不動。它們會移動 產生新的連結,這就是我們學習時會發生的事
As you go farther down this scale here, that's a micron, or a micrometer, and we go all the way down to here to a nanometer and an angstrom. Now, an angstrom is the size of the diameter of a hydrogen atom. That's how small that is. And microscopes that we have today can actually see individual atoms. So these are some pictures of individual atoms. Each bump here is an individual atom. This is a ring of cobalt atoms.
隨著看的東西愈來愈小 那是一微米,即百萬分之一公尺,再繼續 往下看到一奈米 再到一埃米(angstrom)。那麼,一埃米 就是氫原子的直徑大小 一埃米就是這麼小 現今的顯微鏡已經可以看到 原子。所以這就是 原子的圖片。每個小突起皆為一個原子 這是鈷原子環
So this whole world, the nano world, this area in here is called the nano world, and the nano world, the whole micro world that we see, there's a nano world that is wrapped up within that, and the whole -- and that is the world of molecules and atoms.
所以這整個世界,這奈米世界,這個領域 叫奈米世界,這個奈米世界 我們所看到的整個顯微世界 是包含了奈米世界在裡面的 而整個 -- 但那是分子及原子世界
But I want to talk about this larger world, the world of the micro world.
我想談的是大一點的世界 就是顯微世界這個領域
So if you were a little tiny bug living in a flower, what would that flower look like, if the flower was this big? It wouldn't look or feel like anything that we see when we look at a flower. So if you look at this flower here, and you're a little bug, if you're on that surface of that flower, that's what the terrain would look like. The petal of that flower looks like that, so the ant is kind of crawling over these objects, and if you look a little bit closer at this stigma and the stamen here, this is the style of that flower, and you notice that it's got these little -- these are like little jelly-like things that are what are called spurs. These are nectar spurs. So this little ant that's crawling here, it's like it's in a little Willy Wonka land. It's like a little Disneyland for them. It's not like what we see. These are little bits of individual grain of pollen there and there, and here is a -- what you see as one little yellow dot of pollen, when you look in a microscope, it's actually made of thousands of little grains of pollen. So this, for example, when you see bees flying around these little plants, and they're collecting pollen, those pollen grains that they're collecting, they pack into their legs and they take it back to the hive, and that's what makes the beehive, the wax in the beehive. And they're also collecting nectar, and that's what makes the honey that we eat.
所以如果你是隻住在花朵裡的小蟲 如果這朵花是這麼大,這花看起來會是什麼樣子? 它絕不會是我們看一朵花時 所看到或感覺到的樣子。所以如果你看這朵花 而你是隻小蟲,如果你處在那朵花的表面上 這就是你的地面的樣子 那朵花的花瓣看起來會像那樣,所以這螞蟻 會好像爬過這些物體,而如果你 再近一點看這裡的柱頭及雄蕊 這是那朵花的花柱,那你會注意到 那裡有一些小小的 -- 像小小的果凍一樣的東西 這些被稱做花距。這些是儲存花蜜的花距 所以這隻在這裡爬的小螞蟻,就好像 在小小的歡樂糖果屋裡一樣 對牠們而言這就好像小迪斯奈樂園 完全不像我們所看見的 這些是單顆花粉粒 那裡和那裡,這是個 -- 你看到的一顆顆小黃點花粉 當你用顯微鏡看的時候,它其實是由 上千顆的小花粉粒組成 所以舉個例子,這個,當你看到蜜蜂在這些植物 四周飛來飛去採集花粉 牠們會把採集來的花粉粒 堆在腳上,帶回蜂巢 這些就是蜂巢的組成份 蜂巢的蜂蠟。蜜蜂也採蜜 那就是我們吃的蜂蜜
Here's a close-up picture, or this is actually a regular picture of a water hyacinth, and if you had really, really good vision, with your naked eye, you'd see it about that well. There's the stamen and the pistil. But look what the stamen and the pistil look like in a microscope. That's the stamen. So that's thousands of little grains of pollen there, and there's the pistil there, and these are the little things called trichomes. And that's what makes the flower give a fragrance, and plants actually communicate with one another through their fragrances.
這是布袋蓮的特寫圖,或者應該說這才是 布袋蓮真正的圖像。如果你的視力非常好 那麼你用肉眼應該也可以清楚看到這些 這是雄蕊及雌蕊。但請看清楚在顯微鏡下 雄蕊及雌蕊的樣子。這是雄蕊 所以那是成千上萬的小花粉粒 而這是雌蕊,這些小東西 叫毛茸。這就是花有 味道的原因,而植物的確以香味 來彼此溝通
I want to talk about something really ordinary, just ordinary sand. I became interested in sand about 10 years ago, when I first saw sand from Maui, and in fact, this is a little bit of sand from Maui. So sand is about a tenth of a millimeter in size. Each sand grain is about a tenth of a millimeter in size. But when you look closer at this, look at what's there. It's really quite amazing. You have microshells there. You have things like coral. You have fragments of other shells. You have olivine. You have bits of a volcano. There's a little bit of a volcano there. You have tube worms. An amazing array of incredible things exist in sand. And the reason that is, is because in a place like this island, a lot of the sand is made of biological material because the reefs provide a place where all these microscopic animals or macroscopic animals grow, and when they die, their shells and their teeth and their bones break up and they make grains of sand, things like coral and so forth. So here's, for example, a picture of sand from Maui. This is from Lahaina, and when we're walking along a beach, we're actually walking along millions of years of biological and geological history. We don't realize it, but it's actually a record of that entire ecology. So here we see, for example, a sponge spicule, two bits of coral here, that's a sea urchin spine. Really some amazing stuff.
我想談談再普通不過的東西 就是普通的沙子 約十年前我對沙產生興趣 那時我第一次看到夏威夷毛伊島(Maui)的沙 事實上,這就是來自毛伊島的小沙粒 所以沙的大小約十分之一公釐 每顆沙粒的尺寸都大約是十分之一公釐 但當你更近一點看,看看這裡有什麼 實在令人嘆為觀止。你有這些微小的貝殻 你有像珊瑚一樣的東西 也有其它貝殻的碎片。還有橄欖石 你也有火山碎片。那裡有一些小小的 火山碎片。還有一些管狀蠕蟲 在沙裡存在著不可思議的東西,令人讚嘆的陣容 原因是因為像這種島的地方 有很多沙子源自生物成分 因為珊瑚礁提供了這些顯微動物 或肉眼可見的動物生長的地方 而當這些動物死亡時,他們的殼、牙齒 及骨頭會分解成為沙粒 譬如像珊瑚等等的東西都會 所以這裡舉個例子,這張圖是從毛伊來的沙 這是從拉海納(Lahaina)來的 當我們沿著海灘行走時,我們其實是 走了一趟數百萬年的生物及地質歷史 我們並沒有意識到這件事,但這真的是 整本生態學的記錄 所以這裡舉個例,我們看見一條海綿的骨針 這是兩小片珊瑚碎片 這是海膽的硬棘刺。真的很令人讚嘆的東西
So when I first looked at this, I was -- I thought, gee, this is like a little treasure trove here. I couldn't believe it, and I'd go around dissecting the little bits out and making photographs of them. Here's what most of the sand in our world looks like. These are quartz crystals and feldspar, so most sand in the world on the mainland is made of quartz crystal and feldspar. It's the erosion of granite rock. So mountains are built up, and they erode away by water and rain and ice and so forth, and they become grains of sand. There's some sand that's really much more colorful. These are sand from near the Great Lakes, and you can see that it's filled with minerals like pink garnet and green epidote, all kinds of amazing stuff, and if you look at different sands from different places, every single beach, every single place you look at sand, it's different. Here's from Big Sur, like they're little jewels. There are places in Africa where they do the mining of jewels, and you go to the sand where the rivers have the sand go down to the ocean, and it's like literally looking at tiny jewels through the microscope. So every grain of sand is unique. Every beach is different. Every single grain is different. There are no two grains of sand alike in the world. Every grain of sand is coming somewhere and going somewhere. They're like a snapshot in time.
所以當我第一次看到這個,我簡直 -- 我想, 天啊!這簡直就是個小的藏寶窟。 我簡直不敢相信!我四處尋找剖析 這些小粒子並且照相 這些就是我們看到的沙的樣子 這些是石英及長石 所以全球大陸絕大多數的沙子 都是由石英及長石所組成,因為花崗岩受到侵蝕 所以山脈形成後被水或雨或冰等等 風化侵蝕 這些山就變成沙粒 這是一些色彩更繽紛的沙子 這些沙是從五大湖區邊上來的 你可以看到它充滿礦物 像是粉紅色的石榴石和綠簾石,各種令人驚奇的東西 而且如果你觀看從不同的地方來的沙子 你去看從每一個海灘、每一個地方來的沙 都不一樣。這些是從北加州大索爾(Big Sur)來的,好像小珠寶 在非洲有些地方是開採 貴重寶石的。如果你去那邊河裡看那些 被沖到海裡的沙,你的確可以 從顯微鏡下看到那些小小的珠寶 所以每顆沙粒都是獨特的,每個海灘都不一樣 每一顆沙粒都不同,這世界沒有 一模一樣的兩顆沙 每一粒沙都有來處,也都有終點 他們就像時間的剪影
Now sand is not only on Earth, but sand is ubiquitous throughout the universe. In fact, outer space is filled with sand, and that sand comes together to make our planets and the Moon. And you can see those in micrometeorites. This is some micrometeorites that the Army gave me, and they get these out of the drinking wells in the South Pole. And they're quite amazing-looking, and these are the tiny constituents that make up the world that we live in -- the planets and the Moon.
那麼沙不僅僅存在於地球,沙還在 這宇宙裡無所不在。事實上外太空 充滿了沙,而這些沙子組合成 我們的行星及月亮 你可以從微隕石中發現這點 這些是美國陸軍給我的微隕石 他們從南極的一些飲水井裡挖出這些 他們看起來還挺好看的,而這些就是 組成我們所住的世界的小小成份 -- 這些行星及月亮
So NASA wanted me to take some pictures of Moon sand, so they sent me sand from all the different landings of the Apollo missions that happened 40 years ago. And I started taking pictures with my three-dimensional microscopes. This was the first picture I took. It was kind of amazing. I thought it looked kind of a little bit like the Moon, which is sort of interesting. Now, the way my microscopes work is, normally in a microscope you can see very little at one time, so what you have to do is you have to refocus the microscope, keep taking pictures, and then I have a computer program that puts all those pictures together into one picture so you can see actually what it looks like, and I do that in 3D. So there, you can see, is a left-eye view. There's a right-eye view. So sort of left-eye view, right-eye view.
所以美國太空總署要我拍一些月亮沙子的照片 所以他們送了一些沙子給我,是40年前 阿波羅太空船從不同登陸點所採到的 然後我開始用我的立體(3D)顯微鏡拍攝 這是我拍的第一張照片。還挺驚人的。 我認為這看起還有點像月球,還滿有趣的。 那麼,我的顯微鏡運作的方法是,通常 在顯微鏡底下你一次能看到的東西非常少 所以你要做的是,你必須把顯微鏡重新對焦 不斷照相,然後我有一套電腦程式 可以把這些照片組合起來 合成一張照片,所以你可以看到它真正的樣子 而且我做立體圖。所以這裡你看到的 是左眼視圖,這則是右眼視圖 就好樣左眼看,右眼看一樣
Now something's interesting here. This looks very different than any sand on Earth that I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of sand on Earth, believe me. (Laughter) Look at this hole in the middle. That hole was caused by a micrometeorite hitting the Moon. Now, the Moon has no atmosphere, so micrometeorites come in continuously, and the whole surface of the Moon is covered with powder now, because for four billion years it's been bombarded by micrometeorites, and when micrometeorites come in at about 20 to 60,000 miles an hour, they vaporize on contact. And you can see here that that is -- that's sort of vaporized, and that material is holding this little clump of little sand grains together. This is a very small grain of sand, this whole thing. And that's called a ring agglutinate. And many of the grains of sand on the Moon look like that, and you'd never find that on Earth. Most of the sand on the Moon, especially -- and you know when you look at the Moon, there's the dark areas and the light areas. The dark areas are lava flows. They're basaltic lava flows, and that's what this sand looks like, very similar to the sand that you would see in Haleakala. Other sands, when these micrometeorites come in, they vaporize and they make these fountains, these microscopic fountains that go up into the -- I was going to say "up into the air," but there is no air -- goes sort of up, and these microscopic glass beads are formed instantly, and they harden, and by the time they fall down back to the surface of the Moon, they have these beautiful colored glass spherules. And these are actually microscopic; you need a microscope to see these.
那麼這裡有件很有趣的事。這與我曾看過的 地球的沙都非常不一樣,我真的看過 很多地球的沙,相信我。(笑) 看看這個在中間的洞。那個洞是因為 微隕石撞擊月球造成的 那麼月球沒有大氣層,所以微隕石可以 不斷進入,而整個月球表面 現在都被粉塵所覆蓋,因為過去四十億年 它不停地被微隕石轟炸 所以當微隕石以大約每小時 20到六萬英哩的速度進入時,在接觸月球時就蒸發了 所以你可以看到這個 -- 這就是所謂蒸發,而那個材料就是把這些 小小沙粒團塊粘起來的東西 這是個非常小的沙粒,這整個東西都是 那被稱為環粘合 很多月球上的沙粒看起來就像那樣 而你絕不會在地球上發現那個 月球上大多數的沙 尤其是 -- 你看到月亮就會了解 那裡有黑暗的地方及明亮的地方。黑暗的地方 是熔岩流。它們是玄武質熔岩流 而那就是這沙的樣子,非常類似 你在夏威夷哈雷卡拉(Haleakala)看到的沙 其他的沙子,當這些微隕石進入月球時 它們就蒸發了,然後產生噴泉 這些微觀噴泉向上噴到 -- 我本來要說向上噴到「空氣」中,不過那裡沒有空氣 -- 就說是向上噴吧,然後這些微小的玻璃珠 立刻成型,變硬,然後當它們 掉落回月球表面時 就變成了這些色彩炫麗的玻璃球 這些都是微觀的 你需要一座顯微鏡才看得見這些
Now here's a grain of sand that is from the Moon, and you can see that the entire crystal structure is still there. This grain of sand is probably about three and a half or four billion years old, and it's never eroded away like the way we have sand on Earth erodes away because of water and tumbling, air, and so forth. All you can see is a little bit of erosion down here by the Sun, has these solar storms, and that's erosion by solar radiation.
現在看到的是一顆來自月球的沙粒 而你可以看到這整體 晶狀結構仍然存在 這粒沙的年紀大概已有 三十五億到四十億年吧 而且它永遠不會像我們地球上的沙一樣 被水、滾動、空氣等等東西侵蝕風化 你只能在這下面看到一點點 被太陽侵蝕的現象,是因為這些太陽風 所以這是因為太陽輻射所造成的侵蝕
So what I've been trying to tell you today is things even as ordinary as a grain of sand can be truly extraordinary if you look closely and if you look from a different and a new point of view. I think that this was best put by William Blake when he said, "To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour." Thank you. (Applause)
所以今天我在這裡,試著想傳達的就是 即使平凡如沙粒的東西 如果你仔細看,如果你從不同的角度看, 從新的角度看,也能看出它真正非凡之處。 我想,當威廉·布萊克寫下這首詩時 已爲此下了最好的詮釋 一沙一世界 一花一天堂 掌中握無限 剎那即永恆 謝謝。(掌聲)