He died there in 1955 And after the rest of Einstein had been cremated, his brain remained, soaking for decades in a jar of formaldehyde belonging to Dr. Thomas Harvey. No one had bothered to dissect the brain of Freud, Stravinsky or Joyce, but in the 1980s, bits of Einsteinian gray matter were making the rounds of certain neurobiologists, who thus learned … absolutely nothing. It was just a brain——the brain that dreamed a plastic fourth dimension, that banished the ether, that released the pins binding us to absolute space and time, that refused to believe God played dice.

1955年他死在那里。当他身体其余部分被火化后，他的大脑被保存起来，在一瓶甲醛中侵了几十年，现属于托马斯博士。没人费心去解剖弗洛伊德、斯特拉文斯基或乔伊斯的大脑，但在80年代，一些神经生物学家为搞清爱因斯坦的一些灰质大费周折，但最后一无所获。那只不过是一个大脑，它想象了一个可伸缩的第四维度，它推翻了以太学说，它使我们从绝对时空的束缚中解脱出来，它拒绝相信上帝在抛骰子。

In embracing Einstein, our century took leave of a prior universe and an erstwhile God. The new versions were not so rigid and deterministic as the Newtonian world. Einstein’s. God was no clockmaker, but the embodiment of reason in nature. This God did not control our actions or even sit in judgment on them. (“Einstein, stop telling God what to do,” Niels Bohr Finally retorted.) This God seemed rather kindly and absentminded, as a matter of fact . Physics was free, and we too are free, in the Einstein universe which is where we live.

因为信奉了爱因斯坦，我们的世纪告别了原有的宇宙和上帝。新的宇宙和上帝不再那么刻板、僵硬，象牛顿的世界那样。爱因斯坦的上帝不是钟表匠而是自然定律的化身。这个上帝不控制我们的行动，更不对其加以判决。（“爱因斯坦，别再管上帝该干什么。”玻尔最终反驳道）这个上帝实际上似乎有些和善，心不在焉。在这个爱因斯坦的宇宙中，在这个我们生息繁衍的宇宙中，物理学没有了束缚，我们也没有了束缚。

Einstein’s Theory of Relativity

爱因斯坦的相对论

Special Relativity

狭义相对论

Relativity says that light always moves in a straight line through empty space, and always at the same speed in a vacuum, no matter what your observation point. From these simple claims follow bizarre consequence that challenge common sense and our perception of reality.

它指出光在真空中走直线，且在真空中光速恒定，不论你的观测点如何。由这简单的结论得出一些奇怪的推论，它们挑战了我们对现实的日常感知。liuxuepaper.com