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Particles can come into being and be gone again in as little as 0.000000000000000000000001 second (10-24). Even the most sluggish of unstable particles hang around for no more than 0.0000001 second (10-7).
粒子可以在短達0.000 000 000 000 000 000 000 001秒(10的負24次方秒)時間里出現和消失。連最缺乏活力的不穩定的粒子，存在的時間也不超過0.000 000 1秒(10的負7次方秒)。
Some particles are almost ludicrously slippery. Every second the Earth is visited by 10,000 trillion trillion tiny, all but massless neutrinos (mostly shot out by the nuclear broilings of the Sun), and virtually all of them pass right through the planet and everything that is on it, including you and me, as if it weren't there. To trap just a few of them, scientists need tanks holding up to 12.5 million gallons of heavy water (that is, water with a relative abundance of deuterium in it) in underground chambers (old mines usually) where they can't be interfered with by other types of radiation.
有的粒子幾乎捕捉不到。每一秒鐘，就有1萬億億億個微小的、幾乎沒有質量的中微子抵達地球（大多數是太陽的熱核反應輻射出的），實際上徑直穿過這顆行星以及上面的一切東西，包括你和我，就仿佛地球并不存在。為了捕捉幾個粒子，科學家們需要在地下室（通常是廢礦井里），用容器盛放多達57000立方米重水（即含氘相對豐富的水），因為這種地方受不到其他類型輻射的干擾。
Very occasionally, a passing neutrino will bang into one of the atomic nuclei in the water and produce a little puff of energy. Scientists count the puffs and by such means take us very slightly closer to understanding the fundamental properties of the universe. In 1998, Japanese observers reported that neutrinos do have mass, but not a great deal—about one ten-millionth that of an electron.
在非常偶然的情況下，一個經過的中微子會砰地撞擊水里的一個原子核，產生一丁點兒能量。科學家們通過統計有幾個一丁點兒而逐步了解宇宙的基本性質。1998年，日本觀察人員報告說，中微子確有質量，但是不大──大約是電子的一千萬分之一。
What it really takes to find particles these days is money and lots of it. There is a curious inverse relationship in modern physics between the tininess of the thing being sought and the scale of facilities required to do the searching.
如今，尋找粒子真正要花的是錢，而且是大量的錢。在現代物理學中，尋找的東西的大小，與所需設備的大小，往往有意思地成反比關系。
