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Good afternoon.
下午好。
As you're all aware, we face difficult economic times. I come to you with a modest proposal for easing the financial burden.
眾所周知，我們正處經濟困難時期。今天我帶來了一個小小的建議可以消除財政負擔。
This idea came to me while talking to a physicist friend of mine at MIT.
這個想法來自我和麻省理工學院一個朋友的談話，他是物理學家。
He was struggling to explain something to me: a beautiful experiment that uses lasers to cool down matter.
他當時絞盡腦汁地給我解釋：運用激光冷卻物質的偉大實驗。
Now he confused me from the very start, because light doesn't cool things down.
不得不說他一開始就把我弄得暈頭轉向，因為光并不能使東西變冷。
It makes it hotter. It's happening right now.
反而使東西變得更熱。這一現象現在就在發生。
The reason that you can see me standing here is because this room is filled with more than 100 quintillion photons,
大家之所以能看見我站在臺上是因為這個房間充滿了超過一萬億億光子，
and they're moving randomly through the space, near the speed of light.
它們正在這個空間里以接近光的速度隨機運動。
All of them are different colors, they're rippling with different frequencies,
它們的顏色各不相同，頻率各異，
and they're bouncing off every surface, including me, and some of those are flying directly into your eyes,
它們正在物體表面反彈，也在我的身上反彈，其中一些光子直接飛入了你的眼里，
and that's why your brain is forming an image of me standing here.
所以，你的腦海里才呈現出我站在這里的圖像。
Now a laser is different.
然而，激光卻非如此。
It also uses photons, but they're all synchronized,
激光也運用光子，但是這些光子是同步的，
and if you focus them into a beam, what you have is an incredibly useful tool.
如果把這些光子聚焦成一束光線，它的作用將是無比強大的。
The control of a laser is so precise that you can perform surgery inside of an eye, you can use it to store massive amounts of data,
激光的控制之精準可用以在眼中做手術，也可以用來儲存大量數據，
and you can use it for this beautiful experiment that my friend was struggling to explain.
也可以用來做這項偉大的實驗就是當時我朋友絞盡腦汁給我解釋的實驗。
First you trap atoms in a special bottle.
首先，把原子囚禁在一個特殊的瓶子里。
It uses electromagnetic fields to isolate the atoms from the noise of the environment.
瓶子將運用電磁場把原子和周圍的噪聲隔開。
And the atoms themselves are quite violent, but if you fire lasers that are precisely tuned to the right frequency,
原子本身的運動很劇烈，但是如果把調到正確頻率的激光射入瓶中，
an atom will briefly absorb those photons and tend to slow down.
原子就會慢慢地吸收這些光子原子的運動就會變慢。
Little by little it gets colder until eventually it approaches absolute zero.
原子會一點點地變冷直到達到絕對零度（約-273.16℃）。
