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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.
众所周知，我们正处经济困难时期。今天我带来了一个小小的建议可以消除财政负担。
This idea came to me while talking to a physicist friend of mine at MIT.
这个想法来自我和麻省理工学院一个朋友的谈话，他是物理学家。
He was struggling to explain something to me: a beautiful experiment that uses lasers to cool down matter.
他当时绞尽脑汁地给我解释：运用激光冷却物质的伟大实验。
Now he confused me from the very start, because light doesn't cool things down.
不得不说他一开始就把我弄得晕头转向，因为光并不能使东西变冷。
It makes it hotter. It's happening right now.
反而使东西变得更热。这一现象现在就在发生。
The reason that you can see me standing here is because this room is filled with more than 100 quintillion photons,
大家之所以能看见我站在台上是因为这个房间充满了超过一万亿亿光子，
and they're moving randomly through the space, near the speed of light.
它们正在这个空间里以接近光的速度随机运动。
All of them are different colors, they're rippling with different frequencies,
它们的颜色各不相同，频率各异，
and they're bouncing off every surface, including me, and some of those are flying directly into your eyes,
它们正在物体表面反弹，也在我的身上反弹，其中一些光子直接飞入了你的眼里，
and that's why your brain is forming an image of me standing here.
所以，你的脑海里才呈现出我站在这里的图像。
Now a laser is different.
然而，激光却非如此。
It also uses photons, but they're all synchronized,
激光也运用光子，但是这些光子是同步的，
and if you focus them into a beam, what you have is an incredibly useful tool.
如果把这些光子聚焦成一束光线，它的作用将是无比强大的。
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,
激光的控制之精准可用以在眼中做手术，也可以用来储存大量数据，
and you can use it for this beautiful experiment that my friend was struggling to explain.
也可以用来做这项伟大的实验就是当时我朋友绞尽脑汁给我解释的实验。
First you trap atoms in a special bottle.
首先，把原子囚禁在一个特殊的瓶子里。
It uses electromagnetic fields to isolate the atoms from the noise of the environment.
瓶子将运用电磁场把原子和周围的噪声隔开。
And the atoms themselves are quite violent, but if you fire lasers that are precisely tuned to the right frequency,
原子本身的运动很剧烈，但是如果把调到正确频率的激光射入瓶中，
an atom will briefly absorb those photons and tend to slow down.
原子就会慢慢地吸收这些光子原子的运动就会变慢。
Little by little it gets colder until eventually it approaches absolute zero.
原子会一点点地变冷直到达到绝对零度（约-273.16℃）。
