生命物理学 第6集：多重世界，包罗万象

你知道吗，我们在太阳系中看到的其他世界，可能存在于我们地球内部的其他世界，以及我们才刚刚开始理解的、在整个宇宙中都可能存在的其他世界。

You know, other worlds that we see in our solar system, other worlds that may exist within our own planet, other worlds we're only just now beginning to understand that can be capable throughout the universe.

来自圣塔菲研究所，这里是复杂性。

From the Santa Fe Institute, this is Complexity.

我是克里斯·肯佩斯。

I'm Chris Kempes.

我是阿巴·艾莉·菲博。

And I'm Abha Eli Phoboo.

在本季的最后一集中，我们将向一位天体生物学家学习，他的专业领域涵盖从地球深处未被触及的区域，到太空中发生的有机化学反应。

For our final episode this season, we're going to learn from a fellow astrobiologist whose expertise spans from the deep, untouched regions of our planet all the way to organic chemistry happening in space.

我现在戴上眼镜了，感觉聪明多了。

I'm putting on my glasses now so I feel smarter.

这是希瑟·格雷厄姆。

This is Heather Graham.

顺便说一下，希瑟的代词是他们和她。

Heather, by the way, uses both they and she for gender pronouns.

在这一集中，你会听到我们使用他们和他们的代词。

In this episode, you'll hear us use they and them.

在本集后半部分，我还将与克里斯坐下来，听听他对本季我们所讨论内容的更多看法。

Later in the episode, I'll also sit down with Chris and hear more of his perspective on what we've covered this season.

但首先，让我们来听听希瑟的分享。

But first, Heather.

但我们不确定他们是否真的需要戴眼镜才能显得聪明。

And we're not sure that they really need those glasses to seem smart.

我的名字是希瑟·格雷厄姆。

So my name is Heather Graham.

我是美国宇航局戈达德太空飞行中心的研究物理科学家。

I'm a research physical scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

我致力于生物特征定义和生物特征策略的研究。

And I work on biosignature definitions and biosignature strategy.

嗯，也许我不该说策略。

Well, maybe I shouldn't say strategy.

这个词现在承载了太多含义。

That's such a loaded term anymore.

但为了航天器上原位仪器的设计，生物特征定义是必要的。

But biosignature definition for the purpose of in situ instrumentation design in spaceflight.

希瑟的才能不仅限于生物特征定义和航天实验。

And Heather's talents aren't just limited to biosignature definition and spaceflight experiments.

是的。

Yeah.

对。

Yeah.

所以我写了一部关于凯瑟琳·约翰逊的短歌剧。

So I wrote an opera, short opera about Katherine Johnson.

你可能从电影或书籍《隐藏人物》中听说过凯瑟琳·约翰逊。

You might remember Katherine Johnson from the movie or the book Hidden Figures.

它讲述了三位非裔美国女性在NASA的故事——凯瑟琳·约翰逊、多萝西·沃恩和玛丽·杰克逊，她们是美国与苏联太空竞赛中一项最重要任务背后的智囊。

It told the story of three black women at NASA, Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, who were the brains behind one of the most important operations in The US Soviet space race.

希瑟关于约翰逊的摇滚歌剧于2015年上演，比《隐藏人物》这本书或电影的发布早了一年。

Heather's rock opera about Johnson was performed in 2015, a year before the Hidden Figures book or movie was released.

它在巴尔的摩上演了两次，在波士顿上演了一次。

And it was staged three times, twice in Baltimore, once in Boston.

剧情在她的人生故事中来回穿梭，所有对白都取自于对她本人的采访。

It moves back and forward in time through her life story, and all of her dialogue is taken from interviews with her.

剧中还涉及了木偶。

And there are puppets involved.

这些木偶扮演的是阿波罗宇航员，他们的所有对白都来自任务记录。

The puppets are the Apollo astronauts and all of their dialogue was taken from transcripts.

这是我非常自豪的作品，因为我认为它深入探讨了发现的本质以及发现过程中的挣扎，因为我试图展现她作为领域专家却难以获得认可的挣扎。

And it's a piece of work I'm really proud of since I think it kind of got really into the nature of discovery and the nature of struggle in discovery because I was trying to represent her struggle to be seen as an expert in her field.

还有她在NASA任职期间所做出的发现，以及这些发现如何在很大程度上奠定了我们今天进行太空旅行的基础。

And the discoveries that she made during her tenure at NASA and how really a lot of that became how we are able to do space travel today.

希瑟对人们所说的‘理解其他世界’很感兴趣。

Heather's interested in what they describe as understanding other worlds.

你知道，我们所看到的其他世界，

You know, other worlds that we see in

我们太阳系中的其他世界，可能存在于我们地球内部的其他世界，以及我们才刚刚开始理解的、在整个宇宙中可能存在的其他世界。

our solar system, other worlds that may exist within our own planet, other worlds we're only just now beginning to understand that can be capable throughout the universe.

尽管希瑟在NASA工作，和我一样对宇宙中可能发现的事物感兴趣，但他们的许多工作实际上是在研究我们自己的星球地球。

Even though Heather works at NASA and, like me, is interested in what can be discovered out in the universe, much of their work has actually been examining our own planet Earth.

当你想到天体生物学时，你是在试图理解相似的起源点。

When you think about astrobiology, you're trying to understand similar origin points.

因此，寻找可以应用于整个宇宙的生命洞察。

So searching for insights about life that can be applied across the entire universe.

当我们通过地球历史、古生物学和古生物化学来审视它时，我们从现在的状态出发，向过去回溯，试图理解所有这些导致我们今天生命现状的隐秘事件，这些事件造就了我们周围如此丰富的生物。

And when we look at it through Earth history and paleontology and paleobiology, we're starting with where we're at now and moving back in time and trying to understand all of these hidden events that led to where we are right now with life, that led to this plethora of organisms that are around us.

我认为，如果你不断向更久远的过去追溯，很快你就会进入一个足够普遍的领域，可以开始以不局限于这颗星球的方式来思考。

And I think if you go farther back and back and back in time, pretty soon you're in this region that is general enough, you can start to think of it in ways that aren't just applicable to this planet.

你开始以更普遍的视角思考生命，思考它可能如何适用于宇宙中任何地方的生命。

You're starting to think about life in more general terms as it may be related to life that could be anywhere.

我认为这其中非常重要的一点是，地球并不仅仅是我们现在所看到的这个世界。

I think something that's really part of that is understanding that Earth hasn't just been this world we see around us.

地球曾经是许多不同的星球。

Earth has been many planets.

地球曾经呈现出许多不同的面貌。

Earth has looked many different ways.

我们所看到的过去的一些地球形态，与如今的地球截然不同，反而更类似于我们在太阳系中看到的其他星球，甚至可能存在于太阳系之外的星球。

And some of the Earth's that we see in the past, which are wildly different than the way Earth looks like now, are more similar to some of the other worlds that we see in our solar system and may exist outside of our solar system.

因此，你可以将地球的历史当作一个实验性平台，用来思考宇宙中其他地方的生命。

And so you can use Earth history as this sort of experimental test bed for thinking about life elsewhere in the universe as well.

在上一期节目中，大卫·克拉考尔提出，传统上来说，生命科学并不是一门比较性科学。

In our last episode, David Krakauer brought up the idea that life, traditionally speaking, is not a comparative science.

我们只有一个生命起源可以研究。

We only have one origin of life to look at.

人们常常将这一点视为天体生物学中的核心问题。

People often point to that as a central problem in astrobiology.

但你所说的意味着这并不正确。

But what you're saying is that that's not true.

地球的历史为我们提供了许多拥有生命的行星的例子，而生命的多样性也为我们提供了多种生命形式的例子。

The history of Earth gives us many examples of planets with examples of life, and the diversity of life gives us many examples of life.

所以，你是否反对天体生物学中人们常说的‘n等于1’问题？

So so are you are you sort of against the n equals one problem that people say in astrobiology?

嗯，我认为‘n等于1’这个观点有一个根本性的问题：确实，我们在实验室中研究的所有生物，以及与我们相似的生物，都拥有共同的起源。

Well, I think one one fundamental problem I have with that idea of the n equals one, it's true that all of the organisms that we are, you know, examining in labs and that are similar to us.

但我们并不知道生命是否曾在地球的其他地方以其他形式出现，只是未能持续下来。

We all have a common heritage, but we don't know if life has arisen in other forms and other places on our planet and just simply not persisted.

这一点值得再重复一遍。

It's worth saying that again.

我们并不知道生命是否曾在地球的其他地方以其他形式出现，只是未能持续下来。

We don't know if life has arisen in other forms in other places on our planet and simply not persisted.

海瑟谈论的并不是一种抽象的重新构想，比如文化是否具有生命，或者思想是否具有生命。

And Heather's not talking about an abstract reimagining, like if culture is alive or ideas are alive.

我们这里谈论的是细胞、DNA和蛋白质。

We're talking about cells and DNA and proteins here.

他们提出的问题看似显而易见，却又完全激进。

The question they are asking feels somehow both obvious and totally radical.

我们为什么假设自己的生命之树是地球上唯一存在过的生命形式？

Why would we assume that our own tree of life is the only one that's ever been here?

我认为多重起源这个想法在天体生物学上非常相关，而我们现在所看到的只是地球上占主导地位的当前表现形式。

I think that that is something that's very astrobiologically relevant, the idea of multiple origins, and this is just the current expression we have that's dominant on our planet right now.

而且，可能存在一些与我们截然不同的其他生物，我们甚至难以理解、实验和研究这类生命，因为它们与我们差异太大，而我们的探索模式早已被自身生物学所塑造。

And also the idea that possibly there could be other organisms that are sufficiently different from us, that it's very hard for us to even understand and experiment and examine that kind of life because it's so different from us because we're so our search pattern is so trained on what our own biology is.

所以，我认为这是我在根本上对‘n等于一’观点提出质疑的一种方式。

So I think that's one way in which I would fundamentally kind of push back on the n equals one idea.

可能孕育另一种生命起源的区域之一是地球地壳的深层地下。

One area that could hold another origin of life is the deep subsurface of the Earth's crust.

我确实研究洞穴，但同时也关注地球更深层可能存在的生命。

I do work in caves, but also I look at life that may be possible in the deeper regions of the Earth.

地球深部地下有一些区域已经与地表失去了联系长达十亿年左右。

There's parts of the deep subsurface of the Earth that have been out of communication with the surface of the Earth for a billion or so years.

这已经足够长的时间，让某种其他类型的生物可能走上了与地表生命完全不同的进化道路。

That's enough time that some other type of organism could have been on a completely different evolutionary journey than what we have here on the surface of Earth.

这值得我们去深入理解。

And that's worth trying to understand.

它也是一个绝佳的试验场和平台，有助于我们理解那些能量远比地球贫乏的其他星球。

It's also a great sort of test bed and platform for trying to understand other worlds that are much more energy limited than the Earth is.

因为在深部地下，你没有像太阳那样丰富的化学能源。

Because in the deep subsurface, you don't have that rich chemical energy source that is the sun.

当你身处地下时，你依赖的是完全不同的初级能源。

You're reliant on very different sort of primary energy sources when you're in the subsurface.

因此，我非常热衷于研究深部地下环境，有几个很好的理由。

So there's a couple of great reasons that I really like to look at the environment of the deep subsurface.

大陆最古老的内部区域被称为克拉通。

The oldest interior parts of the continents are called cratons.

它们是数十亿年前的岩石。

They're rocks that are billions of years old.

这就像在澳大利亚，当我们想到你可能见过的美丽叠层石时，或者南非是地球上最古老岩石的所在地。

This is like in Australia, when we think of beautiful stromatolites that you might have seen, or South Africa is where some of the oldest rocks are.

希瑟曾研究过加拿大的克拉通，在这片非常古老而厚重的岩石下方是

Heather's worked on the craton in Canada and underneath this very old thick rock is

水，而且水量巨大。

water and lots of it.

这些水存在于这些古老岩石的裂隙系统中。

And it's in fracture systems inside this very old rock.

我们可以从水中所含的气体判断，它在数十亿年的时间里未受到大气水系统或地表水系统的任何影响。

And we can tell from the gases inside this water that it has not been influenced by the meteoric water system, the surface water system of the Earth on orders of a billion years.

因此，你可以将其想象为一种非常稀薄的大陆内部海洋，它已与地表的海洋和地表的生命海洋分离了十亿年。

So there's this So you could think of it as a very diffuse interior ocean inside the continents that has been separated from the oceans of the surface and the ocean of life on the surface for a billion years.

你知道，如果你有水，还有一种能量来源，那里是否可能存在生命？

You know, if you've got water and you've got some sort of energy source, is there the possibility for life there?

所以你的意思是，这就像一个十亿年前被封存并埋藏起来的水族箱。

So it's like an aquarium that got sealed off a billion years ago and buried is what you're saying.

是的。

Yeah.

哦，我喜欢这个说法。

Oh, I love that.

对。

Yeah.

好的。

Okay.

其实我有个蠢问题。

I have an idiot question, actually.

所以有人尝过那水吗？

So has anybody had the chance to drink that water?

天哪。

Oh my gosh.

你可能不会想喝。

You probably wouldn't want to.

这些深部地下系统的水对于理解太阳系的海洋非常重要，因为它极其咸，非常咸，比海水咸五倍。

The water in these systems the deep subsurface is another great understanding the oceans of the solar system because it's incredibly salty, incredibly salty, like five times saltier than ocean water.

所以味道相当糟糕。

So it's pretty awful.

你或许可以试着喝一口，但我觉得你不会喜欢。

You could try to drink it, but I don't think you'd like it.

好的。

K.

知道了。

Good to know.

好的。

Okay.

如果有人觉得这可能是种新型高端矿泉水，想试试的话，我提前警告你。

If there's anyone out there who's thinking this could be some new fancy mineral water to try, consider yourself warned.

但海瑟的探索并不仅限于古老的咸水。

But Heather's exploration isn't limited to just old salty water.

最近，他们一直在分析美国宇航局OSIRIS-REx任务的样本，这是美国首次从小行星上采集样本的任务。

Recently, they've been analyzing samples from NASA's OSIRIS REx mission, the first US mission to collect a sample from an asteroid.

这次的目标是名为贝努的小行星。

In this case, an asteroid named Bennu.

我常常觉得有趣的是，人们将太空探索与派出探测车登陆行星、在行星周围部署轨道器或在行星上着陆并由机器人系统进行科学实验联系在一起。

And I often find it interesting to think that, people associate space exploration with going out and putting rovers on planets or orbiters around planets or landing on planets and having scientific experiments performed by a robotic system.

但样本返回实际上是我们作为探索者在过去半个多世纪以来一直在进行的活动。

But sample return is actually an activity that we have been doing as explorers for over half a century at this point.

所以，这不仅仅是向其他行星发送设备。

So it's not just about sending things to other planets.

它也包括将东西带回地球。

It's about bringing things back as well.

除非你能理解我们在地球上实验室中对这些珍贵样本进行的分辨率和精确度处理，否则很难解释其价值，这与我们在其他行星上用机器人系统所能做的相比有着巨大差异。

And it's hard to explain just the value in that unless you can understand just the resolution and precision handling even of these precious samples that you can do in labs here on Earth when compared to what we can do with robotic systems on other planets.

因此，样本返回是太空探索中非常重要的一部分，尽管所有的探索实际上都发生在我们家中的实验室里。

So sample return is really a huge part of space exploration, even though all the exploring is happening back in our labs back at home.

这之所以重要，是因为小行星和陨石内部发生了许多变化。

And the reason this is important is that asteroids and meteorites have a lot happening inside them.

它们产生了我们通常与生命相关的许多物质。

They produce many of the things we typically associate with life.

我们将陨石视为太阳系中发生的有趣有机化学反应的微观世界。

We look to meteorites as being this microcosm of interesting organic chemistry that's happening out in the solar system.

我们认为小行星和陨石中的碳代表了抵达早期地球的碳储存，这些碳是早期海洋中混合的所有初始成分，可能构成了前生物化学的基础。

And we think of the carbon inside of asteroids and meteorites as representing that store of carbon that came to an early Earth and was all of those first ingredients that would have been mixed up in our oceans that could have become part of prebiotic chemistry.

因此，作为天体生物学家，我们研究小行星的主要原因之一是：如果你把生命的起源看作一道食谱，那么陨石就是你的配料清单。

So that's a lot of why we look at asteroids as astrobiologists is to understand if you think of the origin of life as a recipe, meteorites are your ingredient list.

它们是你厨房里的存货。

It's what's in your pantry.

它们是早期地球上可能发生的所有原始化学反应所能够利用的物质。

It's what would have been available for all of that early chemistry that could happen on the early Earth.

虽然我们拥有大量坠落到地球的陨石样本，但它们在穿过大气层时都经历了过热和燃烧，形成了外部的外壳。

And while we have plenty of samples from meteorites that have crashed into Earth, they all overheated and burned as they flew through our atmosphere, creating a shell on the outside.

尤其是当它们含有大量碳时，外部看起来就像过度烤焦的外壳，几乎像煤一样。

And especially if they have a lot of carbon in them, it is very much like an overdone crust, almost coal like look on the outside of a meteorite.

直到现在，我们才首次获得了未经加热、保持原始状态的样本。

We didn't have any samples that were in a pristine uncooked condition until now.

陨石在穿越星际空间时会捕获大量碳，吸附那些充满有机化学物质的尘埃颗粒和冰粒，这些物质遍布整个太阳系。

Meteorites are full of carbon that they've picked up as they sweep through interstellar space and and are picking up those dusty bits and icy particles that are full of organic chemistry all over the solar system.

因此，所有这些流体、化学物质和碳元素都在这些小行星上进行着有趣的化学反应。

So all of this fluid and chemistry and carbon is doing interesting chemistry on these asteroids.

而我们所看到的是，许多与生命相关的分子正通过陨石内部的化学反应生成。

And what's happening is you're seeing a lot of those molecules that we associate with life being generated by the chemistry that's happening in meteorites.

你看到了核酸碱基。

You see nucleobases.

你看到了酸类物质。

You see acids.

你看到的是我们与新陈代谢相关的较小分子。

You see small molecules that we associate with metabolism.

如果你回想一下高中生物课上学过的代谢反应途径，就会发现，这些在代谢途径中被传递的许多小分子，在陨石中也同样存在。

If you remember back to high school biology and think about those metabolic reaction pathways that you might have had to learn, a lot of those small molecules that are being shuttled around as part of metabolic reaction pathways are present in meteorites as well.

但小行星中发生的有机化学与人体等生命体中发生的有机化学之间的区别在于，生命体中这些有机分子的浓度远高于环境中随机自发反应所能产生的水平。

But the difference between the organic chemistry happening in an asteroid and the organic chemistry happening within something that's alive, like a human body, is that life has much higher concentrations of these organic molecules than what you would expect from random spontaneous reactions in the environment.

这其中的一部分理念是选择——生物体选择它们真正想要聚焦、大量合成的少数分子。

Part of that idea is selection, that organisms are selecting what few molecules they really want to focus on building and making lots of them.

最终，你会得到一些在太空中非生物系统的偶然化学反应中根本不可能形成的更大、更复杂的分子。

You end up with some larger, more complex molecule that would have never happened in just the chance chemistry of abiotic systems in space.

而这种更大、更复杂的分子会与周围的一切相互作用，并成为其中的一部分。

And that larger complex molecule is interacting with and a part of everything around it.

希瑟呼应了我们节目以往的其他嘉宾，强调生命本质上是关于多样化的系统和社群，而非个体的生存。

Heather echoes the other guests we've had on the show, emphasizing how life is really about diverse systems and communities, not individual survival.

我想请大家想象一下：进化并不仅仅关乎生物体。

And something I would really challenge people to imagine is that evolution isn't just about organisms.

这关乎这些生物与其环境之间的关系。

It's about the relationship between those organisms and their environment.

通过谱系传递给我们的信息，全都源于该生物所处环境中发生的事件，正是这些事件决定了哪些信息值得传递给下一代。

What information gets transferred to us through lineages has all been driven by what is happening in that organism's environment that made that the right information to be sent on to the next generation.

我们可以回溯到我之前提到的那些截然不同的早期地球上的生物，但要想象这些生物未来的模样却非常困难。

We can look back in time at organisms on some of those very different earlier earths that I talked about, and it would be very hard to look at those organisms and imagine what they would look like in the future.

我常举雷尼燧石的例子。

I always give the example of the Rhiny Chert.

这是陆地植物最古老的证据。

It's this, the oldest evidence of land plants.

这些岩石位于苏格兰。

It's these rocks in Scotland.

它们看起来几乎像小小的草叶，但只有几毫米大小。

And they almost look like little blades of grass, but they're only a few millimeters big.

它们几乎没有根。

And they don't really have any roots.

海瑟在谈论一种在四亿零八百万至三亿六千万年前的泥盆纪时期演化出的植物。

Heather's talking about a plant that evolved in the Devonian period between four zero eight and three sixty million years ago.

记住，这是一片毫无生命的景观。

Remember, this is a landscape devoid of life.

地表上什么都没有。

There was nothing on the surface.

海洋丰富而生机勃勃，但陆地却荒芜一片。

The oceans were rich and teeming, but the landscapes were barren.

当你看到这块高度变质的岩石中那些微小的碳质叶片时，你根本无法预见未来会出现红杉或仙人掌。

And you look at those little tiny blades of carbon in this very metamorphosed rock, and you would have no way of looking forward in time and seeing redwoods or seeing cactus, you know.

因此，在试图预测进化时总是需要保持谨慎，因为我们现在看到的丰富植物生命，都是通过无数代生物与地球表面环境互动、权衡取舍后，才将有助于生存的结构信息传递给下一代的结果。

So it's always a little bit of a caution to try and predict with evolution because all of the rich plant life that we see now has come through the lens of generations interacting with their environment on the surface of the earth and all of the trade offs that had to happen in order for those organisms to send on that information to the next generation about viable structures that will help them continue existence.

但我仍然认为，我们可以找到约束这种多样性的规律，从而想象未来，并思考其他地方的生命。

Now I still think we can find laws that bound that diversity and allow us to imagine the future and think about life elsewhere.

在第二部分中，我将与克里斯坐下来讨论他的部分工作，并反思海瑟的观点以及整个季节的内容。

Coming up in part two, I sit down with Chris to discuss some of his work and to reflect on both Heather's perspective and the season as a whole.

第二部分，与克里斯回顾。

Part two, looking back with Chris.

克里斯，你和希瑟都把自己描述为天体生物学家，以及其他身份。

Chris, you and Heather both described yourselves as astrobiologists, among other things.

天体生物学是一个非常宽泛的术语。

Astrobiology is a really broad term.

你能告诉我们，当你这么说时，具体指的是什么吗？

Can you tell us a little bit more about what exactly you mean when you say that?

是的。

Yeah.

我实际上把自己描述为多种身份，这取决于我所在的群体。

I I actually describe myself as many things, and it sort of depends on what group of people I'm in.

我称自己为生态学家、生物物理学家、细胞生物学家、天体生物学家。

I call myself an ecologist, a biophysicist, a cell biologist, an astrobiologist.

从根本上说，我对生命的理论感兴趣，我常在朋友间自称是理论物理生物学家，研究同样的理论如何既能揭示现代生态学，也能帮助我们探索太空中的生命。

Fundamentally, I'm interested in theories of life and I often call myself amongst friends, you know, theoretical physical biologist interested in how the same sort of theory can tell us something about modern ecology as well as the search for life in space.

是什么样的问题最初让你来到圣塔菲研究所的？

What were the questions that brought you to the Santa Fe Institute in the first place?

我想，从长远来看，我小时候最热爱的是古生物学和天文学。

So I think in the well, the long arc of my career was as a kid, my first loves were paleontology and astronomy.

我想把这两者结合起来。

And I wanted to put those into one thing.

所以我常对别人说，我想成为一名古生物学家和天文学家。

And so I would tell people I wanna be a paleontologist and an astronomer.

某种程度上，这正是天体生物学的意义所在。

In some weird way, that's what astrobiology is.

后来我开始发现，圣塔菲研究所和更广泛的生物物理学领域有人在做一些令人惊叹的研究。

And so then I started discovering and people pointed me to amazing papers that were being done at the Santa Fe Institute and in biophysics more broadly.

我非常兴奋地想把我热爱的物理学应用于我如此热衷的生物学问题上。

And I got really excited about taking what I loved about physics and applying it to these biological problems that I was so passionate about.

我去了科罗拉多学院，这所大学的特色是每三周半专心上一门课。

I went to this wonderful college, Colorado College, where you take one class at a time for three and a half weeks.

因为一次只专注于一门课，你可以离开校园，到别处进行独立研究。

And because you only have one commitment at a time, it means you can leave campus and do an independent study elsewhere.

于是我提议在SFI进行为期一个月的独立研究，探讨生态学的物理规律以及当时正在开展的大量标度研究。

And so I proposed to do this month long independent study at SFI on thinking about the physics of ecology and a lot of the scaling work that was going on in those days.

幸运的是，双方都同意了。

And luckily for me, both sides agreed.

杰弗里·韦斯特和圣塔菲研究所接待了我。

Jeffrey West and the Santa Fe Institute hosted me.

科罗拉多学院给了我一笔资助，让我有了这一个月的经费支持。

Colorado College gave me a grant to come, so I had support for that month.

我来这边进行了一个月的独立研究，那是我最喜爱的月份之一。

And I came and did independent research for a month, it was really just one of my favorite months ever.

剩下的就是历史了，我想。

And the rest is history, I guess.

你至今仍在和杰弗里合作。

And you're still working with Jeffrey.

我仍然在与一些同样这些人合作。

I'm still collaborating with some of those same people.

不过，我很好奇。

I'm curious, though.

我知道你不喜欢做实验，你一直停留在思考的领域，比如天体生物学，现在是复杂系统。

I know you don't like to do experiments, and you've sort of stuck around in the thinking sphere of, you know, astrobiology and now complex systems.

即使你知道验证某些实验对你的工作会很有趣，你还是想留在思考这一边，这是为什么呢？

Why do you want to even though you know that verifying certain experiments would be interesting for your own work, you would like to stay on the thinking side of things.

我认为思考贯穿于科学的各个部分。

Well, I think thinking happens in all parts of science.

你知道，进行有趣的实验需要严谨的逻辑。

You know, there's a rigorous logic to doing interesting experiments.

我有一些非常棒的实验合作者，他们对逻辑的运用、对对照组的思考、对多个假设的检验，以及识别假阴性和假阳性，都让我感到惊叹，再加上先进的技术。

And I have really wonderful experimental collaborators where the logic, the thinking through controls, testing multiple hypotheses, to identify false negatives and false positives is just sort of amazing to me coupled with amazing technology.

因此，我有一群极其出色的实验合作者，他们的实验室拥有让我感到震撼的技术，我很幸运能与这些人合作。

So I have a set of really fantastic experimental collaborators who have, to me, mind bending technologies in their labs, and I'm I'm really fortunate to get to work with those people.

我的专长更偏向理论方面。

My talents are are more on the theoretical side of things.

我在实验室里表现不好，野外工作我也做不好。

I was not good in the lab, and I'm not good in the field.

这很有趣。

It's interesting.

我大部分业余时间都花在户外，但我并不喜欢在户外工作。

I I spend most of my hobby time outdoors, but I'm not a fan of doing work outside.

所以，尽管我在户外时热爱大自然，喜欢越野跑和山地自行车。

So even though outside, I love being in nature, I love trail running, I love mountain biking.

我发现，当我身处户外时，我想放松。

What I discovered is when I'm outside, I want to be relaxing.

而当我进行深入的科学研究时，我喜欢坐在书桌前。

And when I'm doing hard science, I like to be at a desk.

因此，这是一种非常有趣而个人化的偏好——我无法将这两者结合起来。

And so it's a it's just a very funny sort of personal preference that that was not a combination for me of of how to put those things together.

你知道吗，你在圣塔菲研究所参与过这么多项目，这几乎像是从多个角度看待生活本身，我想。

You know, you've worked on so many projects at SFI, and it almost seems to be multiple ways of looking at life in general, I guess.

你是怎么跟踪所有这些事情的？

How do you keep track of all these things?

对我来说，所有这些事情本质上都是同一件事。

To me, all of these things are sort of the same thing.

我对生命是什么感兴趣。

I'm interested in what life is.

因此，对我来说，城市、细菌和人类机构只是生命的不同形式。

So cities and bacteria and human institutions for me are just different forms of life.

所以在我自己的心里，这实际上比外界看起来要狭窄得多，因为我感兴趣的是，不同的架构、不同的规模、不同大小的实体、不同层次的复杂性，是如何改变生命本身的运作的。

And so in my own mind, it's actually much narrower than it seems from the outside because I'm interested in how do different architectures, different scales, different sizes of entities, different amounts of complexity change what life is doing.

因此，无论我正在做什么，如果非要我总结的话，我会说，我其实是在利用这个系统去理解关于生命的某种深层东西。

And so for anything I'm working on, if I was really pressed on it, I'd say, well, I'm really trying to use that system to understand something deep about life.

有很多事情我并不去研究，因为它们不符合这个界限。

And there are lots of things I don't work on because they don't fit inside that boundary.

你如何定义复杂适应系统？

How do you define complex adaptive systems?

嗯，它们很复杂，而且会适应。

Well, they're complicated and they adapt.

不。

No.

我在开玩笑。

I'm joking.

对我来说，复杂性科学归结为某种类型的问题。

So for me, complexity science comes down to a certain style of question.

也就是努力寻找规律、法则和简单的理论。

So really trying to find regularities and laws and simple theories.

但这显然不是复杂性科学的唯一方面，许多学科都这么做。

But that's not the only aspect of complexity science obviously, lots of disciplines do that.

物理学的历史试图这么做，许多化学领域也试图这么做。

The history of physics tried to do that, lots of chemistry tries to do that.

它试图为这种新兴动态的新层次找到这些规律和定律。

It's trying to find these regularities and these laws for systems that are at this sort of new level of emergent dynamic.

因此，我非常推崇菲利普·安德森的《多即不同》这篇论文。

And so I'm a big fan of Phil Anderson's more is different essay.

对我来说，这篇论文的一个关键特征——我们在播客中多次讨论过——就是这些有效理论：当你获得一个新的组织层次时，你会屏蔽掉许多底层动态，各种因素以某种涌现的方式结合，从而产生这种新的动态类型、模式等等。

And for me, one of the key features of that essay, and we've talked about this a lot in the podcast, are these effective theories where you get a new level of organization, where you screen off lots of the lower level dynamics and things combine in some sort of emergent way to give you this sort of new type of dynamic and sets of patterns and so forth.

有趣的是，要发现这个新系统的全新定律。

What's interesting then is discovering the new laws for that new system.

菲利普试图表达的是，在许多情况下，某个新层次上出现的多样性意味着，对于每个系统，你都必须弄清楚其定律和机制等等。

And Phil was trying to say in many cases, the amount of variety that you get at some new level might mean that for each system you have to figure out what the laws and mechanics are and so forth.

因此，对我来说，这种丰富性才是真正定义复杂系统的核心。

And so for me, that's the richness that really defines complex systems.

你获得了这个新的涌现层次，但我们尚未发现其规律，而我们正希望去发现。

You get this new emergent level and we haven't discovered the laws of that yet and we want to.

而复杂系统中人们常提到的另一个方面，就是适应性部分。

And then there's this other aspect that many people talk about for complex systems is the adaptive part.

因此，这表明对象、规则、机制和系统的规律可能并非固定不变，因为系统可能在对自身做出反应，可能存在某种奇怪的反馈，甚至可能在学习。

And so part of what that's saying is that objects and the rules and the mechanics and the laws of the system may not be fixed in time because the system may be responding to itself, may have sort of strange feedback, may be learning.

因此，这可能要求我们发展出一种理论，其中规律、机制和对象都是随时间演化的，而这类理论同样难以构建。

And so that might give you the need to have theories where the laws and the mechanics and the objects are evolving in time, and those are hard theories to work out as well.

因此，这是这些系统增添丰富性的另一个维度。

And so that's another dimension in which these systems add richness.

所以在本季各集的采访中，有没有哪些观点是你不同意的？

So when we were interviewing all the people across the episodes in the season, were there any perspectives that you disagreed with?

这样说有点不公平，因为我们选择的每个人都是我尊重、合作并共同工作的伙伴。

It's a little bit unfair because all the people we picked are people I respect and work with and collaborate with.

因此，这些不同观点之间存在着大量共识。

And so there's a lot of agreement amongst all of these different perspectives.

但我认为，对于任何一位亲密合作者的对话，分歧总是存在于细微之处。

But I think for any conversation with a close collaborator, the disagreements are always in the subtlety.

就连我个人而言，我觉得今天对某个话题持一种看法，明天又可能持另一种看法。

Even for me personally, I think one way about a topic on one day and a different way than another day.

我认为对于开放性问题，我们不断在两种不同的视角之间来回切换，以试图攻克那些极其困难的挑战。

I think for open problems, we're constantly going back and forth between two different ways of looking at something to try and get traction on really difficult challenges.

因此，在面对这些艰难的开放性问题时，我倾向于多元主义，其中一些分歧其实是语义上的。

So I'm sort of a pluralist when it comes to these hard open problems and some of it is semantic.

比如，曾有人讨论过薛定谔提出的观点，认为我们在研究生命时可能会发现新的物理定律。

So, you know, there was some discussion of the new laws of physics that Schrodinger said we might find looking at life.

而这实际上归结为：你所说的‘新定律’到底是什么意思。

And that really comes down to me about to what you mean by a new law.

是指像我和大卫·克拉考尔经常讨论的那种新兴定律吗？

Is that a new emergent law like David Krakauer and I talked a lot about?

还是指某种尚未被发现的宇宙基本力？

Or is that some new fundamental force of the universe that's yet to be discovered?

人们在这一点上常常产生各种分歧。

And people get into all sorts of disagreements about that.

但即使是我和合作者之间的对话，我们也常常在同一个争论中多次站在对立的两方。

But I think even in conversations with my collaborators, you know, we find ourselves on either sides of the same debate multiple times.

你知道吗，我会和某人展开辩论，然后想到，两个月前你还在这一边，我还在另一边，现在我们各自反转了立场，不得不朝着相反的方向辩论。

You know, I'll be having a debate with someone and think, you know, two months ago you were on the other side of this and I was on the other side of this and now we've each reversed our positions and we're having to debate the other direction.

我认为这揭示了真正前沿科学的样子——你需要不断转变视角，试图获得突破，找到看待事物的新方法，最终达成我们所有人都认同的结论。

And I think that tells you what true frontier science looks like, where you're shifting perspectives to try and gain traction and find new ways to look at something and to eventually get to something that we all agree on.

你能描述一下你在人类组织规模扩展方面的研究吗？

Can you describe some of your research on scaling in human organizations?

你和谁合作过？

Who did you work with?

这与何晋关于城市的研究有何关联？

How does it fit in with He Jin's work on cities?

因此，我们西弗团队的很大一群人，包括何晋、杰弗里·韦斯特、西德·雷德纳、维姬·杨（现任职于麻省理工学院），以及遍布这些机构的众多优秀博士后，都在努力理解我们所谓的‘调控规律’。

So a large group of us at Sify, He Jin Yoon, Jeffrey West, Sid Redner, Vicky Young, who's now at MIT, and a whole bunch of really wonderful postdocs spread across those institutions trying to understand what we call the laws of regulation.

这是一种思考人类组织规模扩展的方式，但也适用于不同生物体的规模扩展。

And so this is one way to think about scaling in human organizations, but also scaling in different types of organisms.

我们真正想探究的是：为什么从细菌到大型组织，生命树上的各个层级都会呈现出对调控功能的某种投入。

What we're really after is why you see across the tree of life from bacteria to large organizations, some investment in regulatory function.

为什么生物体会投入资源，无论是能量、金钱还是时间，来调节其他功能？

Why do organisms spend resources, whether that's energy or money or time regulating other functions.

我们常常抱怨这是官僚主义，许多人会说这是无用的官僚主义，但为什么我们要投入如此多的精力和资源来维持一定程度的监管职能？

We often bemoan this as bureaucracy and many people would say useless bureaucracy, but why do we spend so much effort and resources on having some amount of overhead regulatory function?

因此，我们正试图为这一现象建立非常通用的理论。

So we're trying to write down very general theories for that.

我们正在研究大量跨越细菌、城市到人类组织的有趣数据，以理解监管职能的规模如何随系统的大小和复杂性变化，以及这种变化是否最优。

We're looking at lots of interesting data that span bacteria to cities, to human organizations, and just understanding how the amount of regulatory function changes with the size and complexity of a system and whether that's optimal or not.

我们的部分论点是，细菌中存在着大量的监管机制。

Our argument in part is you see lots of regulation in bacteria.

细菌具有极强的自我功能优化能力。

Bacteria have an enormous capacity to refine their function.

它们拥有庞大的种群规模。

They have huge population sizes.

正因为如此，它们能够感知到极其微小的适应性变化。

And because of that, they can see really small changes in fitness.

因此，许多人认为，如果某种东西在细菌中是无关紧要的，它就会被进化迅速淘汰。

And so many people have argued that if something is irrelevant in bacteria, it gets selected out by evolution quite quickly.

所以，如果一个细菌拥有大量调控基因，这些基因确实是在发挥某种有用的作用。

And so if a bacterium has a lot of regulatory genes, those really are doing something useful.

这并不是无关紧要的官僚体系。

That is not a relevant bureaucracy.

这是这些细胞根本性的一部分。

That is something fundamental to those cells.

因此，我们正试图将从细菌中获得的理解推广到各种不同的系统中，以探讨最优调控是什么样子的。

So we're trying to take what we understand from bacteria and then scale it up to lots of different systems to just ask questions about what optimum regulation looks like.

那么，在生命系统和非生命系统中，进化是否相同呢？

So evolution in living systems and non living systems, would you say it is the same?

是否存在明显可转移的特征，或者存在一些障碍？

Are there characteristics that transfer over clearly, or are there some barriers?

思考不同系统中的进化确实非常有趣。

So it's really interesting to think about evolution in different systems.

所以，你知道，进化类比经常被应用到市场和公司上。

So, you know, the evolutionary analogy gets applied to markets and companies all the time.

但如果你观察公司，就会发现这并不完全像细胞系统中的进化动态，因为公司不会像细胞那样不断增长、分裂成两个独立的小公司，然后这些小公司重返市场、各自成长、再次分裂，同时受到选择压力的影响，决定哪家公司更优，有些公司死亡，其他公司持续增长等等。

But if you look at companies to say, well, it's not exactly the evolutionary dynamic we have in cellular systems because it's not like one company grows and gets bigger and bigger and then divides into two little independent companies and those go back into the market and they both grow and divide and then there's selective forces deciding which company is better as they all compete against each other and so some companies die and others keep growing and so forth.

相反，我们看到的是公司诞生、成长，最终在某个时刻消亡，但它们并不一定直接遗传给其他公司。

Instead, what we see is that companies are born, they grow, they die at some point, but they don't necessarily have direct inheritance to other companies.

它们确实有一些遗传性，因为过去公司的员工会被新公司聘用，许多人也会阅读关于过去公司的案例研究，试图理解这些公司曾经发生了什么。

They have some inheritance because people from past companies get hired into new companies and lots of people read case studies about past companies and try and understand what happened with companies in the past.

因此，这本身也是一种进化动态，但它具有一种非常奇特的遗传方式，与基因组所呈现的严格遗传并不完全相同。

So that itself is an evolutionary dynamic, but it has a very funny sort of inheritance that isn't exactly the rigid inheritance we see with a genome.

然而，当我们观察公司时，会看到许多与生物体相同的特征。

And yet when we look at companies, we see a lot of the same things that we see in organisms.

我们观察到非线性规模定律，并能将这些非线性规模定律转化为非常有趣的增长关系。

We see nonlinear scaling laws and we can take those nonlinear scaling laws and turn those into really interesting growth relationships.

这是我们一群人共同完成的一项研究。

This is a work that a bunch of us have done.

我们对公司在时间维度上的增长有非常精确的预测，使用的理论与我们研究哺乳动物或细菌在其生命周期内如何增长的理论非常相似。

We have really nice predictions for how companies grow in time where we're using a very similar theory to what we would for organisms, asking how mammals or bacteria grow in time over their life cycle.

因此，这里确实存在某种进化动态，但它比基因组所呈现的机制要复杂得多。

And so there's some sort of evolutionary dynamic there, but it's a little more complicated than what we have with genomes.

让我们把话题拉回到海瑟·格雷厄姆身上。

So let's bring the conversation back to Heather Graham.

我记得我们以前常有咖啡晨会，你提到当时在贝努任务中与海瑟合作。

And I remember, like, we used to have these coffee mornings, and you mentioned working with Heather back then in the Bennu mission.

我记得你对这件事非常好奇，也非常兴奋。

And I remember you were very, very curious and very excited about it.

你希望从小行星本身的原始物质中了解什么？

What do you hope to learn from the raw ingredients from an asteroid itself?

关于我为什么对贝努感兴趣，我对任何样本返回任务都感到兴奋。

In terms of why I was excited about Bennu, I'm excited about any sample return.

你知道，只要能将地球之外的完整系统带回并进行详细的化学组成和结构分析，我就感到无比兴奋。

You know, I'm I'm just excited for any time we get whole other systems encapsulated beyond Earth that we can bring back and ask detailed chemical compositional structural questions about.

你知道，我们面对地球生命的一个真正问题是，我们所感兴趣的一切都会受到生命的影响。

You know, one problem that we really face for life on earth is that everything that we're interested in becomes affected by life.

所以，如果你在问，无生命的矿物系统会是什么样子？

So if you're asking questions about, well, what does an abiotic mineral system look like?

在地球上，你要付出很大努力才能获得一个无生命的矿物系统，因为我们的大多数矿物系统都受到生命与地球地质圈共同演化的影响，形成了这种生物地球圈。

On earth, you have to work really hard to get an abiotic mineral system because most of our mineral systems are affected by a coevolution of life and the geosphere of this combined biogeosphere.

因此，我非常期待看到截然不同的环境，以了解它们可能与地球上的情况有多么不同。

And so I'm just excited to see radically different environments to get a sense of how different things might look from what we have on earth.

这对于我们开始理解自身进化历史的偶然性来说，是一个关键要素。

That's sort of an essential ingredient for starting to understand how contingent our own evolutionary history might be.

说到地球之外，希瑟在一次采访中提到了一个说法。

Talking of, you know, beyond Earth, Heather mentioned a phrase during an interview.

我不知道你是否还记得。

I don't know if you still remember it.

但希瑟说，地球曾经是许多个不同的星球。

But Heather says Earth has been many planets.

我想知道你能否详细解释一下，她这句话是什么意思。

I'm wondering if you could elaborate what do you think they mean by that phrase.

我认为海瑟说地球曾是许多个星球，其实是想表达，如果我们回到地球的过去，乘坐时光机前往不同的地质年代，许多时期对我们来说都会完全陌生，有些甚至无法生存。

So I think when Heather says Earth has been many planets, it's really to say that if we go back in time on Earth and we take a time machine back to different eras of Earth, many of those times would be unrecognizable to us and some of them would be unlivable for us.

我最喜欢的一个例子是石炭纪。

So one of my favorite examples is the Carboniferous.

石炭纪大约发生在四亿年前。

So the Carboniferous, it's about 400,000,000 years ago.

那时候陆地植物和树木开始演化，许多有趣的现象正在发生。

It's when you get the evolution of land plants and trees come on the scene and all sorts of things that are interesting are happening.

当时的地球要温暖得多，到处是沼泽，大气中的氧气含量高达40%，大约是今天大气含氧量的两倍。

Now the world at that time is much warmer, it's a swamp and there's 40% oxygen in the atmosphere which is roughly twice the oxygen we have in the atmosphere today.

如此高的大气含氧量使得巨型昆虫得以出现。

So what that huge amount of oxygen in the atmosphere allows you to do is have giant insects.

我曾经去过一个著名的石炭纪化石遗址，在那里可以看到泥岩中保存的千足虫足迹，这些足迹之间的间距大约有10英寸。

When I was actually on one very famous fossil bed from the Carboniferous where you can see millipede tracks preserved in the siltstone, and those tracks are like 10 inches apart.

对吧？

Right?

所以你想象一下，那些千足虫的腿间距有10英寸远，这让你开始理解那个时期昆虫的体型究竟有多大。

So you're thinking about millipedes that have legs that are 10 inches apart and it starts to give you a concept of just how big the insects in this period of life was.

昆虫的体型受到严格限制。

Insects are strongly limited.

它们的大小很大程度上取决于大气中的氧气含量。

Their size is strongly limited by the fraction of oxygen in the atmosphere.

所以那是一个与今天截然不同的世界。

So that's a radically different world than what we have today.

那是个沼泽地，但你还是会遇到大规模的森林火灾，因为一切东西都很容易着火——想象一下，房间里一半都是氧气，点火简直太容易了。

Know, it's a swamp but you get these big forest fires because everything catches fire because you know, imagine half the room is oxygen roughly, like it's really easy to start fires.

所以这是地球历史上一个非常不同的时期。

And so it's a really different period in Earth history.

如果你再往更早的时期追溯，就会遇到更加奇异的世界。

If you go farther back, you get even stranger worlds.

你知道，氧气在很长一段时间里并没有像今天这样大量存在于大气中。

You know, oxygen, for example, wasn't in the atmosphere in today's abundance for a long time.

我的意思是，在地球历史的很长一段时间里，大气中的氧气浓度都非常非常低。

I mean, you have tiny, tiny concentrations of of oxygen in the atmosphere for a long period in earth history.

而这是产氧光合作用，一种激进的进化创新——细胞学会了如何将光子转化为能量，这本身就很困难。

And it's oxygenic photosynthesis, this radical evolutionary innovation where cells figure out how to turn photons into energy, which is just hard to do.

要捕获光子并以有用的方式在细胞内利用它们非常困难，而这一过程的副产品是产生了大量氧气，从而氧化了整个行星的大气，这正是我们今天拥有氧气的原因。

It's hard to capture photons and use them in a useful way inside the cell that comes with the byproduct of producing huge amounts of oxygen that oxygenates the entire atmosphere of the planet and is why we have oxygen today.

因此，正是这种深层次的思考让我们意识到，那个世界——你知道，氧气出现之前的地球——所有化学过程都截然不同，因为氧气极具反应性。

And so it's that deep thinking where that world, you know, the pre oxygen Earth, all the chemistry is different because of how reactive oxygen is.

生活在那里的生物也完全不同。

The organisms that live there are different.

我们根本无法在那里生存。

We couldn't live there at all.

所以，如果你看到那个世界，假设太阳周围有另一颗地球，轨道半径和我们差不多，但处于更早期的地球阶段，我们会看着它说：天啊，这颗行星和地球的差异简直无法更大了。

So that's if you just saw that world, if we had another Earth orbiting the sun at roughly our same radius, and it was just that earlier earth, we would look at it and say, wow, this planet couldn't be more different than earth.

因此，这实际上意味着地球作为一个整体的行星系统，随着时间推移而演化了。

And so that's really to say that the earth as a whole planetary system has evolved in time.

所以回望过去的地球，它们与我们今天所知的地球根本不是同一个地球。

And so looking back at past Earths, they're really not the same Earth we have today.

这真令人着迷，对吧？想到我们所熟知的地球并非一直如此。

That's so fascinating, right, to think that the Earth that we know is not always the way it is.

在第一集的结尾，杰弗里反思了他在研究标度律过程中获得的知识，并说这让他感到与周围的一切都紧密相连。

At the end of the first episode, Jeffrey reflects on the knowledge he's gained through his work on the scaling laws and says that it makes him feel connected to everything around him.

你的天体生物学研究是如何塑造你对这个世界或宇宙的感知方式的？

How has your work in astrobiology shaped the way you move through the world or the universe?

这是一个让我产生两种截然不同感受的地方：有时我觉得自己与宇宙紧密相连，而另一些时候又感到无比渺小。

This is another place where I go two directions, where sometimes I feel very connected to the universe and at one and other times unimaginably small.

你知道，从《凯文与霍布斯》到古代哲学家，人人都曾探讨过这一点。

And you know, this is something that everyone from Calvin and Hobbes to the old philosophers have talked about.

有时我会想，或许存在一个普遍的理论，能够解释生命如何在所有这些不同的星球上出现。

Sometimes I'm thinking, well, there's this general theory and it explains how, you know, life might arise anywhere on all these different planets.

我可以从两个角度来理解这一点。

And I can take that two directions.

我可以这么说，这太棒了。

I can say that's wonderful.

你知道，我可以把自己看作是宇宙中无处不在的普遍模式中的一部分，但这也可能让我觉得自己并不特别。

You know, I'm I can sort of understand myself in the context of these universal patterns that happen everywhere in the universe, or that can make me feel quite unspecial.

对吧？

Right?

我只是宇宙中到处都会出现的某种生命形式的又一个实例。

I'm just another iteration of some, you know, form of life that grows up everywhere.

但了解我本人——我的喜好、我喜欢的艺术、我喜欢听的音乐、我读的书、我生活中的个人关系——

But understanding me, my preferences, what art I like, what music I like to listen to, what books I read, the individual relationships I have in my life.

我不认为任何理论能真正触及这些方面。

I don't think certain theories will ever touch that.

我认为，正是在这些地方，我们永远需要艺术、文学和个人经历来描绘个体的独特性。

I think that's a place where we will always need art and literature and personal experience to sort of describe the individual.

因此，在某些方面，我认为正是我们的普遍理论失效之处，这些更丰富、更细致的描述才得以凸显。

And so in some ways, I think it's where our universal theories fail that these more rich and detailed descriptions come into focus.

因此，这让我一方面从宇宙运行的普遍理论视角感到自己不可思议地渺小，但另一方面又依然觉得某种意义上自己很重要——因为描述我的唯一方式，就是成为我。

And so that allows me to feel both sort of unimaginably small from some perspective of a universal theory of what's going on in the universe, but also still feel important in some sort of way that the only way to describe me is to sort of be me.

而这一点，大概不是理论能够帮上忙的。

And that probably isn't a place that theories can help us.

所以，这就是我为自己调和这种张力的方式之一。

So that's part of how I mediate that tension for myself.

所以，你知道，我们本季一开始便抱有非常宏大的想法。

So, you know, we we started out the season with very ambitious ideas.

当我们第一次讨论时，你想要探讨的内容太多了。

And when we had our first discussion, there were so many things that you wanted to touch upon.

有没有哪个话题是你希望我们能涉及但至今还没谈到的？

Is there any topic that you wish you could have touched upon that we haven't yet?

我的意思是，目前生命物理学领域正发生着太多令人惊叹的事情。

I mean, there's just so much amazing stuff happening right now in the physics of life.