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Fundamental physics Antimatter of fact 基础物理 反物质研究突飞猛进 Researchers at CERN have held on to anti-atoms for a full quarter of an hour 欧洲核子研究中心的科研人员让反原子颗粒存在时间长达15分钟 READERS who were paying attention in their maths classes may recall that quadraticequations often have two solutions, one positive and one negative. 数学课上认真听讲的读者朋友或许都能想起二次方程式通常有两个解:一个是正解,另一个是负解。 So when, in 1928, a British physicist called Paul Dirac solved such an equation relating to theelectron, the fact that one answer described the opposite of that particle might have beenbrushed aside as a curiosity. 因此1928年，当英国物理学家保罗狄拉克在解一道有关微观电子的类似方程时，得到了一个描述电子颗粒负状态的结果，该结果按照异常情况本应该予以舍弃，但实际情况并非如此。 But it wasn t. Instead, Dirac interpreted it as antimatter-and, four years later, it turned up ina real experiment. 狄拉克把这种负粒子解释为反物质，四年后，反物质在真实的实验中出现。 Since then antimatter-first, anti-electrons, known as positrons, and then antiversions of allother particles of matter-has become a staple of both real science and the fictional sort. | 
