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1.God commanded, “Let there be light,” but it didn’t happen for nearly half a million years. That’s how long after the Big Bang the universe took to expand enough to allow photons (light particles) to travel freely. 神说：“要有光。”但是光直到50万年之后才出现——大爆炸之后50万年，宇宙终于膨胀到足够大，可以让光子在其中自由穿行。 2.Those photons are still running loose, detectable as the cosmic microwave background, a microwave glow from all parts of the sky. 这时光子的运动仍然是无规则的，以宇宙背景辐射的形式存在——就是从宇宙的各个部分发出的微波。 3.Light moves along at full “light speed”—186,282.4 miles per second—only in a vacuum. In the dense matrix of a diamond, it slows to just 77,500 miles per second. 光只有在真空中才以“光速”，即186,282.4英里/秒（299,792,458米/秒）运动，在钻石这样的高密度物质中，光速会下降到77,500英里/秒（124,724,160米/秒）。 4.Diamonds are the Afghanistan of gemstones: Any entering photon quickly gets bogged down. It takes a lot of pinging back and forth in a thicket of carbon atoms to find an exit. This action is what gives diamonds their dazzling sparkle. 钻石是宝石中的阿富汗：任何进入其中的光子都会被迫放慢速度。光子要在错综复杂的碳原子间反复冲撞才能找到出路。而这就是钻石闪耀着令人眩目的光辉的原因。 | 
