2010年5月SAT阅读真题（1）

    Passage 1

    String theory is a work in progress whose partial completion has already  revealed remarkably elegant answers to questions about nature’s most  fundamental constituents and forces. For instance, in string theory many  aspects of nature that might appear to be arbitrary technical details --- such  as the number of distinct varieties of particle ingredients and their properties --- are found to arise from tangible aspects of the geometry of the universe.

    In the final analysis, though, nothing is a substitute for definitive, testable  predictions that can determine whether string theory has truly lifted the veil of mystery hiding the deepest truths of our universe. It may be some time  before our level of comprehension has reached sufficient depth to achieve this aim. In fact, the mathematics of string theory is so complicated that, to date, no one even knows the exact equations of the theory. Nevertheless, experimental tests could provide strong circumstantial support for string theory within the next ten years or so.

    One of the pioneers of string theory summarizes the situation by saying that “string theory is a part of twenty-first-century physics that fell by change into the twentieth century.” It is as if our forebears in the nineteenth century had been presented with a modern-day  supercomputer, without the operating instructions. Through inventive trial and error, hints of the supercomputer’s power would have become evident, but it  would have taken vigorous and prolonged effort to gain true mastery. The hints of the computer’s potential, like our glimpses of string theory’s explanatory  power, would have provided strong motivation for obtaining complete facility. A similar motivation today energizes physicists to pursue string theory.

    Science proceeds in fits and starts. Scientists put forward results, both  theoretical and experimental. The results are then debated by the community; sometimes they are discarded, sometimes they are modified, and sometimes  they provide inspiration for new and more accurate ways of understanding the universe. In other words, science proceeds along a zigzag path toward what  we hope will be ultimate truth, a path that began with humanity’s earliest  attempts to fathom the cosmos and whose end we cannot predict. Whether  tring theory is an incidental rest stop along this path, a landmark turning point, or the final destination we do not know. But the last two decades of research by hundreds of dedicated physicists and mathematicians has given us  well-founded hope that we are on the right and possibly final track.