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What Michelson and Morley did, without actually intending to, was undermine a longstanding belief in something called the luminiferous ether,
迈克尔逊和莫雷所做的——实际上是在无意之中所做的——破坏了长期以来人们对一种所谓光以太的东西的信念。
a stable, invisible, weightless, frictionless, and unfortunately wholly imaginary medium that was thought to permeate the universe.
那是一种稳定、看不见、没有重量、没有摩擦力、不幸又完全是想像出来的媒质。据认为，这种媒质充满宇宙。
Conceived by Descartes, embraced by Newton, and venerated by nearly everyone ever since,
以太是笛卡儿假设的，牛顿加以接受，之后差不多人人都对它怀有崇敬之情，
the ether held a position of absolute centrality in nineteenth-century physics as a way of explaining how light traveled across the emptiness of space.
在19世纪物理学中占有绝对的中心地位，用来解释为什么光能够在空荡荡的太空里传播。
It was especially needed in the 1800s because light and electromagnetism were now seen as waves, which is to say types of vibrations.
它在19世纪初尤其必不可少，因为光和电磁在这时候被看成是波，也就是说某种振动。
Vibrations must occur in something; hence the need for, and lasting devotion to, an ether.
振动必须在什么东西里面才能发生，因此，就需要一种以太，并长期认为存在一种以太。
As late as 1909, the great British physicist J. J. Thomson was insisting:
直到1909年，伟大的英国物理学家J.J.汤姆森仍坚持说：
“The ether is not a fantastic creation of the speculative philosopher; it is as essential to us as the air we breathe.”
“以太不是哪位爱好思索的哲学家的凭空想像，它对我们来说就像我们呼吸的空气那样不可缺少。”
This more than four years after it was pretty incontestably established that it didn’t exist.
他说这番话4年多以后，就无可争议地确定以太并不存在。
People, in short, were really attached to the ether.
总而言之，人们确实离不开以太。
