Physicist Rocky Kolb was doing his grocery shopping in Warrenville, Illinois, one day, and wondering what he should call the dark-matter particle he and his colleagues had just invented. A movie poster on a passing bus provided the answer. It was 1998 and the Godzilla remake had just been released. The wimpzilla was born.

物理学家Rocky Kolb在伊利诺斯州的Warrenville的超市购物，他在想给他和他的同事们刚刚发明的暗物质粒子模型取个名字。旁边路过的公交车上的一部电影的海报提供了答案。这是1998年，哥斯拉（Godzilla）翻拍刚刚上映。于是诞生了Wimpzilla。

No one knows what dark matter is made of: we just know that 80 per cent of universe's matter is invisible to our telescopes. Weakly-interacting massive particles, or WIMPs, are a popular idea. Between 10 and 100 times as weighty as protons, they would have been produced in the universe's hot primordial soup and corralled by gravity to seed today's galaxies.

没有人知道暗物质是什么：我们只知道在我们的望远镜里，80％以上的宇宙物质是不可见的。弱相互作用重粒子，Weakly-interacting massive particles或WIMP，是一个流行的想法。它们比质子重10倍到100倍，会在宇宙原始热遗迹中产生，并通过引力播下今天的星系结构的种子。

But that is not the only possibility. Within the universe's first second, during the period of inflation (see "Inflatons"), the expansion of space itself ripped particles out of the vacuum. Kolb and his colleagues calculated that among them could have been dark particles weighing a billion times more than a WIMP.

但这并不是唯一的可能性。在宇宙的第一秒的暴胀时期（请参阅"暴胀子"），空间本身的膨胀从真空中撕出了粒子。Kolb和他的同事们计算，其中暗粒子的质量可以比WIMP大十亿倍。

Their monstrous mass means wimpzillas would be exceedingly rare. They can't be made in particle accelerators and are unlikely to amble into one of the myriadunderground detectors looking for WIMPs. "They are possibly the most elusive dark-matter particles ever proposed," concedes Kolb.

巨兽级的质量意味着Wimpzillas将是极为稀少的。他们不能在粒子加速器中产生，恐怕也不能被众多的探测WIMP的地下探测器所捕获。"他们可能是曾经提出的最难以捉摸的暗物质粒子，"Kolb说。

They might still leave subtle features in the cosmic microwave background radiation, the big bang's afterglow that suffuses the sky. If we find any trace, for example in the detailed maps of the cosmic background expected from the European Space Agency's Planck satellite, "then after 10,000 years of thinking about it, we'll know what the universe is made of", says Kolb. Such are the grand prizes that can come from inventing new particles.

他们可能留下踪影的地方在宇宙微波背景辐射中，那是弥漫天空的宇宙大爆炸的余辉。如果我们发现任何痕迹，例如在来自欧洲航天局的普朗克卫星的宇宙背景辐射的详细测量中，"那么经过万年的思考，我们就可以知道宇宙是由什么构成的"，Kolb说。这是发明新粒子的概念可以得到的大奖。

• illinois [,ili´nɔi]   n.伊利诺斯   (初中英语单词)
• invisible [in´vizəbəl]   a.看不见的；无形的   (初中英语单词)
• possibility [,pɔsə´biliti]   n.可能(性)；希望；前途   (初中英语单词)
• background [´bækgraund]   n.背景；经历；幕后   (初中英语单词)
• european [juərə´pi:ən]   a.欧洲的 n.欧洲人   (初中英语单词)
• grocery [´grəusəri]   n.食品杂货店   (高中英语单词)
• particle [´pɑ:tikl]   n.微粒；极小量   (高中英语单词)
• massive [´mæsiv]   a.厚实的；魁伟的   (高中英语单词)
• gravity [´græviti]   n.严肃；严重；重力   (高中英语单词)
• expansion [ik´spænʃən]   n.扩大；膨胀；发展   (高中英语单词)
• billion [´biljən]   num.万亿   (高中英语单词)
• monstrous [´mɔnstrəs]   a.怪异的；庞大的   (高中英语单词)
• exceedingly [ik´si:diŋli]   ad.非常地，极度地   (高中英语单词)
• underground [,ʌndə´graund]   ad.&a.地下(的)   (高中英语单词)
• universe [´ju:nivə:s]   n.天地；全人类；银河系   (高中英语单词)
• myriad [´miriəd]   n.极大数量 a.无数的   (英语四级单词)
• poster [´pəustə]   n.招贴；贴标语的人   (英语六级单词)
• vacuum [´vækjuəm]   n.真空；空间   (英语六级单词)
• unlikely [ʌn´laikli]   a.不像的；未必可能的   (英语六级单词)
• satellite [´sætəlait]   n.(人造)卫星；随从   (英语六级单词)