大学英语四级阅读的200篇: Unit 37 passage 1_大学英语阅读

大学英语四级阅读的200篇: Unit 37 passage 1

　　To most people it is not easy to explain why Einsteins theory has had such an immense effect upon the whole scientific and intellectual world. After its formation, scientists never again regarded the world as they had before. The theory set forth new and far-reaching conclusions about the nature of space, time, motion, mass, energy, and the relations governing all these. Basically the theory proposed, among other things, that the greatest speed possible is the speed of light; that the rate of a clock moving through space will decrease as its speed increases; and that energy and mass are equal and interchangeable. This latter claim, based on the formula E = mc2 was later proved by atomic fission, on which the atomic bomb is based.

　　Toward the fend of his life, when Einstein was asked to explain his law of relativity to a group of young students, he said; When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, you think its only a minute. But when you sit on a hot stove for a minute, you think its two hours. That is relativity.

　　Einstein had an effect on science and history that only a few men have ever achieved. An American university president once commented that Einstein has created a new outlook, a new view of the universe. It may be some generations before the average mind grasps the identity of time and space, and so on but even ordinary men understand now that the universe is something vaster than ever thought before.