银翼杀手中可以瞬间变色的科幻玻璃成为现实

xman

播音/撰文 克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔 (Christopher Intagliata)
翻译 惠丹丹
审校 Arc Ma

There's a scene in Bladerunner, Ridley Scott's sci-fi classic, when Harrison Ford's character, Deckard, is about to interview Rachael, played by Sean Young, to test whether she's a real human—or a replicant. ["It's too bright in here."] On cue, the floor-to-ceiling windows dim, shading the room from the golden sunlight outside.
雷德利·斯科特导演的科幻经典电影《银翼杀手》中有一个场景，哈里森·福特饰演的迪卡德面试由肖恩·杨饰演的蕾切尔以测试她是人类还是一个复制品。“这里太亮了。”话音刚落，硕大的落地窗立刻变暗，遮挡了从外面入射的夕阳。

It was a beautiful Hollywood effect when the movie came out in 1982. And now it may not be that far from reality. Because researchers at Harvard recently designed a material that, with a shot of electricity, can transform a glass window from transparent to opaque in less than a second.
当1982年这部电影上映时，这一幕只不过是好莱坞搞得炫目特效。而现在这一幕离成为现实不远了。因为，哈佛大学的研究人员最近设计了一种材料，给其施加电脉冲后，可以在一秒内将透明的玻璃窗转换成不透明的。

The team built the window by sandwiching glass between two sheets of a transparent, balloon-like rubber material, laced with silver nanowires. As is, the material is clear. But apply voltage, and the nanowires are attracted to each other ever so slightly across the glass—which deforms those rubbery sheets just enough to scatter light, causing the glass to cloud up. They describe the device in the journal Optics Letters. [Samuel Shian and David R. Clarke, Electrically tunable window device]
该研究组通过把玻璃夹在两片类似气球的透明的橡胶材料中间，并加入银纳米线制备成这种窗户。像其它玻璃材料一样，它是透明的，但加上电压，则玻璃两边的纳米线相互吸引，并使橡胶薄片变形，进而使玻璃模糊。他们将这一发现发表在光学快报。

Study author Samuel Shian, a materials scientist, says this smart glass is cheaper than others, and uses minimal power—much less, for example, than something like a curling iron. And, since it's flexible and foldable, he says it could even be used for things like camouflage uniforms, to switch, for example, from green and brown to white and gray. "This would be very useful when the background landscape suddenly changes, such as during early snowfall."
Bladerunner was set in Los Angeles in 2019. Meaning Shian and others still have about three years to turn one bit of science fiction into science fact.
研究作者塞缪尔·紫安是一个材料科学家，他说这种智能玻璃比其他的变色玻璃更便宜，而且耗电量很小—比如，比卷发器类的东西用电少的多。另外，他说由于这种玻璃是柔软可折叠的，甚至可以用于制作像迷彩制服一样的伪装物，比如从绿色和褐色变为白色和灰色。“当背景突然改变的时候这将是很有用的，比如在刚刚开始下雪的时候。”《银翼杀手》的背景设定是2019年的洛杉矶。也就是说紫安和其他的科学家还有约三年的时间将这一科幻变为科学事实。