Well, those crazy chemistry cats have done it.
好吧，那些瘋狂的化學貓已經做到了。
Nearly 200 years after the molecule was discovered by Michael Faraday, researchers have finally revealed the complex electronic structure of benzene.
在邁克爾·法拉第(Michael Faraday)發現該分子近200年後，研究人員終於揭示了苯的複雜電子結構。
This not only settles a debate that has been raging since the 1930s, this step has important implications for the future development of opto-electronic materials, many of which are built on benzenes.
這不僅解決了自20世紀30年代以來一直激烈的爭論，而且這一步驟對光電材料的未來發展具有重要影響，其中許多材料都是以苯為基礎的。
The atomic structure of benzene is pretty well understood.
苯的原子結構非常清楚。
It's a ring consisting of six carbon atoms, and six hydrogen atoms, one attached to each of the carbon atoms.
這是一個由六個碳原子和六個氫原子組成的環，每個碳原子連接一個。
Where it gets extremely tricky is when we consider the molecule's 42 electrons.
當我們考慮分子的42個電子時，它變得極其棘手。
"The mathematical function that describes benzene's electrons is 126-dimensional," chemist Timothy Schmidt of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Exciton Science and UNSW Sydney in Australia told ScienceAlert.
“描述苯電子的數學函數是126維的，”ARC激子科學卓越中心和澳大利亞悉尼新南威爾士大學的化學家Timothy Schmidt告訴ScienceAlert。
"That means it is a function of 126 coordinates, three for each of the 42 electrons. The electrons are not independent, so we cannot break this down into 42 independent three-dimensional functions.
“這意味著它是126個座標的函數，42個電子各有3個。電子不是獨立的，所以我們不能把它分解成42個獨立的三維函數。”
The answer computed by a machine is not easy to interpret by a human, and we had to invent a way to get at the answer.
機器計算出的答案不容易被人類理解，我們不得不發明一種方法來得到答案。
So, that means mathematically describing the electronic structure of benzene needs to take 126 dimensions into account.
因此，這意味著在數學上描述苯的電子結構需要考慮126個維度。
As you can imagine, this is not exactly a simple thing to do.
正如你可以想象的那樣，這並不是一件簡單的事情。
In fact, this complexity is why revealing the structure has remained a problem for so long, leading to debates about how benzene's electrons even behave.
事實上，這種複雜性就是為什麼揭示結構這麼長時間一直是一個問題，導致了關於苯的電子行為的爭論。
There are two schools of thought: that benzene follows valence bond theory, with localised electrons; or molecular orbital theory, with delocalised electrons.
有兩種觀點：苯遵循價鍵理論，具有局域電子；或者分子軌道理論，具有離域電子。
The problem is, neither really seems to quite fit.
問題是，兩者似乎都不太合適。
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