我們不知道的十大生活常識(上)

Some days, it seems like there are no mysteries left in our everyday lives. Our diets are dissected to the smallest element, there are countless books on how to raise our children and train our pets, and if we have questions, we can just turn to the Internet to find the answer. However, there are a few things left in our everyday lives that still have the experts stumped.

在我們的日常生活中似乎沒有什麼祕密可言。我們有很多途徑可以去了解這些生活常識，例如我們可以通過圖書學會養育孩子以及訓練寵物，如果我們不滿足於書上的答案，我們還可以求助於互聯網去找到答案。然而，還有很多生活常識是我們不知道的。

Do Hiccup Cures Work?

10.爲什麼有些方法能有效停止打嗝?

Hiccups are weird things, and we're not even sure why they happen. There's no real, practical reason for a hiccup, and we don't know why all of our tried-and-true hiccup cures work. Everyone has their favorites, from eating a spoonful of sugar to holding your breath until the hiccups stop. There are so many ways to get rid of a hiccup that no matter where you are when you get it, someone will have a suggestion for making it stop. It turns out that none of the cures are guaranteed to work for everyone, and there's not much scientific support for any of them. As for the ones that do work? Well, don't really know why they do.

打嗝是一件很奇怪的事情，我們根本不知道爲什麼會打嗝。事實上打嗝並沒有所謂的真正的原因，並且我們不知道我們嘗試的哪些方法可以有效停止打嗝。每個人都有自己最喜歡的方式，例如吃一勺糖，屏住呼吸，直到停止打嗝。除了這個方法還有很多可以停止打嗝的方法，無論你身處何地，當你打嗝的時候，周圍總有人會建議你採用某種方法停止打嗝。事實證明，沒有哪一種方法能夠保證對每個人都有效，這並沒有太多的科學理論作爲支撐。至於那些方法爲什麼有效？好吧，真的不知道爲什麼。

Hiccups are essentially caused by the diaphragm having a spasm, which can be caused by anything from laughing to medication. Stopping a hiccup seems to rely on a couple of different things. Raising the amount of carbon dioxide in the blood seems to have some success in stopping hiccups, but no one's sure what that has to do with the process. Other somewhat successful remedies work by impacting the vagus nerve, which is involved in making sure we don't try to breathe and swallow at the same time. We don't know what that has to do with the diaphragm, either, but that seems to be why things like pressing on your eyes or pulling your ear help—those actions stimulate the nerve. Another method that's been found to cure hiccups is, bizarrely, rectal massage. Used as a cure for an extreme case of the hiccups in 1988, its success was once again traced back to stimulating the same vagus nerve.

打嗝本質上是由隔膜痙攣引起的，這可能是由於人們發笑或者食用一些藥物引起。停止打嗝似乎依賴於一些不同的東西。提高血液中二氧化碳的含量似乎能夠成功停止打嗝，但沒有人知道這一過程是如何進行的。有些成功措施是靠影響大腦的迷走神經（注：迷走神經是第10對腦神經，是腦神經中最長，分佈最廣的一對，含有感覺、運動和副交感神經纖維）來確保我們不同時呼吸和吞嚥食物。我們不知道是什麼作用在隔膜上，但是看起來這解釋了爲什麼有些人會在你打嗝的時候按你的眼睛或拉你的耳朵，可能是靠這些行爲刺激神經。另外還有一種奇怪的方法可以來治療打嗝，直腸按摩。這個是發生在1988年的治療打嗝的一個極端例子，它的成功依然可以追溯到同一原理：刺激迷走神經。

Are Moths Attracted To Light?

9.爲什麼飛蛾趨光

We've all watched it happen, and chances are we never really thought about it that much. Bugs—particularly moths—are attracted to light, but why? It's the principle that many bug traps and zappers are built on, but no one knows just why it works. There are a couple of different theories about why moths are attracted to light, but there's not even one that stands out as a front-runner. In fact, there are pretty convincing arguments against all of them.

飛蛾趨光這個現象，我們都看着它發生，但是我們從未真正想過那麼多。昆蟲們——特別是飛蛾都有趨光性，但這是爲什麼呢？許多滅蟲器都是基於這個原理而製作的，但沒有人知道爲什麼這些器具會有效滅蟲。有很多理論來論證爲什麼飛蛾會被光所吸引，但沒有一個讓人信服。事實上，人們對於這些理論都持懷疑態度。

One theory suggests that only man-made, artificial lights attract bugs. Presumably, there's something different about artificial light that interferes with the bugs' ability to navigate, but we don't even know whether bugs are using light as a navigational aid. It's also been suggested that moths may be confusing the frequencies of artificial lights with pheromones given off by willing mates, but there's nothing to really support that theory, either. Researchers have found that it's a pretty bizarre behavior, specifically because it seems to cross species but also works against the survival of those species. In spite of the kamikaze behavior that could be expected to discourage the practice—or at least kill off the part of the population that does it—it's still a major behavior pattern.

目前僅有一種理論表明，人工照明可以吸引蟲子。據推測，有一些不同的人造光具有干擾昆蟲自身導航的能力，但我們難以判定蟲子是否使用光作爲導航援助。還有人認爲飛蛾可能會混淆人工照明產生的信息頻率，但沒有什麼證據能真正支持這一理論。研究人員發現，昆蟲趨光是一個非常奇怪的行爲，特別是它似乎跨物種，並且也不利於這些物種的生存。儘管目前這種自殺性的行爲被認爲是一種消極的行爲甚至會導致昆蟲數量的減少，但是它仍然是昆蟲一個主要的行爲模式。

Is Foam?

8.泡沫到底是什麼？

Every time you wash dishes or lather your hands with soap, you're creating one of the most mysterious household compounds: foam. Foam isn't classified as a liquid, a gas, or a solid, but it's all three at the same time. Different substances form different types of foam that all seem to work differently. There's not much that's actually known about the physics of what forms this weird cohesion of matter states or how we can predict what type of foam will be formed from what type of substance.

當你每次洗盤子或使用肥皂洗手時，你正在製造一個最神祕的家庭化合物：泡沫。 泡沫並不能歸類爲液體，氣體或固體，但它同時又是這三種的結合體。並且不同的物質可以形成不同類型的泡沫。實際上目前人們對泡沫並沒有什麼認識，比如說人們並不知道怎樣來說明這種怪異的凝聚物質狀態以及人們無法預測到什麼類型的物質可以形成什麼類型的泡沫。

Most foams are made up primarily of gas in between bits of liquid, but there's no mathematical formula for discovering how a foam will behave. Some foams are stiff, like shaving foams, while others are delicate, like soap bubbles. The size of the bubbles doesn't seem to have any impact on how the foam behaves. The reason we haven't been able to learn much about foam is a weird bubbles are inherently oddly shaped. The critical point of foam, defined as the moment when all the bubbles in the foam are perfectly spherical, is impossible to achieve on Earth because of gravity. Gravity pulls foam bubbles downward, and its impact is so great that even in a layer of foam just a few centimeters thick, there's a definite difference between the shape of the bubbles at the bottom and the top. This makes it impossible to perform experiments on foam without changing what it is.

大多數泡沫都是由氣體和液體組成的，但是沒有數學公式能夠計算出泡沫的呈現形式。有一些泡沫是僵硬的，像剃鬚泡沫，而另一些則很細膩柔軟，像肥皂泡沫。泡沫的大小似乎並不影響泡沫如何呈現。這些現象都讓我們認識到泡沫是多麼不可思議的存在。泡沫的泡泡本身就是一種特殊的存在。在地心引力的作用下，每個泡泡變成完美的球形是不可能實現的。地心引力對於泡沫的形成影響是巨大的，可以影響到泡沫的每一個小層，產生形變。這樣就使得人們無法通過不改變泡沫的形狀來進行實驗，也就是說人們無法對泡沫進行實驗。

Does Static Electricity Happen?

7.爲什麼會產生靜電現象?

It's a mildly annoying occurrence that usually happens when the weather's dry and you've done something like walking across a carpet. While we know how static electricity builds up, the question of why it happens is a surprisingly complicated one, with a weirdly elusive answer.

天氣乾燥的時候，如果你走在地毯上，你就會發現惱人的靜電產生了。雖然我們知道靜電是怎樣積聚的，但是爲什麼會產生靜電呢？這是一個複雜、古怪、難以捉摸的問題。

The problem in finding an explanation happens when one of the materials involved is, theoretically, an electrical insulator. There's no confirmed reason for why an electrical charge should be transferred from or to an insulating material; an insulator, by nature, shouldn't allow this. The problem is further complicated by the fact that different materials and conductors have different mechanisms for the cause, buildup, and transfer of static electricity.A static electric shock can also occur between two objects made of identical materials, which makes the phenomenon even stranger. In theory, the difference in properties should be what makes the electrical charge jump from one material to the other, but experiments performed by rubbing two identical materials together have shown that static electricity still passed between the two objects. Currently, there are no satisfactory answers from the fields of physics or chemistry, suggesting that it's actually a way more complicated phenomenon than either can account for on their own.

人們找到了一個可以解釋該問題所涉及的一種材料，從理論上講，是一種電絕緣體。事實上人們並沒有確認爲什麼一個電荷會被轉移到一個絕緣材料上，從本質上說，這是不可能發生的事情。這個問題進一步複雜化的是，不同的材料和導體有不同的機制原理來產生、積累和轉移靜電。靜態電擊也會發生在由相同的材料製成的兩個事物之間。理論上來說，屬性的差異應該使電荷從一個物質轉移到另一個，但兩個相同的材料的摩擦實驗表明，靜電是在兩個對象之間傳遞。目前，在物理或化學領域中還沒有令人滿意的答案，表明這是一個多麼複雜的現象。

e Did Dogs Come From?

6.狗是從哪裏來的?

They're some of our most constant companions, but there's a lot we don't know about when dogs were first domesticated, where the process happened, and what the first domesticated dogs even were.

狗一向被譽爲我們最忠誠的同伴，但是大多數人並不知道第一隻狗是怎麼出現的，又是怎麼被馴化的。

Studies on the subject have proven highly inconclusive, with estimates for the first domestication ranging from 9,000–34,000 years ago. Not only is that a huge gap, but it leaves a lot of unanswered questions as to how it happened. Dogs on the most distant end of that scale would have been associating with hunter-gatherer groups, while the more recent instances of domestication would have been happening when the human race had already discovered agriculture and settled into a more sedentary archers from the University of Turku have isolated DNA from some of man's early canine companions with some staggering implications. Some of the oldest DNA samples were taken from dogs that were living alongside humans around 33,000 years ago and were traced through to dogs that lived in Greenland about 1,000 years ago. But this particular DNA seems to be unrelated to today's dogs, and it's now suggested that some of the “dogs” that were domesticated for thousands of years weren't the same as today's dogs and were instead a sort of sister species. Ancient dogs have been found in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, but it's still not known if the idea of domestication spread from one area to the other or occurred independently in all areas. If it did, it's not known who was first.

對於這項研究沒有一個確切的說法，但是研究人員估計第一馴化狗應該是介於9000到34000年前。這個估計的年份實在是有巨大的差距，它也留下了許多未解之謎。狗最早出現應該跟狩獵團體出現的時期一致，而馴養的最近實例應該是發生在人類已經發現農業並安頓下來追求更穩定生活方式的時候。圖爾庫大學的研究人員在分離人類早期出現的一些狗狗的DNA時有驚人的發現。這些作爲實驗的DNA樣本取自於大約33000年前的狗，還有大約1000年前住在格陵蘭島的狗。 但似乎這個特殊的DNA與今天的狗沒什麼關係，和現在的馴化狗，甚至感覺都不是一個系列的物種。古狗是在歐洲，中東和亞洲被發現的，但仍然不知道這個馴養的想法是否是從一個區域傳播到另一個地方，或者在所有領域中是獨立發生。如果是這樣的話，人們無法確定狗是怎麼來的。

翻譯:哈利小王子 來源:前十網