“吸血鬼樹”何處吸取養分？盤點年最怪異10項科學研究

美國趣味科學網站近日盤點了2019年最怪異的10項科學研究：尼斯湖水怪、吸血鬼樹、冷凍糞便、變形糊糊……科學家們深入探究了這些怪異現象背後的科學真相，一起來了解一下吧。

尋找尼斯湖水怪的DNA

According to popular lore, the legendary Loch Ness monster has supposedly lived in a deep Scottish lake for more than 1,000 years. But according to a study conducted this year, Loch Ness seems to be devoid of any signs of "monster DNA." Geneticists drew more than 250 water samples from the vast lake and examined the bits of DNA floating within each. The survey uncovered genetic traces of more than 3,000 species living in and around Loch Ness, including fish, deer, pigs, bacteria and humans. But the team found no evidence of giant reptiles or aquatic dinosaurs, or even massive sturgeons or catfish that could be mistaken for a mysterious lake monster. However, they did uncover an abundance of eels, so it may be possible (though highly improbable) that "Nessie" was actually an overgrown eel.

根據流行的傳說，傳奇的尼斯湖水怪已經在蘇格蘭的深湖裏生活了1000多年。但今年進行的一項研究顯示，尼斯湖裏似乎並沒有任何“水怪DNA”存在的跡象。遺傳學家從這個巨大的湖泊中提取了250多個水樣，並對每個樣本中漂浮的DNA片段進行了檢測。這項調查發現了生活在尼斯湖及周邊地區的3000多個物種的基因痕跡，包括魚、鹿、豬、細菌和人類。但研究團隊並沒有發現巨型爬行動物或水生恐龍，甚至沒有發現可能被誤認爲神祕水怪的大型鱘魚或鮎魚存在的跡象。不過，他們的確發現了大量鰻魚，因此“尼斯湖水怪”有可能（雖然可能性不大）其實是一條長得太大的鰻魚。

be devoid of：缺乏，沒有

用糞便做的刀？

Many scholars are familiar with the strange story of an Inuit man who, upon being stranded during a storm, fashioned a knife from his own frozen poop and used it to butcher a dog. Although the tale is famous among anthropologists, none have attempted to craft their own blade from frozen fecal matter — until this year, that is, when a team of researchers took a hack at crafting their own poop knives. The lead study author, Metin Eren, adopted an "Arctic diet" for eight days to supply the needed raw materials, which the team then froze and shaped into blades with metal files. But when the team attempted to carve up a pig hide with their new knives, the blades only left brown streaks along the meat.

許多學者都熟知一個關於因紐特人的奇怪故事。故事中的一名因紐特人在暴風雪中被困，他用自己被凍成冰的糞便做了一把刀，然後用它宰殺了一條狗。雖然這個故事在人類學家當中流傳甚廣，但從來沒有人嘗試過用冷凍糞便來製作刀具——直到今年，一個研究團隊嘗試了打造自己的糞便刀。研究報告的第一作者梅廷·埃倫經過了爲期8天的“北極飲食”來提供所需的“原材料”，然後研究團隊將這些“原材料”冷凍起來，再用金屬銼刀把它製作成刀的形狀。但是，當這支團隊嘗試用他們新做的刀來切一塊豬皮時，卻只在肉上留下了棕色的印子。

fashion [ˈfæʃn]：vt.做成…的形狀

file [faɪl]：n.銼刀

hide [haɪd]：n.獸皮

吃蠑螈的植物

The carnivorous northern pitcher plant (Sarracenia purpurea) traps unwary insects in its goblet-shaped leaves and digests the bugs for their nutrients. But earlier this year, scientists were shocked to find pitcher plants chowing down on salamanders as well. A team of researchers sampled several hundred pitcher plants in Ontario's Algonquin Provincial Park and found that about 20% of the plants contained at least one juvenile salamander, while many plants captured several of the amphibians at once. The salamanders drowned, starved or were cooked to death in the acidic pitcher fluid and, once dead, decomposed in about 10 days. The ravenous plants may gobble up as much as 5% of the bog's juvenile salamander population each year, the team estimated.

瓶子草這種北方的肉食性捕蟲草能用它的杯狀葉片捕捉到不夠小心的昆蟲，並消化這些昆蟲以吸取它們的營養。但今年早些時候，科學家們驚訝地發現瓶子草也能吞食蠑螈。一組研究人員對加拿大安大略省省立阿爾貢金公園內的數百株瓶子草進行了採樣，結果發現有大約20%的瓶子草裏捕獲了至少一隻幼年蠑螈，而且有不少瓶子草同時捕獲了好幾只。蠑螈在瓶子草的酸性液中被淹死、餓死或被“煮”死，而一旦死亡，它們的身體會在大約10天內分解。研究團隊估計，這種貪婪的植物每年可能會吞食該沼澤內5%的幼年蠑螈。

carnivorous [kɑːˈnɪvərəs]：adj.食肉的；肉食性的

你的舌頭能像鼻子一樣聞氣味

No, this doesn't mean you should stop and lick the flowers — but our senses of taste and smell may be even more entangled than we once thought. In a study published in April, scientists exposed lab-grown human taste cells to odor molecules and found that the cells reacted to scents in the same way that the smell-sensing cells in our nasal passages do. When an odor molecule touched down on one of the taste cells, the chemical plugged into a receptor on the cell's surface. In the body, the interaction between the odor and receptor would normally trigger a chain reaction inside the cell, causing it to shoot off a message to the brain.

不，這並不意味着你應該停下來舔一舔花朵來聞香味——不過，我們的味覺與嗅覺之間的關聯可能比我們以前想象的更加複雜。在今年4月發表的一項研究中，科學家把實驗室培育的人類味覺細胞暴露在氣味分子中，結果發現這些細胞對氣味的反應與我們鼻腔中嗅覺細胞的反應一樣。當一個氣味分子接觸到一個味覺細胞時，這種化學物質會進入到細胞表面的受體中。在人體內，氣味與受體之間的相互作用通常會觸發細胞內的連鎖反應，導致細胞向大腦發出信號。

吸血鬼樹從鄰居那裏吸取養分

Deep in a New Zealand forest, an unassuming tree stump clings to the roots of nearby conifers, sucking up their hard-earned water and nutrients. Scientists stumbled upon this botanical vampire while hiking in West Auckland, New Zealand, as they were surrounded by hundreds of kauri trees — a species of conifer that can grow up to 165 feet (50 meters) tall. During the day, the towering trees shuttled water from their roots into their leaves. By night, the squat stump pumped leftover water and nutrients from its neighbors' roots into its own. "Possibly we are not really dealing with trees as individuals, but with the forest as a superorganism," study co-author Sebastian Leuzinger, an associate professor at the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand, said in a statement.

在新西蘭的森林深處，一個不起眼的樹樁緊緊吸附着旁邊針葉樹的根部，吸取它們來之不易的水分和養分。科學家在新西蘭的西奧克蘭徒步時偶然發現了這個植物“吸血鬼”，它周圍是數百棵貝殼杉——一種能夠長到165英尺（約合50米）高的針葉樹。白天，這些參天大樹把水從樹根輸送到樹葉。到了晚上，那個矮樹樁會把臨近樹木根部裏剩餘的水分和養分抽取到自己的根部。作爲研究報告作者之一的新西蘭奧克蘭理工大學副教授塞巴斯蒂安·洛伊青格在一份聲明中說：“或許我們不應該把樹當作個體，而應該把森林當作一個超級有機體。”

conifer [ˈkɒnɪfə(r); ˈkəʊnɪfə(r)]：n.針葉樹；松柏科植物

X射線是有聲音的

If scientists shoot tiny X-ray lasers at a stream of water, does it make a sound? Oh, yes it does. This year, researchers created what may be the loudest possible underwater sound, using just this setup. Contained within a vacuum chamber, pulsing beams from an X-ray laser collided with a razor-thin water jet, instantly splitting the jet in two and vaporizing the fluid on each side. Pressure waves rippled out from the point of contact and released a 270-decibel sound that would make NASA's loudest-ever rocket launch sound hushed by comparison. If the sound were any louder, it might have boiled the very liquid it was traveling through.

如果科學家向一股水流發射極細的X射線激光，它會發出聲音嗎？是的，它會。今年，研究人員利用這樣一種裝置製造出了可能是最響亮的水下聲音。在真空容器內，X射線激光的脈衝光束與像刀片一樣薄的水射流相撞，瞬間將射流一分爲二，並使兩側的液體汽化。壓力波從接觸點開始擴散，發出270分貝的聲音，比美國國家航空航天局史上最響亮的火箭發射聲音還要大。如果聲音再大一點，就有可能令它穿過的液體沸騰。

黑洞會蒸發嗎？

Famed theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking once predicted that black holes not only suck celestial objects into their depths but also emit particles into space. He theorized that these particles slowly strip black holes of their mass and energy, until eventually, the black hole disappears — but physicists never thought they could prove it.

著名理論物理學家兼宇宙學家斯蒂芬·霍金曾預言，黑洞不僅將天體吸入其深處，而且會向太空發射粒子。他的理論是，這些粒子會慢慢帶走黑洞的質量和能量，直到黑洞最終消失——但物理學家從未想過他們能夠證明這一點。

This year, however, a team of researchers finally spotted this elusive Hawking radiation in laboratory experiments. The team created a "waterfall" from a stream of extremely cold gas to model the event horizon of a black hole, the invisible boundary beyond which nothing can escape. Quantum sound waves fed into the gas could flow away from the waterfall if inserted into the "stream" nearby, but sound waves in the waterfall itself became trapped by the relentless current. The escaped sound waves can be seen as analogous to particles of light escaping the pull of a black hole, suggesting that Hawking's theory was right.

然而到了今年，一組研究人員終於在實驗室的試驗中發現了這種難以捉摸的霍金輻射。研究小組用一股極冷的氣流創造了一個“瀑布”，用以模擬黑洞的事件視界（一種任何事物都無法逃脫的無形邊界）。注入氣體中的量子聲波如果被插入附近的“流”中，就可能從瀑布中流走，但瀑布本身的聲波卻被無情的氣流困住了。我們可以將這些逃逸的聲波看作是黑洞中逸出的光粒子——這表明霍金的理論是正確的。

蚊子不喜歡史奇雷克斯的音樂

In case anyone was wondering, research suggests that female mosquitoes don't care for the musical stylings of Skrillex. A study published in March found that the pests suck less blood and have less sex after listening to the song "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites" in 10-minute spurts, at least compared with mosquitoes left in silence. But why did a team of insect researchers subject the bugs to Skrillex in the first place? Well, they wondered whether loud music could be used to manipulate mosquito behavior as an "environmentally friendly" alternative to insecticides. The loud music may have distracted the mosquitoes, preventing them from homing in on a nearby food source and potential mates, the team suggested.

研究表明——如果有人想知道的話——雌蚊子不喜歡史奇雷克斯（美國DJ、歌手、吉他手兼音樂製作人）的音樂風格。今年3月發表的一項研究發現，在聽了10分鐘的史奇雷克斯的作品《可怕的怪物和漂亮的精靈》後，這些害蟲的吸血量和交配活動都減少了，至少與待在安靜環境下的蚊子相比是這樣。可是，一個昆蟲研究團隊最開始爲什麼要給這些蟲子播放史奇雷克斯的音樂呢？哦，他們是想知道，是否可以用吵鬧的音樂來操縱蚊子的行爲，從而成爲殺蟲劑的一種“環保”替代品。研究團隊認爲，吵鬧的音樂可能分散了蚊子的注意力，使它們找不到附近的食物來源和潛在的配偶。

不是粒子的粒子

This year, physicists may have finally spotted an odderon — a particle that really isn't. Particles such as electrons and protons stick around for extended periods, while odderons, a kind of "quasiparticle," blink in and out of existence. Scientists first predicted the existence of odderons in the 1970s, thinking that the particles might materialize when an odd number of teeny particles called quarks get released during the violent collision of protons and antiprotons. Researchers resurrected the decades-old idea when they sent particles crashing into each other at the world’s largest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider. The team spotted some strange differences in the way protons collide with other protons as compared to antiprotons, and the existence of odderons may explain why that discrepancy exists.

今年，物理學家們可能終於發現了“奇子”——一種實際上並不存在的粒子。諸如電子和質子之類的粒子會長時間存在，而作爲一種“準粒子”的奇子則忽隱忽現。早在上世紀70年代，科學家就首次預測了奇子的存在。他們認爲，在質子和反質子的劇烈碰撞期間，當奇數個被稱爲“夸克”的微小粒子被釋放出來時，這種粒子就有可能形成。研究人員在世界上最大的原子粉碎器大型強子對撞機上實現粒子相互碰撞，重現了幾十年前的構想。研究團隊發現，質子之間的碰撞方式與反質子相比存在一些奇怪的差異，而奇子的存在或許可以解釋爲什麼會存在這種差異。

歐不裂

Oobleck is a delightful goop that runs like a liquid but snaps into a solid state when you smack it. You can mix up your own oobleck by stirring up a slurry of cornstarch and water, and with the help of a new computer model, you can predict how the bizarre substance will react to various forces. Scientists used the model to simulate how oobleck would behave if it were pressed between two plates, were hit by an airborne projectile or were run over by a virtual wheel. They hope to find innovative uses for the goo, like temporarily filling dangerous potholes on major roads.

歐不裂是一種可愛的膠狀半流體，它可以像液體一樣流動，但當你敲打它時，它又可以變成固態。你可以將玉米澱粉和水攪拌在一起，製作出你自己的歐不裂，而藉助一個新的計算機模型，你還可以預測這種奇怪的物質會對各種作用力作出何種反應。科學家用這個模型模擬了歐不裂被擠壓在兩塊板子之間、被空中拋物擊中或被虛擬車輪碾壓時的反應。他們希望爲這種黏稠的糊糊找到新的用途，比如用來臨時填充馬路上危險的坑窪。