头条号视频“吸血鬼树”何处吸取养分？盘点2019年最怪异10项科学研究(2)

不，这并不意味着你应该停下来舔一舔花朵来闻香味——不过，我们的味觉与嗅觉之间的关联可能比我们以前想象的更加复杂。在今年4月发表的一项研究中，科学家把实验室培育的人类味觉细胞暴露在气味分子中，结果发现这些细胞对气味的反应与我们鼻腔中嗅觉细胞的反应一样。当一个气味分子接触到一个味觉细胞时，这种化学物质会进入到细胞表面的受体中。在人体内，气味与受体之间的相互作用通常会触发细胞内的连锁反应，导致细胞向大脑发出信号。

吸血鬼树从邻居那里吸取养分

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.

在新西兰的森林深处，一个不起眼的树桩紧紧吸附着旁边针叶树的根部，吸取它们来之不易的水分和养分。科学家在新西兰的西奥克兰徒步时偶然发现了这个植物“吸血鬼”，它周围是数百棵贝壳杉——一种能够长到165英尺（约合50米）高的针叶树。白天，这些参天大树把水从树根输送到树叶。到了晚上，那个矮树桩会把临近树木根部里剩余的水分和养分抽取到自己的根部。作为研究报告作者之一的新西兰奥克兰理工大学副教授塞巴斯蒂安·洛伊青格在一份声明中说：“或许我们不应该把树当作个体，而应该把森林当作一个超级有机体。”

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

X射线是有声音的

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.

如果科学家向一股水流发射极细的X射线激光，它会发出声音吗？是的，它会。今年，研究人员利用这样一种装置制造出了可能是最响亮的水下声音。在真空容器内，X射线激光的脉冲光束与像刀片一样薄的水射流相撞，瞬间将射流一分为二，并使两侧的液体汽化。压力波从接触点开始扩散，发出270分贝的声音，比美国国家航空航天局史上最响亮的火箭发射声音还要大。如果声音再大一点，就有可能令它穿过的液体沸腾。

黑洞会蒸发吗？

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.

著名理论物理学家兼宇宙学家斯蒂芬·霍金曾预言，黑洞不仅将天体吸入其深处，而且会向太空发射粒子。他的理论是，这些粒子会慢慢带走黑洞的质量和能量，直到黑洞最终消失——但物理学家从未想过他们能够证明这一点。

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，一组研究人员终于在实验室的试验中发现了这种难以捉摸的霍金辐射。研究小组用一股极冷的气流创造了一个“瀑布”，用以模拟黑洞的事件视界（一种任何事物都无法逃脱的无形边界）。注入气体中的量子声波如果被插入附近的“流”中，就可能从瀑布中流走，但瀑布本身的声波却被无情的气流困住了。我们可以将这些逃逸的声波看作是黑洞中逸出的光粒子——这表明霍金的理论是正确的。

蚊子不喜欢史奇雷克斯的音乐

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.

头条号视频“吸血鬼树”何处吸取养分？盘点2019年最怪异10项科学研究(2)
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