Research roundup: 6 cool science stories we almost missed
Research roundup: 6 cool science stories we almost missed
科研综述：6个我们差点错过的酷炫科学故事
It’s a regrettable reality that there is never enough time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across. So every month, we highlight a handful of the best stories that nearly slipped through the cracks. September’s list includes a tantalizing hint of the elusive dark matter at the LUX-ZEPLIN detector; entangled Z bosons at the Large Hadron Collider; possible use of psychoactive substances in the Late Pleistocene; and an intriguing technical description of a telescope attributed to Galileo.
令人遗憾的是，我们总是没有足够的时间去报道所有遇到的有趣科学故事。因此，每个月我们都会精选出一批差点被遗漏的精彩报道。九月的名单包括：LUX-ZEPLIN探测器对难以捉摸的暗物质发出的诱人暗示；大型强子对撞机中纠缠的Z玻色子；晚更新世时期可能存在的精神活性物质使用；以及一份关于伽利略望远镜的引人入胜的技术描述。
A hint of dark matter?
暗物质的线索？
Physicists believe dark matter makes up roughly 85 percent of matter in our universe, with the strongest (but not only) candidate being so-called weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). But directly detecting WIMPs, or other alternative hypothetical dark matter particles, has eluded physicists for decades. We might have our first glimpse, however, courtesy of the LUX-ZEPLIN detector buried deep in a gold mine in South Dakota. Those potentially exciting results were presented in a scientific talk at the 2026 TeV Particle Astrophysics conference in Japan, with a preprint available on the arXiv. (It has been submitted to Physical Review Letters for peer review.)
物理学家认为，暗物质约占宇宙物质的85%，其中最有力（但并非唯一）的候选者是所谓的“弱相互作用大质量粒子”（WIMPs）。然而，几十年来，直接探测WIMPs或其他假设的暗物质粒子一直让物理学家们束手无策。不过，多亏了埋藏在南达科他州金矿深处的LUX-ZEPLIN探测器，我们或许已经窥见了一丝曙光。这些令人兴奋的初步结果已在日本举行的2026年TeV粒子天体物理学会议上通过学术报告发布，预印本可在arXiv上查阅。（该论文已提交至《物理评论快报》进行同行评审。）
The announcement came with strong caveats: the signal is just a hint, well below the threshold needed to confirm discovery, and might just be a statistical fluke. Anyone who regularly follows dark matter news knows that past tantalizing anomalies evaporated as more data came in. But the LUX-ZEPLIN team was unable to account for this event and decided to report their result to the broader physics community. They are still collecting data, as is the XENONnT at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy. And China’s PandaX detector is currently being built.
这项公告附带了强烈的警示：该信号仅仅是一个线索，远未达到确认发现所需的阈值，且可能只是统计学上的偶然。任何长期关注暗物质新闻的人都知道，过去许多诱人的异常现象随着更多数据的积累而烟消云散。但LUX-ZEPLIN团队无法解释这一事件，因此决定向更广泛的物理学界报告他们的结果。他们仍在收集数据，意大利格兰萨索国家实验室的XENONnT探测器也在进行同样的工作。此外，中国的PandaX探测器目前正在建设中。
If it turns out to be a WIMP that struck a xenon nucleus, it’s not what physicists would predict. The event had a higher nuclear recoil energy than expected, which means the detector should have also picked up several lower-energy WIMPs; it did not. That has theoreticians scrambling to come up with alternative models. Perhaps the interaction rate increases with collision energy. Or perhaps WIMPs have an internal structure, like an atom, and only interact if hit hard enough. Or its coupling to ordinary matter could depend on its momentum.
如果这确实是一个撞击了氙核的WIMP，那么它并不符合物理学家的预测。该事件的核反冲能量高于预期，这意味着探测器本应同时捕捉到几个低能量的WIMP，但事实并非如此。这使得理论家们不得不忙于提出替代模型。也许相互作用率会随着碰撞能量的增加而增加；或者WIMP像原子一样具有内部结构，只有在受到足够强烈的撞击时才会发生相互作用；又或者它与普通物质的耦合可能取决于其动量。
Spooky action at the LHC
大型强子对撞机中的“幽灵行动”
Cornell University physicist N. David Mermin once described quantum entanglement as “the closest thing we have to magic,” since it means that disturbances in one part of the universe can instantly affect distant other parts of the universe, somehow bypassing the cosmic speed-of-light limit. Albert Einstein memorably dubbed it “spooky action at a distance.” Today, entanglement is the foundation for quantum computing and next-generation sensors, among other applications.
康奈尔大学物理学家N. David Mermin曾将量子纠缠描述为“我们所拥有的最接近魔法的东西”，因为它意味着宇宙某一部分的扰动可以瞬间影响宇宙中遥远的其他部分，从而以某种方式绕过了宇宙光速限制。阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦曾将其戏称为“鬼魅般的超距作用”。如今，纠缠已成为量子计算和下一代传感器等应用的基础。
Maintaining quantum entanglement is usually a delicate process; any interference can cause entangled particles to decohere quickly. Despite this, in 2023, physicists found evidence of entanglement between pairs of top quarks produced at the Large Hadron Collider’s ATLAS experiment, raising the possibility that large colliders could be used as an investigative tool to study spooky action at a distance. Now ATLAS physicists have observed entanglement in pairs of Z bosons, according to a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
维持量子纠缠通常是一个微妙的过程；任何干扰都可能导致纠缠粒子迅速退相干。尽管如此，2023年，物理学家在大型强子对撞机的ATLAS实验中发现了顶夸克对之间存在纠缠的证据，这提出了利用大型对撞机作为研究“鬼魅般的超距作用”工具的可能性。根据发表在《物理评论快报》上的一篇论文，现在ATLAS的物理学家们已经观察到了Z玻色子对之间的纠缠。
Z bosons are produced when a Higgs boson decays and are themselves extremely short-lived particles, decaying into pairs of electrons and muons. The ATLAS detector precisely tracks those decay patterns. The physicists used that data to reconstruct the angles at which electrons and muons were emitted to infer the spins of the original Z bosons that preceded them. The authors claim that this is the highest-energy example of entanglement observed to date.
Z玻色子产生于希格斯玻色子的衰变，它们本身是寿命极短的粒子，会衰变为电子和μ子对。ATLAS探测器精确地追踪了这些衰变模式。物理学家利用这些数据重建了电子和μ子的发射角度，从而推断出它们之前原始Z玻色子的自旋。作者声称，这是迄今为止观察到的能量最高的纠缠实例。
Is yeast the key to 3D-printing Martian homes?
酵母是3D打印火星住宅的关键吗？
Dreams of colonizing Mars face many significant obstacles given the harsh conditions (for humans) on the red planet—including housing. Transporting anything from Earth to Mars is costly, and building materials are especially so. That’s why Hong Kong engineers devised a recipe to combine Martian rocks with terrestrial gelatin and yeast, which then hardens into a durable “living” building material on par with cheap concrete, according to a paper published in the journal Chem.
考虑到火星上对人类而言极其恶劣的条件，殖民火星的梦想面临许多重大障碍，其中就包括住房问题。从地球向火星运输任何东西都代价高昂，建筑材料更是如此。因此，香港的工程师们设计了一种配方，将火星岩石与地球上的明胶和酵母混合，使其硬化成一种耐用的“活性”建筑材料，其性能可与廉价混凝土相媲美。该研究发表在《化学》（Chem）杂志上。
Co-author Jishen Qiu of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology drew inspiration from the hardening of freeze-dried fruits, noting that the Martian environment has extremely low temperatures and pressures akin to freeze-drying. The team experimented with various mixtures of sand and glue, the latter made from gelatin and yeast. But it’s a special yeast coated with sticky proteins similar to those mussels use to adhere to rocky surfaces. The gelatin provides scaffolding for the cells to grow, and the sand provides the structure and mass.
合著者、香港科技大学的邱继申（音译）从冷冻干燥水果的硬化过程中汲取了灵感，他指出火星环境具有与冷冻干燥相似的极低温度和压力。团队尝试了各种沙子和胶水的混合物，后者由明胶和酵母制成。这是一种特殊的酵母，表面覆盖着类似于贻贝用来附着在岩石表面的粘性蛋白质。明胶为细胞生长提供了支架，而沙子则提供了结构和质量。
Qiu et al. tested their concoction in simulated Martian conditions, 3D-printing small domes the size of wine corks. They found that the mixture freeze-dries after exiting the nozzle, leaving a light, porous foam with a compressive strength of 10 to 12 megapascals. Per the authors, that is strong enough to build a one- or two-story structure on Earth, where gravity is three times stronger than on Mars, so it should be possible to use their material to make much higher structures on the red planet. It’s less energy-intensive than heating and melting Martian rocks or moon dust into bricks, another approach that’s been proposed. And yeast recovered from dismantled structures could be easily recycled to build new ones.
邱及其团队在模拟火星条件下测试了他们的混合物，3D打印出了酒瓶塞大小的小圆顶。他们发现，混合物在离开喷嘴后会发生冷冻干燥，形成一种轻质多孔泡沫，抗压强度为10到12兆帕。据作者称，这足以在地球上建造一两层的建筑，而由于火星重力仅为地球的三分之一，因此使用这种材料在火星上建造更高的结构是完全可能的。与另一种提议的加热熔化火星岩石或月尘制砖的方法相比，这种方法的能耗更低。此外，从拆除的结构中回收的酵母可以很容易地循环利用，用于建造新的建筑。