New_Scientist_2410 - 2026-10-23 深度阅读工作台

综合要闻 1

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下一个重大（微小）发现

一颗微小的粒子，一项巨大的突破，以及对现实全新的理解

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焕新升级

凭借能够精确绘制 128 年内每个月相的 JJ04 机芯，C1 Moonglow 一直具有吸引力。现在，它产生了更强大的引力。在星空般的蓝宝石表盘上，盈亏变化的双 Globolight 球体更具立体感。而且，得益于增强型 Super-LumiNova，它们不再发出绿光，而是闪耀着冷峻、明亮的蓝色（这同时也照亮了其环绕的日期轮，确保在夜晚拥有真正卓越的辨识度）。其他光彩夺目的特性还包括 40.mm LightCatcher™ 表壳、抛光表耳切面以及可选的五链 Consort™ 表带。甚至其价格也令人心动：皮革表带款仅 2,095 英镑起。

深入了解

\+ : Christopher Ward

封面内容

32 下一个重大（微小）发现

一颗微小的粒子，一项巨大的突破，以及对现实全新的理解

第 272 卷第 3618 期

封面图片：西蒙·拜利

36 “男性”自闭症理论的争议遗产

40 关于首批美洲原住民身份的新辩论

6 物理学将是下一个被 AI 颠覆的领域吗？

10 你肠道中的巨型细菌

26 《时间旅行者的妻子》回归 11 全球最古老的沉船

32 特写

“在标准模型中，中微子没有质量——但我们知道它们确实有”

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新闻

4 持续上升

厄尔尼诺现象已经导致部分海平面上升

11 不再需要闰秒

科学家投票决定废除闰秒

14 古代露天画廊

独特的岩画遗址展示了 26,000 年前人们如何与艺术共存

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观点

19 暗物质探测

钱达·普雷斯科特-温斯坦探讨暗物质是以粒子还是波的形式存在

20 无感冒季节

大卫·罗布森发现，积极的心态可能帮助我们避免感冒

22 视角

海鸟获得助力

24 文化

为什么我们应该在数量中寻找力量

31 读者来信

关于 AI 如何被使用，有充分的理由感到担忧

8 冰层流失警告即使海洋冷却，斯韦茨冰川仍可能融化

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特写

32 中微子之谜

《新科学家》访问最新的探测器，试图解开中微子质量之谜

36 西蒙·巴伦-科恩人物志

“男性”自闭症理论的争议遗产

40 首批美洲原住民

关于美洲最初定居者身份的辩论再次升级

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📦 已折叠版面非核心信息：气象、潮汐与天文时刻表（《封底页》— 点击展开）

封底页

45 益智游戏

尝试我们的纵横字谜、谜题和快速测验

46 近乎最后的定论

如果地球上只存在厌氧生物，世界会有多大不同？

47 Tom Gauld 为《新科学家》创作

漫画家眼中的世界

48 反馈

跟进我们的猫咪朋友们究竟有多活跃（或不活跃）

48 Twisteddoodles 为《新科学家》创作

描绘生活轻松的一面

厄尔尼诺现象导致海平面上升

迈克尔·勒佩奇（Michael Le Page）发现，东太平洋部分地区的海平面已经比正常水平高出惊人的 40 厘米，增加了沿海洪涝的风险。

洪水、干旱、饥荒——日益增强且打破纪录的厄尔尼诺现象已经开始对全球许多地区产生巨大影响。东太平洋已经出现了剧烈的海平面上升，并且在未来几个月内将继续持续。

“目前，东太平洋的海平面比正常水平高出惊人的 40 厘米，而强劲的西风事件将在接下来的几周内将海平面推得更高，”纽约州奥尔巴尼大学的保罗·朗迪（Paul Roundy）表示。

这可能会导致从阿拉斯加到智利的东太平洋沿岸许多地方出现沿海洪水和侵蚀，而特高潮位会使情况进一步恶化。“许多地区可能会出现频繁的沿海淹没，且可能变得严重或打破纪录，造成重大干扰，并可能导致

一些重大损失，”加州水资源研究所的丹尼尔·斯韦恩（Daniel Swain）表示。

有几个因素共同导致未来几个月东太平洋的海平面达到创纪录的高位。最重要的一点是厄尔尼诺现象引起的赤道太平洋海平面的“跷跷板”式转移，即西太平洋海平面下降，东太平洋海平面上升。简单来说，在与通常的信风方向相反的阵风驱动下，大量暖水向东横跨太平洋涌动。

牛津大学的托马斯·莫纳汉（Thomas Monahan）表示，从技术上讲，这些风触发了所谓的开尔文波（Kelvin waves）。他说，这些波与普通波截然不同。“开尔文波更像是提高了浴缸里的水位。”

这些波大约需要 60 天才能横跨太平洋，然后沿海岸线传播。最终结果是

海平面的持续上升，并将持续数月。“它将在海面温度最高时达到顶峰，目前预计在 11 月下旬或 12 月左右，”莫纳汉说。

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苏丹因厄尔尼诺现象面临饥荒

虽然东太平洋由于厄尔尼诺现象正面临增加的沿海洪水风险（见主报道），但苏丹面临饥荒的风险也在增加。在由创纪录的厄尔尼诺现象引发的干旱中，已有数百名儿童死于饥饿和疾病。

根据联合国与慈善组织合作的综合粮食安全阶段分类（IPC）发出的警告，该国近一半地区正经历干旱，部分地区的干旱程度为数十年之最。该机构表示，这导致作物歉收，人们在场“规模已达历史级别的人道主义灾难”中死去。

在苏丹西部的达尔富尔地区，两个难民营的饥饿程度已达到饥荒水平。虽然这还不足以让 IPC 宣布该地区整体进入饥荒状态，但该合作组织表示，这已导致数百人死亡。其中大多数是儿童，他们极易受到营养不良以及霍乱爆发的影响。据该组织称，在由阿卜杜勒·瓦希德·努尔（Abdel Wahid al-Nur）领导的叛军派系控制的达尔富尔三个地区，至少有 1800 人死于营养不良。

在联合国称今年苏丹所需的 28.7 亿美元援助中，高收入捐助国仅提供了 12.5 亿美元。Alec Luhn

由于这次厄尔尼诺现象如此异常，海平面的变化也将是异常的。事实上，莫纳汉及其同事的一项研究发现，海平面的变化会被强厄尔尼诺事件放大，而非呈线性相关。“因此，如果你仅仅根据较小规模的事件进行外推，你将会错过强事件中所发生的情况，”他说道。

沿海线观察到的变化在靠近赤道的地方最为显著。基于对过去事件的分析，莫纳汉的团队计算出，根据这次厄尔尼诺现象增强的程度，加拉帕戈斯群岛的海平面可能会上升 24 和 40 cm。在大陆上，影响预计会稍小一些。秘鲁和厄瓜多尔的海平面可能会上升 19 和 33 cm。

[...OMITTED...] 1900 年以来由于全球变暖导致的海平面上升。换句话说，即使这次厄尔尼诺现象不像 1877 / 78 年那次那样强烈，海平面的上升幅度仍将超过当时。

这些上升是叠加在 20-cm 的全球平均海平面上升之上的。

在像加利福尼亚这样远离赤道的地方，该团队估计海平面将上升 9 和 13 cm。然而，与南美洲不同，美国和加拿大西海岸还受到几个额外因素的影响。

其中之一是由于长期月球周期导致的超高潮汐。存在

“强西风事件将在接下来的几周内将这些海平面推得更高”

由于月球轨道相对于地球赤道倾斜而产生的 18.6-year 月球节点周期，以及由于月球椭圆轨道旋转而产生的 8.85-year 近地点周期。这些周期产生的最高潮汐将与此次厄尔尼诺现象重合，在厄尔尼诺效应之上，实际上为加利福尼亚沿岸的海平面增加了约 5 cm。

“我们已经看到这种情况在加利福尼亚开始显现，在那里

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加利福尼亚在热带风暴 Rachel 袭击后出现洪水，且受厄尔尼诺现象加剧

我们在热带风暴 Rachel 之后看到了一些严重的洪水发生，”莫纳汉说。“比较麻烦的是，潮汐的最大峰值预计将出现在感恩节周和圣诞节周，而这两个时间段是出行和人员聚集的高峰期。”

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📦 已折叠版面非核心信息：气象、潮汐与天文时刻表（《一波麻烦》— 点击展开）

一波麻烦

此外，他表示，厄尔尼诺现象会加深阿拉斯加附近阿留申群岛附近的一个低压区，从而增加风暴活动。这意味着在厄尔尼诺期间，风暴潮可能会变得更大。

最后一个因素是这些风暴会激起更大的波浪。在 2015 / 16 年的厄尔尼诺期间，超过 15 米的巨浪袭击了俄勒冈州——这是美国海岸线有记录以来最大的一次。因此，西海岸面临的危险是，巨大的波浪和强烈的风暴潮可能会在海平面远高于正常水平时，与特高潮位同时发生，从而极大增加沿海洪水和侵蚀的风险。

“我们可能会在某些地区看到足以媲美甚至超过历史记录的沿海洪水和侵蚀——而且差距可能非常显著，”斯温（Swain）说道。

这也是加利福尼亚州在 9 月宣布进入紧急状态的部分原因。另一个主要担忧是厄尔尼诺导致的极端降雨。

“这次厄尔尼诺事件带来的降雨是加利福尼亚州最担心的。在 1877 年的一次类似事件中，中央谷地发生了严重的洪水，”朗迪（Roundy）说道。“今年有可能发生类似情况，且同时出现沿海洪水是一个真实的风险。”

人工智能

俄罗斯和中国正利用 AI 对英国发起网络攻击

马修·斯帕克斯（Matthew Sparkes）

英国一名顶尖情报主管上周告诉《新科学家》杂志，俄罗斯和中国正在利用 AI 对英国发起“无休止”的网络攻击。但 AI 同样被用于帮助防御此类攻击。

英国国家网络安全中心（NCSC）——负责保障国家 IT 基础设施安全的英国政府部门——运营总监保罗·奇切斯特（Paul Chichester）表示，英国的四个主要网络对手——俄罗斯、中国、朝鲜和伊朗——都在利用 AI 来增强其攻击能力。

“它们不需要睡眠、咖啡、食物或类似的东西，”奇切斯特说。“我们的所有对手肯定都在使用 AI。”

NCSC 是在本月 10 年前通过合并几个目标重叠的部门而成立的，旨在共同防御网络攻击。奇切斯特表示，在这十年间，网络攻击已成为主权国家情报活动的标准组成部分。

“现在感觉比 10 年前更加无休止，”奇切斯特说。“这现在已成为秘密外交绝对关键的一部分，而且显然我们生活在一个更加不确定、地缘政治紧张局势更加严重的世界上。因此，这将体现在网络领域，并体现在我们的工作量上。突然之间 [随着 AI 的出现]，他们行动的生产力确实在提高。”

近几个月来，出现了一系列关于 AI 模型不慎脱离测试环境并在现实世界中黑入计算机的故事

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📄 Original Section

El Niño has increased sea levels

Sea levels in parts of the eastern Pacific are already an “astounding” 40 centimetres above normal, raising the risk of coastal flooding, discovers Michael Le Page

FLOODS, droughts, famine – the record-smashing El Niño that is growing ever stronger is already starting to have massive impacts in many regions around the world. Dramatic sea-level rises, too, have already happened in the eastern Pacific and are set to continue in the coming months.

“Presently, the east Pacific is an astounding 40 centimetres above normal, and a strong westerly wind event will drive those sea levels even higher over the next few weeks,” says Paul Roundy at the University at Albany in New York state.

MARIO TAMA/GETTY IMAGES

This could lead to coastal flooding and erosion in many places along the eastern Pacific, from Alaska to Chile, with especially high tides making things even worse. “Frequent coastal inundation will likely develop in many areas and may become severe or record breaking, causing significant disruption and possibly also

some significant damage," says Daniel Swain at the California Institute for Water Resources.

There are several factors combining to produce record-high sea levels in the eastern Pacific in the coming months. The most important is the seesaw-like shift in sea level across the equatorial Pacific caused by El Niño, with levels falling in the west and rising in the east. In simple terms, huge quantities of warm water are sloshing eastwards across the Pacific, driven by bursts of wind blowing in the opposite direction to the usual trade winds.

More technically, these winds trigger what are known as Kelvin waves, says Thomas Monahan at the University of Oxford. These are very different to normal waves, he says. "A Kelvin wave is more similar to raising the water level in a bathtub."

These waves take around 60 days to cross the Pacific and then travel along coasts. The end result is a

sustained rise in sea level that will persist for months. “It’ll peak with the highest sea surface temperatures, which right now are projected for around late November or December,” says Monahan.

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“没有两天是相同的；你总能看到不同类型的攻击”

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📄 Original Section

Sudan faces famine due to El Niño

While the eastern Pacific is facing an increased risk of coastal flooding due to El Niño (see main story), the risk of famine in Sudan is growing. Hundreds of children have already died of starvation and disease in a drought caused by the record-breaking El Niño.

Almost half the country is experiencing drought, which, in some areas, is the worst in decades, according to a warning from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a partnership of the United Nations and charity organisations. As a result, crops are failing and people are dying in a “humanitarian catastrophe, already of historic proportions”, it said.

Hunger has reached famine levels in two refugee camps in Darfur, a region in western Sudan. While that's not enough for the IPC to declare a famine across the region, the partnership said it has resulted in hundreds of deaths. Most of these are children, who are particularly vulnerable to malnutrition, as well as outbreaks of cholera. At least 1800 people have died of malnutrition in three areas of Darfur controlled by a rebel faction led by Abdel Wahid al-Nur, according to the group.

High-income donor countries have given only \$1.25 billion of the \$2.87 billion in aid the UN has said is needed this year in Sudan. Alec Luhn

Because this El Niño is so exceptional, the changes in sea level will also be exceptional. In fact, a study by Monahan and his colleagues has found that changes in sea level are amplified by strong El Niño events, rather than being linearly related. "So, if you were to just extrapolate from smaller events, you would miss what is happening in the stronger events," he says.

The changes seen along coastlines will be greatest nearest the equator. Based on analysis of past events, Monahan's team calculates that sea level could rise between 24 and 40 cm in the Galapagos islands, depending on how strong this El Niño becomes. On the mainland, the effects are set to be a bit smaller. Peru and Ecuador could see rises of between 19 and 33 cm.

sea level since 1900 due to global warming. In other words, even if this El Niño isn't as strong as the 1877/78 one, the sea-level rises will still be bigger than they were then.

These rises are occurring on top of the 20-cm rise in global mean

In places such as California, further from the equator, the team estimates that sea level will rise between 9 and 13 cm. However, unlike in South America, several extra factors are at play along the west coast of the US and Canada.

One is extra-high tides because of long-term lunar cycles. There is

"A strong westerly wind event will drive those sea levels even higher over the next few weeks"

the 18.6-year lunar nodal cycle, due to the moon's orbit being inclined relative to Earth's equator, and the 8.85-year perigean cycle, due to the rotation of the moon's elliptical orbit. The highest tides due to these cycles will coincide with this El Niño, effectively adding around 5 cm to sea level along California on top of the El Niño effect.

"We're already seeing this start to play out in California, where

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AI 正在助力提升俄罗斯和中国的网络攻击能力

这些模型来自大型 AI 公司。而安全公司受雇入侵客户机器以测试防御，使用模型已变得十分普遍。这些模型不仅能设计新型攻击，还能以惊人的速度执行，且无需休息。

奇切斯特（Chichester）表示， IPC 正被用于“网络杀伤链”的所有阶段，从侦察、开发漏洞到实际对目标发起攻击。他还警告称，当人类策划攻击时，他们能窃取的智能或数据量在事实上存在上限，但在 IPC 可以执行攻击的世界里，这个限制因素消失了。

“你看到的总是新东西。因为如果他们这次没成功，就会尝试其他方法，”奇切斯特说，“没有两天是相同的；你总能看到不同类型的攻击。你一直在尝试防御这些东西。”

他们的目标各异，从间谍活动、经济利益到破坏，而在朝鲜的案例中，则是简单的金融犯罪和欺诈。

奇切斯特不愿透露英国参与类似攻击的程度，但表示“存在一些公开承认且英国正在使用的能力”。神秘的英国国家网络部队（National Cyber Force）是由英国国防部与 GCHQ（英国网络安全机构）共同开展的行动，拥有进攻性网络能力。

然而，奇切斯特表示，英国国家网络安全中心（NCSC）在工作中以及开发自有工具时，对使用商业前沿模型持开放态度。

“以你观察某些前沿模型的方式来构建一个 LLM（大语言模型），显然需要极其庞大的计算量和设备，但构建能够完成特定具体任务的小型模型则完全是另一回事，”奇切斯特说，“例如，在我们进行恶意软件研究或恶意软件工程调查的方式中，我们构建的工具和系统中就包含人工智能元素，而且这已经存在很久了——但它是高度定制的，专门针对该任务。”

GREG BAKER / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

分析人工智能

AI 将在下一个科学领域掀起怎样的颠覆？马修·斯帕克斯（Matthew Sparkes）发现，AI 在计算机编程和数学领域已取得巨大进步——现在，轮到物理学了

在解决数学难题方面已变得如此熟练，以至于批评者担心，它创造的大量新证明将使学者们不堪重负，实际上反而会阻碍该领域的发展。直到现在， IPC 对其他科学领域的影响还很有限，但有迹象表明，物理学可能即将经历类似的剧变。

耶鲁大学（Yale University）的约翰·苏斯（John Sous）表示，由于测试方式的问题， IPC 模型在物理学方面的声誉可能被不公正地低估了。此前，在六项专门旨在评估处理艰巨物理问题能力的测试中，顶尖模型的得分低至 30%，但苏斯表示，这与他及其同事在使用这些模型时所见到的成功并不相符。

对基准测试中的问题进行检查后，发现其中存在大量错误和定义模糊之处。一旦予以修正，得分便飙升至 94% 之高。问题不在于，而在于测试未能提供必要的信息。

“我认为，只要是定义明确的东西，即使非常困难，我怀疑也会处理得非常好——可以说比最顶尖的专家还要好，”苏斯说，“我们的数据支持这一观点。”

但虽然物理学的某些部分可以定义得非常明确——物理学家弗拉基米尔·阿诺德（Vladimir Arnold）曾说，数学是物理学中实验成本最低的部分——但许多部分并非如此。在物理学那些全新的、未知的、模糊且前沿的领域， IPC 可能会陷入苦战。

苏斯说，有趣的物理学产生于当我们发现某些令人困惑的事物时，比如

既然已经证明了自己能做数学，它正转向下一个目标

我们在自然界中观察到的一种现象，一种我们无法理解的材料或宇宙。随后，物理学家的工作就是创建一个模型、一个近似值或一个模拟，以捕捉并预测该现象。

“这是一个非常有艺术感、非常有创造力的过程，”苏斯说，“ 真的能迈出下一步，完成理论物理学家的全部工作吗？进行端到端的研究：定义、创建、探索、测试？目前情况还不明确。”

数学之所以处于进步的最前沿，原因之一是形式化（formalisation）。这种

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“ 很快就能设计出人类无法理解的实验，这在目前看来完全是有可能的”

技术将数学思想转化为可以有条理地检查的计算机代码。这一过程如此彻底，以至于如果一个定理能完整通过，它就被认为在合理怀疑之外是正确的。它允许处理一个问题，并知道何时得出了正确的解决方案。

虽然在利用形式化测试物理学方面已取得一些进展，但与数学相比，这还处于早期阶段。而且物理问题往往更混乱，更难以精准界定。

显而易见的是，物理学家已经在利用，不仅用于编写计算机代码和进行数学运算，甚至用于设计和运行实验。

同样来自耶鲁大学（Yale University）的洛根·赖特（Logan Wright）目前正在教授一门关于在物理研究中使用的课程，他表示，教学大纲在不断变化，以跟上发展的步伐。

赖特说，关键在于创建输入和输出均可由计算机控制的实验。然后，这种控制权可以移交给，使其能够拨动合适的杠杆来探索问题空间并

得出有意义的结果。

“它没有手，没有眼睛，它仅通过语言和代码与世界交互，”赖特说，“所以，如果我们能建立一个实验，其中所有的观察都被简化为代码，所有的操作都被简化为代码……那么实际上会非常有帮助。”

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什么是科学？

赖特实验室目前正在进行的一项此类实验涉及分析不同形状的激光脉冲如何影响铷原子。研究人员使用 Anthropic 公司的 AI Claude 来控制激光脉冲并收集其效果的数据。

“Claude 现在基本上可以说：‘我认为这个激光脉冲会产生这个输出’，对吧，”赖特说，“而且它可以对此进行测试。”

赖特表示，此类实验可以彻夜运行，完成相当于人类一周的工作量——人类物理学家甚至可以使用手机上的应用程序，在离开实验室时提出灵感，并在返回时获取结果。

“并不是宇宙的所有部分都能以这种方式被探索。它将局限于非常受限的领域，”赖特说，“我认为物理学的下一个前沿部分，将是在这些领域中尽可能多地取得进展。”

KMM / ALAMY

赖特表示，AI 很快就能设计出人类无法理解的实验，并要求人类将其构建出来，从而产生令人兴奋的新结果，这完全是有可能的。“但需要明确的是，就像在数学领域一样，目前存在一种争论：如果我们得到了一个我们对其完全不了解的结果，这是否能被算作科学，”赖特说。

气候变化

AMOC 崩溃后我们仍能将其挽救

Madeleine Cuff

大西洋经向翻转环流（AMOC）的崩溃将是灾难性的，会给欧洲带来“冰河时代”般的冬季，提高北美的海平面，并扰乱非洲和亚洲至关重要的季风。

但有一线好消息：由气候驱动的 NCSC 崩溃可能并非永久性的。在未来几十年的全球气温升高背景下， NCSC 可能会显著减弱，但如果出现全球冷却，它也能同样迅速地恢复强度。

丹麦气象研究所的郭春成（Chuncheng Guo）及其同事使用最先进的气候模型，模拟了全球气温随碳排放升高而上升时， NCSC 强度会发生的变化。该模拟将格陵兰冰盖的融化以及更高的气温作为影响因素。

该团队模拟了每十年 0.2℃ 的温度增幅（略低于目前的变暖速度），发现虽然在未来几个世纪内会显著减弱，但不会完全关闭。郭表示，即使升温高达 10℃， NCSC 也不会被完全熄灭。

如果世界实现净零排放，然后开始冷却全球气候（例如通过从大气中移除大量碳并将其进行长期存储）， NCSC 将在数十年内开始增强。

但所需的碳移除量将极其巨大。目前，全球每年通过直接空气捕集和增强风化等技术移除约 200 万吨碳，仅相当于人类年度排放量的 0.1%。若要实现每十年 0.2℃ 的全球冷却速度，这一数值需要增加到每年 45 petagrams，相当于当前年度总排放量的 100%（《科学进展》，doi.org / rtbj）。

“ 的可逆性并不意味着安全，因为我们确实需要海量的二氧化碳移除才能实现那种冷却速度，”郭说，“这在今天的技术条件下是无法实现的。”

荷兰乌得勒支大学的 René van Westen 表示，为了实现这种规模的冷却，可能需要采取更激进的冷却方案，例如利用太阳辐射管理来调暗太阳。

但 Van Westen 警告说，在 NCSC 达到崩溃状态后重新启动它将会

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📄 Original Section

AI is helping to boost the cyberattack abilities of both Russia and China

have emerged from large AI companies. And the use of AI models by security companies paid to break into clients' machines to test defences has become commonplace. These models can not only design new types of attack, but they can carry them out at astonishing pace and operate without rest.

Chichester says that AI is being used in all stages of the “cyber kill chain”, from reconnaissance to developing a vulnerability to actually carrying out attacks on a target. He also warns that when humans staged attacks, there

was a de facto limit to how much intelligence or data they could steal, but in a world where AI can carry out attacks, that limiting factor is gone.

“What you’re seeing is always something new. Because if they don’t get it, they’re gonna try something else,” says Chichester. “No two days are the same; you’re always seeing different kinds of attack. You’re always trying to defend against things.”

Their aims vary, from espionage to economic advantage to disruption and, in the case of North Korea, simple financial crime and fraud.

Chichester would not be drawn on the extent that the UK takes part in similar attacks, but says that “there are capabilities that are avowed and the UK uses”. The secretive National Cyber Force is a joint operation between the UK Ministry of Defence and GCHQ (the UK’s cybersecurity agency), which has offensive cyber capabilities.

However, Chichester says that NCSC is open about using commercial frontier models in its work, and in developing its own AI tools.

"Building an LLM [large language model] in a way that you might look at some of the frontier models obviously takes a ridiculous amount of computing and machinery, but building smaller models that do particular specific things is a very different proposition," says Chichester. "For instance, in the way that we do malware research or malware engineering investigations, there are elements of artificial intelligence in the tooling and the systems we build, and that's been in there for a long time – but it's very bespoke, it's very specific to that task."

GREG BAKER/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Analysis Artificial intelligence

“AMOC的可逆性并不意味着安全，因为我们需要海量的二氧化碳移除”

使欧洲的气候进一步陷入混乱，在经历一段剧烈的冷却期后，使其面临加速变暖的风险。

与此同时，这些结果仅基于一个气候模型，该模型可能高估了AMOC（大西洋经向翻转环流）的稳定性。

然而，这些发现与7月发表的一项研究结果一致，该研究同样发现，通过降低大气中的$CO_{2}$水平可以逆转AMOC的减速。

神经科学

📄 Original Section

Which field of science will AI next turn upside down? Huge strides have been taken by AI in computer programming and mathematics – and now it could be physics' turn, finds Matthew Sparkes

AI HAS grown so adept at solving mathematical puzzles that critics fear the flood of new proofs it creates will overwhelm academics and actually set the field back. Until now, AI has had limited impact on other areas of science, but there are signs that physics may be about to experience a similar upset.

John Sous at Yale University says AI models may have an unfairly bad reputation when it comes to physics because of the way they are tested. Cutting-edge models have previously scored as low as 30 per cent on six different tests designed specifically to assess AI's ability on tough physics problems, but this doesn't square with the successes Sous and his colleagues have seen when using them, he says.

Checking the problems in the benchmark revealed a litany of errors and ambiguous definitions. Once corrected, scores soared to as high as 94 per cent. The problem didn't lie with AI, but in the tests not providing the necessary information.

"I think anything that's well defined, even if it's very hard, I suspect that AI will be very good at it – arguably better than the best experts," says Sous. "This is backed up by our data."

But while some parts of physics can be very well defined – physicist Vladimir Arnold once said that mathematics is the part of physics where experiments are cheap – many aren't. And it is in the new, uncharted, fuzzy and cutting-edge parts of physics where AI may struggle.

Sous says that interesting physics comes when we find something confusing, some

Now that AI has shown it can do maths, it's moving on to the next thing

phenomenon we observe in nature, a material or the cosmos that we don't understand. It is then a physicist's job to create a model, an approximation or a simulation that captures and predicts that phenomenon.

“That’s a very artistic, a very creative process,” says Sous. “Can AI really take the next step and do the full job of a theoretical physicist? Do end-to-end research: define, create, explore, test? The picture is not clear yet.”

One reason mathematics has been at the tip of the spear of AI progress is formalisation. This

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你母亲的细胞可能就在你的大脑中

克里斯·西姆斯 (Chris Simms)

当你还是胎儿时，来自你母亲的细胞可能已经渗透进了你的大脑。这些外来的，或称作“微嵌合”的细胞随后似乎在此定居，并执行一系列工作，甚至一直持续到老年。

纽约西奈山伊坎医学院（Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai）的希娜·乔杜里（Hina Chaudhry）表示，这一发现表明“每个人类大脑都可能是一个由多个人组成的遗传马赛克”，她并未参与这项研究。

BSIP SA / ALAMY

我们已经知道，我们的体内拥有来自母亲以及其他家庭成员的细胞。这被认为是由于我们在子宫内时，有小比例的细胞穿过了胎盘，这可能会影响我们患自身免疫疾病的风险，同时也在组织修复中发挥作用。

有证据表明这些细胞能到达大脑，并在那里持续数十年。但这种情况的程度以及这些细胞在那里扮演的角色此前并不十分明确。西雅图弗雷德·哈钦森癌症中心（Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center）的萨米·卡南（Sami Kanaan）表示，这是因为需要同时拥有母亲及其孩子的脑样本进行对比，而且即使有了这些样本，这些细胞也很难被发现。

现在，卡南及其同事分析了37名儿童（从新生儿到14岁）在治疗癫痫的手术中切除的脑样本遗传序列。这些序列与从其母亲口中采集的拭子遗传序列进行了对比。

研究团队在37名儿童中的26名体内发现了母体细胞，平均每个样本每100,000个细胞中含有2.2个母体细胞（bioRxiv, doi.org / rtbt）。卡南表示，可能更多的孩子体内含有母体细胞，但该方法会遗漏母亲与孩子具有相同遗传变异的情况。

当我们处于子宫内时，来自母亲的细胞可能会进入我们的身体

“我对这个非常兴奋，”乔杜里说，“因为他们使用了一些非常先进的方法，真正回答了‘是否存在微嵌合现象’这个问题。”

卡南及其同事发现，微嵌合细胞在多种细胞类型中发挥作用，包括神经元（传递信息的神经细胞）、小胶质细胞（大脑的免疫细胞）、星形胶质细胞（支持神经元）、少突胶质细胞（在神经元周围创建保护鞘）和内皮细胞（衬在血管壁上的细胞）。

在实验的另一部分中，团队分析了三项此前已发表研究的RNA序列数据。这些数据涵盖了从22周大的胎儿到80多岁的人群。

这揭示了所有年龄段的人大脑中都可能存在微嵌合细胞。然而，其数量随年龄增长而下降。这种下降可能是细胞凋亡的结果，即通过程序性细胞死亡来清除受损和衰老的细胞。

气候变化

未来的冰量损失可能已成定局

即使海洋冷却，南极洲的“末日”冰川仍将继续融化，尽管邻近的冰川可能会开始增长，艾莉森·乔治 (Alison George) 发现

英国南极调查局 (BRITISH ANTARCTIC SURVEY)

世界上最宽的冰川——南极洲的斯韦茨冰川（Thwaites glacier）——由于海洋变暖已经在以惊人的速度崩塌，这对全球海平面上升产生了令人担忧的影响。现在，一项研究表明它将继续损失冰量

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📄 Original Section

We can rescue the AMOC after its collapse

Madeleine Cuff

A COLLAPSE in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) would be catastrophic, bringing "ice age" winters to Europe, raising sea levels in North America and disrupting vital monsoons in Africa and Asia.

But there is a sliver of good news: a climate-driven collapse of the AMOC might not be permanent. The AMOC could weaken significantly under rising global temperatures over the coming decades, but it could recover its strength just as quickly if global cooling occurs.

Chuncheng Guo at the Danish Meteorological Institute and colleagues used a state-of-the-art climate model to simulate what would happen to the AMOC's strength as global temperatures rise in response to carbon emissions. The simulation includes melting of the Greenland ice sheet as a factor, as well as higher air temperatures.

The team modelled a temperature increase of 0.2°C per decade, slightly slower than the current rate of warming, and found that although the AMOC would weaken significantly over the coming centuries, it wouldn't shut down entirely. The AMOC wouldn't be totally extinguished even with up to 10°C of warming, says Guo.

If the world reached net zero emissions and then started to cool the global climate, for example by removing huge amounts of carbon from the atmosphere and putting it in long-term storage, the AMOC would start to strengthen within decades.

But the level of carbon removal needed would be vast. Currently, the world removes around 2 million tonnes of

carbon per year, equivalent to 0.1 per cent of humanity's annual emissions, via technologies such as direct air capture and enhanced weathering. This would need to increase to 45 petagrams per year, equivalent to 100 per cent of current total annual emissions, to deliver global cooling at a rate of 0.2°C per decade (Science Advances, doi.org/rtbj).

"AMOC reversibility does not mean safety, because we really need a huge, huge amount of carbon dioxide removal to achieve that cooling rate," says Guo. "That is not something we can achieve with today's technology."

More radical cooling options, such as dimming the sun using solar radiation management, might be necessary to deliver cooling on this scale, says René van Westen at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

But Van Westen warns that restarting the AMOC after it has reached a collapsed state would

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“降低排放并控制冰层流失速度仍然至关重要”

在接下来的至少 150 年里，即使在海洋极冷这一不可能实现的场景下也是如此。

这意味着，即使在最乐观的气候缓解方案下，该冰川未来的冰层流失也是不可避免的。

这块巨大的冰体被冠以“末日冰川”之名，其规模大致与英国相当。它与相邻的派恩岛冰川（Pine Island glacier）共同构成了南极洲冰层流失最严重的区域，这主要是由于较温暖的海洋海水导致的融化。

“派恩岛冰川和斯韦茨冰川是目前南极洲导致海平面上升的最大因素，且其冰层流失速度正在加快，”英国南极调查局（British Antarctic Survey）的罗西·威廉姆斯（Rosie Williams）表示。

如果斯韦茨冰川完全崩塌，预计将引发覆盖西南极洲的冰盖出现更广泛的流失，从而导致海平面灾难性地上升 5 米。因此，确定其未来的行为至关重要。

为了探索这一点，威廉姆斯和她的同事们做了一件“相当大胆的事情”，她说道。在三种不同的冰盖计算机模型中，他们关闭了所有由海洋驱动的融化——这在现实中是不可能实现的条件——并观察在接下来的 150 年中会发生什么。其目的是观察即使在没有海洋变暖的情况下，斯韦茨冰川和派恩岛冰川的未来轨迹。

令人惊讶的是，这两座冰川走上了截然相反的道路。派恩岛冰川重新推进并变得更加稳定。“但对于斯韦茨冰川，我们发现了一些截然不同的情况，”威廉姆斯说。在整个 150 年的模拟过程中，该冰川继续流失冰层，尽管流失速度随时间而放缓（《地球物理研究快报》 / Geophysical Research Letters, doi.org / rtbh）。“我们普遍的预期是……如果你关闭海洋融化，冰层将能够增厚并重新推进。斯韦茨冰川无法做到这一点，这在某种程度上令人惊讶，”她说。

研究人员认为，斯韦茨冰川仍受到 20 世纪 40 年代极端厄尔尼诺现象的影响，当时的情况使南极洲的冰川变得不稳定并启动了它们的退缩。“我们今天在斯韦茨冰川身上仍然能看到这种影响的延续。[冰川]的移动速度非常缓慢。它们拥有长久的记忆，”威廉姆斯说。

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巍峨的冰崖将如何崩塌？

虽然计算机模型表明，即使海洋冷却，斯韦茨冰川仍将继续融化（见主报道），但研究人员也通过观察冰川，以了解其边缘冰崖的崩塌是如何发生的。

多年来，研究人员一直担心包括斯韦茨在内的海洋基底冰川可能会在失控的冰崖崩塌面前变得脆弱。其理论是，每次冰崖崩塌，都会暴露出一个新的、更高的——因此潜在地更不稳定——且更靠近冰川内部的冰崖。根据政府间气候变化专门委员会的一份报告，由于这些不断增高的冰崖发生失控崩塌而导致的冰量损失，可能会使未来 100 年预计的海平面上升幅度增加一倍。

来自麻省理工学院-伍兹霍尔海洋研究所联合项目的卡罗琳·尼德尔（Caroline Needell）及其同事现在利用卫星数据，首次对最高冰崖的行为提供了直接的大规模观察。

他们发现，失控崩塌的风险取决于两个主要因素：冰川冰之下的海床深潜程度，以及冰向海方向流动的速度。如果冰的粘性流动足够快，它会使冰川边缘变薄，从而降低冰崖高度。即使冰川在更靠近内部的地方更厚，足够快速的冰流似乎能够起到补偿作用，降低这些冰崖并防止失控效应（《科学》杂志，doi.org / rtbn）。

“在我们观察的所有冰川中，没有一个经历了不稳定的退缩，尽管它们的退缩速度确实比我们目前的模型预测的要快得多，”尼德尔说。马里莎·格鲁内斯（Marissa Grunes）

除此之外，科罗拉多大学博尔德分校的泰德·斯坎博斯（Ted Scambos）表示，人类引起的气候变化可能加速了融化。他说：“在过去四十年左右的时间里，由于人为变暖，输送到冰底的海洋热量……已将斯韦茨系统推入了一种本质上不稳定的状态。”

但尽管未来的冰量损失已成定局，这并不意味着减少气候变化和海洋变暖的策略是徒劳的。“几乎恰恰相反，”威廉姆斯说。“在零融化情景下，[斯韦茨冰川] 仍然会损失冰量，但海洋变暖越严重，冰量损失就越快，因此降低我们的

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📄 Original Section

Your mother's cells could be in your brain

Chris Simms

CELLS from your mother may have penetrated your brain when you were a fetus. These alien, or “microchimeric”, cells then seem to take up residence and perform a range of jobs, even into old age.

The discovery shows that “every human brain is likely a genetic mosaic of more than one person”, says Hina Chaudhry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, who wasn’t involved in the research.

BSIP SA/ALAMY

We already knew that we have cells from our mothers – and other family members – inside us. This is thought to be because of a small proportion of cells crossing the placenta while we are in utero, which could influence our risk of autoimmune conditions, while also playing a role in tissue repair.

There is evidence that these cells reach the brain, where they can persist for decades. But the extent of this, and the role the cells play there, was less clear. This is because brain samples from both a mother and their child are needed for comparison, and even if you have these samples, the cells can be hard to spot, says Sami Kanaan at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle.

Now, Kanaan and his colleagues have analysed genetic sequences in samples removed from the brains of 37 children – from newborns to 14-year-olds – as part of surgery to treat epilepsy. These were compared against genetic sequences in mouth swabs taken from their mothers.

The team found maternal cells in 26 of the 37 children, with each sample having 2.2 maternal cells per 100,000, on average (bioRxiv, doi.org/rtbt). More of these children probably had maternal cells, says Kanaan, but the method would have missed instances in which the mother and child had identical genetic variants.

Cells from our mothers may enter our body while we are in the uterus

"I'm very excited about this," says Chaudhry, "because they've used some very sophisticated methods to really answer the question of 'is there microchimerism?'

Kanaan and his colleagues identified microchimeric cells working in many cell types, including neurons (nerve cells that transmit information), microglia (the brain's immune cells), astrocytes (which support neurons), oligodendrocytes (which create the protective sheath around neurons) and endothelial cells (which line blood vessels).

In another part of the experiment, the team analysed RNA sequence data from three previously published studies. These comprised individuals ranging in age from a 22-week-old fetus to people in their 80s.

This revealed that people of all ages can have microchimeric cells in their brains. However, the number declined with age. This decline may be the result of apoptosis, programmed cell death that removes damaged and old cells.

Climate change

如果斯韦茨冰川崩塌，可能会导致海平面上升 5 米

排放并控制冰量损失率仍然至关重要。”

“为了在未来保护这些冰川，每一分之一度的温差都至关重要，而这关系到我们所有人，关系到全球海平面的上升，”威廉姆斯说。

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末日情景

据预测，在整个 21 世纪，与斯韦茨冰川相邻的海洋温度将以历史速度的三倍增长，从而导致冰量融化增加。人们最大的担忧是，这可能会触发斯韦茨冰川失控崩塌的末日情景，进而引发整个西南极冰盖的崩塌。

在这方面，威廉姆斯及其同事的研究提供了一线希望。新罕布什尔州达特茅斯学院的马修·莫利格姆（Mathieu Morlighem）表示：“我们还没有跨过不可回头之点。在最理想的情况下……如果海洋融化停止，斯韦茨不会……导致西南极冰盖的崩塌。”

威廉姆斯表示，未来的关键问题是在现实的海洋温度下会发生什么，她目前正在对此进行研究。

与此同时，本月发表的另一项研究揭示了关于斯韦茨冰川的其他令人担忧的消息。一个关于冰川如何与海洋相互作用的更精确模型表明，它的退缩速度可能比此前认为的更快，潜在地导致海平面上升幅度达到此前预测的两倍（《自然-通讯》，doi.org / hcnb94）。

健康

益生菌降低配方奶喂养婴儿的呼吸道感染风险

Carissa Wong

在配方奶中添加益生菌补充剂，降低了非母乳喂养婴儿的呼吸道感染率。

配方奶喂养的婴儿更容易发生感染，但这种补充剂——其中既包含来自母乳的糖分，也包含发酵这些糖分所需的细菌——产生了能够增强免疫系统的脂肪分子。

“这令人极其兴奋，”伦敦帝国理工学院的丹尼尔·戴维斯（Daniel Davis）表示，他没有参与这项研究。生命早期的频繁感染与成年后出现中度至重度感染以及过敏风险增加有关。“通过改良配方奶来帮助婴儿建立良好的免疫健康，这是一个非常强大的概念，”他说。

然而，此类干预措施可能会产生意外后果，包括实际上增加过敏风险。“如果你增强了一个人针对感染的免疫反应能力，那么他们可能更容易对过敏或自身免疫产生敏感性，”戴维斯说道。他是在10月12日于伦敦皇家学会举行的暴露组免疫学（Immunology of the Exposome）会议上了解到这种补充剂的。“这些

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📄 Original Section

"It's still really essential to bring down our emissions and control that rate of ice loss"

for at least the next 150 years, even under the impossible scenario of extremely cool oceans.

This means that future ice loss from the glacier is unavoidable, even under the most optimistic climate mitigation scenarios.

Dubbed the “doomsday glacier”, this vast mass of ice is roughly the size of Britain. Together with the neighbouring Pine Island glacier, it is the area of Antarctica losing the most ice, mainly due to melting by the warmer ocean waters.

"The Pine Island and

Thwaites glaciers are the biggest contributors to sea-level rise in Antarctica at the moment, and they're losing ice at an increasing rate," says Rosie Williams at the British Antarctic Survey.

If Thwaites glacier collapses completely, it is expected to trigger a more widespread loss of the ice sheet covering West Antarctica, causing a calamitous sea-level rise of 5 metres. So determining how it behaves in future is crucial.

To explore this, Williams and her colleagues “did something quite wild”, she says. In three different computer models of the ice sheet, they turned off all ocean-driven melting – an impossible condition in reality – and watched what would happen over the next 150 years. The aim was to see the future trajectory of Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers, even without warming oceans.

Surprisingly, the glaciers followed opposite paths. Pine Island glacier re-advanced and became more stable. "But with Thwaites glacier, we found

something really different," says Williams. Over the entire 150 years of the simulations, the glacier continued to lose ice, even though the rate of loss slowed over time (Geophysical Research Letters, doi.org/rtbh). "Our general expectation was... that if you turned off that ocean melting, the ice would be able to thicken and re-advance. It's somewhat

of a surprise that Thwaites glacier can't do that," she says.

The researchers think that Thwaites is still being affected by extreme El Niño conditions in the 1940s, which destabilised Antarctica's glaciers and kick-started their retreat. "We're still seeing some effect of that playing out today with Thwaites. [Glaciers] are really slow-moving. They have a long memory," says Williams.

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“服用益生菌的婴儿从感染中恢复的速度也快了几天”

干预措施可能利弊共存；我们目前还不知道所有这些影响是什么。”

之前的试验表明，含有母乳糖分（称为人乳寡糖，HMOs）的补充剂能降低婴儿的呼吸道感染率。这些糖分被包括婴儿长双歧杆菌（Bifidobacterium longum infantis）在内的肠道细菌发酵，产生短链脂肪酸，这种分子似乎能增强针对病原体的免疫反应。

但一些婴儿，尤其是西方国家的婴儿，肠道中缺乏婴儿长双歧杆菌，这可能与母亲的饮食有关。此前，伦敦帝国理工学院的彼得·布罗丁（Petter Brodin）及其同事发现，提高这种细菌水平的补充剂似乎能改善母乳喂养婴儿的免疫健康。

现在，布罗丁的团队开发了一种同时含有 HMOs 和婴儿长双歧杆菌的补充剂，并将其在配方奶喂养的婴儿身上进行了测试，因为这类婴儿更有可能缺乏婴儿长双歧杆菌。

在开发配方奶的雀巢公司（Nestlé）的资助下，研究人员在菲律宾马尼拉招募了 223 名年龄在 2 到 5 周之间、且完全由配方奶喂养的婴儿。约一半的婴儿被随机分配饮用由含有益生菌补充剂的粉末制成的配方奶，而其余婴儿则饮用不含该补充剂的同款牛奶。

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📄 Original Section

How will towering glacial ice cliffs collapse?

While computer models suggest that Thwaites glacier will continue to melt even if the ocean cools (see main story), researchers have also observed glaciers to see how collapse of the ice cliffs at their edge may occur.

For years, researchers have feared that marine-based glaciers, which include Thwaites, might be vulnerable to runaway cliff collapse. The idea is that each time an ice cliff collapses, it exposes a new, taller – and so potentially even less stable – ice cliff further towards the glacier's interior. The loss of ice due to runaway collapse of these ever-taller cliffs could

potentially double the amount of sea-level rise expected over the next 100 years, according to an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.

Caroline Needell at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program and her colleagues have now used satellite data to provide the first direct, large-scale observations of how the tallest ice cliffs behave.

They found the risk of runaway collapse depends on two main factors: how steeply the sea floor beneath the glacial ice

deepens, and how quickly the ice flows seawards. If the viscous flow of ice is fast enough, it will thin out the edge of a glacier, reducing cliff height. Even if the glacier is thicker further towards its interior, sufficiently rapid ice flow appears able to compensate, lowering those ice cliffs and preventing a runaway effect (Science, doi.org/rtbn).

"None of the glaciers we observed underwent unstable retreat, even though they did retreat much faster than our current models predict," says Needell. Marissa Grunes

On top of this, human-induced climate change has probably accelerated the melt, says Ted Scambos at the University of Colorado Boulder. “Ocean heat delivered to the base of the ice... over the past four decades or so, as a result of anthropogenic warming, has pushed the Thwaites system into an inherently unstable configuration,” he says.

But despite future ice loss being locked in, this doesn't mean that strategies to reduce climate change and ocean warming are futile. "Almost the opposite," says Williams. "Under the zero-melt scenario, [Thwaites glacier] still loses ice, but the more warming you have in the ocean, the faster that ice is lost, so it's still really essential to bring down our

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在配方奶中添加补充剂有助于增强免疫反应

父母在不知道孩子被分在哪个组的情况下，记录孩子直到 6 个月大为止出现的所有呼吸道感染症状，如打喷嚏、咳嗽或流鼻涕。

在此期间，补充剂组中有 23% 的婴儿被记录为发生感染，而仅喂养配方奶的组中这一比例为 40%。前者从感染中恢复的速度平均快了几天。“呼吸道感染次数更少，持续时间也更短，”布罗丁说。

对粪便样本的分析显示，该补充剂似乎能提高肠道中婴儿长双歧杆菌的水平，同时减轻炎症并支持针对病原体的免疫反应。

DANIEL LEE / GETTY IMAGES

微生物学

巨型细菌可能生活在你的肠道中

乔·马钱特 (Jo Marchant)

我们的肠道微生物组是数万亿个微生物的家园，但它们可能并非全部都是微小的。巨型细菌的长度可达 1 厘米，通常发现于特定的生态环境（如鱼类肠道）中。如今，微生物学家在来自全球的人类肠道微生物组中，检测到了其中一种最大类型细菌的 DNA 迹象。

细菌通常长度在 2 微米左右，而巨型细菌通常被定义为大于 10 微米。但属于 *Epulopiscium* 属的物种长度可达 600 微米。

这些细菌通常发现于刺外科鱼的肠道中，但柏林工业大学的丹尼·伊奥内斯库 (Danny Ionescu) 注意到其他鱼类中也存在与 *Epulopiscium* 相关的 DNA 序列。为了查明它们的分布范围，他及其同事搜索了从超过 600,000 个微生物组中扩增出的 DNA 序列。

伊奥内斯库表示，在来自 80 多个国家、涵盖多种物种的微生物组中，团队发现了“数万例” *Epulopiscium* 阳性样本，分布在从甲壳类动物

埃斯特·R·安格特 (ESTHER R. ANGERT)

*Epulopiscium* 物种的长度可达 600 微米

然而，研究确实发现，它们在生命的第 1 年以及患有与炎症相关的胃肠道疾病（如炎症性肠病）的人群中最为丰富。

伊奥内斯库表示，这些细菌并非导致这些疾病的原因，而是“我们认为这种 [细菌] 生物利用了微生物组失衡的机会”。因此，他认为在症状出现之前，它们可能作为肠道失调的标志物而具有实用价值。

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“我们认为这种细菌利用了微生物组失衡的机会”

到雪貂。他们还在数千个人类微生物组中发现了 *Epulopiscium* 物种。这些细菌通常仅占样本中鉴定出的 DNA 序列的 1 到 2%，但在极少数情况下，比例高达 20% (bioRxiv, doi.org / rtkk)。

在刺外科鱼中，*Epulopiscium* 物种会改变肠道 pH 值和消化酶活性，但目前尚不清楚它们对人类可能产生什么影响。研究人员

加州大学圣巴巴拉分校的让-马里·沃兰 (Jean-Marie Volland) 曾参与发现已知最大细菌的团队，他表示自己在意想不到的物种中注意到了与 *Epulopiscium* 相关的序列。但要证明在人类身上看到的携带 *Epulopiscium* 相关基因的细菌确实是巨型的，科学家必须直接观察到它们。伊奥内斯库目前正在使用旨在与鉴定序列结合的荧光探针进行研究，以揭示这些细菌。他说：“当我们拍到照片时，我们就有了证据。”

古生物学

古鸟类化石或将改写早期翅膀进化史

詹姆斯·伍德福德 (James Woodford)

在中国发现的一件非凡化石提出了这样一种可能性：一些最早的鸟类物种可能从未飞翔，或者在进化出飞行能力后几乎立即放弃了飞行。

中国科学院的王敏表示，这种名为“月珠鸟”（*Yuezhuornis yangyuanensis*）的新型不飞鸟类的发现，可能意味着动力飞行并非驱动鸟类独特解剖结构进化的主因。王敏说：“这件新化石改变了我们对侏罗纪鸟类样貌的假设。”

这件近乎完整的化石大约有 1.48 亿到 1.5 亿年的历史，于 2024 年在福建省被发现。月珠鸟在生前高度约为半米，体重略高于 800 grams。王敏推测，这种生物可能生活在沼泽环境中，且擅长奔跑。

在将这种古鸟的解剖结构与近 400 种现存鸟类进行对比后，研究人员得出结论，月珠鸟与现代地栖雉类最为相似（*Nature*, doi.org / rtk7）。这些鸟类的前肢比后肢短，月珠鸟也是如此。虽然雉类可以短距离爆发飞行，但它们实际上是地栖生物。

月珠鸟的第二个脚趾上还有一个独特的镰刀状爪，王敏表示该爪具有“高度功能性”，可能用于捕捉猎物。其外观与包括迅猛龙（Velociraptor）在内的远亲的爪子非常相似。现代鸟类已经失去了这些爪子。

与现代鸟类不同，月珠鸟拥有像始祖鸟（Archaeopteryx）那样长长的尾巴。它还拥有紧密排列的锯齿状牙齿，类似于恐爪龙类（deinonychosaur）恐龙通常具备的特征。

但月珠鸟的其他解剖特征则与其它鸟类相似。王敏表示，它的髋骨和腓骨（小腿骨之一）与后期的白垩纪鸟类非常相似。

研究人员认为，月珠鸟身上兼具恐龙和鸟类特征，证明了鸟类身体构造并非向飞行优化方向稳步演进——尤其是他们的分析表明，飞行能力更强的始祖鸟实际上比月珠鸟更原始。

他们表示，鸟类的进化过程比此前认为的更复杂且更迅速。早期的物种几乎立即开始探索不同的生态位和专业化方向，包括不涉及飞行的生活方式。王敏说，这挑战了这样一个观点，即鸟类身体构造的早期进化是由飞行的选择压力所驱动的。

MR. CHUNG-TAT CHEUNG

物理学

科学家投票决定取消闰秒

UTC 在被修正前将与天文时间产生最高一小时的偏差

闰秒（LEAP seconds）此前用于使全球时钟与地球自转保持同步，现将被废除。取而代之的是，协调世界时（universal time）将被允许与天文时间产生最高一小时的偏差，随后再进行修正。10月15日，来自69个国家的代表在法国凡尔赛举行的国际计量局（BIPM）会议上投票通过了这一变更。

伦敦皇家天文台的时间策展人艾米莉·阿克曼斯（Emily Akkermans）表示，随着时钟时间与天文时间之间的差距缓慢扩大，其最终效果将“就像生活在夏令时一样”，但这种状态将是永久性的。

在历史的大部分时间里，我们的时钟是根据太阳在天空中的表观位置来设定的。但在1967年，随着超高精度原子钟的开发，物理学家定义了一种名为协调世界时（UTC）的国际时间标准，该标准基于铯-133原子的特定振动速度。

地球自转速率的自然波动意味着需要定期进行修正，以使世界时与天空保持同步。随着自转速度减慢，物理学家增加了闰秒。自1972年引入以来，已累计增加了27个闰秒。

现在，这一策略将被放弃。部分原因是，从GPS到电信等技术系统对精确计时的依赖程度已大大提高。这意味着引入闰秒变得更加复杂，且可能带来电网崩溃的风险。英国泰丁顿国家物理实验室的塞特纳姆·谢马尔（Setnam Shemar）表示，之前的闰秒曾导致网站崩溃并干扰航空公司的预订系统。

“时间现在在这些系统中变得如此重要且集成度如此之高，”阿克曼斯说，“曾经行之有效的方法现在变得更成问题。”

此外，地球自转最近开始轻微加速，这带来了一个令人畏惧的可能性，即可能需要“史上第一个

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“向闰时的转变应能确保未来几个世纪时间流逝的连续性”

负闰秒”，国际计量局（BIPM）时间与频率委员会负责人诺埃尔·迪马克（Noël Dimarcq）在的一份声明中表示。这种时间向后跳跃的实际后果难以预测。

在过去的30年里，物理学家一直在讨论用什么来替代闰秒。在BIPM会议上，他们投票选择了“闰时”，这意味着

UTC将被允许与天文时间产生最高一小时的偏差，随后再进行修正。迪马克表示，这应能确保“几个世纪”内时间流逝的连续性。该变更将于2027年5月20日起生效。

谢马尔强调，涉及的影响非常小：“在需要闰时之前，还将经过数百年甚至数千年。”他补充说，物理学家仍将精确追踪地球自转，以为天文学和天文导航提供信息。

BIPM会议还就“秒”的新定义征求建议——因为光学钟现在比目前时间所基于的铯钟精确得多——并呼吁国际机构开始考虑如何为月球定义统一的时间标准。■ JM

考古学

古代沉船可能是世界上最古老的沉船

HAKAN ONIZ / AKDENIZ UNIVERSITY

在土耳其南海岸发现的一艘沉船可能有 4500 年的历史。土耳其安塔利亚阿克登尼兹大学（Akdeniz University）的 Hakan Öniz 表示，这使其成为有记录以来发现的最古老的沉船，他正是此次发现团队的负责人。

考古学家于 2024 年在土耳其地中海沿岸的凯科瓦岛（Kekova Island）附近首次发现了这艘沉船。船体本身的木材早已分解，但在本月早些时候完成的挖掘工作中，他们从海底回收了其货物——大约 30 个被称为“双耳瓶”（amphoras）的储物罐。

这些双耳瓶具有独特的形状，带有侧把手和平底，与来自黎凡特和埃及的其他青铜时代早期的陶器相似。这使得研究人员能够将其年代定在公元前 2700 年至 2400 年之间。Öniz 表示，这为研究地中海海上贸易的最早时期提供了见解。随着国际贸易的建立，贸易商转向使用底部锥形的罐子，因为这样在船上堆放效率更高。

Öniz 表示，双耳瓶之间的细微差异表明它们来自“不同的作坊，且可能来自不同的定居点”。他得出结论，该船长约 10 米，从地中海东岸的一个港口出发。船员在前往克里特岛的米诺斯文明或土耳其特洛伊城的途中，可能装载了装满橄榄油或葡萄酒的双耳瓶。

直到现在，世界上已知最古老的沉船是希腊多科斯（Dokos）的一艘青铜时代早期沉船，年代定在公元前 2700-2200 年。Öniz 认为凯科瓦的沉船更古老，但英国爱丁堡大学的 Jon Henderson 表示，这两艘沉船实际上可能是同时期的。JM

健康

📄 Original Section

Ancient bird may rewrite early wing evolution

James Woodford

A REMARKABLE fossil found in China raises the possibility that some of the earliest bird species never took wing or abandoned flight almost immediately after they had evolved the ability.

Min Wang at the Chinese Academy of Sciences says the discovery of the new flightless species, Yuezhuornis yangyuanensis, could mean that powered flight didn't drive the evolution of birds' unique anatomy. "This new fossil changes our assumption about what a Jurassic bird looked like," says Wang.

The new, almost-complete fossil, which is about 148 million to 150 million years old, was discovered in 2024 in Fujian province. When alive, Y. yangyuanensis was around half a metre tall, weighing just over 800 grams. Wang suspects the creature probably lived in a swampy environment and was a good runner.

After comparing the ancient bird's anatomy with nearly 400 living birds, the researchers concluded Y. yangyuanensis is most like modern ground-dwelling pheasants (Nature,

Yuezhuornis

yangyuanensis could

only fly in short bursts doi.org/rtk7). These have forelimbs shorter than their hindlimbs, and Y. yangyuanensis did too. While pheasants can fly in short bursts, they are effectively ground-dwellers.

Y. yangyuanensis also had a distinctive sickle-shaped claw on its second toe that was "highly functional", says Wang, and probably used in prey capture. It was very similar in appearance to the claws of its distant relatives, including Velociraptor. Modern birds have lost these claws.

Unlike modern birds, Y. yangyuanensis had a long tail, similar to Archaeopteryx. It also had closely packed, serrated teeth like those typically present in deinonychosaur dinosaurs.

But other anatomical features of Y. yangyuanensis resemble those of other birds. Its hip bones and fibula – one of the lower leg bones – closely mirror those of later Cretaceous birds, says Wang.

The mix of dinosaur and bird features present in Y. yangyuanensis demonstrates that the bird body plan wasn't a steady progression towards flight optimisation, say the researchers – particularly given that their analysis suggests Archaeopteryx, a stronger flier, was actually more primitive than Y. yangyuanensis.

Rather, bird evolution was a more complex and rapid process than previously thought, they say. It saw early species almost immediately explore different niches and specialisations, including lifestyles that didn't involve flying. This challenges the notion that the early evolution of the avian body plan was driven by the selective pressures of flight, says Wang.

MR. CHUNG-TAT CHEUNG

Physics

双胞胎在子宫内发生癌症扩散

这一罕见病例还揭示了同卵双胞胎如何由一个受精卵发育而来

Alice Klein

一对在出生后不久不幸死于同一种罕见癌症的双胞胎，帮助科学家理解了这种疾病如何在子宫内从一个胎儿传播到另一个胎儿。对这对双胞胎 DNA 的分析还导致人们对同卵双胞胎在受精后如何分裂产生了根本性的重新思考。

“这是一件极其可怕的事情，但他们的母亲非常明确地表示，我们必须从中学习到一些东西，并为科学提供了这份惊人的馈赠，”英国剑桥 Wellcome Sanger 研究所的 Sam Behjati 表示。

在一次扫描发现其中一名胎儿有面部肿块后，双胞胎 Amelia 和 Amaya 在妊娠 34 周时通过剖腹产分娩。出生时，两人都被发现多处患有癌症，并随后不久死亡。“新生儿患癌极其罕见，”Behjati 说。

这引发了一个问题：癌症是在其中一个双胞胎身上产生并传播到另一个身上的，还是分别发育的，或许是因为共同继承的突变使两人都易患此病。

为了进行调查，Behjati 及其同事进行了全基因组测序

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📄 Original Section

UTC will diverge from astronomical time for up to an hour before being corrected

LEAP seconds, previously used to keep the world's clocks in sync with Earth's rotation, are to be abolished. Instead, universal time will be allowed to drift up to an hour from astronomical time before it is corrected. Representatives from 69 countries voted for the change on 15 October at a meeting of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) in Versailles, France.

As the gap between clock time and astronomical time slowly grows, the effect will eventually be “like living on daylight saving time”, but permanently, says Emily Akkermans, curator of time at the Royal Observatory in London.

For most of history, our clocks have been set by the apparent position of the sun in the sky. But in 1967, after the development of super-accurate atomic clocks, physicists defined an international time standard called coordinated universal time (UTC), based on the speed of a particular vibration of the caesium-133 atom.

Natural fluctuations in Earth's rate of rotation meant periodic corrections were needed to keep universal time in sync with the sky. As the rotation slowed, physicists added leap seconds. Twenty-seven have been added since they were introduced in 1972.

Now, that strategy is to be abandoned. This is partly because technological systems, from GPS to telecommunications, have become much more reliant on precise timekeeping. That means introducing leap seconds is more complex, potentially risking the failure of electricity grids. Previous leap seconds have caused websites to crash and disrupted airlines' booking systems, says Setnam Shemar at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, UK.

“Time is now so much more important and integrated into these systems," says Akkermans. "What once worked has become more problematic."

What's more, Earth's rotation has recently begun to accelerate slightly, raising the daunting possibility of needing “a first-ever

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“双胞胎 B 的肿瘤似乎是由双胞胎 A 的单个癌细胞形成的”

对死后从双胞胎器官、胎盘和肿瘤中采集的 45 份细胞样本进行了分析。

尽管这对双胞胎最初拥有相同的 DNA，但由于随着时间的推移自然积累了突变，在她们分离后，DNA 变得略有不同。这意味着研究人员能够识别出姐妹两人细胞之间的差异，并估算她们癌症发展的时间点。

他们发现，由于未知原因，在第一孕期结束左右，其中一名双胞胎（在研究中被称为双胞胎 A）体内发生了两个基因 MN1 和 ZNF341 的错误融合。这种基因重排导致她的面部生长出肿瘤，大脑、肝脏和其他器官中也出现了肿瘤。这些肿瘤被鉴定为软组织肉瘤，这是一种可能影响皮肤、神经、血管、肌肉和脂肪的罕见癌症。

在第二孕期结束左右，双胞胎 A 的肿瘤细胞扩散到了她的姐妹（被称为双胞胎 B）体内。这导致双胞胎 B 的皮肤和大脑中生长出了由双胞胎 A 肿瘤细胞组成的肿瘤（《自然·通讯》，doi.org / rs9w）。

Behjati 表示，癌症可能是通过双胞胎共用的血液循环扩散的。“当你共用一个胎盘时，不可避免地会共用血管，”他说。他指出，双胞胎 B 体内的肿瘤似乎是由双胞胎 A 的单个癌细胞跨越过去并随后大量繁殖而形成的。

最令人惊讶的发现之一是这对双胞胎在受精后最初是如何分离的。长期以来人们一直认为，同卵双胞胎源自一个分裂成两半的胚胎，这意味着胚胎的一半细胞变成了双胞胎 A，另一半变成了双胞胎 B。

相反，研究人员发现，胚胎中的仅一个细胞发育成了双胞胎 A，而所有其他细胞则变成了双胞胎 B 以及整个胎盘。Behjati 说，这很奇怪，因为你会假设胎盘中会包含双胞胎 A 和 B 均匀混合的细胞。

古生物学

化石发现一个世纪后，恐龙被命名为新物种

在英格兰南部的怀特岛，人们鉴定出一种与霸王龙（Tyrannosaurus rex）亲缘关系较近的新型掠食性恐龙。

用于鉴定该物种的化石——一个部分脑颅——自 1924 年从雷金纳德·胡利牧师（Reverend Reginald Hooley）处获得以来，一直存放于伦敦自然历史博物馆的档案库中。“它在博物馆里没被研究地放了大约 100 年，这感觉非常超现实，”目前就职于英国利兹大学的卡修斯·莫里森（Cassius Morrison）说道。

莫里森及其同事利用 CT 扫描创建了该化石的 3D 扫描图，并将其与其他恐龙的特征进行了对比。

伦敦自然历史博物馆信托基金会

Invictibellatrix amberina 的化石脑颅，以及其大脑所在的孔洞

匹配度最高的是来自约 8000 万年前的阿根廷巨型猛禽龙 Murusraptor。因此，研究人员认为，这个最初发现于怀特岛西南海岸下白垩统威塞克斯组（Wessex Formation）120-million-year-old 岩层中的头骨，属于肉食性恐龙巨型猛禽龙组（Megaraptora）的一个新物种。如果属实，这将是首次在欧洲发现巨型猛禽龙（《皇家学会开放科学》，doi.org / rs9x）。

该团队将其命名为 Invictibellatrix amberina。Invictibellatrix 的意思是“不可战胜的女战士”。研究人员估计，它是一种敏捷的两足食肉动物，体长约 3 到 4 米，高约 1.5 米，体重在 200 到 300 公斤之间。莫里森表示，它很可能长有羽毛，并拥有 10 到 20 厘米长的爪子，用于攻击小型恐龙、蜥蜴和哺乳动物。

他说，如果我们当时生活在那个时代，“人类将是尺寸完美的猎物，体重大约只有它们体重的三分之一”。克里斯·西姆斯（Chris Simms）

古代人类

发现带有恐怖伤痕的尼安德特人骨架

詹姆斯·伍德福德 (James Woodford)

一名尼安德特人的遗骸揭示了旧石器时代生活中极其残酷的一面。其下颌骨曾遭受严重粉碎性骨折（后已愈合），肩部还有一个矛孔。

然而，剑桥大学的艾玛·波梅罗伊 (Emma Pomeroy) 表示，考虑到在早期的牙科损伤后能够生存下来必须依赖长期的照料，这一重大发现可能也提供了关于同情心的早期证据。

这具被称为 Shanidar A 的 75,000 年前的部分骨架，于 2019 年和 2022 年从伊拉克北部的沙尼达尔洞穴中挖掘出土。虽然无法确定 Shanidar A 的性别，但牙齿的磨损表明，该遗骸属于一名大约 45 岁的个体。

波梅罗伊说，该个体在生命中的某个时刻面部一定受到了沉重打击，导致一颗下前牙裂成两半，且可能导致下颌骨骨折。牙齿的断裂边缘覆盖了硬化的牙菌斑，表明其在受伤后继续生存了（《科学报告》，doi.org / rtbd）。但波梅罗伊表示，他们当时一定承受了巨大的痛苦。她说，这样的伤势还会导致进食和饮水困难，而且几乎肯定需要其群体在一段时间内提供密集护理。

研究团队还惊讶地发现，Shanidar A 的肩胛骨上有一个完美的圆孔，这可能是由木矛而非石尖武器造成的。团队表示，这样的伤势将“贯穿整个胸腔，包括肺部以及潜在的主要血管，很可能导致迅速死亡”。

目前尚不清楚该伤势是在狩猎过程中还是通过暴力行为造成的。

气候变化

陆地储存碳的能力已回升

玛德琳·卡夫 (Madeleine Cuff)

在过去的 2 年里，研究森林、草原和沼泽健康状况的科学家们一直感到担忧。自 2023年以来，面对极端天气，地球景观能够吸收的二氧化碳量剧烈下降，导致大气 $\mathrm{CO}_{2}$ 浓度在连续两年中创下纪录式增长。

但 2025 年打破了这一趋势，初步研究显示出强劲的反弹。

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“2025年气候趋于正常，因此植物恢复了碳吸收能力”

陆地碳汇以及随之而来的大气 $\mathrm{CO}_{2}$ 生长率的下降。

森林等陆地生态系统在生长过程中会从大气中吸收 $\mathrm{CO}_{2}$，并在分解或燃烧时排放碳。近几十年来，由于气温升高以及 $\{}_{2}$ 的施肥效应（这能促进植物生长），这些生态系统吸收的 $\{}_{2}$ 往往多于排放的量。这形成了一个强度随年份波动的全球碳汇。

“在 2023 和 2024年，由于厄尔尼诺现象和亚马逊森林火灾，全球陆地碳汇几乎被抵消，”领导此次分析的法国气候与环境科学实验室的菲利普·西亚斯（Philippe Ciais）表示。“这种抵消导致 $\{}_{2}$ 生长率极高，因为如果 $\{}_{2}$ 没有被陆地吸收，它就会留在大气中。”

西亚斯及其同事目前估计，2025 年陆地碳汇吸收了 23.6 亿吨碳。这比 2015-22 年的平均值高出 7.1 亿吨（arXiv, doi.org / rs56）。这次恢复主要由热带森林生长率的回升所驱动。“气候变得更加正常，尤其是在非洲和亚马逊地区，因此植物恢复了它们的碳吸收能力，”西亚斯说。

研究人员估计，海洋和陆地的自然碳汇已经移除了人类活动排放的 $\{}_{2}$ 的一半以上。但这种益处不会永远持续，科学家预计

热带森林在 2025 年表现出健康的生长

除非人类驱动的排放量逐渐减少，否则在未来几十年内，全球陆地生物圈将从碳汇转变为碳源。

2023 和 2024 年陆地碳汇的消失让研究人员担心它比预期更早地崩溃。

英国埃克塞特大学的团队成员迈克·奥沙利文（Mike O’Sullivan）表示，2024 年是一个“极端年份”。因此，2025 年的“大规模恢复”是个好消息，他说。但他警告说，我们不知道这种状态是否能无限期维持，特别是如果天气模式变得日益极端。

预计太平洋正在进行的超级厄尔尼诺现象将是历史上最剧烈的，将给亚马逊雨林等关键陆地碳汇带来极端高温和干旱。这意味着明年预计碳吸收量将再次大幅下降。

奥沙利文警告说，由气候变化驱动的这种重复的天气冲击循环，可能会削弱全球陆地碳汇长期储存碳的能力。研究人员估计，由于气候变化和自然变率的影响，该碳汇已经比没有这些影响时缩小了 25%。

“陆地表现出了短期韧性，”奥沙利文说。“存在一个短期冲击，即厄尔尼诺现象，而它在次年得到了恢复。有强有力的证据表明这种情况正在发生。但这并不意味着陆地将对气候变化保持长期韧性。”

实地笔记葡萄牙，科亚河谷

古代人类如何与艺术共存一个独特的岩画遗址告诉我们，艺术并非仅存在于偏远的圣地。本杰明·托布（Benjamin Taub）前往实地考察以了解更多详情

现在是葡萄牙科亚河谷佩纳斯科萨（Penascosa）岩画遗址的凌晨 6 点，在手电筒倾斜的光芒下，一幅褪色的原牛（生活在末次冰期的野牛）刻画在黎明前的阴暗中突然变得清晰。三周以来，科亚公园基金会的考古学家蒂埃里·奥布里（Thierry Aubry）及其团队一直在刻画旁挖掘，寻找可能帮助他们理解该河谷最古老岩画功能的古代工具。当我们进入挖掘的最后一天时，他们终于找到了目标：指甲盖大小、锋利如刃的石片，这些石片曾被史前狩猎采集者用作狩猎武器。

“这种技术是典型的 26,000 年前风格，”奥布里说道，语气中带着兴奋与宽慰，“这是我们第一次在艺术作品旁边发现如此古老的材料。”

全球最大的旧石器时代露天岩画遗址位于葡萄牙的科阿河谷（Côa valley）。

科阿公园基金会的路易斯·路易斯（Luís Luís）表示，在整个科阿河谷最重要的一组岩画面板仅几米之遥的地方发现这些文物，有助于证明艺术并非仅仅是我们的祖先安置在偏远神圣场所的东西，而是“日常生活的一部分”。

在包含这些石制小叶片的考古地层中，研究人员还发现了其他打制工具的残骸以及火塘，这表明人们在触手可及的刻画面板附近生火并使用各种器具。或者，用奥布里的说法，“他们就生活在艺术之中”。

佩纳斯科萨（Penascosa）的石器为研究岩画创作与欣赏的社会背景提供了至关重要的线索，揭示了它如何塑造那些迁徙到科阿地区狩猎和互动的群体之间的接触。“最合理的功能是传递某种神话，但同时也是向猎人们传递一些实用信息，”奥布里说道。

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📄 Original Section

"The tumour in twin B appears to have formed from just one cancer cell from twin A"

on 45 samples of cells collected from the twins' organs, placenta and tumours post-mortem.

Although the twins started with the same DNA, it became slightly different once they split apart, due to the natural build-up of mutations over time. This meant the researchers could spot the difference between the sisters'

cells and estimate the timing of their cancer development.

They found that a mistaken fusion of two genes, MN1 and ZNF341, occurred in one of the twins, referred to in the study as twin A, around the end of the first trimester, for unknown reasons. This genetic rearrangement led to the growth of a tumour on her face, as well as others in her brain, liver and other organs. The tumours were identified as soft tissue sarcomas, rare cancers that can affect skin, nerves, blood vessels, muscles and fat.

Around the end of the second trimester, tumour cells from twin A spread to her sister, referred to as twin B. This led twin B to develop tumours on her skin and in her brain that were composed of twin A's tumour cells (Nature Communications, doi.org/rs9w).

The cancer probably spread via the twins' shared circulation, says

Behjati. “When you share a placenta, you inevitably end up sharing blood vessels,” he says. The tumour in twin B appears to have formed from just one cancer cell from twin A that crossed over and then multiplied, he says.

One of the most surprising findings was how the twins initially split apart after conception. It has long been assumed that identical twins come from an embryo that splits in half, which would mean that half of the embryo's cells became twin A and the other half became twin B.

Instead, the researchers discovered that just one cell in the embryo developed into twin A, while all the other cells became twin B and the entire placenta. This is curious, because you would assume that the placenta would contain an even mix of twin A and B's cells, says Behjati.

Palaeontology

露天画廊

PHBCZ / GETTY IMAGES

科阿河谷（Côa valley）是世界上最大的旧石器时代露天岩画收藏地。这些刻画最早于 1991 年被发现，分布在约 17 公里的河谷地带。“艺术在洞穴中保存良好，但在露天环境下则不然，”路易斯（Luís）说道，“但在科阿，我们拥有让露天艺术得以保存的条件，因为这里是一个干燥地区，且当地的片岩对侵蚀具有很强的抵抗力。”

这些暴露在外的图案的发现，触发了路易斯所称的考古学中的一场“哥白尼式革命”，因为它证明了岩画并不局限于与宗教和仪式相关的阴暗地下环境，而且

“岩画为塑造伊比利亚人数千年生活的社会剧场提供了一个舞台”

通常是一种非常公开的现象。

“科阿河谷的发现促使人们在其他地方寻找类似的东西。根据过去 30 年的发现，我们现在知道，事实上这类艺术一定遍布各处，”葡萄牙里斯本大学的若昂·齐尔豪（João Zilhão）说道，他在 1996 年建立了科阿河谷考古公园。从那时起，伊比利亚半岛及其他地区又发现了更多旧石器时代的露天岩画遗址，甚至在远至尼罗河谷的地方也发现了风格相似的刻画。

在科阿，岩画创作的最早阶段对应于旧石器时代晚期格拉维特文化（Gravettian）与梭鲁特文化（Solutrean）之间的过渡期，大约在 26,000 到 27,000 年前，正值末次冰盛期的开始。为了理解为什么狩猎采集者选择在法国拉斯科洞窟壁画创作前 10,000 年就在这个河谷中填满刻画，研究人员在过去三十年里一直在佩纳斯科萨（Penascosa）寻找格拉维特文化晚期的居住迹象。

“1995 年，所有人都说找到这个是不可能的，因为这是一个露天遗址且紧邻河流，所以所有东西都会被[洪水事件]冲走，”奥布里（Aubry）说，“但如果你不去寻找，你就找不到。”

第一次挖掘古代营地证据的尝试是由齐尔豪监督的。然而，直到由奥布里在 2018 年领导的最后一轮大规模挖掘结束时，仍未发现显示人类居住迹象的地层。但在 2025 年，在佩纳斯科萨 3 号岩石（Rock 3）——上面刻有一系列重叠的动物图案——正前方挖掘的一个试坑中，发现了若干块被火烧过的岩石和石片工具，其风格与格拉维特文化晚期和梭鲁特文化早期相匹配。

研究团队首次获得了人们在佩纳斯科萨围火而坐并制造生存技术工具的直接证据，而与此同时，这片景观正通过岩画被赋予纪念意义。“这表明旧石器时代的狩猎采集者与今天的狩猎采集者是一样的，”齐尔豪说道，他指的是某些继续以类似方式使用岩画的澳大利亚原住民社区，“他们装饰自己居住的领土。”

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生命剧场

本杰明·托布 (BENJAMIN TAUB)

上个月，研究团队回到佩纳斯科萨 (Penascosa) 挖掘这个史前“客厅”，发现了被掩埋的片岩板。这些岩板曾形成一个天然的悬顶，古代狩猎采集者曾在其下方避难，直到营火产生的热量导致其坍塌。通过挖掘时间之层，考古学家出土了一系列文物，追溯了从旧石器时代一直到罗马时代的人类历史进程。与西欧著名的彩绘洞穴不同，科阿 (Cōa) 山谷及其岩画并未与不断变化的外界隔绝，而是为塑造古代伊比利亚人数千年生活的社会剧目提供了一个舞台。

就在挖掘时间即将耗尽之际，考古学家终于到达了 27,000 年前的格拉维特文化 (Gravettian) 居住层，发现了将佩纳斯科萨及其最早的刻画置于古代伊比利亚社会景观中定位所需的证据。

“这块燧石来自西班牙中部，至少 150 公里远，”奥布里 (Aubry) 说道，他手里拿着一个来自佩纳斯科萨的微小石叶。

考古学家蒂埃里·奥布里 (Thierry Aubry) 与法里塞乌 (Fariseu) 描绘重叠动物的岩画。在附近的佩纳斯科萨遗址，刻画的动物包括一头原牛（左下）和一只羱羊（下）。

“但这块燧石来自葡萄牙中部，在相反方向 200 公里处，”在谈到同一沉积层中发现的另一个石叶时，他说道。这些来自遥远地区的材料汇聚于此，表明 27,000 年前，科阿山谷处于一个横跨半个伊比利亚半岛的庞大交换网络的核心。

“这也解释了为什么这里的艺术风格与你在西班牙北部，甚至远至法国罗讷河谷看到的如此相似，”齐尔豪 (Zilhão) 表示。他认为，这些相似性表明岩画起到了“一种共享的表达代码”的作用，属于“一个交换信息、人员和物品的人员网络，形成了一个非常广泛的文化同质区域”。

然而，科阿山谷可能不仅仅是这个网络中的另一个节点。“这个地区是（大西洋）海岸与伊比利亚内陆之间的天然边界，因此我们认为它是来自这些不同地区人群的重要会面地，”路易斯 (Luís) 说道。几十年来，科阿的考古学家一直认为该山谷是一个社会聚集地，来自伊比利亚内陆各地的狩猎采集群体会定期在此会面并狩猎。

蒂埃里·奥布里 / 科阿公园基金会 (THIERRY AUBRY / FUNDAÇÃO CÔA PARQUE)

“石制材料为我们提供了这一信息，”路易斯说，“我们不再将这些人群视为孤立的。”

因此，该山谷的岩画可以被理解为产生它的社会世界的一个关键组成部分，在这个世界中，流动性极强的狩猎采集群体在科阿反复面对面相遇。换句话说，正如路易斯所言，“艺术被用于遥远的群体聚集在一起的时刻”。

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社会网络

为了强调岩画在这些邂逅中所可能扮演的角色，奥布里（Aubry）带我去了法里塞乌（Fariseu），那是该山谷中另一个带有装饰的遗址。在这里，考古学家发现了狩猎采集者曾多次在艺术品之间生活的证据——尽管与佩纳斯科萨（Penascosa）不同，他们尚未发现可追溯至格拉维特文化（Gravettian）晚期的居住层，而该遗址最早的刻画正是产生于那个时期。

“这是一个有开头、有中间和结尾的故事——就像16世纪的艺术一样，”当我们站在法里塞乌的一块刻画面板前时，奥布里说道，“但我认为这并不是为当地人准备的，而是为了那些来自其他地区的人。”

岩壁上是一系列重复的图案，由四头雌性原牛组成，每头原牛都伴有一头幼牛，且显然正朝着附近的河流移动。“其中一个功能可能是为了与这些动物建立联系，向来自其他地方的人证明你属于某个特定的群体，”奥布里说。这一观点与其他学者的看法不谋而合，他们认为科阿（Cóa）山谷的艺术家可能使用动物图案来代表人类。

然而，这些刻画的叙事

本杰明·陶布（BENJAMIN TAUB）

可能还传递了关于大型食草动物及其狩猎方式的信息。例如，原牛幼牛看起来都大约 6 个月大，这让奥布里推测，该构图可能描绘了这些动物在“一年中特定时刻”的行为。

“我认为聚集的时刻可能就是狩猎的时刻，”他说，“因此，神话的传递是[岩画的]社会功能，但狩猎功能同样至关重要。”那么，与其将象征意义与实用意义分开，同一幅图像可能同时履行了这两种功能。

“显然，要理解这些艺术的含义非常困难，但它可能曾是生存策略的一部分，”路易斯（Luís）说。当旅人和当地人在科阿的刻画遗址相遇时，他们创作的图像可能促进了陌生群体之间至关重要的交流，同时也使他们能够共同狩猎。

“科阿改变了一切，因为它让我们中的许多人意识到，这就是正常的冰河时代艺术，”未参与挖掘的独立考古学家保罗·巴恩（Paul Bahn）说道，“我一直认为他们生活在离艺术品非常近的地方，如果不是直接住在艺术遗址中的话，所以我很高兴他们终于得到了相关证据。”

三十多年来，科阿山谷的发现帮助人们重新审视旧石器时代岩画的认知：它不再被视为仅在洞穴中为了祭祀目的而创作的作品，而往往是户外且多功能的。“绝大多数岩画都处于露天环境下，洞穴中的作品几乎是一种边缘现象，”巴恩说，“只不过它们恰好保存得更好而已。”

不过，奥布里表示，要真正理解此类艺术，我们必须停止将其作为一种独立现象来研究，而应将其视为古代狩猎采集者日常世界的一个综合组成部分。“考古学家需要意识到，我们研究的不是一座纪念碑，”他说，“我们研究的是生活在某个空间里的人。”

佩纳斯科萨居住区的挖掘（左上）出土了可追溯至岩画创作最早阶段的工具，包括一个 27,000 年前的碧玉刮削器（顶端），以及一个由三块石片重新组装的工具（上方），据认为其年代为 26,500 年。

📄 Original Section

"In 2025, the climate became more normal, so the plants recovered their carbon uptake capacity"

the land carbon sink and a corresponding decline in the growth rate of atmospheric $CO_{2}$ .

Terrestrial ecosystems such as forests take up $CO_{2}$ from the atmosphere as they grow, and emit carbon when they decompose or burn. Over recent decades, these ecosystems have tended to absorb more $CO_{2}$ than they have released, due to warmer temperatures and the fertilising effect of $CO_{2}$ , which

boosts plant growth. This creates a global carbon sink that varies in strength from year to year.

"In 2023 and 2024, because of El Niño and the Amazon fires, we had the almost cancellation of the global land sink," says Philippe Ciais at the Climate and Environment Sciences Laboratory in France, who led the analysis. "This cancellation led to a very high $\mathrm{CO}_{2}$ growth rate, because if $\mathrm{CO}_{2}$ is not taken by land, it stays in the atmosphere."

Ciais and his colleagues now estimate that the land sink absorbed 2.36 gigatonnes of carbon in 2025. This is 0.71 gigatonnes more than the 2015-22 average (arXiv, doi.org/rs56). This recovery was driven largely by a return of growth in tropical forests. “The climate became more normal, especially in Africa and the Amazon, so the plants recovered their carbon uptake capacity,” says Ciais.

Researchers estimate that natural sinks in the oceans and on land have removed over half of the $\mathrm{CO}_{2}$ emitted by human activities. But this benefit won't last forever, and scientists expect

Tropical forests showed healthy growth in 2025

the world's land biosphere to shift from being a carbon sink to a carbon source within the next several decades unless human-driven emissions taper off.

The disappearance of the land sink in 2023 and 2024 had researchers worried that it was collapsing earlier than expected.

2024 was an “extreme year”, says team member Mike O’Sullivan at the University of Exeter in the UK. The “massive recovery” in 2025 is therefore good news, he says. But he warns we don’t know if this will be sustained indefinitely, especially if weather patterns become increasingly extreme.

The super El Niño under way in the Pacific is expected to be the most intense in history, bringing extreme heat and drought to crucial terrestrial sinks such as the Amazon rainforest. This means another sharp slump in carbon uptake is expected next year.

Such a cycle of repeated weather shocks, fuelled by climate change, may be weakening the global land sink's long-term ability to store carbon, warns O'Sullivan. This sink is already 25 per cent smaller than it would have been without the effects of climate change and natural variability, researchers estimate.

"The land is showing short-term resilience," says O'Sullivan. "There is a short-term shock, which is the El Niño, and it is recovering the year after. There is strong evidence of that happening. What it doesn't mean is that the land is going to maintain long-term resilience to climate change."

Field notes Côa valley, Portugal

How ancient peoples lived alongside art A unique rock art site is teaching us that art wasn't something found only at remote sacred places. Benjamin Taub pays a visit to learn more

IT'S 6am at the Penascosa rock art site in Portugal's Côa valley, and under the raking glow of torchlight, a faded carving of an aurochs – a wild ox that lived during the last glacial period – suddenly comes into focus against the pre-dawn gloom. For three weeks, archaeologist Thierry Aubry at the Côa Park Foundation and his team have been digging beside the engravings in search of ancient tools that might help them understand the function of the valley's oldest rock art. As we enter the final day of excavations, they have finally found what they are looking for: thumbnail-sized slivers of razor-sharp stone that were used as hunting weapons by prehistoric hunter-gatherers.

"This technology is typical from 26,000 years ago", says Aubry in a voice tinged with excitement and relief. "It's the first time we've found material this old next to the art."

The world's largest site of Palaeolithic open-air rock art is in Portugal's Cōa valley

Finding these artefacts just a few metres from one of the most significant rock art panels in the entire Côa valley helps to demonstrate that art wasn't just something our ancestors placed at remote sacred sites, but was "part of daily life", says Luís Luís at the Côa Park Foundation.

Within the archaeological layers containing the stone bladelets, researchers also found the remains of other flaked tools as well as hearths, indicating that people made fire and used a range of utensils within touching distance of the engraved panel. Or, as Aubry puts it, “they were living inside the art”.

The stone tools at Penascosa provide vital clues about the social context in which the rock art was created and viewed, revealing how it shaped the encounters between groups of people who

migrated to Côa to hunt and interact. “The most logical function is to transmit some mythology, but also to transmit some practical information for hunters,” says Aubry.

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在您的遗嘱中留下癌症研究的突破。

我们的研究促成了 HPV（人乳头瘤病毒）疫苗的诞生，该疫苗可预防导致几乎所有宫颈癌病例的病毒。每年为数百万人提供至关重要的保护，而这正是通过遗嘱捐赠的支持才得以实现。

遗嘱捐赠资助了我们抗击癌症工作的超过三分之一。

了解更多详情：

CANCER RESEARCH UK

齐心协力，战胜癌症

15:34 伦敦尤斯顿站

17:43 利物浦莱姆街站

票种

一等座

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如果这是一个特殊的日子和一次特殊的旅行，在前往目的地的途中，您难道不应该感受到特殊的待遇吗？

📄 Original Section

"The rock art provided a stage for the social dramas that shaped the lives of Iberians for millennia"

often a very public phenomenon.

"The Côa valley discovery prompted people to search for similar stuff elsewhere, and now we know from the last 30 years of discoveries that, in fact, it must have been all over the place," says João Zilhão at the University of Lisbon in Portugal, who set up the Côa Valley Archaeological Park in 1996. Since then, further open-air sites of Palaeolithic rock art have been identified across the Iberian peninsula and beyond, with stylistically similar engravings found as far away as the Nile valley.

At Côa, the earliest phase of rock art production corresponds to the transition between the Gravettian and Solutrean periods of the Upper Palaeolithic, some 26,000 to 27,000 years ago at the onset of the last glacial maximum. To understand why hunter-gatherers chose to fill this valley with engravings 10,000 years before the Lascaux cave paintings in France were made, researchers have spent the past three decades searching for signs of occupation during the late Gravettian at Penascosa.

"In 1995, everybody said it would be impossible to find this because it's an open-air site and it's right by a river, so everything will have been washed away [during flooding events]," says Aubry. "But if you don't look, you don't find."

The first attempt to uncover evidence of an ancient campsite was overseen by Zilhão. Yet by the end of the last major round of excavations, which Aubry led in 2018, layers showing signs of human occupation still hadn't been found. In 2025, however, a test pit dug right in front of Penascosa's Rock 3 – which is engraved with a series of overlapping animal motifs – revealed a number of fire-damaged rocks and flaked stone tools that match the style of the late Gravettian and early Solutrean.

For the first time, the team had direct evidence of people sitting around fires and manufacturing survival technologies at Penascosa, just as the landscape was being monumentalised through rock art. “What this shows is that the hunter-gatherers of the Palaeolithic were just like the hunter-gatherers of today,” says Zilhão, referring to certain Aboriginal Australian communities who continue to use rock art in a similar way. “They decorated the territory they lived in.”

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暗物质探测钱达·普雷斯科特-温斯坦表示，可以说我们已经发现了暗物质，但为了观测到它，我们需要弄清楚我们预期它表现得像粒子还是像波

几年前，我正在起草一份将由美国政策制定者阅读的文件，我们内部就如何界定我们的目标进行了一些讨论。我们是否应该说我们希望发现暗物质？不，我们最终得出的结论是，因为事实上，我们已经做到了这一点。

我们已经通过多种类型的天体物理观测发现了暗物质，包括星系中恒星的运动，这表明存在一种显然不可见的类物质现象，它通过引力产生相互作用，而没有通过任何其他力量产生显著作用。当我们观察来自时间之初、在宇宙中自由传播的光线时，只有在假设暗物质存在的情况下，我们才能将观测结果与宇宙学理论相匹配。

我们意识到，我们真正想表达的是，我们想要弄清楚暗物质究竟是什么。我们已经知道，大多数具有正常引力的物质

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📄 Original Section

Theatre of life

BENJAMIN TAUB

Returning to Penascosa last month to excavate this prehistoric living room, the team uncovered buried slabs of schist that had once formed a natural overhang, beneath which ancient hunter-gatherers had taken shelter until the heat from their campfires caused it to collapse. Digging through the layers of time, the archaeologists unearthed a sequence of artefacts that traced the course of human history from the Palaeolithic all the way up to Roman times. Unlike western Europe's famous painted caves, the Cōa valley and its rock art didn't remain sealed off from the ever-changing outside world, but provided a stage for the social dramas that shaped the lives of ancient Iberians for millennia.

Eventually reaching the 27,000-year-old Gravettian occupation layer just as time was running out on the dig, the archaeologists uncovered the evidence they needed to orient Penascosa – and its earliest engravings – within the social landscape of ancient Iberia.

"This flint comes from central

Archaeologist Thierry Aubry with rock art depicting overlapping animals at Fariseu. At the nearby Penascosa site, engraved animals include an aurochs (below left) and an ibex (below)

Spain, at least 150 kilometres away," says Aubry, holding a tiny bladelet from Penascosa. "But this flint is from central Portugal, 200 kilometres the other way," he says of another bladelet that was found in the same deposit. The convergence of these far-flung materials at this one spot suggests that, 27,000 years ago, the Côa valley sat at the heart of a vast network of exchange that spanned half of Iberia.

"This also explains why the art here is so similar in style to what you see in northern Spain, or even as far as the Rhône valley in France," says Zilhão. These similarities, he suggests, indicate that rock art functioned as "a shared code of representation" belonging to "a network of people that exchanged information, personnel and objects, forming a very widespread area of cultural homogeneity".

Yet the Côa valley may have been more than just another node in this network. “This region is a natural border between the [Atlantic] coast and the Iberian interior, so we think it was an important meeting place for populations from these different areas,” says Luís. For decades, archaeologists at Côa have argued that the valley was a social aggregation site, where bands of hunter-gatherers from across the Iberian hinterland periodically came together to meet and hunt. “The lithic materials

THIERRY AUBRY/FUNDAÇÃO CÔA PARQUE

give us that information," says Luís. "We no longer see these populations as isolated."

The valley's rock art can therefore be understood as a key component of the social world that gave rise to it, in which highly mobile bands of hunter-gatherers repeatedly came face to face at Côa. In other words, as Luís says, “the art was used in moments when distant groups came together”.

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LUX-ZEPLIN 实验是揭示暗物质真实面貌的一种途径

宇宙中的暗物质是一种不可见的物质，其数量与可见物质的比例约为 5 比 1。虽然这是一个有用的信息，但它几乎没有提供太多细节，而且许多粒子物理学理论都能解释这些天体物理观测结果。因此，问题变成了我们如何区分众多不同的暗物质模型。

一种方法是在地球上寻找暗物质相互作用的证据。你可能看过最近关于 LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) 实验的新闻，该实验宣布了一个单一的数据点，这可能代表一个暗物质粒子与原子核发生了相互作用。如果这一结果得到证实——尽管目前距离达到统计学显著性还很遥远——这将是暗物质通过核力进行相互作用的首个证据。这也将是我们对暗物质本质最直接的观察。

在实验室缺乏实质性数据的情况下，我们仍然依赖于天体物理观测。在这种情况下，我们必须研究如何利用那些在表面上与多种可能构成暗物质的假设粒子都一致的数据。例如，LZ 正在寻找弱相互作用大质量粒子 (WIMPs)。与此同时，我大部分的研究时间都集中在另一类与 WIMPs 特征截然不同的粒子上，称为轴子 (axions)。

虽然在星系中会以类似粒子的方式呈现，但轴子更有可能表现为波。这反映了波粒二象性原理，该原理告诉我们，从量子物理学的角度来看，所有粒子同时也是波。对于轴子而言，其波动性质预计将在天体物理数据中明显体现，包括对矮星系和宇宙微波背景辐射的观测。它们的特征有时应该与我们预期在中看到的特征有所不同。

为了有机会弄清楚暗物质是由轴子而非组成的，我们首先必须运行计算机模拟，预测其中一种或另一种粒子可能产生的数据形态。只有这样，我们才能观察我们的观测结果是否匹配。而且，为了进行计算，我们经常必须做出简化假设。

在我上个月与新罕布什尔大学的 Hoang Nhan Luu 共同发表的两篇预印本论文中，我们研究了一种突破了研究界常用简化假设的轴子模型。我们的工作表明，这个由国际团队开发的模型既能加快模拟速度，又能提高准确性。这类工作不太可能登上头条新闻，但它完成了科学所需的功能：它有助于创造条件，让我们最终从发现暗物质跨越到真正理解暗物质。

钱达·普雷斯科特-温斯坦 (Chanda Prescod-Weinstein) 是新罕布什尔大学物理学和天文学的副教授。她是《无序的宇宙》(The Disordered Cosmos) 的作者。她的最新著作是《时空的边缘：粒子、诗歌与宇宙梦幻舞曲》(The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, poetry, and the cosmic dream boogie)。

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钱达的这一周

我正在阅读

试图理清威廉·梅克皮斯·萨克雷 (William Makepeace Thackeray) 的《虚荣之市》(Vanity Fair) 的各个版本

我正在观看

我刚看完 2000 年代的《太空堡垒卡拉狄加》(Battlestar Galactica)

我正在研究

我的研究小组在一周内发表了三篇预印本论文，所以现在我正在规划接下来的步骤

大卫·罗布森 (David Robson) 是一位屡获殊荣的科学作家，专注于人类大脑、身体和行为的极端情况。他的最新著作是《连接法则：13 个社交策略改变你的生活》(The Laws of Connection: 13 social strategies that will transform your life)

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"The most logical function is to transmit mythology, but also to transmit practical information for hunters"

art], but the hunting function was also essential." Rather than separating the symbolic from the practical, then, the same images could have performed both functions at once.

"Obviously it's very difficult to understand the meaning of the art, but it may have been part of a survival strategy," says Luís. As travellers and locals met at Cóa's engraved sites, the images they created may have facilitated vital exchanges between bands of strangers while also enabling them to hunt together.

“Côa revolutionised everything, because it made many of us realise that this is normal Ice Age art,” says freelance archaeologist Paul Bahn, who isn’t involved in the excavation. “I always assumed that they were living very close to the art, if not in the art sites themselves, so I’m delighted that they’ve finally got evidence of that.”

For more than three decades, discoveries in the Côa valley have helped to reshape the perception of Palaeolithic rock art from something produced exclusively in caves for ritual purposes to something that was often outdoor and multifunctional. “The vast

Excavations at the occupied area of Penascosa (above left) have yielded tools that date to the earliest phase of rock art production, including a 27,000-year-old scraper made from jasper (top) and a tool reassembled from three stone flakes (above), thought to be 26,500 years old

majority of it was in the open air, and the stuff in caves was almost a marginal phenomenon," says Bahn. "It just happens to have survived much better."

To truly understand such art, though, Aubry says we must stop studying it as a distinct phenomenon and view it instead as an integrated component of the everyday world of ancient hunter-gatherers. “Archaeologists need to realise that we are not studying a monument,” he says. “We are studying people living in a space.”

大卫的这一周

我正在阅读

我正沉浸在苏珊·凯恩（Susan Cain）的《苦乐参半》（*Bittersweet*）中所带来的敬畏感中，这是一篇关于超验情感的优美沉思。

我正在观看

我需要从工作中获得一些甜蜜的慰藉（见下文），而《英国烘焙大赛》（*The Great British Bake Off*）的回归再合适不过了。

我正在进行的工作

我的下一本书将在本月底截稿，所以我正处于修订和事实核查的略显疯狂阶段。

一个没有感冒的季节

积极的心态能否保护我们免受冬季最严重感冒的侵害？大卫·罗布森（David Robson）筛选证据，探讨关注心理健康如何影响你的免疫系统。

威胁似乎无处不在。无论是在地铁上还是在公交车上，我发现自己被咳嗽和喷嚏包围，疾病在四处传播。

为了抵御可怕的流行病，我饮食健康，坚持锻炼，并尽量保证 8 小时睡眠。然而，直到最近，我才开始研究我们的精神生活是否也在身体防御中发挥作用。

我发现，我们的心态可以微妙地塑造免疫系统的活动，进而影响我们出现症状的可能性。如果我们想要抵御感染，在照顾身体的同时，照顾好我们的心灵也是明智之举。

最早探索这一可能性的研究之一出现在 21 世纪初。当时，宾夕法尼亚州匹兹堡卡内基梅隆大学的谢尔顿·科恩（Sheldon Cohen）及其同事招募了 334 名勇敢的志愿者，他们愿意被感染普通感冒。在试验前的一个月里，他们定期填写关于全天感受的问卷，记录积极（愉快、自在、精力充沛）和消极（悲伤、紧张、敌对）的情绪。

在感染日，科学家给每位参与者滴入含有两种已知会导致感冒的鼻病毒之一的鼻滴，然后将他们隔离了五个更多

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“社交联系似乎也能增强免疫反应，因此请多与那些对你最重要的人接触”

6天时间，以观察是否出现任何症状。

科恩的结果是明确的。情绪风格更阳光的人出现症状的可能性比那些不够积极的人低约三分之一。令人惊讶的是，积极情绪的影响独立于消极情绪——这意味着，

咳嗽和打喷嚏在冬季频发，但有些方法可以帮助你减轻其影响

ARIEL SKELLEY / GETTY IMAGES

例如，那些既能感到愉快又能感到焦虑的人，出现症状的可能性仍然低于那些既不愉快也不焦虑的人。

如果这是唯一的证据，我可能会持怀疑态度，但此后多项其他研究已经证实并扩展了这些发现。

虽然具体机制尚不清楚，但这几乎肯定与压力有关，而压力已知会导致我们的防御系统陷入混乱。承受巨大压力的人可能难以调动资源在病毒刚入侵时就将其识别，从而导致免疫反应受抑制。或者，免疫系统可能会过于迅速且急切地采取行动，用引发许多症状的炎症轰击身体。

在普通感冒的情况下，第二种潜在机制似乎最为相关。心态更积极的人可能更容易应对生活压力，这意味着当他们面对病原体时，身体产生的炎症较少。沿着这个思路，科恩发现，感染后人们的症状（如流鼻涕）与 IL-6 的水平直接相关，IL-6 是一种被称为细胞因子的促炎信号蛋白。在情绪风格积极的人群中，这一水平要低得多。与此同时，由西班牙瓦伦西亚国立大学的萨拉·普伊格·佩雷斯（Sara Puig Pérez）领导的一个研究小组发现，乐观主义者体内另一种促炎细胞因子 TNF-alpha 的水平较低，而这种因子与感冒时经常伴随的疲劳和倦怠有关，这似乎体现在整体症状的减少上。看来，乐观主义者的身体能够更好地微调其对当前威胁的反应。

我该如何利用这些信息来保护自己？我很高兴地发现，威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校的布鲁斯·巴雷特（Bruce Barrett）及其同事进行了一项为期八周的正念课程试验。此前已有研究表明，正念课程能培养更积极的心态——而这对参与者的健康产生了预期的效果。在练习正念后，参与者患呼吸道疾病的可能性普遍较低。对于那些确实出现感染迹象的人来说，症状也较轻。这些益处与运动相当，而运动同样已知能提高免疫系统的效率。

正念可能不适合你。鉴于其与良好感受之间非常普遍的联系，我相信许多其他形式的自我关怀也能带来类似的保护。例如，社交联系似乎也能增强免疫反应，因此你可以尝试多与那些对你最重要的人接触。

随着北半球夜晚渐长，人们很容易陷入冬季忧郁，因此现在可能是专注于那些能带给你慰藉之事的完美时机。一个没有感冒的季节可能只是众多益处之一。

准备好用不同的视角看待科学了吗？探索汉娜·弗莱（Hannah Fry）教授的专栏

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The LUX-ZEPLIN experiment is one way to work out what dark matter actually is

in the universe is an invisible substance that outnumbers visible matter at a rate of about 5 to 1. While this is useful information, it hardly tells us much detail, and many particle physics theories can account for these astrophysical observations. So, the question becomes how we tell the difference between the many different dark matter models.

One approach is to look for evidence of dark matter interactions here on Earth. You may have seen recent news items about the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment, which announced a single data point that could represent a dark matter particle interacting with atomic nuclei. If this result bears out – and it is a long way from being statistically significant – it would be the first evidence that dark matter interacts via nuclear forces. It would also be our most direct look at what dark matter is.

In the absence of substantive data in the lab, we remain dependent on astrophysical observations. In this case, we have to figure out how to use data that seems to be, on the

MATTHEW KAPUST/SANFORD UNDERGROUND RESEARCH FACILITY

surface, consistent with different hypothetical particles that could be making up dark matter. For example, LZ is looking for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). Meanwhile, I spend most of my research time focused on a category of particles with a very different set of characteristics from WIMPs, called axions.

While WIMPs will manifest in a particle-like way in galaxies, axions are more likely to behave as waves. This is a reflection of the principle of wave-particle duality, which tells us that all particles are also waves from the point of view of quantum physics. With axions, their wave-like nature is expected to visibly manifest across astrophysical data, including observations of dwarf galaxies and the cosmic microwave background radiation. Their signature should sometimes look different from what we would expect to see with WIMPs.

To have a chance at figuring out whether dark matter is made of axions rather than WIMPs, we first have to run computer simulations that project what the data might look like for one or the other. Only then can we see if our observations match. And we often have to make simplifying assumptions in order to do our calculations.

In two preprints that I published last month with Hoang Nhan Luu at the University of New Hampshire, we study an axion model that pushes past the simplifying assumptions that are common in our research community. Our work shows that this model – developed by an international team – may both make simulations go faster and make them more accurate. This kind of work is unlikely to make headlines, but it does what science needs it to do. It helps create the conditions where we will finally move past discovering dark matter, to truly understanding it.

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is an associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of New Hampshire. She is the author of The Disordered Cosmos. Her latest book is The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, poetry, and the cosmic dream boogie

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全新专栏

加入汉娜·弗莱（Hannah Fry）教授的行列，听她为我们提供关于那些你必须了解的故事的独特见解，挑战既有假设，并揭示日常生活中的科学奇迹。从科学家与她分享的令人惊讶的故事和秘密，到数学之美以及健康趋势背后的证据，没有任何领域是禁区。

在印刷版出版前，请先在网上阅读该专栏，并订阅新专栏上线时的更新通知。

在线免费阅读专栏 newscientist.com / hannahfry

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

熄灯

安德烈亚·扎嫩加（Andrea Zanenga）

这些照片展示了在一个偏远岛屿上，人们如何安全地引导稀有海鸟前往海洋。

亚速尔群岛拥有全球四分之三的科里剪水燕鸥（Cory's shearwaters）。雏鸟在巢中停留，直到它们长大到足以尝试首次飞行，并在夜间起飞（如最左图所示）以避开捕食者，利用月亮和星星导航前往海洋。但摄影师安德烈亚·扎嫩加在访问科尔沃岛（Corvo）时发现，这些鸟需要警惕的不止是捕食者。这座小岛仅有 430 名人类居民，却是全球最大的科里剪水燕鸥栖息地。

在 10 月下旬至 11 月初的离巢期，年轻的剪水燕鸥很容易被人造灯光误导。它们无法从地面起飞，因此如果坠落，就会被困在地面且处于危险之中。在情况最糟糕的夜晚，居民们可能会发现数十只鸟被困在街道上。

一项名为“SOS Cagarro”的亚速尔群岛范围内的运动于 1995 年启动，旨在营救坠落的剪水燕鸥。志愿者参加夜间巡逻，寻找坠毁的鸟类并将其安置在人造巢穴中（如左上方图所示）。其下方的图像显示海洋生物学家塔妮亚·皮帕（Tânia Pipa）正在检查人造巢穴。随后，这些鸟会被从附近的悬崖顶端释放。

但科尔沃岛的居民做得更彻底。在离巢高峰期的五个夜晚，所有公共照明在晚上 9 点至午夜期间全部关闭，以帮助鸟类安全地导航前往海洋。

科尔沃岛是亚速尔群岛中唯一实施自我禁灯的岛屿，这带来了如左下方图所示的壮丽景观——火山坑卡尔代朗（Caldeirão）背后的星空。

玛德琳·卡夫（Madeleine Cuff）

依靠数学

📄 Original Section

"Social connection also seems to boost the immune response, so reach out to the people who matter most"

days to observe whether any symptoms developed.

Cohen's results were unequivocal. People with a sunnier emotional style were about a third less likely to develop symptoms than those who were less positive. Quite amazingly, the influence of the positive feelings was independent of the negative feelings – meaning that people

Coughs and sneezes pepper the winter, but there are things that can help you reduce their impact

ARIEL SKELLEY/GETTY IMAGES

who managed to feel both cheerful and anxious, for instance, were still less likely to develop symptoms than those who were neither cheerful nor anxious.

I might have been sceptical if this were the only evidence, but multiple other studies have since confirmed and extended these findings.

While the exact mechanisms are unclear, it almost certainly comes down to stress, which is known to throw our defences into disarray. Someone under a lot of pressure may struggle to summon the resources to identify the virus when it first takes hold, leading to a suppressed immune response. Alternatively, the immune system may leap into action too quickly and too eagerly, bombarding the body with the inflammation that lies behind many of our symptoms.

In the case of the common cold, it seems that the second potential mechanism is the most relevant. Someone with a more positive frame of mind may find it easier to cope with life's stresses, meaning that the body becomes less inflamed when they face a pathogen. Along these lines, Cohen has found that people's symptoms, such as a runny nose, are directly correlated with their levels of IL-6, a pro-inflammatory signalling protein called a cytokine, after infection. This was much lower among those with a positive emotional style. A group of researchers led by Sara Puig Pérez at Valencian National University, Spain, meanwhile, found that optimists have lower levels of another pro-inflammatory cytokine, TNF-alpha, which has been linked to the fatigue and lethargy that often accompanies our sniffles, and this seemed to be reflected in fewer overall symptoms. It seems that the optimist's body is simply better able to fine tune its response to the threat at hand.

How might I use this information to protect myself? I was delighted to find a trial of an eight-week mindfulness course by Bruce Barrett at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his colleagues. The mindfulness course had previously been shown to cultivate a more positive mindset – and this had the desired effect on the participants' health. The participants were generally less likely to develop a respiratory illness after practicing mindfulness. For those who did develop signs of an infection, the symptoms were less severe. The benefits were comparable to those of exercise, which is also known to increase the efficiency of the immune system.

Mindfulness may not be your thing. Given the very general link to good feelings, I'm sure that plenty of other kinds of self-care would bring similar protection. Social connection also seems to boost the immune response, so you might try to reach out to the people who matter most to you, for instance.

With the nights drawing in over the northern hemisphere, it is very easy to succumb to the winter blues, so now could be the perfect time to focus on the things that bring you comfort. A sniffle-free season may be one of many benefits.

世界上最伟大的数学家之一陶哲轩在其新书中，敦促我们在数字中寻找力量。卡梅拉·帕达维奇-卡拉汉（Karmela Padavic-Callaghan）对此深表认同

书籍

《数学六大要义》（Six Maths Essentials）

陶哲轩（Terence Tao）

Pelican 出版社（英国，10月27日）

Quanta Books（美国，11月10日）

对于陶哲轩来说，数学一直以来都是一种执着的痴迷。有一个故事说，在他2岁时，他就用积木教其他孩子如何计数。如今，陶哲轩被认为是世界上最伟大的在世数学家，他不仅是一位高产的研究员，也是一位数学作家。

他的最新著作（也是第一部面向大众读者的作品）是《数学六大要义：如何为世界建模》（Six Maths Essentials: How to model the world）。书中展示了数学比刻板印象中所暗示的要更有意义、更具生命力。对于即使是最没有经验的读者来说，这也是一份简短且易懂的邀请，鼓励他们给数学一个机会，同时也是未来深入阅读的一个有益起点。无论你在学校时是热爱还是讨厌数学，陶哲轩的

“数学赋予我们知识，使我们能够推导出几乎任何事物是如何运作的，包括技术”

文字或许能让你相信，这个领域确实是值得且令人兴奋的。

《数学六大要义》是陶哲轩的第一本科普书籍

本书分为六章，每章探讨一种数学类型：数字、代数、几何、概率、分析和动力学。陶哲轩通过讲述每种数学的历史、概述其基础，并就其在当代数学中的兴奋点和重要性提供有益的评论来引入。

例如，他在书的前部分写道

DAVID ESQUIVEL / UCLA

数字是定量思维的门户，而几何则是超越我们所见之物的一种方式。在后面的章节中，他解释了充斥在家庭作业和期末考试中的所有 x 和 y 变量的作用，并指出：“代数的优雅之处恰恰在于它将我们从为每个表达式寻找具体解释的需求中解放了出来。”

他对统计模型和概率作用的解释（量化概率传达的是关于我们宇宙模型的信息，而非关于宇宙本身的信息）同样具有启发性且犀利，他对动力学的章节也是如此——动力学是一种捕捉变化的数学，例如力与物体运动之间的关系。

但由于其简练性和易读性，《数学六大要义》有时会省略细节：例如，在举例开放性数学问题时，听起来比实际情况更模糊。这是在短短一个下午的阅读量内讲述数学领域如此宏大故事时，不得不做出的遗憾权衡。结果是，这本书最适合作为更详细探索的基础或门户。

陶哲削以友好且鼓励的语气写作，坚定地主张以这种方式使用本书。他深情地写道：“对数学是什么以及它如何与现代世界相连有一定了解，可以为我们面对周围的复杂性提供某种宁静、宽慰和视角。它赋予我们知识，使我们在需要时能够从第一原理出发，推导出几乎任何事物是如何运作的——包括任何现代技术产品——并分析其优缺点。”

陶哲轩在《数学六大要义》的结尾恳请读者在追求数学的过程中找回一种掌控感和力量感，这让我觉得非常及时。在这个如此容易被技术和信息淹没的时代，我绝对建议倾听他的见解——并花时间阅读他的书。

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一个迷人的问题

响应数学的召唤，并在其中寻找快乐和全新的自我认知的绝佳方式，在另一本新书中得到了体现：达娜·麦肯齐（Dana Mackenzie）的《孙子问题：一部历经 2,000 年的数学史诗》（Master Sun's Problem: A mathematical epic 2,000 years in the making）。麦肯齐是一位科学作家，曾任数学教授，用他自己的话来说，他当时“离经叛道”了。这本书记录了他如何痴迷于一个

失落的世界

一次对恐龙内心世界的探索，让詹姆斯·伍德福德领悟到了它们的多样性

根植于古代中国，并最终将其解决，仿佛在讲述一个你能想象到的最惊心动魄的动作冒险故事。

书名中的这个问题核心在于寻找在两名玩家之间的游戏（例如纸牌游戏）中获胜的最佳策略。它与军事战略同样相关，即如何根据你掌握的关于对手手牌的信息来牺牲某些牌。

这个问题看似简单，却开启了麦肯齐一段生动的数学之旅。我们读到了来自一名几乎被遗忘的同学的神秘电子邮件，一次前往红杉林的至关重要的旅行，《纽约时报》中热闹的评论区，以及一支由数学英雄组成、最终化险为夷（也就是说，解决了该问题）的奇特团队的形成。

麦肯齐在这本书中做了一件非凡的事：

《孙子问题：一部历经 2,000 年的数学史诗》

达娜·麦肯齐

不知怎么地，他成功地阐明了数学家研究过程中的每一个步骤，包括错误和死胡同，且从未显得枯燥或难以产生共鸣。《孙子问题》中充满了方程式和图表，但麦肯齐并没有让它们显得令人反感或令人生畏，而是赋予了它们悬念与激情。

虽然他偶尔听起来过于自以为是，甚至像个爱说教的长辈，但那种渴望了解更多、更好地理解并推进人类知识的纯粹情感冲击力在这里是不容否认的。任何年轻人或成年人都能从阅读这本书中获益——它将在他们的心中点燃一种新的火焰。

或者，正如陶（Tao）所写且麦肯齐清晰展示的那样：“我鼓励每个人都去摆弄数字。”

IGOR STEVANOVIC / ALAMY

书籍《恐龙在想什么？》（What Did Dinosaurs Think About?）让·勒洛夫（译者：艾莉森·邓肯）约翰霍普金斯大学出版社

小时候，我记得自己坐着画恐龙，试图想象它们是如何灭绝的。在我知道 6600 万年前希克苏鲁伯小行星撞击地球之前，我 7 岁时最好的理论是，巨浪拍击在它们长长的脖子上，将整个恐龙类彻底消灭。

在阅读愉快且信息丰富的《恐龙在想什么？》时，我想起了我那些素描（以及理论）最大的局限性：将一种范式应用于这些极其多样化的动物的行为和认知是一个巨大的错误。本书作者对此深有体会：古生物学家让·勒洛夫是法国埃斯佩拉萨恐龙博物馆的馆长。

以智力为例。勒洛夫对此进行了深入探讨，且没有躲在科学的谨慎之后。那么，迅猛龙真的像在《侏罗纪公园》电影中描绘的那样聪明吗？大多数电影观众都想知道答案，以防万一他们最终被恐龙猎杀，答案是：不……但也是。

“史蒂文·斯皮尔伯格和迈克尔·克赖顿所塑造的高智商猛禽成群狩猎，以及暴龙全速追上吉普车的形象……根据最新的研究，需要稍微淡化一点，”勒洛夫写道。

它们也许不能开门或使用工具，但在其他方面，恐龙非常敏锐。例如，勒洛夫引用的一项研究表明，霸王龙的嗅觉可能比大多数鸟类更好，且“接近狗的嗅觉”。这揭穿了电影中最令人难忘的虚假知识点之一——只要站着不动，霸王龙就不知道你在那里。“《侏罗纪公园》里的角色根本没有机会，”他写道。

那么，关于剑龙的大脑只有核桃大小的侮辱性说法呢？勒洛夫说，这又是错的。新研究发现，它们的大脑可能更接近两个核桃的大小，“或者如果你愿意，可以说是一颗漂亮的杏子”。

但最重要的是，勒洛夫捕捉到了数百个已知物种在 1.7 亿年间展现出的多样化恐龙行为——无论它们是否玩耍、是否是称职的父母、性生活如何（充其量非常棘手且极易导致受伤），以及它们是独行侠还是高度社交的动物。

几乎可以肯定的是，它们绝非不聪明。只不过有些物种比其他物种更聪明。

自从这个模型制作以来，我们对迅猛龙的认识已经有所提高

《新科学家》推荐

贝森·阿克利 (Bethan Ackerley)

副编辑

伦敦

在亚历杭德罗·冈萨雷斯·伊纳里图的新气候变化讽刺剧《挖掘者》(Digger) 中，年迈的寡头迪格·罗克韦尔 (Digger Rockwell) 的处境不容乐观。而这部电影的前景也同样不容乐观——

它被评论家抨击，被全球观众冷落，且注定将成为一场巨大的失败。

但不要被表象所迷惑。它是对导致全球环境恶化的力量及其失败的残酷抨击。凭借汤姆·克鲁斯 (Tom Cruise) 的精彩表演，这部电影非常值得花时间观看。

资本家（在 LUX 美国政府的支持下）将目光投向了格陵兰岛，而多年的资源开采导致了世界末日般的后果。随后，罗克韦尔的一座石油钻井平台发生爆炸，导致一座马里兰州大小的冰山向欧洲漂移。

接下来的剧情是一场类似《博士异想》(Dr. Strangelove) 的讽刺剧，但很少有幽默之处。奇怪的是，这反而变得至关重要。不剧透，但这里涉及的是我们如何讲述关于“现实”问题的故事。渐渐地，电影的真实本质揭晓……

《时间旅行者》的创作者

对于粉丝而言，等待奥黛丽·尼芬尼格（Audrey Niffenegger）畅销书的续作已久。艾莉森·弗鲁德（Alison Flood）与她探讨了关于构建未来、时间循环以及艺术的价值。

RICK MADONIK / TORONTO STARVIA GETTY IMAGES

2003年，奥黛丽·尼芬尼格凭借《时间旅行者的妻子》（The Time Traveler's Wife）的出版而名声大噪。作为一部处女作，该小说展现出令人惊讶的自信且结构极其复杂，讲述了克莱尔与亨利之间的爱情故事；亨利因患有时间位移障碍而成为一名非自愿的时间旅行者。这本书成为了畅销书，迅速加入了伟大时间旅行作家的行列（如 H. G. 威尔斯、奥克塔维亚·巴特勒、斯蒂芬·金……）。

二十三年后，尼芬尼格在《失序之生》（Life Out of Order）中延续了这个故事，讲述了他们的女儿阿尔巴的故事，她同样患有时间位移障碍。但这一次，时间线推进到了几十年后的未来：背景是人工智能、气候变化等，在阴森且不可避免的未来阴影笼罩下，过一种预先决定的人生意味着什么，变得愈发深刻。至少，艺术与爱依然存在……

---

艾莉森·弗鲁德：你为什么决定回到这个世界？

奥黛丽·尼芬尼格：我是在 2012 年 11 月开始创作的，因为当时我们正在发行《时间旅行者的妻子》的电子书，我的经纪人问我是否有任何删节片段或人们未曾见过的内容可以作为附加内容加入。我没有。于是我说：“没关系，我给你写点东西。”于是我写了一个名为《黄房子》的章节，讲述 5 岁的阿尔巴和克莱尔第一次去黄房子的经历。

随后我产生了一定的兴趣，心想：“也许我可以多写一点。”最终，我决定着手写一部续集。但这从未在计划之中。写第一本书时，我完全没有继续写下去的打算。

这本书比前作复杂得多。一直以来都是这样吗？刚开始时，我真的毫无头绪。我觉得自己没有能力准确地构思未来。第一本书遵循现实世界的方式，因此现实生活中的事件偶尔会出现在书中，比如 9 / 11 之类的事情。所以刚开始我感到有些担心，因为我想：“好吧，我永远无法弄清楚该如何描写成年后的阿尔巴，因为我不知道

“时间旅行是一种基因缺陷，因此时间旅行者们正在失去对当下的掌控力”

在她有生之年世界会变成什么样子。”

但我认为我可以把赌注押在气候变化上，所以刚开始我想：“好吧。我就假设气候变化确实变得糟糕了，因为我们作为人类群体，始终无法就如何防止其发生达成一致。”事实证明，这是一个稳妥的赌注。

书的开头是一个“派对”——加引号是因为阿尔巴和她的朋友们正试图抓捕一些新纳粹分子。我在 2013 年写这段内容，当时新纳粹在新闻中并不多见。我当时想：“好吧，这有点奇怪且牵强，但这就是他们正在做的事。他们在与法西斯主义作斗争。”

我在这部作品上投入的时间越长，法西斯主义就越成为一个真实的问题。随后特朗普总统当选。所以，有很多事情是我完全没有预料到的。但这本书开始真正地与现实世界发生的事情趋于一致。

那感觉一定很奇怪。是的，我不喜欢那样。

在这本书中，有两个时间旅行者，阿尔巴和她的两个爱人之一奥利弗。这有多难

奥黛丽·尼芬尼格

对她想象准确未来的

能力持谨慎态度

---

📄 Original Section

Terence Tao, one of the world's great mathematicians, urges us to find empowerment in numbers in his new book. Karmela Padavic-Callaghan is convinced

Book

Six Maths Essentials

Terence Tao

Pelican (UK, 27 October)

Quanta Books (US, 10 November)

FOR Terence Tao, mathematics has never been anything other than a relentless preoccupation. When he was 2, so goes one story, he used blocks to teach other children how to count. Now, Tao is understood to be the world's greatest living mathematician, prolific as a researcher as well as someone who writes about maths.

His latest book (and first for a popular audience) is Six Maths Essentials: How to model the world. It showcases how much more meaningful and alive maths is than stereotypes about it may suggest. It is a short and accessible invitation to even the most inexperienced reader to give maths a chance, and also a helpful starting point for deeper future reading. Whether you loved or hated maths in school, Tao's

"Maths equips us with the knowledge we can work out how just about anything works, including technology"

writing just might convince you that the field really is worthwhile and exciting.

Six Maths Essentials is Terence Tao's first popular-science book

The book is split into six chapters, each of which tackles one type of maths: numbers, algebra, geometry, probability, analysis and dynamics. Tao introduces each by recounting its history, outlining its basics and offering helpful commentary about what is exciting and important about it within contemporary maths.

For instance, early on he writes

DAVID ESQUIVEL/UCLA

that numbers are a gateway to quantitative thinking, and geometry is a way to go beyond what we can see. “Algebra is elegant precisely because it frees us from needing a concrete interpretation for every expression,” he states in a later chapter, explaining the role of all the x and y variables that crowd homework assignments and final exams.

His explanations of the role of statistical models and probabilities (quantifying probability conveys something about our model of the universe, not about the universe itself) are similarly informative and sharp, as is his chapter on dynamics, which is a type of maths that captures change, for example in the relationship between forces and the motion of bodies.

But in its brevity and accessibility, Six Maths Essentials sometimes leaves out details: for instance, making examples of open maths problems sound vaguer than they really are. This is an unfortunate trade-off that comes with telling a story as big as that of the field of maths within an afternoon of reading's worth of pages. The result is that the book may best serve as a foundation for, or a gateway into, more detailed explorations.

Writing in a friendly and encouraging tone, Tao steadfastly advocates for using it that way. Poignantly, he writes that “having some understanding of what mathematics is, and how it connects to the modern world, can provide some serenity, reassurance, and perspective on the complexity we see around us. It equips us with the knowledge that, if needed, we can work out from first principles how just about anything works – including any piece of modern technology – and analyse its strengths and weaknesses”.

Tao ends Six Maths Essentials by imploring readers to find a restored sense of agency and empowerment in pursuing maths, which struck me as timely. In an age when it is so easy to become inundated with technology and information, I would certainly recommend hearing him out – and spending time with his book.

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如何记录这一切？

在写《时间旅行者的妻子》时，我是在用 Word 文档记录所有细节。而这一次，有人向我介绍了 Eon，这是一款类似于时间线的软件。它非常棒，因为你可以输入一个角色和一个事件，它就会告诉你该角色在那个时间点时的年龄，这对我的帮助极大。

在你的世界里，当一个人进行时间旅行时会发生什么？在我的世界中，时间旅行是一种基因缺陷，因此他们（时间旅行者）所经历的是失去了对当下的掌控。我们体内在生物学上与时间相交的部分在他们身上出了问题，因此他们对时间、对当下的感知，

MAXIMUM FILM / ALAMY

变得混乱不堪。对他们而言，这种感觉有点像大脑中发生了电风暴，他们会经历先兆感，会头痛，身体感到不适。这并不光彩。无论走到哪里，他们总是赤身裸体，因为从生物学上讲，衣服并不是附着在身上的。

亨利总是倾向于旅行到过去，且通常在自己的有生之年内；而奥利弗和阿尔巴的范围都更广一些，更有可能前往未来。就阿尔巴的情况而言，她能够前往未来的原因之一是，她对前往“黄房子”有着如此强烈的倾向，以至于无论她是向前还是向后旅行几乎都无关紧要，因为房子就是房子——她很容易想到它，所以向前旅行并没有那么困难。

你是否研究过关于时间旅行的物理学？我确实读过相关资料。显然，我不是科学家，但“块状宇宙”（block universe）的概念对我非常有帮助。这个观点认为所有事物是同时存在的，而时间旅行者所做的是在相邻甚至不相邻的时间之间移动。如果你把宇宙和时间想象成一座大房子，普通人只能按照一定的顺序探索这座房子，因为它的结构是特定的，你必须一间房一间房、一条走廊一条走廊地移动。但能够时间旅行的人能够创造自己的门，并将完全分离的事物组合在一起。这就是我的思考方式。

为什么你决定将因果环（causal loops）作为故事的一部分——想到这个就觉得可怕！时间旅行有两种方式，对吧？一种是可以改变事情的方式，另一种是不能改变的方式。一般来说，在文学和电影中，如果能改变事情，时间旅行故事往往是喜剧。比如《回到未来》。我们必须回去修复它，然后他们做到了，秩序得以恢复，太棒了！

如果不能改变，那就是一场悲剧，而悲剧的一部分在于预知将要发生什么，并被迫承受这一切。

我认为从我角色的角度来看，这样要有趣得多——“在我们生活的这个时刻，人们说‘噢，我不关心政治’的时代已经结束了”

——必须知道真相却要保守秘密，这将是极其痛苦的。因此，角色们达成了一种共识：摆脱这种决定论式苦旅的方法就是生活在当下，尽可能少地了解信息，这样你才能拥有选择。因为如果你知道已经发生了什么，你所能做的就只能是顺从于此。

你是想写一些东西来帮助人们觉醒，意识到我们所处的现实，还是觉得这不是小说的目的？在我们生活的这个时刻，人们说“噢，我不关心政治”的时代已经结束了。我之前的作品并不具有特别的政治色彩，但我认为每个人都应该尽其所能地去做任何能做的事。

我相信我会遭到人们的抨击，他们会说：“噢，这是一部浪漫小说。你为什么要把政治扯进来？”但我从未认为《时间旅行者的妻子》仅限于浪漫小说这一类型。它确实是一个爱情故事，但我从未觉得被该类型所束缚。我不觉得必须让自己留在一个容易被贴标签的位置，而且当我描写未来时，如果我认为某些事情将深刻影响未来，我不觉得我应该对此保持沉默。这就是为什么它变得如此具有政治色彩。

音乐是这里角色们的避风港。你是在主张，无论未来多么反乌托邦，艺术的存在依然至关重要吗？想想在所有这些消失的文化中，什么被保存了下来——什么在时间长河中得以延续。当我们进入遗址开始挖掘时，我们发现了什么？我们发现了雕塑，发现了精美的绘画。偶尔，有人能读懂一篇古老的数学文本之类的东西。

正是文化让我们能够回溯并理解过去的人们。对我而言，如果你想为未来保存某些东西，那么文化显然是你想要放入时间胶囊中的很大一部分内容。

如果你能时间旅行，你会去吗？我相信每个人都问过你这个问题，但我绝对不会……

不会。就我设定的方式而言，我不想去。如果非要去，我想我会用它来探访人们。我对见证历史事件没有任何兴趣。我只会像阿尔芭那样，回去与她的父亲保持联系。我的父亲在 2016 年我写这本书期间去世了，我绝对会很享受能有一个下午，就那样坐下来和他聊一会儿。

这就是全部了吗？你目前已经完成了关于时间旅行的创作了吗？

确实全部完成了。写这本书花了 13 年，我还有一大堆其他想要开展的项目在排队。

独立的心灵

动物是否有内心世界？已故的灵长类动物学家弗兰斯·德·瓦尔（Frans de Waal）认为，答案是肯定的。迈克尔·马歇尔（Michael Marshall）发现，他的最后一本书将回忆录与科学完美融合。

书籍

《我遇见的心灵》（Minds I've Met）

弗兰斯·德·瓦尔著

Granta (英国); W. W. Norton (美国)

当灵长类动物学家弗兰斯·德·瓦尔于 2024 年去世时，他留下了巨大的科学遗产。几十年来，他的研究一直是本杂志的常客，他还撰写了一系列书籍，包括《共情时代》（The Age of Empathy）、《我们足够聪明到能知道动物有多聪明吗？》（Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?）以及《妈妈最后的拥抱》（Mama's Last Hug）。

德·瓦尔的许多观点在当时极具争议，但如今已被广泛接受，以至于我们经常将其视为理所当然。例如，关于某些动物会进行社交操纵的观点，可以追溯到他 1982 年出版的奠基之作《黑猩猩政治》（Chimpanzee Politics）。此外，还有他关于倭黑猩猩的观点——这种类人猿与黑猩猩一样，是我们现存最亲近的亲属。它们生活在由雌性主导的社会中，且经常使用性行为而非

近距离接触：弗兰斯·德·瓦尔与巴塞罗那动物园的一只黑猩猩

暴力来解决冲突——德·瓦尔在《倭黑猩猩：被遗忘的类人猿》（Bonobo: The forgotten ape）一书中大力推广了这一观点。

德·瓦尔的最后一本书《我遇见的心灵：从否认到接纳动物的内心世界》（Minds I've Met: From denying to embracing the inner lives of animals）在他去世前就已经开始撰写，但尚未完成。他留下了“带有指令和建议的文件及音频文件”。最后两章和后记由他的妻子凯瑟琳·马林（Catherine Marin）、心理学家斯蒂芬妮·普雷斯顿（Stephanie Preston）和莎拉·布罗斯南（Sarah Brosnan），以及人类学家彼得·费尔贝克（Peter Verbeek）共同完成。

这本书将科学与回忆录相结合，讲述了德·瓦尔职业生涯中的关键片段，并将它们置于我们对动物认知不断变化的背景之下。在 20 世纪的大部分时间里，科学将动物视为几乎等同于自动机：“动物的心灵被否认了，”德·瓦尔解释道。这体现在一种“晦涩且被阉割的动物行为词汇”中。德·瓦尔说，有人告诉他，“类人猿的笑声”这个词是拟人化的，他应该将其称为“发声喘息”。德·瓦尔认为，事实上，动物能够思考，能够体验情感

并表现出共情——而且它们经常将共情付诸行动。

故事始于 20 世纪 60 年代，当时德·瓦尔是荷兰奈梅亨天主教大学的生物系学生。在动物研究实验室的一份暑期工作中，他与几只年轻的雄性黑猩猩合作，任务是让它们仅通过手触摸来区分两种形状。起初，它们的表现“几乎

“德·瓦尔说，有人告诉他‘类人猿的笑声’是拟人化的——他应该将其称为‘发声喘息’”

完美无缺”。但在大约 20 次试验后，它们的注意力开始分散，想要和他玩耍。他认定，这并不是因为它们愚笨，而是因为任务太简单且重复：它们“无聊透顶”。

这类轶事帮助德·瓦尔展示了科学家在研究动物时往往是多么盲目。对于行为主义者来说，这些动物不过是刺激-反应机器，任何试图窥视其内部状态的尝试都是徒劳的。

他们的技术之一是给实验动物喂食不足，将其体重维持在正常体重的 80% 以下，从而利用饥饿感激励它们在实验中表现。有一次，行为主义者尝试在圈养的类人猿身上实施类似的方案，结果这些类人猿变得“忧郁、暴躁且具有敌意”，拒绝执行任务，并向研究人员投掷“臭东西”。它们的饲养员在夜里偷偷喂食它们。B. F. 斯金纳（B. F. Skinner）抱怨道，“那些心软的同事挫败了将黑猩猩降低到令人满意的匮乏状态的努力”。

“令人满意的匮乏状态”这个短语是我最近读到过最令人作呕的话之一。幸运的是，许多研究人员对此进行了反击。其中包括发现黑猩猩能够解决问题的沃尔夫冈·克勒（Wolfgang Köhler），以及描述了野生黑猩猩具有个性且拥有强纽带的珍·古道尔（Jane Goodall）。我们看到，包括德·瓦尔（de Waal）在内的研究人员发现了证据，证明许多动物能够共情他者的经历，而这可能是人类许多道德直觉的根源。

XAVIER CERVERA / PANOS PICTURES

考虑到其创作方式，不可避免地，《我遇见的心灵》（Minds I've Met）在结尾处显得有些踉跄。最后一章匆匆地从动物文化跳到了公平性和延迟满足感。在经历了前几章的丰富与深度之后，这里感觉过于分散且不尽如人意。不过，本书的其他部分非常出色：易读，且经常幽默、富有启发性，偶尔令人震惊。将回忆录与科学结合总是具有挑战性的，但德·瓦尔成功做到了。唯一的问题是，我现在想要一本完整的传记。

英雄时代：在两位顶尖作家克莱尔·诺斯（Claire North）和安娜莉·纽维茨（Annalee Newitz）令人脑洞大开的新小说中，一名时间旅行者在拿破仑时代的法国为爱而战，而一个单细胞外星人则对地球的生物学感到困惑。科幻专栏作家艾米莉·H·威尔逊（Emily H. Wilson）如此评价道。

ANDY SANDS / NATUREPL

本周，我为大家带来两位最有趣的科幻作家的新作。第一部是才华横溢且多才多艺的作家克莱尔·诺斯所著的《当我们穿越时间》（As We Fall Through Time），故事在法国大革命前夕展开。“时间旅行者在佩拉西埃夫人的晚宴上遇到了奥利维尔，”诺斯写道，“那是1789年……”

这位时间旅行者没有那个 era, 常见的天花瘢痕，身上散发着淡淡的木瓜味泡泡浴香气，他就是我们的主角卡尔。他被一名年轻的法国士兵奥利维尔所吸引。奥利维尔显然不知道卡尔是一名经验极其丰富的时间旅行者，也不知道卡尔来到佩拉西埃夫人这里是为了寻找一件能够修复现实裂缝的神器。

两人坠入了爱河。诺斯在处理这类情节方面非常出色；一切都显得新鲜且迷人。当卡尔无法接受奥利维尔将在为拿破仑服役期间死去时，情况开始恶化。卡尔开始操纵时间，随后，这个温柔的爱情故事演变成了一部情节紧凑的时间旅行惊悚片，其中

卡尔以一种真正令人眩晕的方式在时间中穿梭。

如果你喜欢碎片化且充满反转——但核心是关于爱——的时间旅行故事，那么这部小说绝对适合你。

与此同时，《墙也是路》（A Wall Is Also a Road）是作家安娜莉·纽维茨的最新小说，她同时也是《新科学家》的专栏作家。

“纽维茨显然在思考一个高度智能的单细胞文明会是什么样子方面投入了大量心血”

在这个富有创意且俏皮的故事中，首席主角是花园路径（Gardenpath），一个研究银河系其他地区生命的天真生物学家。他们同样是一个单细胞生物，更具体地说，是一种黏菌。从人类的角度来看，这是宇宙中一个颠倒的世界，单细胞变形虫是顶级生物，而多细胞生物则是池塘里的水垢。

花园路径就读于一所精英大学，但能够通过穿上“星系套装”并被传送至目的地，从而访问

一个伪装成人类的黏菌是安娜莉·纽维茨小说中的主角

他们选择研究的行星——恰好就是地球。星系套装还能让花园路径看起来像地球上的主导多细胞生物（人类）之一。令人惊讶的是，当地居民表现出了智能的迹象。

另一个反转是，Gardenpath 将自己传送到了维苏威火山爆发前的庞贝城。更离奇的是，Gardenpath 最终被一名在妓院工作的女性朱莉娅收留。在外星大学中（最初）乌托邦式的生活，与朱莉娅作为人类生活的现实以及火山迫在眉睫的威胁形成对比，构成了一种令人惊喜且有趣的结合。

Newitz 显然在构思一个高度智能、复杂的单细胞文化会是什么样子上投入了大量思考，这也带来了极大的阅读乐趣。和他们的朋友们在夜晚会进行“集群”（cluster），陷入一个单一的团块中进行充电。当事情变得难以承受时，他们会谈论起“化水”（puddling）。为了进行性行为，他们会产生许多探测触须插入对方体内，并用这些触须抚摸彼此的细胞核。（额！呕？）

事实上，小说中有很多性描写，包括外星人之间以及外星人与人类之间，且都非常幽默。无法区分人类的性别——因为外星人可以随意产生突出的肉块——是众多笑点中的一个。

Newitz 是一位才华横溢、想象力极其丰富的作家，对人格、身份、荣誉和能动性有着深厚的兴趣，这部作品为他们已经相当丰厚的作品集增添了精彩的一笔。

艾米莉·H·威尔逊（Emily H. Wilson）是《苏美尔人》系列（包括《伊南娜》、《吉尔伽美什》和《宁舒巴尔》，均由 Titan 出版）的作者，目前正在创作她的第一部科幻小说。她曾任《新科学家》的编辑，您可以在 Instagram 上关注她 @emilyhwilson1

书籍

《As We Fall Through Time》

克莱尔·诺斯 (Claire North)

Hachette 出版社

《A Wall Is Also a Road》

安娜莉·纽维茨 (Annalee Newitz)

Hachette UK;

Tor Books (美国)

艾米莉还推荐...

书籍

《The Ministry of Time》

卡莉安·布拉德利 (Kaliane Bradley)

Hachette UK; Simon & Schuster (美国) 克莱尔·诺斯新小说的前几部分，讲述了 Cal 和 Olivier 相爱的过程，这让我强烈想起了《The Ministry of Time》的开篇章节，不仅是在还原一名来自过去的军官这一点上，而且在爱情故事的温柔与生动程度上亦是如此。

阿尔茨海默病协会 (Alzheimer's Society)

📄 Original Section

The lost world

An exploration of dinosaurs' inner lives leads James Woodford to appreciate their diversity

roots in ancient China, ultimately solving it as if it were the most thrilling action-adventure story you can imagine.

The titular problem centres on finding the best strategy to win in a game between two players (say, a card game). It has relevance to military strategy, too, in how some cards are sacrificed based on the information you have about an opponent's hand.

This problem is deceptively simple yet sets Mackenzie off on a vivid mathematical journey. We learn about a mysterious email from a nearly forgotten classmate, a crucial trip to a redwood forest, an animated comment section in The New York Times and the formation of an unlikely team of mathematical heroes who save the day (solve the problem, that is).

Mackenzie does something remarkable in this book:

Master Sun's Problem

A Mathematical Epic 2,000 Years in the Making

Dana Mackenzie somehow, he manages to elucidate every single step of a mathematician's process, including errors and dead ends, without ever

becoming boring or unrelatable. Master Sun's Problem is replete with equations and diagrams, but, instead of being off-putting or intimidating, Mackenzie imbues them with suspense and passion.

While he can occasionally sound overly knowing and almost avuncular, the sheer emotional thrust of the desire to know more, to understand better and advance human knowledge, is undeniable here. Any young person or adult could benefit from reading this book – it will stoke a new kind of fire in their heart.

Or, as Tao writes and Mackenzie clearly shows: "I encourage everyone to fool around with numbers."

IGOR STEVANOVIC/ALAMY

Book What Did Dinosaurs Think About? Jean Le Loeuff (Translator, Alison Duncan) Johns Hopkins University Press

AS A child, I remember sitting and drawing dinosaurs as I tried to imagine how they became extinct. Long before I knew about the Chicxulub asteroid impact 66 million years ago, my best theory at 7 years old was that giant waves broke onto their long necks, dispatching dinosauria in its entirety.

Reading the delightful and informative What Did Dinosaurs Think About?, I was reminded of the biggest limitation of my sketches (and theories): it is a big mistake to apply one paradigm to the behaviour and cognition of these incredibly diverse animals. Its author should know: palaeontologist Jean Le Loeuff is the curator of the Museum of Dinosaurs in Esperaza, France.

Take intelligence. Le Loeuff gives it a red-hot crack and doesn't hide behind scientific caution. So, were velociraptors really as clever as they are portrayed in the Jurassic Park movies? The answer, one most cinema-goers want to know in case they end up hunted by a dinosaur, is no and... yes.

"Steven Spielberg and Michael Crichton's images of highly intelligent raptors hunting in packs and of tyrannosaurs catching a jeep at full speed... need to be toned down a little in light of the latest studies," Le Loeuff writes.

They may not have been able to open doors or use tools, but in other respects, dinosaurs were sharp. For example, Le Loeuff cites a study showing that Tyrannosaurus rex probably had a better sense of smell than most birds and "close to what a dog has". This debunks one of the most memorable movie factoids – stand still and a T. rex won't know you're there. "Jurassic Park's characters didn't stand a chance," he writes.

What about the insulting claim that a stegosaurus had a brain the size of a walnut? Wrong again, says Le Loeuff. New research has found their brains were probably closer to the size of two walnuts "or a beautiful apricot, if you prefer".

Above all, though, Le Loeuff captures the range of dinosaur behaviour across hundreds of known species and 170 million years – whether they played, were good parents, what their sex lives were like (at best, very tricky and likely to result in injuries) and whether they were lone wolves or very social animals.

What is almost certain is that they really were far from unintelligent. Some were just smarter than others.

Our understanding of velociraptors has improved since this model was made

New Scientist recommends

Bethan Ackerley

Subeditor

London

Things aren't looking good for Digger Rockwell, the ageing oligarch in Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu's new climate change satire, Digger. Nor is the prognosis rosy for the

film – panned by critics, passed over by global audiences and poised to become a huge flop.

But don't be fooled. It is a brutal takedown of the forces and failures behind planetary degradation. Held together by a terrific performance from Tom Cruise, Digger is more than worth your time.

Capitalists (with US state support) have set their sights on Greenland, and years of extraction have led to world-ending consequences. Then there's an explosion at one of Rockwell's oil rigs, which sends an iceberg the size of Maryland heading for Europe.

What follows is a Dr. Strangelove-esque send-up, but one that is rarely funny. Oddly, that turns out to be important. No spoilers, but how we tell stories about "real" issues is at play here. And gradually, the film's true nature unfolds...

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📄 Original Section

Alison Flood: Why did you go back to this world?

Audrey Niffenegger: I started it in November 2012, because we were putting out the ebook for The Time Traveler's Wife, and my agent asked if I had any outtakes or anything people hadn't seen to include as extras. I didn't. And I said, "It's OK. I'll write you something." So I wrote the chapter called "The Yellow House", where 5-year-old Alba and Clare go to the Yellow House for the first time.

Then I got kind of interested, and I was like: "Maybe I could do a little more." Eventually, I decided to go ahead and write a sequel. But it was never the plan. I had no intention when I wrote the first book of ever continuing.

This book is far more complex than its predecessor. Was it always going to be that way? At the beginning, I really had no clue. I didn't feel competent to make up the future accurately. The first book follows the real world in such a way that real life events do occasionally come into it, like 9/11 and things like that. So I was feeling a bit worried at the beginning, because I thought "Well, I'll never be able to figure out how to write about Alba as an adult, not knowing what

"The time travel is a genetic defect, and so the time travellers are losing their grip on the present"

the world's going to be like in her lifetime."

But I thought I could bet on climate change, so at the beginning I thought, "Alright. I'll just assume that climate change really got bad because we, as a group of humans, just never were able to agree on

how to not have it happen." And that's turning out to be a safe bet.

I start off the book with a “party” – in quotes because Alba and her friends are trying to catch some neo-Nazis. I was writing this in 2013, so neo-Nazis at the time were not featuring in the news much. I just thought, “Well, this is kind of weird and far-fetched, but that’s what they’re doing. They’re fighting fascism.”

The longer I worked on this thing, the more fascism got to be a real problem. And then President Trump got elected. So, there was a lot of stuff that I just never saw coming. But the book started to really kind of align with things happening in the real world.

That must have felt strange. Yeah, I didn't like it.

In this book, you've got two time travellers, Alba, and Oliver, one of her two lovers. How hard was

Audrey Niffenegger

was wary of her ability to

imagine an accurate future

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📄 Original Section

it to keep track of it all?

When I wrote The Time Traveler's Wife, I was keeping track of everything in a Word document. This time, someone introduced me to Eon, software which is like a timeline. It's lovely because you can plug in a character and an event, and it will tell you how old the character is at this juncture, which for me is super helpful.

What is going on when someone travels through time in your world? In my world, the time travel is a genetic defect, and so what they [time travellers] are doing is losing their grip on the present. The thing in us that biologically intersects with time is awry in them, and so their sense of time, of the present,

MAXIMUM FILM/ALAMY

is messed up. What it feels like to them is kind of like an electrical storm in the brain, they experience auras, they get headaches. They feel physically ill. It's not glamorous. They're always naked wherever they go because, biologically, clothes are not attached to you.

Henry always tended to travel to the past and generally within his own lifetime, Oliver and Alba both have a bit more range than that, and are a little bit more likely to go to the future. In Alba's case, one of the reasons she's able to go to the future is that she's got such a strong predilection to go to the Yellow House that it almost doesn't matter whether she's going forward or backward, because the house is the house – and it's very easy for her to think of it, and so going forward is not that big of a stretch.

Did you explore any physics about time travel? I did read up on it. Obviously, I'm not a scientist, but the concept of a block universe has been really helpful. The idea is that everything exists simultaneously, and that what time travellers are doing is moving between adjacent and even non-adjacent time. If you imagine the universe and time as a big house, a normal person would only be able to explore the house in a certain order because it is structured in a certain way, and you have to move through it room by room, hallway by hallway. But somebody who can time travel is capable of making their own doorways and putting together things that are entirely separate. That's how I think of it.

Why did you decide to make causal loops part of your story – the thought of them is awful! There's two ways of doing time travel, right? There's the kind where you can change things and the kind when you can't. Generally speaking, in literature and film, if you can change things, the time-travel story tends to be a comedy. Like Back to the Future. We must go back and fix it, then they do, and order is restored, yay!

If you can't change it, it's a tragedy, and part of the tragedy is knowing what's going to happen and being forced to live with that.

I thought that was much more interesting from the point of view "In the moment we're living in, the time for people saying, 'Oh, I'm not political', is kind of over"

of my characters – to have to know, but to keep secrets, would be so painful. So, the characters kind of agree that the way to be free of this deterministic slog is to be in the present and not know as much as possible, so that you can have choices. Because if you know what's already happened, all you can do is going to fall in with that.

Did you want to write something to help wake people up to the reality of where we are, or do you not feel that's the point of a novel? In the moment we're living in, the time for people saying, "Oh, I'm not political", is kind of over. My previous work is not particularly political, but I feel like everybody should be doing everything and anything that they can.

I'm sure I will get blowback from people saying, "Oh, this is a romance. What are you doing being all political?" But I have never thought of Time Traveler's Wife as being limited to the romance genre. It's certainly a love story, but I've never felt bound by that genre. I don't feel compelled to stay in a place where I'm easy to label, and I don't feel like I should shut up about something that I think is going to strongly influence the future when I'm writing about the future. So, that's why it got so political.

Music is a refuge for the characters here. Are you arguing that it is important the arts are still there no matter how dystopian the future? Think about what gets saved – what persists across time – of all these lost cultures. We go in there and we start digging, and what do we find? We find sculpture. We find beautiful painting. Every now and then, somebody's able to read an old mathematical text or something like that.

But it's culture that's allowing us to reach back and understand people from the past. And to me, it seems natural that if you're going to preserve something for the future, that is a very large part of what you would want to put in your time capsule.

Would you time travel if you could? I'm sure everyone's asked you that, but I definitely wouldn't...

No. In terms of the way I've laid it out, I would not want to. If I was going to, I think I would use it to visit people. I don't have any interest in witnessing historical events. I would just go back and do what Alba is doing where she's in touch with her father. My dad died in 2016 while I was working on this book, and I would definitely enjoy having an afternoon just to sit and talk to him for a while.

Is this it? Are you done with time travelling for now?

This is well and truly it. It took 13 years to write this, and I have a backlog of other projects that I would love to work on.

编辑精选

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📄 Original Section

Minds of their own

Do animals have inner lives? Definitely, argued the late primatologist Frans de Waal. His final book is a terrific mix of memoir and science, finds Michael Marshall

Book

Minds I've Met

Frans de Waal

Granta (UK); W. W. Norton (US)

WHEN primatologist Frans de Waal died in 2024, he left a huge scientific legacy. His work was a fixture in this magazine for decades, and he wrote a small library of books, including The Age of Empathy, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? and Mama's Last Hug.

Many of de Waal's ideas were controversial, but are now so widely accepted we often treat them as given. For instance, the idea that some animals engage in social manoeuvring can be traced to his foundational Chimpanzee Politics, published in 1982. Then there are his ideas about bonobos, the apes that, along with chimps, are our closest living relatives. They live in female-dominated societies, and often use sex, not

Close encounter: Frans de Waal and a chimpanzee at the Barcelona Zoo

violence, to resolve conflict – something de Waal promoted vigorously in Bonobo: The forgotten ape.

De Waal's last book, Minds I've Met: From denying to embracing the inner lives of animals, was begun before his death, but not completed. He left “documents and audio files with instructions and suggestions”. The two last chapters and the epilogue were completed by his wife Catherine Marin, psychologists Stephanie Preston and Sarah Brosnan, and anthropologist Peter Verbeek.

The book blends science and memoir, retelling key episodes in de Waal's career and placing them in the context of our changing understanding of animals. For much of the 20th century, science treated animals as little more than automata: “Animal minds were denied,” explains de Waal. This was reflected in an “arcane, castrated vocabulary for animal behaviour”. De Waal says he was told that the phrase “ape laughter” was anthropomorphic, that he should call it “vocalized panting” instead. In reality, de Waal argues, animals can think, experience emotions

and display empathy – which they often act on.

The story begins in the 1960s, when de Waal was a biology student at the then Catholic University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands. During a summer job in an animal research lab, he worked with young male chimps set the task of discriminating between two shapes just by feeling them with their hands. At first, they performed “nearly

"De Waal says he was told ‘ape laughter’ was anthropomorphic – that he should call it ‘vocalized panting’"

flawlessly". But after about 20 trials, their attention drifted, and they wanted to play with him. This, he decided, was not because they were stupid, but because the task was easy and repetitive: they were "bored out of their minds".

Such anecdotes help de Waal show how blinkered scientists often were to research animals. For behaviourists, these animals were little more than stimulusresponse machines, and any attempt to glimpse their internal states was pointless.

One of their techniques was to underfeed lab animals, keeping them below 80 per cent of their normal weight, so hunger would motivate them to perform in experiments. On one occasion, behaviourists tried a similar regime on captive apes, who became “morose, grumpy, and hostile”, refusing to perform and flinging “smelly stuff” at researchers. Their caretakers secretly fed them at night. B. F. Skinner complained that “tender-hearted colleagues frustrated efforts to reduce chimpanzees to a satisfactory state of deprivation”.

The phrase “satisfactory state of deprivation” is one of the more obscene things I have read lately. Happily, many researchers fought back. Among them were Wolfgang Köhler, who found evidence of chimps solving problems, and Jane Goodall, who described wild chimps with personalities and strong bonds. We see how researchers, including de Waal, found evidence that many animals empathise with the experiences of others, and that this may be at the root of many of the moral intuitions of humans.

XAVIER CERVERA/PANOS PICTURES

Inevitably, given how it was created, Minds I've Met stumbles at the end. The final chapter rushes through animal culture to fairness and delayed gratification. After the richness and depth of the earlier chapters, it feels scattered and unsatisfying. The rest of the book, however, is terrific: readable, often funny, illuminating, occasionally shocking. Mixing memoir and science is always challenging, but de Waal pulls it off. The only thing is, I now want a full biography.

Heroic times A time traveller fights for love in Napoleonic France and a single-celled alien is perplexed by Earth's biology in mind-bending new novels from two top writers, Claire North and Annalee Newitz, says sci-fi columnist Emily H. Wilson

ANDY SANDS/NATUREPL

THIS week, I bring before you new works by two of the most interesting writers in science fiction. The first is As We Fall Through Time, by the outrageously talented and versatile writer Claire North, which opens on the eve of the French Revolution. “The time traveller met Olivier at Madame Pelassier’s soirée,” writes North. “The year was 1789...”

The time traveller, who doesn't have the usual pox marks of the era, and smells very faintly of papaya-scented bubble bath, is our hero Cal. He is drawn to Olivier, a young French soldier. Olivier obviously has no idea that Cal is a hugely experienced time traveller, or that Cal is only at Madame Pelassier's in search of an artefact that can heal breaches in reality.

The pair fall in love. North is wonderful at this stuff; everything is fresh and delicious. Things begin to go wrong for the men when Cal will not accept that Olivier is going to die in service to Napoleon. Cal starts to fiddle with time, and then our tender love story evolves into a tightly plotted time-travel thriller, with

Cal zipping around in a truly dizzying manner.

If you like your time-travel stories fractured and twisty – but with love at the heart of them – then this novel is surely for you.

A Wall Is Also a Road, meanwhile, is the latest novel by author Annalee Newitz, who is also a columnist for New Scientist.

"Newitz clearly put a lot of thought into what a highly intelligent single-celled culture would look like"

The chief protagonist in this inventive and playful tale is Gardenpath, a naive biologist studying life in other parts of the galaxy. They are also a single-celled organism, more specifically a slime mould. From a human perspective, this is a topsy-turvy part of the universe, where single-celled amoebae are apex creatures and multicellular organisms are pond scum.

Gardenpath attends an elite university, but is able to visit the

A slime mould disguised as a human is the hero of Annalee Newitz's novel

planet they have chosen to study – Earth, as it happens – by donning a “galaxy suit” and being teleported to their destination. The galaxy suit can also make Gardenpath look like one of Earth’s dominant multicellular creatures (a human). Amazingly, the local folk show signs of being intelligent.

Another twist is Gardenpath has transported themselves to Pompeii in the years before Vesuvius erupts. Even twistier, Gardenpath ends up being taken in by Julia, a woman who works in a brothel. The juxtaposition of Gardenpath's (initially) utopian life at the alien university with the reality of Julia's human life, and the looming threat of the volcano, makes for a surprising and entertaining mix.

Newitz clearly put a lot of thought into working out what a highly intelligent, sophisticated single-celled culture would look like, and that also makes for great enjoyment. Gardenpath and their friends “cluster” at night, sinking into a single clump to recharge. There is talk of them “puddling” when things get too much. To have sex, they produce any number of probing tendrils to insert into each other and use them to stroke each other’s nucleuses. (Eeww! Eeew?)

Actually, there is quite a lot of sex in the novel, both alien-with-alien and alien-with-human, and all of it very amusing. Gardenpath's failure to tell the human sexes apart – since aliens readily produce sticking-out bits of flesh – is a good joke among many.

Newitz is a terrific, fantastically imaginative writer with a deep interest in personhood, identity, honour and agency, and this is a wonderful addition to their already substantial body of work.

Emily H. Wilson is the author of the Sumerians series (Inanna, Gilgamesh and Ninshubar, all published by Titan) and she is currently working on her first sci-fi novel. She is a former editor of New Scientist and you can follow her on Instagram @emilyhwilson1

Books

As We Fall

Through Time

Claire North

Hachette

A Wall Is Also a Road

Annalee Newitz

Hachette UK;

Tor Books (US)

Emily also recommends...

Book

The Ministry of Time

Kaliane Bradley

Hachette UK; Simon & Schuster (US) The early sections of the new Claire North novel, in which Cal and Olivier fall in love, strongly reminded me of the early chapters of The Ministry of Time, both in the recreation of a military officer from the past, but also in how tender and vivid the love affair was.

Alzheimer's Society

有充分理由担忧 AI 的使用方式

3 October, p 11 and p 22

来自澳大利亚悉尼，马修·史蒂文斯 (Matthew Stevens)

人工智能是否很快会毁灭世界是新闻中的热门话题，但 AI 本身并不是问题，问题在于人类如何使用它。目前对社会最大的威胁是天真地使用来取代人力，而完全没有考虑用仅能遵循指令的自动化系统取代工人会导致什么后果。

很快，我们将面临数百万人在削减成本的压力下失业的威胁，而这仅仅是为了让所有者和股东获益，对于新失业者的生活和生计则没有任何计划。政府有两种选择：要么忽视即将到来的劳动力崩溃，要么为了大众利益开始对的财务受益者征税。

来自英国约克，斯蒂芬·埃利斯 (Stephe Ellis)

一个决定消灭我们的超级智能是一个不切实际的干扰项，它转移了人们对更可信且更紧迫危险的注意力。我们应该将视为一套日益强大且不可预测的工具，这些工具必然会向所有人开放。

三十年前，互联网还是新鲜事物，我们认为它是良性的。似乎没有人预见到许多人现在归咎于这项相对简单技术的多种问题。而的情况则截然不同：很大一部分深度参与其开发的人员，对他们参与创造的东西感到恐惧。当那些“知情人士”认为他们正在开发的技术具有潜在危险时，我们不应轻视他们的恐惧。

来自英国东约克郡贝弗利，理查德·特纳 (Richard Turner)

机器变得智能并试图摧毁构建和维持它们的社会的风险可能很小，但犯罪分子将用于自身目的的风险显然要高得多。目前，我们在所有基本商品和服务方面完全依赖于网络计算机系统。

即使是小规模的网络犯罪，在被察觉之前就可能让某些人变得非常富有，更不用说大规模的破坏了。黑客已经证明了他们多么擅长绕过安全措施进入计算机系统以窃取数据或重定向付款。我的猜测是，就攻击次数而言，我们还没看到最糟糕的情况。但责任在于人，而非机器。

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关于狗听觉偏差研究的真实启示

3 October, p 12

来自英国爱丁堡大学，鲍勃·拉德 (Bob Ladd)

那些对你们关于狗在听人类说话时存在“辅音偏差”报道感到困惑的读者，如果能有一个更清晰的关于狗听到了什么的说明，将会有所帮助。该实验属于一项可以追溯到 20 世纪 90 年代初的研究系列，在这些研究中，听者会听到一段长达数分钟、没有明显停顿的枯燥短音节序列。音节串中包含周期性重复的三音节序列（“单词”），例如 “tipola” 或 “maluvi”。

此类实验发现，人类听者（甚至是婴儿）通常能注意到这些重复出现的序列，尽管它们在听觉上并没有被分开。研究还表明，仅涉及辅音的部分重复（例如 tipola, tapele, tupalo 等）比仅涉及元音的部分重复（例如 maluvi, kaputi, savuri 等）更容易被检测到。

这项关于狗的研究比较了三种此类部分重复的模式（基于辅音、基于元音、两者都不是），并发现证据表明，狗与人类一样（尽管程度较低），能最迅速地检测到辅音中的重复模式。遗憾的是，报道中列举的三个序列（mozite, zobefu 和 fumoza）的孤立示例未能阐明，关键差异不在于单个“单词”，而在于整个序列中重复出现的内容。

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宇宙之美源于我们的视角

9月19日，第19页

来自英国达勒姆郡康塞特，安德鲁·怀特利（Andrew Whiteley）

正如钱达·普雷斯科特-温斯坦（Chanda Prescod-Weinstein）在探讨通过人类视角审视宇宙之危险的文章中所言，宇宙确实令人敬畏且美丽。然而，之所以如此，仅仅是因为我们（以及或许在其他地方存在的其他意识生命）在此将其视为如此。如果没有我们，宇宙仅仅是力与粒子的聚集体。

因此，从真实意义上讲，宇宙是指向我们的，而非远离我们，这并非人类单纯的傲慢或自恋。同时让我们记住，宇宙巨大的规模和年龄并不能告诉我们关于自身重要性（或缺乏重要性）的任何信息——除非，当然，我们将物理尺寸与重要性划等号。

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气候危机的诱因开始感受到其影响

读者来信，9月12日

来自美国华盛顿州波特汤森，彼得·雅各布森（Peter Jacobsen）

虽然萨姆·埃奇（Sam Edge）正确地指出了核电站面对干旱的脆弱性，但火力发电厂和水电站同样面临风险。例如，在波兰，两座燃煤电厂在今年夏天降低了发电量，因为它们正常的冷却水需求在当时将占据维斯瓦河一半以上的流量。矛盾的是，导致我们气候变化的诱因本身已成为了其受害者。

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模拟委员会的第一次会议

9月26日，第40页

请将信件发送至 letters@newscientist.com；条款详见 newscientist.com / letters。寄至 New Scientist, 9 Derry Street, London, W8 5HY 的信件将会延迟处理。

来自英国赫特福德郡韦尔，格雷厄姆·奈特（Graham Knight）

在阅读了对凯瑟琳·海曼斯（Catherine Heymans）的采访（她在采访中讨论了我们生活在模拟现实中的可能性）后，我地想象了在资金决定下达后，模拟委员会第一次会议上的如下场景：

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想要联系我们？

“用那个预算，我们永远无法模拟‘万有理论’。”

“没关系……但嘿！也许我们不需要！记得我们在小学学过的所有关于量子和弯曲时空的东西吗？那些我们能轻而易举地实现。”

“但它们在根本上是不兼容的！我们模拟的生物永远无法理解黑洞内部发生了什么，或者宇宙暴胀期之前发生了什么。”

“那又怎样？他们永远进不去黑洞，而且我们可以在暴胀结束后启动整个程序。他们依然会有超导技术和曲速驱动。”

“嗯，我想也是……好吧。”

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📄 Original Section

There is plenty of reason to worry about how AI is used

3 October, p 11 and p 22

From Matthew Stevens,

Sydney, Australia

Whether artificial intelligence will soon destroy the world is much in the news, but AI isn't the problem; it's how humans use it. The biggest threat to society at the moment is the naive use of AI to replace human labour, with no thought about what replacing workers with automated systems that simply follow instructions will lead to.

Very soon, we face the threat of millions of people being put out of work in the interest of saving costs, for the benefit of the owners and shareholders, with no plan for the lives and livelihoods of the newly unemployed. Governments have two choices: ignore the coming labour crash or start taxing the financial beneficiaries of AI for the sake of everyone.

From Stephe Ellis, York, UK

A superintelligence that decides to eliminate us is an implausible distraction from more credible and immediate dangers. We should think about AI as a set of increasingly powerful and unpredictable tools that will inevitably become available to all.

Thirty years ago, the internet was new and we regarded it as benign. Seemingly nobody foresaw the multiple problems that many now attribute to this relatively simple technology. With AI, the situation is very different: a significant proportion of those who are intimately involved in its development are afraid of what they have had a hand in creating. When those “in the know” see the technology they are developing as potentially dangerous, we shouldn’t dismiss their fears.

From Richard Turner, Beverley, East Riding of Yorkshire, UK

The risk of machines becoming intelligent and seeking to destroy the society that builds and sustains them may be very small, but the risk of criminals using AI for their own purposes is evidently much higher. We are currently totally dependent on networked computer systems for all essential goods and services.

Even small acts of cybercrime could make some people very rich before it was even noticed, never mind major disruptions. Hackers have already shown how good they are at bypassing security measures to get inside computer systems to steal data or redirect payments. My guess is that, in terms of the number of attacks, we ain't seen nothing yet. But the blame will lie with people, not machines.

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勘误

关于放弃研究发出嘶嘶声的蟑螂的信件由玛格丽特·内尔森（Margaret Nelson）撰写（读者来信，8月15日）。第8项向下的线索应改为“缺乏共价键”（10月3日，第45页）。

中微子之谜

尽管经过多年的搜寻，我们仍然不知道中微子的质量。杰克林·关（Jacklin Kwan）走访了试图解开这一谜团的最新探测器。

缆车将我向下送入山中，熟悉的地面世界随之消失。隧道很陡，凿穿了坚硬的花岗岩，我们逐渐下降——向下，向下，再向下——持续了近一刻钟。过了一会儿，压力让我的耳朵产生了爆破感。

当通道终于结束时，我们身处地下 700 米处，我可以看到一个巨大的地下洞穴和管道综合体在我下方铺展开来。这景象相当壮观。但话又说回来，对于一个可能永远改变粒子物理学的实验，你本就对此抱有如此期待。

我来到了江门中微子实验（Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory），更广为人知的名称是 JUNO，这是一台位于中国南方的机器，旨在捕捉被称为中微子的幽灵粒子。它们是我们所知的现实中最微小的碎片，如此转瞬即逝，以至于几乎不存在。对它们的研究已经推翻了我们关于宇宙的一些最基本的假设——而且有充分的理由认为，它们掌握着揭开宇宙一些最深层剩余秘密的关键。“中微子质量为我们提供了唯一的粒子物理学证据，证明粒子物理学的标准模型是不完整的，”意大利博洛尼亚大学的物理学家西尔维娅·帕斯科利（Silvia Pascoli）说道。

谈到现实的基本组成成分，我们对现有的成分了解得非常多——但同时也知道，我们还没有看到全貌。粒子物理学的标准模型就是一份这些成分的清单，即构成宇宙的基本粒子和力。它具有一种优雅的对称性，并且取得了堪称辉煌的成功。但它不包括引力，也无法解释暗物质的本质。此外还有反物质。每一种物质粒子都有一个反物质对应物，具有相同的质量但属性相反，例如电荷。当物质和反物质相遇时，它们会在能量爆发中相互湮灭。这产生了一个谜题，因为根据我们的理解，早期宇宙应该产生了等量的物质和反物质——这就提出了一个问题：为什么现在物质占据主导地位。

由于这类谜团，物理学家倾向于认为在标准模型之外一定还存在某些东西——一些我们缺失的拼图碎片。而有一个线索看起来越来越有希望。中微子几乎不与任何东西发生相互作用——每秒有数万亿个中微子穿过你的身体。然而我们知道它们具有非常、非常小的质量。不过，这种质量似乎以奇怪的方式显现，我们甚至不确定它们是如何获得这种质量的。如果我们顺着这条线索挖掘，标准模型的谜团是否会开始解开？

中微子奇异性的第一个线索出现在另一个地下地点：南达科他州的一个金矿。在那里，20 世纪 60 年代后期，物理学家雷蒙德·戴维斯（Raymond Davis Jr.）用一种含氯的清洗液填满了一个巨大的水槽，以测量从太阳流向地球的中微子。与几乎所有中微子探测器一样，它被埋在地下以屏蔽其他粒子（这些粒子会被岩石阻挡），而中微子则能穿过。偶尔，一个中微子会击中水槽中的一个氯原子，将其转化为放射性氩-37，戴维斯随后可以对其进行计数。但当他计算数据时，出现了一个问题：物理学家预期的中微子中，大约有三分之二从未出现。

得益于一系列渐进的发现，我们现在知道，就像标准模型中的其他物质粒子一样，中微子分为三种类型，称为“味”（flavours）。分别是电子中微子、μ中微子和 τ 中微子。“为什么自然界是这样构造的，我们毫无头绪，但这就是我们的观察结果，”帕斯科利说道。

随后，在 2000 年左右，其他中微子实验的物理学家发现，中微子还具有一项额外的特性。在飞行过程中，它们可以从一种味变为另一种味，这种蜕变被称为“中微子振荡”。例如，太阳产生的那种电子中微子，在到达地球时可能会变成缪子中微子或 tau 中微子。

因此，戴维斯在金矿中的探测器——其设计初衷是揭示电子中微子的影响——最终并没有丢失其目标的三分之二。这些中微子只是在前往地球的旅途中改变了“味”。“这是一个极其重大的发现，而且是在长期的积累之后才实现的，”伊利诺伊州西北大学的理论物理学家安德烈·德·古维亚（André de Gouvêa）说道。

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群众的秩序

同样的实验揭示了中微子的另一个奇异特性。这种振荡之所以成为可能，是因为三种风味并不分别对应一个特定的质量。电子中微子并非简单地比缪子中微子更轻或更重；没有任何一种风味具有单一且明确的质量。相反，存在三种中微子“质量态”，且每一种都是所有三种风味的奇异量子混合体。当它们在空间中穿行时，这些质量之间的平衡——以及因此我们观察到的风味——会发生变化。但构成该混合体的具体数值仍然难以捉摸。

感到困惑了吗？如果是这样，你并不孤单。“在标准模型中，中微子没有质量——但现在我们知道它们有，”伦敦帝国理工学院的物理学家阿内兹卡·克鲁斯托娃（Anezka Klustova）说道，“但我们不知道这些质量是多少，也不知道它们是如何获得这些质量的。”

质量极其微小这一事实增加了谜团的吸引力。电子与中微子质量之间的差距，大致相当于一辆满载的旅行车与一张单张扑克牌之间的区别。对于物理学家来说，这个巨大的鸿沟引发了一个问题：中微子获得质量的方式是否与其他物质粒子不同，后者的质量是通过与希格斯玻色子的相互作用而产生的。

如果真是这样，这可能会开启一扇审视现实的新窗户。一些关于产生中微子质量的拟议机制将违反物理学家目前认为真实的关于现实运作的规则。而这反过来可能会揭示更深层的谜题，包括为什么物质最终战胜了反物质的问题。“有可能，赋予中微子非零质量的某种机制，同时也直接导致了物质本身的起源，”德·戈维亚说道。

刘悦香（YUEXIANG LIU）

这些关于中微子质量的问题促使了江门中微子实验（JUNO）的建设。可以肯定的是，我们已经走过了漫长的路，远超戴维斯那个被美化为“清洁液水箱”的设备。JUNO 的核心是一个巨大的丙烯酸球体，其中填充了 20,000 吨名为闪烁体的特殊液体。大约 53 公里外，阳江和台山核电站持续产生一股强大且非常纯净的电子反中微子流——它们是电子中微子的反物质伙伴。一部分反中微子被引导至 JUNO，当其中一个与闪烁体液体发生相互作用时，会产生一个微小的闪光。数以千计的金色球形探测器布置在球体边缘，用以放大这些闪光。

这种工程规模令我叹为观止。安置探测器的洞穴可以容纳一座 14 层高的建筑。遗憾的是，在我访问时，整个结构都被黑色塑料布覆盖着——不过，这台寻找最难以捉摸的粒子的机器本身被隐藏起来，或许也恰如其分。

JUNO 的首要目标之一是解决中微子质量谜团中一个棘手方面。虽然我们不知道三种中微子质量态的准确质量，但我们知道其中两种状态似乎非常接近。这使得质量态存在两种可能的配置：正常层级和反转层级（见右侧“质量之谜”）。这些质量态以相同的方式印刻在普通中微子和反中微子上，因此 JUNO 主要处理后者并不成问题。

弄清楚哪种层级结构才是正确的，将有助于限定单个质量的实际数值，并缩小关于中微子如何获得质量的各种竞争性解释。其中一个最引人入胜的可能性被称为“跷跷板机制”（seesaw mechanism），该机制最早于 20 世纪 80 年代被提出。它认为存在尚未被发现的、质量极其巨大的中微子，因此极难被观测到。它们巨大的质量将与我们今天看到的熟悉中微子的微小质量相联系——将跷跷板的一端向上推，另一端就会下降。帕斯科利（Pascoli）表示：“大多数中微子理论都认为这是一个合理的解释，而且它也解释了为什么中微子比[其他物质粒子]轻得多。”

另一种可能性是，中微子是通过与尚未被发现的其他粒子相互作用而间接获得质量的。它们的质量将仅通过一个更复杂的量子过程产生，这自然使其质量小得多。但有趣的是，在这种观点的一些版本中，那些尚未被发现的粒子之一可能是构成宇宙中大部分物质的神秘暗物质。需要说明的是，这两种假设都较为笼统，并未提供精确的预测。

尽管如此，JUNO 应该能够帮到我们。当反中微子在从发电厂到探测器的 53 km 旅程中穿行时，叠加态中不同的质量会在中微子的能量中留下一个微妙的干涉图样：一系列微小的波峰和波谷，其精确位置取决于第三个质量状态是在另外两个之上还是之下。只要准确测量该图样

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质量之谜

中微子有三种“味”，分别被称为电子中微子、μ中微子和τ中微子。但它们在空间中以所谓的“质量态”传播，而质量态是这三种味的混合体。我们目前尚不清楚这些质量态是呈现所谓的“正序”还是“反序”模式。

JUNO中微子探测器（左）可通过缆车（最左侧）进入。

巨大的超级神冈中微子探测器（右）很快将被规模更大的 Hyper-Kamiokande 探测器所取代。

THE ASAHISHIMBUNVIAGETTY IMAGES

“在标准模型中，中微子没有质量——但我们知道它们确实有”

足够精确，那么 JUNO 就可以开始推导其排序。一个规模较小的配套实验——台山反中微子观测站，距离台山核电站要近得多。在那里，它可以测量反中微子在尚未有太多机会发生振荡之前的状态，从而为 JUNO 提供一个参考。

今年 6 月，JUNO 合作组公布的结果表明，该项目有望在未来几年内对质量排序产生具有竞争力的测量结果。这些初步结果倾向于正序，但在物理学家得出坚定结论之前，还需要更多的数据。

即便如此，关于中微子如何获得质量，我们可能依然无法得到一个无懈可击的答案。相反，JUNO 将像筛子一样，使某些理论看起来更合理，而让另一些理论承受压力。例如，如果正序结果成立，这将与一些最简单的“跷跷板模型”自然契合。相比之下，反序则可能会排除这些版本，或者迫使理论家将其设计得更加复杂。“通过这些中微子实验，我认为我们无法获得所有答案，但我们会得到大量指向正确方向的间接证据，”德·古维亚（de Gouvêa）说道。

在某种意义上，JUNO 仅仅是物理学中一场潜在的中微子革命的开始。紧随其后的是另外两个史诗级的探测器：日本的 Hyper-Kamiokande，计划于明年开始运行；以及美国的 DUNE，预计在 2030 年代初开放。这两个实验也将能够探测中微子的质量排序。但更重要的是，它们将研究中微子和反中微子的行为是否有所不同。

Hyper-Kamiokande 和 DUNE 都将通过将高能质子撞击到石墨等固体靶材上，来产生 μ 中微子束。不过，与 JUNO 不同的是，这两个实验拥有控制中微子源的奢侈条件。它们可以开启或关闭光束，并选择产生中微子还是其反物质对应物。困难在于，它们探测到的结果将受到几个交织因素的影响，其中就包括中微子的质量排序。如果 JUNO 能先将其确定下来，Hyper-Kamiokande 和 DUNE 就少了一个需要解开的未知数。随着这三个探测器的协同工作，我们最终或许能解开困扰我们如此之久的中微子之谜。

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走向超新星

这些答案的影响力可能远超粒子物理学的领域。单个中微子的引力影响微乎其微，但由于其数量极其庞大，在宇宙的时间尺度上，它们能够影响物质如何聚集形成星团、星系和恒星。鉴于我们的宇宙学模型已开始显现出吃力的迹象，这使得中微子变得异常有趣。

以暗能量为例，这种未知力量似乎正以不断加快的速度推动宇宙膨胀。长期以来，公认的观点是暗能量是一个常数。但去年来自暗能量光谱仪（Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument）的结果似乎表明，它实际上可能正在减弱。此外还存在其他矛盾。根据某些衡量标准，宇宙中的物质聚集程度似乎比预期略低。这表明在数十亿年的时间里，某种因素可能抑制了宇宙结构的生长。

那个因素会是中微子吗？有可能。因为它们在早期宇宙中移动迅速，能够抵抗被困在不断增长的物质团块中，从而使结构变得平滑。中微子的总质量越重，这种效应就越强。这意味着像 JUNO 这样的实验结果将帮助研究宇宙的人员检查其模型是否合理。“在处理这类矛盾时，中微子的特性会非常有帮助，”夏威夷大学的宇宙学家威廉·贾雷（William Giarè）表示。

对于 JUNO 来说，可能还有一个最终的谢幕演出。人们希望它能运行足够长的时间，以捕捉到一个极其罕见的事件：我们星系中某颗恒星的爆炸。“我们希望拥有 30 年寿命的原因正是为了捕捉超新星中微子，”JUNO 的主任王一芳表示，“我们想等待一次爆炸。”

当一颗大质量恒星坍缩时，中微子会在光线艰难地突破而出之前，先从其核心逃逸。因此，在地球上探测到的一波超新星中微子爆发，将让我们能够非凡地窥见恒星最后的时刻——并为测试超新星形成理论提供一种全新的方式。此外，如果坍缩的核心质量足够大以形成黑洞，中微子的洪流可能会突然停止。物理学家实际上将观察到，在黑洞形成的那一刻，来自垂死恒星的信号被关闭。“如果发生一次超新星爆发，那将是本世纪的物理学成果，”帕斯科利（Pascoli）说道。

最终，到了我离开 JUNO 的时候。我被引导通过一系列令人困惑的隧道，来到一部狭小的电梯前，我的向导将一道链条帘拉过入口。随着一阵颠簸，我们迅速上升，电梯在无尽的岩壁旁发出尖叫。几分钟后，我重新回到了日光下，距离我最初登上缆车的地方近 2 km。这再次提醒人们 JUNO 那不可思议的规模——它拥有一个重量相当于三座埃菲尔铁塔的探测器——而这一切仅仅是为了研究自然界中最小的粒子。也许在接下来的十年里，物理学的一次地震级转变将来自这个最害羞、最微小的角色。

杰克林·关（Jacklin Kwan）是一位记者，此前曾担任《新科学家》杂志的数字专题编辑，负责物理科学报道。

GARRY JONES PHOTOGRAPHY

自闭症的“极端男性大脑”理论现在如何演变？

心理学家西蒙·巴伦-科恩（Simon Baron-Cohen）具有影响力的研究曾将自闭症定性为一种典型的男性疾病。随着研究日益拓宽我们对自闭症的认知，托马斯·刘顿（Thomas Lewton）询问他，其观点是否发生了改变。

如果你被要求描述一个自闭症患者，你可能会很容易想到一个例子，无论是一个亲戚、一名同事，甚至是你自己。在过去的几十年里，自闭症的诊断率大约增长了十倍，而一套更广泛的诊断标准意味着现在在他人或自己身上识别出该症状似乎变得更加简单。直到最近还主导流行文化的自闭症刻板印象——如《雨人》中拥有数字天赋的雷蒙德·巴比特（Raymond Babbitt），或《生活大爆炸》中特立独行的物理学家谢尔顿·库珀（Sheldon Cooper）——现在又加入了女性角色，比如注重细节的侦探阿斯特丽德·尼尔森（Astrid Nielsen），以及《后翼弃后》中激进的国际象棋冠军贝丝·哈蒙（Beth Harmon）。

这与 2000 年代初期截然不同，当时心理学家西蒙·巴伦-科恩提出了自闭症的“极端男性大脑”概念。自 20 世纪 40 年代首次定义以来，自闭症一直被认为是一种主要影响男性的疾病。作为全球最高产的自闭症研究者，巴伦-科恩通过关注那些在系统化思维方面得分极高而在某些共情方面得分较低的自闭症患者，巩固了这一观点。

但如今，巴伦-科恩和其他自闭症研究人员发现自己处于一个十字路口。近年来，与女孩和女性相比，被诊断为自闭症的男孩和男性的比例显著下降。与此同时，越来越多的证据表明，自闭症患者可能并非处于一个单一的光谱（极端病例全部集中在其中一端），而是分布在多个不同的亚型之中。那么，巴伦-科恩在 1000 多篇高被引论文和三本科普书中发展出的观点现在处于什么位置？

“标题可能会被误读，”巴伦-科恩在剑桥大学三一学院的办公室里对我说道。他自 1995 年起便在此担任研究员。我们坐下来讨论他那些获得了大量媒体报道的观点目前的处境。“我试图破除一些迷思。”尽管如此，他最近撤回了“极端男性大脑”这一术语，将其描述为一个无益的标签——尽管他仍然坚持支撑该术语的核心观点。

巴伦-科恩并非旨在将自闭症与性别挂钩。对他而言，这一切始于共情概念。20 世纪 80 年代，他在一所为自闭症儿童提供一对一教育的先驱学校工作，他希望更好地理解他们的行为，尤其是他们看似缺乏社交意识的表现。“一个孩子可能会直接走到你的脸前，毫无尴尬之感，”他说，“或者一个患有自闭症的青春期女孩可能会不穿衣服走进父母的晚餐派对，但完全不觉得尴尬。”这反过来让他好奇，为什么非自闭症儿童会产生自我意识，并担心他人如何看待自己。

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📄 Original Section

The riddle of the neutrino

Despite years of searching, we still don't know the mass of the neutrino. Jacklin Kwan visits the latest detector attempting to solve this mystery

THE funicular railway carries me downwards into the mountain, and the familiar, above-ground world vanishes. The tunnel is steep, bored through solid granite, and we gradually descend – down, down, down – for nearly a quarter of an hour. After a while, the pressure makes my ears pop.

When the passageway finally ends, we are 700 metres underground, and I can see a vast subterranean complex of caverns and pipes spread out beneath me. It is quite a sight. But then again, you would expect nothing less from an experiment that could change particle physics forever.

I have come to the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory, better known as JUNO, a machine in southern China designed to catch ghostly particles called neutrinos. These are the tiniest fragments of reality we know of, so fleeting that they barely exist at all. Studying them has already overturned some of our most basic assumptions about the universe – and there are good reasons to think they hold the key to some of its deepest remaining secrets. “Neutrino mass provides us with the only particle physics evidence that the standard model of particle physics is incomplete,” says physicist Silvia Pascoli at the University of Bologna, Italy.

When it comes to the fundamental ingredients of reality, we know an awful lot about what is out there – but also know that we aren’t yet seeing the whole picture. The standard model of particle physics is a list of these ingredients, the fundamental particles and forces that make up the cosmos. There is an elegant symmetry to it, and it has been nothing short of a spectacular success. But it doesn’t include gravity or explain the nature of dark matter. Then there is antimatter. Every kind of matter particle has an antimatter counterpart, with the same mass but opposite properties, such as electric charge. When

matter and antimatter meet, they annihilate each other in a burst of energy. That creates a puzzle because, as far as we understand, the early universe should have produced matter and antimatter in equal amounts – raising the question of why matter now dominates.

Because of these kinds of mysteries, physicists tend to believe that there must be something beyond the standard model – some piece of the puzzle that we are missing. And there is one lead that looks increasingly promising. Neutrinos barely interact with anything – trillions of them pass through your body every second. Yet we know they have a very, very small mass. This mass seems to manifest in strange ways, however, and we aren’t even sure how they get it. If we pull at this thread, might the mysteries of the standard model begin to unravel?

The first hint of neutrinos' strangeness arose in another underground site: a gold mine in South Dakota. There, in the late 1960s, physicist Raymond Davis Jr. filled a huge tank with a chlorine-containing cleaning fluid to measure neutrinos streaming towards Earth from the sun. Like nearly all neutrino detectors, it was buried to screen out other particles, which would be blocked by the rock, while the neutrinos would pass through. Occasionally, a neutrino would strike a chlorine atom in the tank, transforming it into radioactive argon-37 that Davis could then count. But when he ran the numbers, there was a problem: around two-thirds of the neutrinos physicists had expected never showed up.

Thanks to a gradual series of discoveries, we now know that, like the other matter particles in the standard model, neutrinos come in three types, called flavours. There is the electron neutrino, the muon neutrino and the tau neutrino. “Why nature is made like this, we have no idea, but that’s what we observe,” says Pascoli.

Then, around the year 2000, physicists at other neutrino experiments discovered that neutrinos have an additional peculiarity. As they travel, they can change from one flavour into another, a metamorphosis known as neutrino oscillation. An electron neutrino, the kind produced in the sun, might arrive at Earth as a muon or tau neutrino.

So, Davis's detector in the gold mine – which had been designed to reveal the effects of electron neutrinos – wasn't missing two-thirds of its quarry after all. Those neutrinos had simply changed flavour during their journey to Earth. "This was an absolutely gigantic discovery that had been building up for a long time," says theoretical physicist André de Gouvêa at Northwestern University in Illinois.

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系统化与共情

几年后，为了寻找这些问题的答案，他在著名心理学家乌塔·弗里思（Uta Frith）的指导下完成了伦敦大学学院的博士学位。在接下来的十年里，他设计了多项实验，以测试自闭症儿童对各种心理状态（如意图、欲望、情感和感知）的理解能力。1995年，他创造了“心盲”（mindblindness）一词，用来描述自闭症患者在理解他人内心想法时似乎存在的困难。

“心盲”有时被误解为自闭症患者缺乏共情能力。但在2004年与当时同样在剑桥大学的萨莉·惠尔赖特（Sally Wheelwright）共同发表的一篇论文中，巴伦-科恩指出，在衡量一个人的共情能力时，我们需要考虑两种类型：认知共情（cognitive empathy），即识别他人想法的能力；以及情感共情（affective empathy），即在上述理解之上产生相应的情感反应。他说，自闭症患者在认知共情方面似乎较为吃力，但在情感共情方面并非如此，甚至可能更为强烈。“如果你告诉一个自闭症患者有人在受苦，他们会感到难过——他们会想要过去帮忙，”他说。这与精神病态者（psychopaths）恰恰相反，后者往往具有良好的认知共情，但缺乏情感共情。

除此之外，巴伦-科恩不禁感觉到，包括他自己在内的研究人员过于狭隘地关注自闭症的负面影响。从20世纪90年代初开始，随着阿斯伯格综合征（Asperger's syndrome）被广泛采纳为一种不伴有智力障碍的可诊断自闭症形式，人们日益意识到这种状态可能带来独特的天赋。（阿斯伯格综合征目前已不再是正式的医学诊断。）

一个典型的例子或许就是艾萨克·牛顿，一个有着执迷之志、在社交方面挣扎，但同时也奠定了现代物理学基础的人。“我们不能确定他是否患有自闭症，”巴伦-科恩在当天早些时候告诉我，同时指向三一学院礼拜堂里的一尊牛顿雕像，牛顿曾是该学院的院士。但他在社交关系上经常面临挑战，他告诉我：多年来，牛顿对着空教室讲课，因为很少有学生能听懂他的话。

牛顿确实符合某种模式：社交困难，同时在数学、音乐、拼图——或者实际上任何与社交世界无关的事情上——拥有天赋。巴伦-科恩的飞跃在于将自闭症的所有这些优势概括为一个概念。“我提出了一个统领性的概念：系统化（systemising）。”

他说，这种分析、理解、预测和构建受规则支配的系统的天然驱动力，是一种来自内心深处的、独特的处理世界的方式。“我认为这几乎就像蜘蛛结网一样。没有人告诉它要这么做，它天生就是这样。”

在走回巴伦-科恩办公室的路上，他指向一扇窗户。“那里曾是维特根斯坦的房间。”哲学家路德维希·维特根斯坦（Ludwig Wittgenstein）——可以说又是另一个极端男性大脑的典型——投入了大量时间寻找人类行为的逻辑规则。“对他来说，这也许就是他尝试理解他人心智的天然方式，”他说。

像这样的推测性例子表明了一种失衡，而这成为了巴伦-科恩定义自闭症的核心。当我们到达他的办公室时，他从书架上抽出一本书，指向一张图表，一个轴是共情（empathising），另一个轴是系统化（systemising）。“人类的心智拥有这两种不同类型的架构，它们是为了截然不同的目的而进化的，”他说。“一种是为了在社交世界中穿行，另一种则是为了在非社交世界中穿行。”

这个图表背后的理念是，任何人都可以参加由巴伦-科恩设计的心理测量测试，以评估其共情能力和系统化能力。这些测试往往发现，自闭症患者缺乏某些共情方面能力，且极其擅长系统化。因此，自闭症患者倾向于聚集在图表的一个特定区域。他还发现，在非自闭症男性与女性的对比中也存在类似的模式，尽管程度较低。受这些发现的启发，他在 2002 年写道，就共情和系统化而言，自闭症可以被视为正常男性特征的一种“极端”形式。他向我展示的图表出自他次年出版的科普著作《本质差异：男人、女人与极端男性大脑》（The Essential Difference: Men, women and the extreme male brain）。

西蒙·巴伦-科恩的著作《本质差异》2003年版

自此，围绕巴伦-科恩的自闭症“极端男性大脑”理论一直存在争议。首先，这一观点似乎强化了性别刻板印象，暗示男性更倾向于分析性思维，而女性则更具共情力。通过将自闭症视为一种极端男性化形式，它还暗示这种状况在女性和女孩中较不常见。

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📄 Original Section

Order to the masses

The same experiments revealed another weird neutrino property. The oscillation is possible only because the three flavours don't each correspond to a distinct mass. An electron neutrino isn't simply lighter or heavier than a muon neutrino; none of the flavours has a single, well-defined mass. Instead, there are three neutrino "mass states", and each is a strange quantum mixture of all three flavours at once. As they travel through space, the balance between these masses – and therefore the flavour we observe – changes. But what exact values make up that mixture still elude us.

Confused? If so, you're in good company. "So, in the standard model, neutrinos don't have mass – but now we know they do," says physicist Anezka Klustova at Imperial College London. "But we don't know what those masses are, and we don't know how they get them."

The fact that the masses are extraordinarily small adds to the intrigue. The disparity between the mass of an electron and a neutrino is roughly the difference between a fully loaded station wagon and a single playing card. For physicists, this vast gulf raises the question of whether neutrinos acquire their mass in a different way from other matter particles, whose masses arise through their interaction with the Higgs boson.

If so, that could fling open a new window on reality. Some proposed mechanisms for generating neutrino mass would violate rules about how reality functions that physicists currently assume to be true. That, in turn, could shed light on deeper puzzles, including the question of why matter won out over antimatter. “It is possible that whatever is giving the neutrinos a non-zero mass is also directly responsible for the origin of matter itself,” says de Gouvêa.

YUEXIANG LIU

YUEXIANG LIU

These questions about neutrino mass prompted the construction of JUNO. One thing is for sure: we have come an awfully long way from Davis's glorified tank of cleaning fluid. JUNO's centrepiece is a vast acrylic sphere filled with 20,000 tonnes of a special fluid called a scintillator. About 53 kilometres away, the Yangjiang and Taishan nuclear power plants continuously produce a powerful and very clean stream of electron antineutrinos – the antimatter partners to electron neutrinos. A fraction of the antineutrinos are piped to JUNO, and when one interacts with the scintillator fluid, it produces a tiny flash. Thousands of spherical, golden orbs are positioned around the edges of the sphere to amplify these flashes.

The scale of the engineering takes my breath away. The cavern housing the detector could swallow a 14-storey building. Sadly, when I visit, the whole structure has been draped in black plastic – although perhaps it is fitting that this machine searching for the most elusive particles is itself hidden from view.

One of JUNO's first goals is to resolve a tricky aspect of the puzzle around neutrino masses. Although we don't know the exact masses of the three neutrino mass states, we do know that two of the states appear to be close together. This leaves open two possible configurations of the mass states: the normal and inverted hierarchies (see “The mass mystery”, right). These mass states are imprinted onto ordinary neutrinos and antineutrinos in the same way, so the fact that JUNO works mainly with the latter isn't an issue.

Working out which hierarchy is the right one could help constrain what the individual masses actually are and narrow competing explanations of how neutrinos get them. One of the most intriguing possibilities is known as the “seesaw mechanism”, first proposed in the 1980s. It proposes that undiscovered neutrinos exist that are enormously heavy and therefore extremely difficult to observe. Their gargantuan mass would be linked to the tiny masses of the familiar neutrinos we see today – push one end of the seesaw up and the other drops. “This is an explanation which most of the neutrino theories consider plausible, and it also explains why neutrinos are much lighter than the [other matter particles],” says Pascoli.

Another possibility is that neutrinos get their masses indirectly, through interactions with other particles that have yet to be discovered. Their mass would emerge only through a more complicated quantum process, naturally making it much smaller. But intriguingly, in some versions of this idea, one of those undiscovered particles could be the mysterious dark matter that makes up most of the matter in the universe. It is important to say that both hypotheses are broad-brush and don't offer exact predictions.

Still, JUNO should be able to help us. As the antineutrinos travel the 53 km odyssey from the power plants to the detectors, the different masses in the superposition leave behind a delicate interference pattern in the neutrinos' energies: a succession of tiny peaks and dips whose precise positions depend on whether the third mass state lies above or below the other two. Measure that pattern accurately

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争议理论

“我对那些误读仍然感到相当震惊。有些人认为该理论意味着如果你是女性，就不可能是自闭症患者，”他说，“在我写的所有这些书和文章中，从未说过那样的话。”

诚然，巴伦-科恩在他的著作中明确表示，并非所有男性都拥有“男性大脑”类型，也并非所有女性都拥有“女性大脑”类型——他在《本质差异》（The Essential Difference）中写道，这并非《男人来自火星，女人来自金星》。他的假设侧重于通过比较大量男女所观察到的模式，但这并不排除这样一个事实：即在每个生物性别内部，人们的差异也很大，而不仅仅是性别之间的差异。

但当我问他是否后悔创造了“极端男性大脑”这个词时，他依然坚持认为，在共情和系统化这两个维度上，自闭症患者表现出的是一种“典型”男性特征的极端形式。

有些人认为这种带有性别色彩的自闭症观点具有直接的危害。心理学家吉娜·里彭（Gina Rippon）认为，使用男性特征来构建自闭症的诊断标准，导致女性和女孩的病情被系统性地漏诊或误诊。这种情况

一直在发生变化。在过去的 20 年里，10 岁以下儿童自闭症男女诊断比例已从 4:1 下降到 3:1 左右——而在一些研究中，这一比例在成年后几乎达到了持平。

巴伦-科恩并不认为极端男性大脑理论应为此负责——他指出，女性和女孩的诊断率在他在发展这些想法的同一时期开始上升。“女性为了掩饰或伪装而承受的社会压力（很可能是由于围绕女性自闭症的污名化），更有可能是导致女性自闭症被漏诊或误诊的原因，”他说。

尽管如此，巴伦-科恩认为男女比例永远不会达到持平。“更多的女孩开始寻求诊断，这是好事。但事实是，如果你是男性，最终被诊断为自闭症的可能性似乎更高，”他说。

虽然巴伦-科恩不再坚持使用“极端男性大脑”这个标签，但他表示，支持“共情-系统化”框架的证据比以往任何时候都多——他提到了一篇他参与撰写的 2018 年论文，该论文基于 670,000 人参加的在线测试，证实了该框架的许多预测。

此外，这一框架由巴伦-科恩的另一个观点支撑：自闭症的产前性类固醇理论。包括他自己在内的研究发现，胎儿接触性激素的生物学差异与多年后的自闭症特质相关。而针对动物和“类器官”

“他坚持认为，在共情和系统化方面，自闭症患者表现出的是一种‘典型’男性特征的极端形式”

CESAR MANSO / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

脑组织团块的研究发现，性激素接触的模式会改变大脑结构，而这些改变可能预示着自闭症。

从表面上看，这些研究支持了男性和女性性别差异在自闭症中起作用的观点。然而，巴伦-科恩表示，如果仅通过这种二元论来看待自闭症，将会是一个错误。“如今，我们不再将性别视为二元的，因为其中存在许多不同的色调。”事实上，他 2018 年的论文发现，非二元性别者患自闭症的可能性高出 5.5 倍。

G. NIMATALLAH / DE AGOSTINI VIA GETTY IMAGES

所有这些都揭示了自闭症研究核心的一个悖论。为了更好地理解这种状况，我们需要简化的方式来区分或定义它——而巴伦-科恩成功地开发了这样一种方法。但在沿着某些界限定义自闭症时，你必须切断其中涉及的复杂生物和社会因素，而这可能会导致部分人群被排除在外。

巴伦-科恩承认，他的自闭症产前性类固醇理论只能部分解释自闭症在共情能力与系统化能力方面的差异。“大脑的这些方面不仅受激素影响，还受遗传影响——而这一切都是相互作用的。”同样，共情与系统化能力的差异也远非自闭症特质的唯一定义。“毫无疑问，还会有其他相关的维度，”他说，“例如，感官敏感度、智商、语言、执行功能以及共病情况。”

我们越是探索评估和理解自闭症的替代方案，这个群体的规模就越大。例如，在瑞典，2000年到

左图：擅长系统化可能包括对拼图有天赋

左下图：有人推测艾萨克·牛顿具有自闭症特质

2022年之间，自闭症的诊断人数增长了十倍。许多国家都出现了类似的趋势，这既是因为人们对该病症的认识提高，也是因为我们对自闭症的定义在扩大。那么，在理解这种日益模糊的病症方面，我们该如何前行？

巴伦-科恩在越来越多的证据中看到了希望，这些证据表明自闭症存在多种类型。这些亚型是基于对大量自闭症人群研究中发现的基因模式、大脑活动和特质而划分的。他认为自己关于自闭症的理论与亚型划分是兼容的，并建议我们很可能会找到一条将所有亚型联系在一起的共同底层线索。“为了取得科学进展，并为自闭症患者及其家庭提供量身定制的支持，对自闭症进行亚型划分迫在眉睫，”他说。

他回顾了自20世纪80年代他首次接触自闭症群体以来，在支持这些群体方面所取得的进展。“自那时起，该领域已经走过了很长一段路，所有自闭症研究的优先级都是服务于自闭症群体……目标必须始终是提高他们的生活质量，”他说。

询问自闭症患者的需求和渴望，是自闭症研究中心研究的基石，该中心由巴伦-科恩于1997年在剑桥大学创立。除了让自闭症患者或其父母参与研究设计外，该中心的底线也非常明确。“例如，我们明确表示我们不是在寻找自闭症的治愈方法，也不是在尝试开发自闭症的产前检测，”他说。同样，他希望找到方法来缓解自闭症群体的担忧，即亚型划分可能会被用来分裂他们，并以不平等的方式分配资源。

这种参与式方法为涉及数千名自闭症患者的人群研究带来了一些令人惊讶的结果。“事实证明，许多自闭症患者患有多种共病的心理或生理健康问题，”他说。其中一些病症，如心脏病或多内分泌代谢卵巢综合征，涉及睾酮等激素，很可能在巴伦-科恩的自闭症产前性类固醇理论中有所依据。他说，而其他一些情况，如关节过度活动，则很难通过这个视角来解释。

巴伦-科恩表示，无论如何，这类发现对于如何最好地支持自闭症患者具有直接的现实意义。“如果你是一名（医生），而你的病人是一名自闭症患者，你还应该询问什么？你应该关注什么？”他说。

“这就是在尝试让我们意识到，仅仅因为自闭症是基于社交困难、重复行为或狭隘兴趣而诊断的，但实际上，自闭症可能伴随着许多其他情况。”

托马斯·刘顿（Thomas Lewton）是《新科学家》杂志的特写编辑，专注于神经科学、宇宙学、粒子物理学和科学政治学。

谁是美洲的第一批原住民？

几十年来，智利的蒙特贝尔德（Monte Verde）遗址一直是关于美洲首批原住民争论的焦点。迈克尔·马歇尔（Michael Marshall）发现这场争论再次升级。

在每一个科学领域，都有一些具有图腾意义的地方。比如安置有大型强子对撞机的欧洲核子研究中心（CERN）物理实验室；詹姆斯·沃森（James Watson）和弗朗西斯·克里克（Francis Crick）研究 DNA 结构的剑桥卡文迪许实验室；以及位于加利福尼亚州的美国国家航空航天局（NASA）喷气推进实验室。

在考古学中，智利一个名为蒙特贝尔德的遗址就是这样一个地方。半个世纪以来，蒙特贝尔德一直是我们理解美洲人类定居过程的核心。在二十年间，蒙特贝尔德所讲述的故事曾引发剧烈争议。随后，这一结论变得相当稳固，但从今年起，它再次陷入争议之中。

新争论的细节有时极其专业且枯燥，我将仅提供一个大致的轮廓，否则我们得在这里讨论一整周。然而，所有这些讨论背后的实际问题很简单：谁是第一批居住在美洲的人，他们是什么时候到达的？

美洲是人类最后定居的大陆。（当然，还有南极洲，但考虑到它在过去 300 年内才被发现，我们不必担心它。）已知最古老的人类祖先生活在非洲，在 180 万年前之前，我们在其他任何地方都没有看到人类祖先存在的确凿证据，直到那时，直立人（Homo erectus）到达了现在的格鲁吉亚——是指欧亚大陆上的那个，而不是美国的那个州。随后，像尼安德特人和丹尼索瓦人这样的人类祖先扩散到整个欧亚大陆。再后来，我们的物种——智人（Homo sapiens）在非洲出现并迁徙到整个欧亚大陆。

在近 200 万年的时间里，人类进行了大量的迁徙。然而，这些人中似乎都没有到达美洲。虽然这次重大登陆的确切时间极具争议，但我们讨论的最多是过去 35,000 年——而主要的定居浪潮似乎发生在 20,000 到 13,000 年前之间。

这就是蒙特贝尔德发挥作用的地方。长期以来，人们一直声称它是美洲人类存在的最古老证据——或者至少是最古老的

蒙特贝尔德遗址位于智利的钦奇瓦皮（Chinchihuapi）溪沿岸，该遗址具有无可争议的人类干预痕迹和可靠的年代测定证据。蒙特贝尔德告诉我们，人类进入美洲的时间比此前认为的要早数千年。

ERIC CARLSON; BEN POTTER AND JAMES CHATTERS

现在，该遗址的考古数据正受到质疑——随之而来的，是我们对美洲史前史的理解也受到了冲击。

蒙特贝尔德位于智利南部，距离太平洋海岸线向内陆延伸几十公里。向南，南美洲的海岸线破碎成一片混乱的半岛和岛屿。南北走向的安第斯山脉位于东侧。蒙特贝尔德坐落在一片泛滥平原上：它位于钦奇瓦皮溪的岸边，而该溪是较大的毛林河（Maullín river）的一条支流。

自 1977年以来，考古学家们断断续续地对蒙特贝尔德进行了近 50 年的挖掘。其中最著名的一位是田纳西州纳什维尔范德堡大学的汤姆·迪莱海（Tom Dillehay）。他及其同事挖掘了两个位置相对接近的遗址，简单地被命名为蒙特贝尔德 I 号和蒙特贝尔德 II 号。

蒙特贝尔德 I 号的情况比较复杂。它包含烧焦的区域和大量推测为石器的物品——尽管其中一些可能仅仅是天然石头，尽管是很罕见的石头。早期的木炭放射性碳定年研究将该遗址的年代定为 33,000 年，但这从未被广泛接受。在 2015 年的一项研究中，迪莱海的团队将蒙特贝尔德 I 号的年代定在 14,500 到 18,500 年之间。

JORGE GUZMÁN AND FRANCISCO DONOSO

克洛维斯人（Clovis people）是美洲第一批原住民的潜在竞争者之一。

然而，由于人类活动的痕迹过于稀疏，该时间范围的上限存在争议，迪莱海（Dillehay）本人对此也不太在意。

更强有力的证据来自蒙特贝尔德 II（Monte Verde II）。在这里，团队发现了由石头、木头和骨头制成的器物，以及似乎是某种建筑（可能是帐篷）的地基。在包含这些材料的层位正上方是一层泥炭，迪莱海的团队将其定年为 14,500 年前。这意味着蒙特贝尔德至少有那么古老。1997, 一组考古学家访问了该遗址，并正式认可了迪莱海的分析结果。随后的证据也支持了这一测年结果：例如，2008, 迪莱海的团队在蒙特贝尔德发现了海洋藻类，并将其直接定年为 14,220 到 13,980 年前。

迪莱海表示，如今证明蒙特贝尔德年代的证据包括“100 多个放射性碳测年和发光测年数据，完整的年代地层学，以及在其他遗址中测得的特征性石器”。

蒙特贝尔德的这些发现实际上颠覆了我们关于美洲人类定居的主要观点。在 20 世纪的大部分时间里，大多数考古学家认为首批美洲原住民是被称为“克洛维斯”（Clovis）的人群，该名称源自新墨西哥州的一个遗址。克洛维斯人制造具有独特尖端的石器。最古老的克洛维斯遗址大约有 13,000 年历史。

“长期以来，人们一直声称蒙特贝尔德是美洲人类活动最古老的证据”

围绕“克洛维斯优先”模型的共识如此之强，以至于任何“前克洛维斯”遗址都会受到极其严苛的审查。北美的一些遗址，如库珀斯费里（Cooper's Ferry）、巴特米尔克溪（Buttermilk creek）和佩斯利洞穴（Paisley caves），都被反复地审视。蒙特贝尔德是第一个在这种审查过程中幸存并被认可的遗址。

今年 3 月，另一组考古学家试图推翻整个理论体系。

托德·苏罗维尔（Todd Surovell）在 1994, 还是威斯康星大学的本科生时首次了解到蒙特贝尔德。当时迪莱海作为客座演讲者来讲述该遗址的情况。“我完全被震撼了，”他说，“这真的激励了我的职业生涯。”

苏罗维尔现在是怀俄明大学的考古学家。他对蒙特贝尔德日益产生怀疑，他和同事在 2022 和 2023 年访问了该地区。他们于 2026 年 3 月在《科学》（Science）杂志上发表了研究结果。

他和他的团队没有在蒙特贝尔德 I 或进行挖掘，而是在钦奇瓦皮溪（Chinchihuapi creek）沿岸进行。根据他们发现的沉积层，他们重建了该地区的历史。

他们表示，大约 20,000 年前，当地球气候处于深冰期时，该地区是安第斯山脉延伸而下的冰川融水区：一片拥有辫状溪流以及大量沙砾的平原。随后，随着气候变暖，森林迁入，演变为湿地，然后被掩埋——形成了黑色泥炭。接着，在大约 11,000 年前，一座名为米钦马胡伊达（Michinmahuida）的火山爆发，在当地覆盖了一层被称为“莱普埃火山灰”（Lepué Tephra）的灰烬。之后，钦奇瓦皮溪切穿了所有这些地层，形成了一个人类居住的裸露表面。

苏罗维尔的团队据此认为，这意味着蒙特贝尔德必须比莱普埃火山灰层更年轻。根据其挖掘地点的沙石测年，该团队将其定在 8200 到 4200 年前之间。

如果说这引起了争论，那简直是轻描淡写。目前该篇《科学》论文附带了七封“电子信函”（eLetters），对各项主张做出回应。8 月 19 日，迪莱海及其同事在《古美洲》（PaleoAmerica）杂志上发表了一整篇论文，反驳苏罗维尔团队的论点。

这一切的核心问题在于，苏罗维尔（Surovell）的团队在蒙特维尔德（Monte Verde）附近进行了挖掘，但并非在遗址本身。或者，用迪莱海（Dillehay）的话来说：“他们没有在遗址内挖掘，从未见过地层学情况，且仅检查了距离 50 到 4000 [米] 之外的地表景观。”由于这里是一个冲积平原，河流会随时间推移而偏移，沉积物可能会发生混合，因此将一个地方的情况推演到另一个地方是非常困难的。

例如，苏罗维尔及其团队发现了一层泥炭，他们称这与覆盖在蒙特维尔德 II 居住层之上的泥炭相对应。而迪莱海的团队则认为并非如此。

JORGE GUZMÁN DÁVILA / WWW.INDAGA.ME

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📄 Original Section

"In the standard model, neutrinos don't have mass – but we know they do"

enough, and JUNO can begin to tease out the ordering. A smaller companion experiment, the Taishan Antineutrino Observatory, sits much closer to the Taishan reactor. There, it can measure the antineutrinos before they have had much of a chance to oscillate, giving JUNO a reference.

In June, the JUNO Collaboration published results that put it on track to produce a competitive measurement of the mass ordering in the next few years. These initial results lean towards the normal ordering, but more data will be needed before physicists can draw a firm conclusion.

Even then, we probably won't have a bulletproof answer on how neutrinos get their mass. Instead, JUNO will act like a sieve, making some theories look more plausible while putting others under strain. If the normal ordering result does hold up, for instance, that would fit naturally with some of the simplest seesaw models. An inverted ordering, by contrast, could rule out those versions or force theorists to make them more elaborate. "By doing these neutrino experiments, I don't think we'd learn all the answers, but we would get a lot of circumstantial evidence that points us in the right direction," says de Gouvêa.

In a sense, JUNO is just the start of what could be a neutrino revolution in physics. Hot on its heels are two other epic detectors: Hyper-Kamiokande in Japan, which is set to start running next year, and DUNE in the US, due to open in the early 2030s. Both experiments will also be able to probe the neutrino mass ordering. But more importantly, they will search for whether neutrinos and antineutrinos behave differently.

Both Hyper-Kamiokande and DUNE will create beams of muon neutrinos by smashing high-energy protons into a solid target, like graphite. Unlike JUNO, though, the experiments have the luxury of controlling their neutrino source. They can switch their beams on and off and choose whether to produce neutrinos or their antimatter counterparts. The difficulty is that the results they detect will be affected by several tangled factors will affect the results, including the neutrino mass ordering. If JUNO can pin that down first, Hyper-Kamiokande and DUNE will have one fewer unknown to disentangle. With these three detectors working together, we could finally have answers to the neutrino riddles that have plagued us for so long.

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争议主张

同样，支持蒙特韦尔德（Monte Verde）年代的关键证据之一是该遗址中大量经过测年的木材。苏罗韦尔（Surovell）认为：“那里有大量可追溯至冰河时期的木材，但这些木材源自……更古老的沉积层。它们从这些古老沉积层中被侵蚀，随溪流冲刷到了这些较年轻的表面上。”然而，迪莱海（Dillehay）则主张，这些木材没有被重新沉积的迹象——例如，没有在洪水冲刷中被撞击而产生的典型损伤。

此外，在蒙特韦尔德 II 遗址中，无论是在文物层之上还是之下，都没有发现至关重要的勒普埃火山灰层（Lepué Tephra ash layer）。迪莱海据此认为，因此该火山灰层无法提供关于该遗址年代的任何信息。

就这样，争论在数千字的文字和更多的推理逻辑中继续进行。我试图提取出主要观点，但我必须强调，这是一个极其深不见底的“兔子洞”。迪莱海和苏罗韦尔挖掘工作的每一个细节都在被反复审视。

当一项科学主张产生争议时，判定谁正确可能会变得极其困难，因为存在所谓的“实验者回归”（experimenter’s regress）。如果我们不知道某个问题的真实答案，那么就很难判断我们是否正确地执行了实验。如果你得到了一个令人惊讶的结果，也许你发现了新事物，或者也许是你把实验搞砸了。

因此，如果一项实验与你所青睐的世界理论相矛盾，你只需主张该实验存在缺陷，或者运行实验的人能力不足。麻烦在于，对方也可以对你的实验说同样的话。这就是“实验者回归”：一个看似无止境的主张与反主张循环，双方都认为对方在关键环节上搞砸了研究。

汤姆·迪莱海（左下）及其团队（左）长期研究蒙特韦尔德遗址，其发现包括一件被认为制作于 17,000 到 19,000 年前的鹅卵石工具（下）

图片由 TOM DILLEHAY 提供

JORGE GUZMÁN DÁVILA / WWW.INDAGA.ME

“遗传学研究似乎表明，人类在大约 15,000 年前迁入美洲”

我目前无法打破这个循环并给出正确答案。一方面，我不认为自己有信心判定蒙特韦尔德 II 的泥炭层与苏罗韦尔团队发现的泥炭层是否为同一事物。

我们能否通过独立的证据链来回答这个问题？正如我所说，美洲现在已经有了许多前克洛维斯（pre-Clovis）遗址，且新的遗址在不断出现。近期最令人震撼的发现之一位于新墨西哥州的白沙国家公园（White Sands National Park），那里发现了似乎约有 22,000 年历史的足迹和拖拽痕迹。与此同时，对美洲原住民及其亚洲亲属的遗传学研究似乎表明，人类在大约 15,000 年前迁入美洲。一种解释是，此前曾有一些早期的流浪者但未能生存下来，随后才发生了至少一次大规模迁徙。

无论蒙特韦尔德的真相如何，这似乎意味着在克洛维斯时代（Clovis era,）之前，美洲就已经有人类存在。

苏罗韦尔则主张，“北美和南美关于前克洛维斯时期的证据在任何地方都不是很充分”，并且“每一个此类遗址都受到过质疑，且每一个此类遗址仍处于争议之中”。

他主张，“在我的领域中，有大量在媒体上鲜有露面的人”认为，前克洛维斯（pre-Clovis）遗址的质量太差，不足以令人信服。“我预测，你会看到越来越多的考古学家重新回归到‘克洛维斯第一’（Clovis First）的立场。”

与此同时，迪莱海（Dillehay）依然充满信心。他说：“我们刚刚邀请了一个由地质学家和考古学家组成的独立小组前往遗址……他们查看了地层学，确认了我们的工作，并指出了苏罗维尔（Surovell）等人存在的重大错误。他们很快就会公布结果。”

我不知道这些预测中哪一个会证明更具先见之明，但我必须说，我原以为这个问题在很大程度上已经解决了，我很感兴趣想看看像苏罗维尔这样的人是否能成功地将其重新开启。

这是由科学作家迈克尔·马歇尔（Michael Marshall）撰写的订阅者时事通讯《我们的故事》（Our Human Story）的节选。请在 newscientist.com / our-human-story 注册。

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📄 Original Section

Going supernova

The answers may hold sway far beyond the realms of particle physics. Neutrinos' individual gravitational influence is negligible, but there are so many of them that, over cosmic time, they can affect how matter gathers into clusters, galaxies and stars. That makes them unusually interesting, given that our cosmological models are starting to show signs of strain.

Take dark energy, the unknown force that appears to be accelerating the expansion of the universe at an ever-increasing pace. The accepted understanding has long been that dark energy is a constant. But last year's results from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic

Instrument seemed to show that it may, in fact, be weakening. And there are other tensions, too. Matter in the universe appears, by some measures, to be slightly less clumped than expected. This suggests that something may have suppressed the growth of the universe's structure over billions of years.

Could that something be neutrinos? Possibly. Because they move rapidly through the early universe, they resist being trapped inside growing clumps of matter and can smooth out structure. The heavier neutrinos are in total, the stronger that effect becomes. All of this means that the results from experiments like JUNO will help those studying the universe check whether their models make sense. "Neutrino properties can be very helpful in tensions like these," says cosmologist William Giarè at the University of Hawai'i.

There could also be one final curtain call for JUNO. The hope is that it will run long enough to catch an extremely rare event: a star exploding somewhere in our galaxy. “The reason we want to have a 30-year lifetime is exactly for the supernova neutrinos,” says Yifang Wang, JUNO’s director. “We want to wait for one explosion.”

When a massive star collapses, neutrinos escape from its core before light can fight its way out. As such, a burst of supernova neutrinos detected on Earth would give us an extraordinary glimpse of the star's final moments – and a fresh way to test our theories of how supernovae form. Plus, if the collapsing core is massive enough to form a black hole, the torrent of neutrinos could suddenly stop. Physicists would, in effect, watch the signal from the dying star switch off at the moment the black hole forms. "If a supernova goes off, that would be the physics result of the century," says Pascoli.

Eventually, it is time for me to leave JUNO. I am led through a baffling series of tunnels to a cramped lift, where my guide pulls a chain-link curtain across the entrance. With a jolt, we shoot upwards, the lift screaming past an endless wall of rock. A few minutes later, I step back into daylight, almost 2 km from where I first stepped onto the funicular. It is a final reminder of JUNO's improbable scale – complete with a detector weighing as much as three Eiffel Towers – all to study nature's tiniest particles. Perhaps, in the next decade, a seismic shift in physics will come from its shyest, most diminutive character.

Jacklin Kwan is a journalist who was previously a digital features editor at New Scientist covering physical science

GARRY JONES PHOTOGRAPHY

NewScientist

大卫·斯库斯 (David Skuse) 教授

埃娃·洛斯 (Eva Loth) 教授

达米安·米尔顿 (Damian Milton) 博士

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📄 Original Section

What now for the 'extreme male brain' idea of autism?

Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen's influential research helped pin autism as a particularly male condition. As studies increasingly broaden our view of autism, Thomas Lewton asks him whether his perspective has changed

IF YOU were asked to describe an autistic person, you might find it easy to think of an example, whether a relative, a colleague or even yourself. Diagnoses for autism have risen roughly tenfold over the past few decades, and a suite of broader diagnostic criteria means it now seems simpler to recognise in each other or ourselves. To the autistic stereotypes that dominated popular culture until recently – Rain Man's numerical savant Raymond Babbitt or The Big Bang Theory's idiosyncratic physicist Sheldon Cooper – are now added women, like the detail-oriented detective Astrid Nielsen and the fierce chess champion Beth Harmon in The Queen's Gambit.

It's a world away from the early 2000s, when psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen proposed his “extreme male brain” concept of autism. Since it was first defined in the 1940s, autism had been considered a condition that largely affects men, a view that Baron-Cohen, the world’s most prolific autism researcher, cemented with his focus on autistic people who score particularly highly for systematic thinking and lowly on some aspects of empathy.

But today, Baron-Cohen and other autism researchers find themselves at a crossroads. In recent years, the proportion of boys and men diagnosed with autism has markedly fallen compared with girls and women. Meanwhile, there's growing evidence that autistic people may not lie on a single spectrum with extreme cases all at one end, but within multiple distinct subtypes. So, where does this leave the ideas developed by Baron-Cohen in over 1000 highly cited papers and three popular science books?

“Headlines can be misinterpreted,” Baron-Cohen tells me as we sit down in his office at Trinity College, University of Cambridge, where he has been a fellow since 1995, to discuss how his ideas, which have garnered much media coverage, have fared. “I try to do a bit of myth-busting.” Nevertheless, he has recently rolled back on the term “extreme male brain”, describing it as an unhelpful label – although he still stands by the core ideas that underpin it.

Baron-Cohen didn't set out to make autism about sex. For him, it all began with the concept of empathy. Working in the 1980s at a pioneering school that offered one-on-one education for autistic children, he wanted to better understand their behaviour, especially their seeming lack of social awareness. "A child could come right up close to your face without any embarrassment," he says. "Or a teenage autistic girl might walk into their parents' dinner party with no clothes on, but with no embarrassment." This led him to conversely wonder why non-autistic children develop a sense of self-awareness and worry what other people think of them.

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加入我们与三位顶尖自闭症研究人员的实时讨论，共同探讨最新发现对于我们理解该病症意味着什么。我们将探讨亚型是否能带来更好、更具针对性的支持，或者固定类别是否无法捕捉自闭症生活的真实情况。

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📄 Original Section

Systemising versus empathy

Searching for answers to questions like these, a few years later, he completed his PhD at University College London under the supervision of renowned psychologist Uta Frith. Over the next decade, he designed experiments to test autistic children's understanding of a whole range of mental states, such as intentions, desires, emotions and perceptions. In 1995, he coined the term “mindblindness” to describe the seeming difficulties autistic people have understanding what’s going on in someone else’s head.

Mindblindness has sometimes been misunderstood to mean that autistic people aren't empathetic. But in a 2004 paper, written with Sally Wheelwright, then also at the University of Cambridge, Baron-Cohen argued that, when measuring someone's empathy, we need to consider two kinds: cognitive empathy, which is the ability to recognise what someone else is thinking, and affective empathy, which layers the appropriate emotional response on top of that understanding. Autistic people, he says, seem to struggle with cognitive empathy, but not affective empathy, which may even be heightened. "If you tell an autistic person that somebody else is suffering, it upsets them – they want to go over and help," he says. This is the mirror opposite of psychopaths, who tend to have good cognitive empathy but lack affective empathy.

Beyond this, Baron-Cohen couldn't help feeling that researchers, himself included, were too narrowly focusing on the negative aspects of autism. From the early 1990s, with the widespread adoption of Asperger's syndrome as a diagnosable form of autism without intellectual disabilities, there was a growing awareness that the condition could come with unique gifts. (Asperger's syndrome is no longer an official medical diagnosis.)

A classic example might perhaps have been Isaac Newton, a man of obsessive interests who struggled socially but also laid the foundations of modern physics. “We can’t know for sure that he was autistic,” Baron-Cohen told me earlier that day, while gesturing towards a statue of Newton in the chapel at Trinity College, where Newton was also once a fellow. But his relationships with other people were often challenging, he tells me: for years, Newton lectured to an empty room because so few students could understand him.

Newton does seem to fit the pattern of someone with social difficulties combined with a gift for maths, music, jigsaw puzzles – or really anything not to do with the social world. Baron-Cohen's leap was to encompass all these kinds of upsides to autism in one idea. "I came up with an umbrella concept: systemising."

This natural drive to analyse, understand, predict and construct rule-governed systems is a distinct way of processing the world that comes from deep within, he says. “I see it as almost akin to a spider spinning a web. No one’s told it to do that. It’s just what it does.”

Walking back towards Baron-Cohen's office, he points up to a window. "Those were Wittgenstein's rooms." Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein – arguably another extreme male brain stereotype – devoted much time searching for the logical rules of human behaviour. "Maybe for him that was his natural approach to trying to understand other people's minds," he says.

Speculative examples like these suggest an imbalance that became the core of Baron-Cohen's definition of autism. When we reach his office, he pulls a book off the shelf and points to a graph with empathising along one axis and systemising along the other. "The human mind has these two different types of architecture, which evolved for very different purposes," he says. "One is to navigate the social world and the other one is to navigate the non-social world."

The idea behind the graph is that anyone can take psychometric tests, designed by Baron-Cohen, that rate their empathising and systemising abilities. These tests tend to find that autistic people lack aspects of empathy and are excellent at systemising. As a result, autistic people tend to cluster in one region of the graph. He also found a similar pattern among non-autistic males compared with females – although to a lesser extent. Prompted by these findings, in 2002 he wrote that autism can be considered an “extreme” of the normal male profile when it comes to empathising and systemising. The graph he shows me is from his popular science book, published the following year, entitled The Essential Difference: Men, women and the extreme male brain.

A 2003 edition of Simon Baron-Cohen's book The Essential Difference

Controversy has surrounded Baron-Cohen's extreme male brain theory of autism ever since. For one, the idea appears to reinforce gender stereotypes, suggesting that men are more inclined towards analytical thinking while women are more empathetic. By considering autism as a form of extreme maleness, it also hints that the condition is less common in women and girls.

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📄 Original Section

Controversial theory

"I'm still quite shocked by the misinterpretations. Some people think that the theory says that if you're female, you can't be autistic," he says. "In all of these books and articles that I've written, it never says that."

Granted, Baron-Cohen has been clear in his work that not all men have a “male brain” type and not all women have a “female brain” type – this is no Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, he writes in The Essential Difference. His hypothesis focuses on patterns seen by comparing large numbers of men and women, but it doesn’t exclude the reality that people vary widely within each biological sex, not just between them.

But when I ask him if he regrets coining the “extreme male brain”, he stands by the idea that autistic people show an extreme of a “typical” male profile when it comes to the two dimensions of empathy and systemising.

Some see this sex-inflected view of autism as directly harmful. Psychologist Gina Rippon has argued that using a male profile to build diagnostic criteria for autism led to the condition being systematically missed or misdiagnosed in women and girls. That has

been changing as, over the past two decades, the ratio of male-to-female autism diagnosis has dropped from 4:1 to around 3:1 in children under 10 years old – and in some studies, this ratio almost reaches parity by adulthood.

Baron-Cohen doesn't think the extreme male brain theory was to blame – noting that the rates of diagnosis of women and girls took off around the same time as he was developing his ideas. “The social pressures on females to mask or camouflage, likely for reasons to do with stigma surrounding autism in females, is a much more likely explanation for why autism went underdiagnosed or misdiagnosed in females,” he says.

Still, Baron-Cohen doesn't think the male-to-female ratio will ever reach parity. "More girls have come forward seeking a diagnosis and that's good. But the fact is that there seems to be a higher likelihood of ending up with a diagnosis of autism if you're male," he says.

Although Baron-Cohen no longer stands by the extreme male brain label, he says there is more evidence than ever for the empathising-systemising framework – pointing to a 2018 paper he co-authored, based on online tests taken by 670,000 people, which confirmed many of its predictions.

What's more, this framework is underpinned by another of Baron-Cohen's ideas: the prenatal sex steroid theory of autism. Research, including his own, has found that biological differences in a fetus's exposure to sex hormones are linked to autistic traits years later. And studies on animals and “organoid”

"He stands by the idea that autistic people show an extreme of a 'typical' male profile when it comes to empathy and systemising"

CESAR MANSO/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

clumps of brain tissue find that patterns of sex hormone exposure alter the brain's architecture in ways that may be indicative of autism.

On the face of it, these studies support the idea that male and female sex differences are instrumental in autism. Yet it would be a mistake to view autism only through this binary, says Baron-Cohen. “These days, we don’t think of sex or gender as a binary because there’s lots of different shades.” Indeed, his 2018 paper found that non-binary people were 5.5 times more likely to be autistic.

G. NIMATALLAH/DE AGOSTINI VIA GETTY IMAGES

All of which lays bare a paradox at the core of autism research. To better understand the condition, we need simplified ways to distinguish or define it – and Baron-Cohen successfully developed one such way. But in defining autism along certain lines, you have to cut through the complex biological and social factors that are involved, which may exclude people as a result.

Baron-Cohen acknowledges that his prenatal sex steroid theory of autism can only partially explain autistic differences in empathising versus systemising. “These aspects of the brain are not just influenced by hormones but also genetics – and these all interact.” Likewise, differences in empathising versus systemising are far from an exclusive definition of autistic traits. “There will undoubtedly be other dimensions that are relevant,” he says. “For example, sensory sensitivity, IQ, language, executive function and co-occurring conditions.”

The more we look at alternative ways of assessing and comprehending autism, the larger the club becomes. In Sweden, autism diagnoses rose tenfold between 2000 and

Left: Being good at systemising can include things like a knack for jigsaw puzzles

Below left: Some speculate that Isaac Newton had autistic traits

2022, for example. There are similar trends in many countries because of greater awareness of the condition, but also because of a broadening of how we define autism. So, how do we move forward in making sense of this increasingly nebulous condition?

Baron-Cohen sees hope in mounting evidence that there are multiple kinds of autism. These subtypes are based on patterns in genes, brain activity and traits found in studies with large populations of autistic people. He sees his own theories of autism as compatible with subtyping and suggests we may well find a common underlying thread that ties together all subtypes. “Subtyping autism is urgent both to make scientific progress and to provide tailored support to autistic people and their families,” he says.

He reflects on the progress made in supporting the autistic communities he first met in the 1980s. “The field has come a long way since then and the priority for all autism research is to serve the autism community... the goal must always be their better quality of life,” he says.

Asking autistic people what they want and need is a cornerstone of research at the Autism Research Centre, which Baron-Cohen founded at the University of Cambridge in 1997. As well as involving autistic people, or their parents, in the design of studies, the centre's red lines are clear. "We're explicit about how we're not looking for a cure for autism, for example, or we're not trying to develop a prenatal test for autism," he says. Similarly, he wants to find ways to allay the fears of autistic communities that subtyping could be used to divide them and allocate resources in unequal ways.

This participatory approach has paved the way to some surprising results from population studies involving thousands of autistic people. “It turns out that many autistic people have got many co-occurring mental or physical health conditions,” he says. Some of these conditions, such as heart disease or polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome, involve hormones like testosterone and may well have a basis in Baron-Cohen’s prenatal sex steroid theory of autism. Others, like hypermobile joints, are much harder to make sense of through this lens, he says.

Regardless, findings like these have immediate relevance for how best to support autistic people, says Baron-Cohen. "If you're a [doctor] and you've got an autistic person as your patient, what else should you be asking? What should you be looking for?" he says.

"It's trying to open our minds to the fact that just because autism is diagnosed on the basis of, say, social difficulties, repetitive behaviour or narrow interests, actually autism may come with a lot of other things."

Thomas Lewton is a features editor at New Scientist focusing on neuroscience, cosmology, particle physics and the politics of science

隐晦十字谜题 #199 出题人：Trurl

涂鸦区

下周为快速十字谜题

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📄 Original Section

Who first lived in the Americas?

For decades, the Monte Verde site in Chile has been the source of arguments about the first peoples in the Americas. Michael Marshall finds the row is heating up again

IN EVERY scientific field, there are totemic places. The CERN physics laboratory that houses the Large Hadron Collider; the Cavendish lab in Cambridge where James Watson and Francis Crick did their research on the structure of DNA; NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

In archaeology, one such place is a site in Chile called Monte Verde. For half a century, Monte Verde has been central to our understanding of the peopling of the Americas. For two decades, the story that Monte Verde told was wildly controversial. It then became fairly settled, but, as of this year, it has become controversial again.

The details of the new argument are, at times, punishingly technical, and I am going to give only the roughest outline of them or we would be here all week. However, the actual questions at the back of all this are simple: who were the first people to live in the Americas, and when did they arrive?

The Americas were the last continents to be settled by humans. (Well, there's Antarctica, but given it was discovered only within the past 300 years, let's not worry about it.) The oldest known hominins lived in Africa, and we don't see hard evidence of hominins anywhere else until 1.8 million years ago, when Homo erectus reached what is now Georgia – the one in Eurasia, not the US state. Later, hominins like Neanderthals and Denisovans spread

throughout Eurasia. Later still, our species, Homo sapiens, appeared in Africa and migrated all over Eurasia.

That's a lot of travelling around, over a period of nearly 2 million years. Yet none of those people seem to have reached the Americas. While the exact timing of that momentous landfall is very contentious, we are talking at most about the past 35,000 years – and the main waves of settlement seem to have been between 20,000 and 13,000 years ago.

That's where Monte Verde comes in. It has long been claimed to be the oldest evidence of humans in the Americas – or at least the oldest

The Monte Verde site sits along Chinchihuapi creek in Chile site with indisputable traces of human intervention and reliable dating evidence. Monte Verde told us that people entered the Americas thousands of years earlier than previously thought.

ERIC CARLSON; BEN POTTER AND JAMES CHATTERS

Now, the archaeological data at the site is under attack – and with it, our understanding of the prehistory of the Americas.

Monte Verde is in southern Chile, a few tens of kilometres inland from the Pacific Ocean. To the south, the coast of South America fractures into a confusing scatter of peninsulas and islands. The Andes mountain chain, which runs north-south, lies to the east. Monte Verde sits on a floodplain: it is on the banks of Chinchihuapi creek, a tributary of the larger Maullín river.

Archaeologists have been excavating Monte Verde on and off for almost 50 years, since 1977. One of the most prominent is Tom Dillehay at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He and his colleagues have excavated two relatively close sites, simply dubbed Monte Verde I and Monte Verde II.

Monte Verde I is tricky. It contains burned areas and numerous putative stone artefacts – although some may simply be natural stones, albeit unusual ones. Early studies radiocarbon dating the charcoal placed the site as 33,000 years old, which has never been widely accepted. In a 2015 study, Dillehay's team dated Monte Verde I to between 14,500 and 18,500 years old.

JORGE GUZMÁN AND FRANCISCO DONOSO

The Clovis people are one possible contender for the first Americans

However, because the human traces are so sparse, the older end of that range is disputed, and Dillehay himself doesn't put too much store by it.

Stronger evidence comes from Monte Verde II. Here, the team found artefacts made of stone, wood and bone, as well as what seem to be the foundations for a structure, perhaps a tent. Directly above the layers containing these materials was a layer of peat, which Dillehay's team dated to 14,500 years ago. This implies that Monte Verde II is at least that old. In 1997, a team of archaeologists visited the site and gave Dillehay's analyses an official stamp of approval. Subsequent evidence has supported the dating: for instance, in 2008, Dillehay's team identified marine algae at Monte Verde II, which they directly dated to 14,220 to 13,980 years ago.

Today, Dillehay says, the evidence for the age of Monte Verde consists of “more than 100 radiocarbon and luminescence dates and intact chrono-stratigraphy, as well as diagnostic stone tools dated in other sites”.

These finds at Monte Verde II effectively detonated our main ideas around the peopling of the Americas. For much of the 20th century, most archaeologists believed that the first Americans were people dubbed the Clovis, after a site in New Mexico. Clovis peoples made distinctive pointed stone tools. The oldest Clovis sites are about 13,000 years old.

"MONTE VERDE HAS

LONG BEEN CLAIMED

TO BE THE OLDEST

EVIDENCE OF HUMANS

IN THE AMERICAS"

So strong was the consensus around the Clovis First model that any pre-Clovis site came under immense scrutiny. Sites like Cooper's Ferry, Buttermilk creek and Paisley caves in North America have been endlessly picked over. Monte Verde was the first site to survive this process and become established.

In March this year, another team of archaeologists tried to tear the whole edifice down.

Todd Surovell first learned about Monte Verde in 1994, when he was an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin. Dillehay came as a guest speaker to talk about the site. “I was absolutely blown away,” he says. “It really inspired my career.”

Surovell is now an archaeologist at the University of Wyoming. Increasingly sceptical about Monte Verde, he and his colleagues visited the area in 2022 and 2023. They published their results in Science in March 2026.

He and his team didn't excavate at Monte Verde I or II, but along the banks of Chinchihuapi creek. Based on the layers of sediments they found, they reconstructed a history of the area.

About 20,000 years ago, they say, when Earth's climate was deep in a glacial period, the region was the outwash from a glacier extending down from the Andes: a plain with braided streams and lots of sand and gravel. Later, as the climate warmed, a forest moved in, transitioned into a wetland, and was then buried – forming a black peat. Then, around 11,000 years ago, a volcano called Michinmahuida erupted and blanketed the area in a layer of ash, called the Lepué Tephra. Afterwards, Chinchihuapi creek cut down through all these layers, forming an exposed surface where people lived.

This means that Monte Verde II must be younger than the Lepué Tephra ash layer, Surovell's team argues. Based on dating of sands and gravels at their excavation sites, the team places it between 8200 and 4200 years ago.

To say this has caused a row would be an understatement. The Science paper now has seven “eLetters” attached to it, responding to the various claims. On 19 August, Dillehay and his colleagues published an entire paper in the journal PaleoAmerica, rebutting Surovell’s team’s arguments.

A central problem with all this is that Surovell's team excavated near Monte Verde but not actually at it. Or, as Dillehay puts it: “They did not excavate at the site, never saw the stratigraphy and examined only surface landscape from 50 to 4000 [metres] away in distance.” Because this is a floodplain, where rivers shift over time and sediments can be mixed, extrapolating from one place to another is tricky.

For instance, Surovell and his team identified a layer of peat, which they say corresponds to the peat overlaying the Monte Verde II occupational layer. Dillehay's team says it doesn't.

JORGE GUZMÁN DÁVILA/WWW.INDAGA.ME

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快速测验 #375 出题人：Chelsea Whyte

1 一家 AI 公司一次性发布了 700 多篇数学论文，引发了数学家们对该技术使用的不安。这家公司是谁？

2 一种新型墨水使得纹身可以变为隐形。是什么触发了这种转变？

3 一种新型巨型睡莲已被鉴定。它是在哪个国家被发现的？

4 为了更好地理解长寿，研究人员首次分析了一个 194 岁生物的基因组。它是哪种动物？

5 哪项常见活动与我们脚踝海绵骨的轻微结构变化有关？

答案在第 47 页

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📄 Original Section

Disputed claims

Likewise, one of the key planks of evidence supporting Monte Verde's age is the large quantity of wood at the site, which has been dated. "There's a lot of wood in there that dates to the ice age, but that wood is derived from... older deposits," argues Surovell. "It was eroded from these older deposits to wash into the stream onto these younger surfaces." However, Dillehay argues that the wood shows no sign of having been redeposited – for example, there is no telltale damage from being bashed around in flood water.

Furthermore, there is no sign of the crucial Lepué Tephra ash layer at Monte Verde II, either above or below the layer with the artefacts. Dillehay argues that, therefore, it can't tell us anything about the age of the site.

So the argument goes on, for thousands of words and many more lines of reasoning. I have tried to pull out the main points, but I can't overemphasise how much of a rabbit hole this is. Every detail of Dillehay's and Surovell's excavations is being picked over.

When a scientific claim becomes disputed, resolving who is correct can become extremely challenging, because of the “experimenter’s regress”. If we don’t know the true answer to some question, then it is difficult to judge whether we have performed an experiment correctly. If you get a surprising result, maybe you have found something new, or maybe you screwed up the experiment.

So, if an experiment contradicts your favoured theory about the world, you can simply argue that the experiment was flawed, or that the people who ran it are incompetent. The trouble is that they can say the same thing about your experiment. Hence the experimenter's regress: a seemingly endless cycle of claim and counterclaim, with each side arguing that the other is stuffing up their research in crucial ways.

Tom Dillehay (below left) and his team (left) have long studied the Monte Verde site, with findings including a pebble tool thought to have been made 17,000 to 19,000 years ago (below)

COURTESY TOM DILLEHAY

JORGE GUZMÁN DÁVILA/WWW.INDAGA.ME

"GENETIC STUDIES SEEM TO INDICATE PEOPLE MOVING INTO THE AMERICAS AROUND 15,000 YEARS AGO"

I am not in a position to break the cycle here and call the correct answer. For one thing, I don't feel confident judging whether the peat layer at Monte Verde II and the peat layer Surovell's team found are, or aren't, the same thing.

Can we instead answer the question with independent lines of evidence? As I said, there are now a lot of pre-Clovis sites in the Americas, and more turn up regularly. Some of the most dramatic recent discoveries have been at White Sands National Park in New Mexico, where footprints and drag marks have been found that seem to be about 22,000 years old. Meanwhile, genetic studies of Indigenous Americans and their Asian relatives seem to indicate people moving into the Americas around 15,000 years ago. One interpretation is that there were some early wanderers who didn't survive, followed by at least one major migration.

This would seem to imply that people were in the Americas before the Clovis era, regardless of the truth about Monte Verde.

Surovell, for his part, argues that “the evidence for pre-Clovis in North and South America is not very good anywhere” and that “every other one of these sites has been questioned, and every other one of these sites is still in play”.

He contends that “there are a heck of a lot of people in my field who you don’t hear from very much in the press” who think the pre-Clovis sites are too poor in quality to be trusted. “I predict that you’re going to very much see archaeologists increasingly migrating back towards the Clovis First position.”

Meanwhile, Dillehay remains confident. "We just finished having an independent group of geologists and archaeologists at the site... who saw the stratigraphy, confirmed our work and pointed out the major errors of Surovell et al," he says. "They will be publishing the results soon."

I don't know which of these predictions will prove more prescient, but I will say that I thought this question had largely been settled, and I am interested to see if people like Surovell succeed in reopening it.

This is an extract from our subscriber newsletter Our Human Story, written by science writer Michael Marshall. Sign up at newscientist.com/our-human-story

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横向

1 腐败的乡巴佬大部分关注底栖生物出没的地方 (7)

5 对于伦敦的显赫地位，难以跟随最初的成功 (5)

8 三人组在释放后重组，在没有费用的情况下被筛选 (4-2-3)

9 它没开，大声地表达爱意 (3)

10 来自俄罗斯的钱必须离开 (5)

12 E 和 C 与复杂的点有关，涉及相对论？ (7)

13 南极洲的第二和第一绝不能扰乱极地研究站 (8-5)

15 乐队领袖与笨蛋的结合，一种像避瘟疫一样避开的纽带 (7)

17 紧随大多数国家之后，它以英尺和英寸计算？ (5)

19 肾上腺素由无菌管道内部提供 (3)

20 清晰地表达字母，如果你不捡起来，它们可能会被留下 (9)

22 一点血？首先是审判，然后是监狱 (1-4)

23 申请被拒绝——你不能进去 (2,5)

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纵向

1 容易看到近处和远处 (2,3)

2 科学guy比尔为派对腾出时间！ (3)

3 无尽的烦恼关于脾气暴躁的人 (7)

4 将“ocarina”中的“c”放错位置产生的连锁反应 (5,8)

5 Pyrus 捣碎以提供甜而粘稠的液体 (5)

6 皇家学会支持月球上的城堡，基于一个坚实的前提 (1,8)

7 大部分建筑随时间崩塌——这是一种损失 (7)

11 背诵紫色诗句？这取决于情况！ (5,4)

13 我在背景中变形了 (7)

14 向爱人施压 (7)

16 据报道，许多战舰上连接绳索的地方 (5)

18 蓝色，像甲基硫吩鎓氯化物？ (5)

21 在艺术之后，但被否认信用 (3)

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Plus Side 由 Puzzlr 创建

圈出下方网格中的数字以使用它们，或将其划掉以舍弃。圈出的数字之和必须同时等于每行末尾的目标值以及每列下方的目标值。

7 | 9< / > 5< / > 2< / > 4< / > 18< / > | 6< / > 5< / > 2< / > 3< / > 1< / > 15< / >< / > 1< / > 2< / > 7< / > 3< / > 9< / > 19< / >< / > 7< / > 2< / > 5< / > 9< / > 2< / > 21< / >< / > 3< / > 6< / > 5< / > 1< / > 3< / > 7< / >< / > 20< / > 11< / > 17< / > 18< / > 14< / > < / > |

本周谜题的答案见第 47 页

我们的游戏现在可以在线游玩 newscientist.com / games

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现实核查

如果我们观察到的世界仅仅是大脑对其从眼睛接收到的电化学信号的解读，那么世界实际上是什么样子的？

Mike Follows

英国西米德兰兹郡萨顿科尔德菲尔德。简短的回答是，我们其实并不真正知道。

我们所看到的，是大脑对光线击中视网膜时产生的电化学信号的解读。没有理由假设我们的感知就是决定性的感知。

因此，询问独立于任何观察者的现实是什么样子，可能有点像在询问一个听不到声音的东西听到的交响曲是什么样的。空气中存在压力波，但“声音”是听觉系统与这些波相互作用时产生的体验。某物看起来像什么，完全取决于观察者：蝙蝠主要通过回声定位构建世界，而鸟类和蜜蜂能看到我们看不见的波长。

甚至触觉也是一种体验。桌子感觉是坚固的，但在某种意义上，原子几乎是空的

---

“宇宙的特性可能仅在物理世界与能够体验它的事物相互作用时才会出现”

空间。阻止你的手穿过桌子的是电磁力与量子效应（包括泡利不相容原理）的结合。物理力是真实的；感觉到某种坚固之物是我们体验这些力的方式。

所以，也许询问宇宙实际上“看起来”像什么是一个错误的问题。它在本质上可能没有任何外观、声音或触感。这些特性可能仅在物理世界与某种事物相互作用时才会出现

IMAGEBROKER / GEERT WEGGEN / ALAMY

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本周新问题

动物感官哪种动物对现实的感官获取能力最强？苏珊·威廉姆斯，美国科罗拉多州莱克伍德

让它起泡考虑到二氧化碳对全球的影响，为什么它仍然被用于给水和软饮料增加气泡？伊恩·廷代尔，英国康沃尔郡西顿

能够体验到它。

这引出了关于意识的更深层问题。我们所知道的所有关于现实的信息，最终都是通过意识体验传达给我们的。我们永远无法跳出意识，将我们的感知与一个客观版本的现实（如果存在的话）进行比较。

将其推向极端，这会导致唯我论：即认为我们唯一能绝对确定知道的事情就是体验的存在。我们有充分的理由相信外部世界和其他心智的存在，但归根结底，这两者都是从体验中推断出来的。

这并不意味着当没有人观察时，宇宙就消失了。但这留下了一个深刻的问题。

意识仅仅是产生于我们大脑中发生的物理过程，还是在某种程度上是现实的一个基本特征？

文森特·莫里西

澳大利亚新南威尔士州，

库纳巴拉布兰

许多人已经接受了存在两个世界的观点——我们大脑中的模拟世界和真实世界。模拟世界基于我们的感官输入。由于包括心理和情绪状态在内的多种因素，每个人对世界的体验都将是独特的。

但脱离了我们人类的偏见，真实世界究竟是什么样子？我怀疑，真实世界只有在被观察者强加定义时，才会呈现出某种特定的现实。

想要向我们发送问题或答案吗？请发送电子邮件至 lastword@newscientist.com。问题应关于日常科学现象。完整条款与条件请参阅 newscientist.com / lw-terms

哪种动物拥有最广泛的感官范围，从而能最大限度地获取现实？

这是一个由力场和瞬态组成的世界，这些是我们在模拟世界中可能会忽略的东西。在真实世界中，没有任何事物具有固定的边界。

而且可能还存在隐藏的深度以及世界中的世界，类似于一套俄罗斯套娃。

---

无氧生命

如果厌氧生命是唯一的生命形式，地球会有多么不同？它能否产生意识？

希拉里·肖 (Hillary Shaw)

英国，什罗普郡，纽波特

一些厌氧生命是专性厌氧的——它们只能生活在无氧环境中，例如人类的肠道或深层淤泥中。其他生物可以在没有氧气的情况下生存，但更倾向于有氧环境，或者虽然以厌氧方式生存但不会被氧气伤害。

最大的问题在于，糖分的厌氧分解是不完全的，其产生的能量仅为有氧分解的 5%，因此厌氧生物通常不是多细胞生物。

假设光合细菌从未在地球上出现。如果行星的大气层中不含氧气，那么目前在地球上仅能在深层淤泥等环境中繁衍的耐氧性差的物种，就可以生活在任何地方，包括地表。

这种生命要变成多细胞甚至智能生物，仍然面临巨大的障碍。首先是厌氧呼吸的能量产出低，尤其是在缺乏糖分的情况下。其次，任何智能的用途都将非常有限，因为没有需要避开的捕食者，且移动能力非常有限。这些生物基本上只是呆在原地，进食并分裂。

让我们假设某种多细胞、可移动、厌氧且智能的生物确实进化了出来。它可能看起来像黏菌，且移动速度非常缓慢。它感知时间的速度可能很慢——几天在它看来可能就像几分钟。它的沟通能力将受到限制，而且可能无法感知声音。也许它能超越化学信号，演化出一种光信号形式（它的大脑和感觉器官处理信息的速度也会非常缓慢）。也许它能进化出（移动缓慢的）肢体，甚至发展出文字。

亨利迟到了，发现其他所有人都已经建立了联系。

但随后它将面临与海洋智能生物在 Hycean 世界（一种理论上的系外行星，具有富氢大气层和液态水海洋）中类似的物理和文化发展障碍。

它将没有火，没有金属冶炼，没有电力，因此它对化学和物理学的认知将非常有限。

也许在数百万年的时间里，它在艺术、社会科学，甚至生物学和数学方面有所发展，但对于这种生物来说，

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“任何智能的用途都将非常有限，因为没有需要避开的捕食者，且移动能力非常有限”

要发展太空旅行，甚至建造望远镜来研究家园行星之外的世界，将是非常困难的。

---

气味错觉

有视觉错觉和听觉错觉。那么是否存在嗅觉错觉？（接上篇）

---

理查德·鲁宾 (Richard Reubin)

通过电子邮件

嗅觉错觉或嗅觉幻觉确实存在，并在医学文献中有描述。这种现象被称为“幻嗅”（phantosmia），可能随机出现在身体健康的人身上，但也发生在各种癌症化疗期间或之后。

根据我化疗后的个人经历，我可以证明这种现象相当令人不安。

我意识到的幻嗅通常是腐臭性质的，这导致我在房子周围和垃圾桶里寻找气味来源。

---

安迪·克罗夫特 (Andy Croft)

英国，汉普郡，朴次茅斯

几年前，我的偏头痛先兆从漂亮的灯光变成了某种气味，一种烤焦面包的味道。根据确认此情况的神经科医生的说法，这种情况在医生眼中发生的频率比大多数人意识到的要高。

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📄 Original Section

This week's new questions

Animal senses Which animal has the most sensory access to reality? Susan Williams, Lakewood, Colorado, US

Make it fizz Given the worldwide impact of carbon dioxide, why is it still used to put the fizz in water and soft drinks? Ian Tindal, Seaton, Cornwall, UK

capable of experiencing it.

This leads to the deeper problem of consciousness. Everything we know about reality ultimately comes to us through conscious experience. We can never step outside consciousness to compare our perception with an objective version of reality, if one exists.

Taken to its extreme, this leads to solipsism: the idea that the only thing we can know with absolute certainty is that experience exists. We have very good reasons to believe that an external world and other minds exist, but ultimately both are inferred from experience.

That doesn't mean the universe disappears when nobody is looking. But it leaves a profound question.

Does consciousness simply emerge from the physical processes taking place in our brains, or is it somehow a fundamental feature of reality?

Vincent Morrissey

Coonabarabran,

New South Wales, Australia Many people already accept that there are two worlds – the simulation in our brain and the real one. The simulation is based on our sensory inputs. Everyone will have a unique experience of the world due to several factors, including our mental and emotional state.

But what is the real world actually like, free from our human bias? I suspect that the real world takes on a particular reality only when imposed by an observer.

Want to send us a question or answer? Email us at lastword@newscientist.com Questions should be about everyday science phenomena Full terms and conditions at newscientist.com/lw-terms

Which animal has the broadest range of senses, and therefore the most access to reality?

This is a world of force fields and transient states, things that we may overlook in our simulated world. In the real world, nothing has a fixed boundary.

There are also likely to be hidden depths and worlds within worlds, akin to a set of nesting Russian dolls.

---

Ametrine Lavender

英国西约克郡，赫布登桥

关于前一位通信者提到的因脑瘤而产生水仙花气味幻觉的话题，我想到了几十年前的一位患有癫痫的朋友。

她发作前可靠的先兆（aura）是柠檬的味道。

4-Chain reaction, 5-Syrp,

6-A fortion, 7-Deficit, 11-Plumb

line, 13-Ambient, 14-Squeeze,

16-Navel, 18-Saltv, 21-Aff

DOWN 1 By far, 2 Nye, 3-Hothrad,

23 No entry

23 No authority.

20 Voicemail, 22 T-cell,

15 Dubonic, 17 Units, 19 EPI,

12 Nepotic, 13 Amundsen-Scott,

8 Freie-to-air, 9 Off, 10 Rupee,

ACROSS 1 Benthic, 5 Shard,

📄 Original Section

No O₂ life

How different would Earth be if anaerobic life were the only life form, and could it have become sentient?

Hillary Shaw

Newport, Shropshire, UK

Some anaerobic life is obligate anaerobic – it can live only in oxygen-free environments, such as the human gut or deep mud. Other organisms can live without oxygen, but prefer it, or live anaerobically but aren't harmed by oxygen.

The biggest problem is that the anaerobic breakdown of sugar is only partial and yields just 5 per cent of the energy that aerobic breakdown does, so anaerobic organisms are generally not multicellular.

Suppose that photosynthetic bacteria never appeared on Earth. If the planet's atmosphere contained no oxygen, then oxygen-intolerant species that now thrive on Earth only, for example, in deep mud, could live anywhere, including right on the surface.

There are still huge obstacles to this life becoming multicellular and even intelligent. First is the low energy yield of anaerobic respiration, especially in the absence of sugars. Then, any intelligence would be of limited use as there are no predators to avoid and mobility is very limited. These organisms basically just sit there and feed and divide.

Let's suppose somehow a multicellular, mobile, anaerobic, intelligent organism does evolve. It would probably look like a slime mould and be very slow-moving. It could perceive time slowly – days would seem like minutes to it. Its communication abilities would be limited, and it probably wouldn't be able to perceive sound. Maybe it gets beyond chemical signals to a form of light signalling (its brain and sensory organs would process things very slowly, too). Maybe it could evolve (very slow-moving) limbs and even develop writing.

HENRY ARRIVED LATE AND FOUND THAT EVERYONE ELSE HAD ALREADY BONDED.

But then it faces physical and cultural developmental barriers similar to a marine intelligent organism on a Hycean world (a theoretical exoplanet with a hydrogen-rich atmosphere and oceans of liquid water).

It would have no fire, no metal smelting, no electricity, so its knowledge of chemistry and physics would remain very limited.

Maybe over millions of years it develops in the arts and social sciences, even biology and mathematics, but it would be

---

199

隐晦十字谜题

5 Wearing shoes

4 Giant torque

3 Colombia

2 Light

1 OpenAI^💡

快速测验 #375

谜题答案

封底页反馈

---

猫咪大游行

有些话题似乎对“反馈”栏目的读者具有极强的吸引力，其中之一就是猫（见右侧）。在 9 月 23 日的版本中，我们描述了一项给宠物猫安装加速度计的研究。结果显示，它们绝大部分时间都在无所事事，其中 20.1% 到 41.4% 的时间在坐着，另有 34.8% 到 52.9% 的时间在躺着。我们认为这些猫有点懒散，甚至可能正趋向于终日无业。

我们收到了关于这一观点的反馈。读者杰克·哈利（Jack Haley）给我们发了一段“由 Google AI 提供”的长文（先把它标记起来，我们稍后会谈到），讲述了斯蒂芬·巴恩斯（Stephen Barnes）的经历，他是一位在 2010 年代参与猫类追踪实验的澳大利亚地质学家。

哈利的文中概述的结果令人震惊：“Squid，一只较重的橘色虎斑猫，被记录到定期在深夜漫步至当地高中和附近的一家购物中心。Semi，一只黑白猫，走得更远，竟然在距离家三公里的地方出没。”

此外，“像 Cat Tracker 项目这样的研究表明，大约 40% 的猫在主人认为它们晚上在室内或附近时，实际上活动范围超过一公顷，经常进行秘密的长距离邻里探索。”

出于好奇，“反馈”栏目也开始调查，最终发现 Cat Tracker 项目最初由北卡罗来纳大学发起，随后在澳大利亚重复实验（现在已有 Cat Tracker 2.0）。其最终结果于 2020 年发表在《动物保护》（Animal Conservation）杂志上。这些“猫类观察员”写道：“我们与公民科学家合作，追踪了来自 6 个国家的 925 只宠物猫，发现其家域范围异常之小。”平均范围为“3.6 公顷”（0.036 平方公里），且在样本中只有 3 只猫的活动范围超过 1 平方公里。

读者可能会注意到一些微妙的

---

为《新科学家》创作的 Twisteddoodles

“狗很笨且气味难闻，所以你因为喜欢狗而应该感到愧疚——一项系统性综述。”

有想要发送给“反馈”（Feedback）栏目的故事吗？

请发送至 feedback@newscientist.com

或邮寄至 New Scientist, 9 Derry Street, London, W8 5HY

邮寄物品的审阅时间将会延迟

@twisteddoodles

AI 框架化结果的方式与科学家所做的方式之间存在差异。从技术上讲，如果你仔细思考，AI 确实抓住了核心事实，然而，“反馈”栏目仍然认为猫相当懒惰。

与此同时，助理新闻编辑 Sam Wong 向我们发送了一项发表在 PLoS One 上的研究，题为《财富、健康、猫与弓形虫：一项关于 93 个国家主观幸福感的生态相关性研究》。该研究发现，“国家幸福感与猫的密度呈正相关”。

他们指的当然是“人口密度”，但“反馈”栏目也非常确定，具有更高物理密度的猫会对它们人类照顾者的幸福感产生显著影响。我们养的一只猫在想要睡在主人身上时，可以将身体收缩到密度接近中子星的程度。

---

狂暴地狱火

许多讲座都深受缺乏共鸣之苦。潜在的听众可能会好奇，寒武纪有冠动物的进化分歧，或者玻色-费米混合物中由拖拽引起的趋肤效应，与我的生活有什么关系？

10 月 8 日在犹他州立大学举行的一场讲座则没有这种共鸣限制，主讲人是亚利桑那州立大学哲学专业的研究生米兰达·贾德森（Miranda Judson）。组织者指出，一篇宣布该讲座的帖子出人意料地走红了——这并不奇怪。

该讲座题为《欢迎来到地狱：一种神义论》。副标题进一步阐明：“本次讲座认为，我们世界的证据表明，我们身处地狱的可能性惊人地高。

如果我们身处地狱，我们预期的证据正是我们实际看到的那些。”

遗憾的是，该讲座没有在线直播，贾德森似乎尚未发表相关论文。但坦白说，考虑到目前的普遍状况，我们觉得填补这些空白应该不会太难。如果我们了解到更多信息，我们会再次报道，希望不是通过脑海中恶魔的声音这种媒介。

---

睡前故事

说到我们身处地狱的证据，读者们可能听说过那位 AI 工程师，他告诉妻子，他不需要在睡前给孩子们读书，因为他可以训练一个 AI 来替他完成。如果你还没听说过这件事，那么现在你知道了。

涉事工程师是阿尔文·宋（Alvin Sng），就职于一家名为 Factory 的公司。宋于 10 月 7 日在 X 上发布了以下内容：“我的妻子：你能给宝宝读本书吗？我：我可以直接用手机播放有声书。我的妻子：但那样就不是你的声音了。我：我可以训练一个语音模型。”他的结论是：“当你从事 AI 工作时，为人父母的感觉截然不同。”

“反馈”栏目不打算对此进行嘲讽，因为很大一部分能上网的人已经这么做了，而且现在这样做太简单了。不过，我们会注意到宋随后删除了该帖子，并在 10 月 8 日写道：“好了，开玩笑开得差不多了。我现在回去读睡前故事。”对此帖的回复表明，人们并不相信他是在开玩笑。

问题在于，AI 兄弟们（Al bros）经常发表的言论如此夸张，以至于很难将恶搞与真实情况区分开来。互联网格言“波尔定律”（Poe's law）描述了这种针对极端观点的现象，即这些观点通常荒谬到任何恶搞都必须明确标注。

也许我们需要一个推论，类似于：“如果没有明显的幽默展示，就完全不可能以一种不被误认为真实原件的方式，去恶搞反社会的 AI 炒作”。我们可以将其称为“宋定律”。

---

极光地带之旅

---

接下来的几个月是观测北极光的黄金时间——您会前往吗？

北极光冒险之旅：加拿大丘吉尔 2027年2月3日 / 7天

北极光、峡湾与冰川：挪威斯瓦尔巴和特罗姆瑟 2027年3月4日 / 7天

---

如何观测并拍摄极光

加入屡获殊荣的天文学作家及极光追逐者 Jamie Carter 的行列，参加一场引人入胜的 60 分钟在线讲座，共同探索自然界最伟大的奇观之一：北极光。

由《新科学家》探索之旅（New Scientist Discovery Tours）专家 Jamie Carter 主持

扫描二维码预订您的名额

为好奇之魂打造的科学引领之旅

超霸系列 (Speedmaster)

自 1957 年起成为经典

超霸系列月相专业表 (SPEEDMASTER MOONWATCH PROFESSIONAL) 同轴天文台认证大师天文钟

🧭 今日主编程控导读：聚焦「俄罗斯和中国正利用 AI 对英国发起网络攻击」、「AI 正在助力提升俄罗斯和中国的网络攻击能力」等核心政经议题

🎭 本期时代思潮与社会文化雷达

《New_Scientist_2410》本期社会思潮与时代切片

🗂️ 全版面分栏导览目录 (点击标题直达正文)

📑 封面内容

📑 健康/医学

📑 考古/历史

📑 书籍评论

📑 读者来信/科学澄清

📑 心理学/社会

📑 哲学/意识

综合要闻 1

THE NEXT BIG (Small) THING

下一个重大（微小）发现

Glow-up

焕新升级

News

新闻

Views

观点

Features

特写

The back pages

封底页

Can we fix it?

厄尔尼诺现象导致海平面上升

"When it comes to sea-level rise, we have locked ourselves in for a lot of future pain"

苏丹因厄尔尼诺现象面临饥荒

PUBLISHING & COMMERCIAL

加利福尼亚在热带风暴 Rachel 袭击后出现洪水，且受厄尔尼诺现象加剧

Marketing & Data

一波麻烦

NewScientist

俄罗斯和中国正利用 AI 对英国发起网络攻击

El Niño has increased sea levels

“没有两天是相同的；你总能看到不同类型的攻击”

Sudan faces famine due to El Niño

AI 正在助力提升俄罗斯和中国的网络攻击能力

California saw flooding after tropical storm Rachel, exacerbated by El Niño

AI 将在下一个科学领域掀起怎样的颠覆？马修·斯帕克斯（Matthew Sparkes）发现，AI 在计算机编程和数学领域已取得巨大进步——现在，轮到物理学了

A wave of trouble

“ 很快就能设计出人类无法理解的实验，这在目前看来完全是有可能的”

Russia and China are using AI to stage cyberattacks on the UK

什么是科学？

"No two days are the same; you're always seeing different kinds of attack"

AMOC 崩溃后我们仍能将其挽救

AI is helping to boost the cyberattack abilities of both Russia and China

“AMOC的可逆性并不意味着安全，因为我们需要海量的二氧化碳移除”

Which field of science will AI next turn upside down? Huge strides have been taken by AI in computer programming and mathematics – and now it could be physics' turn, finds Matthew Sparkes

你母亲的细胞可能就在你的大脑中

"It is already entirely possible that AI will soon design an experiment that humans don't understand"

未来的冰量损失可能已成定局

What counts as science?

即使海洋冷却，南极洲的“末日”冰川仍将继续融化，尽管邻近的冰川可能会开始增长，艾莉森·乔治 (Alison George) 发现

We can rescue the AMOC after its collapse

“降低排放并控制冰层流失速度仍然至关重要”

"AMOC reversibility does not mean safety, as we need a huge amount of carbon dioxide removal"

巍峨的冰崖将如何崩塌？

Your mother's cells could be in your brain

如果斯韦茨冰川崩塌，可能会导致海平面上升 5 米

Future ice loss may be locked in

末日情景

Even if oceans cool, Antarctica's "doomsday" glacier will continue to melt, although a neighbouring glacier might begin to grow, discovers Alison George

益生菌降低配方奶喂养婴儿的呼吸道感染风险

"It's still really essential to bring down our emissions and control that rate of ice loss"

“服用益生菌的婴儿从感染中恢复的速度也快了几天”

How will towering glacial ice cliffs collapse?

在配方奶中添加补充剂有助于增强免疫反应

If Thwaites glacier collapses, it could lead to 5 metres of sea-level rise

巨型细菌可能生活在你的肠道中

Doomsday scenario

“我们认为这种细菌利用了微生物组失衡的机会”

Probiotic cuts risk of respiratory infections in formula-fed babies

古鸟类化石或将改写早期翅膀进化史

"Infants given the probiotic also recovered a few days faster from the infections"

科学家投票决定取消闰秒

Supplementing formula milk could help enhance the immune response

UTC 在被修正前将与天文时间产生最高一小时的偏差

Giant bacteria could be living in your gut

“向闰时的转变应能确保未来几个世纪时间流逝的连续性”

暗物质探测钱达·普雷斯科特-温斯坦表示，可以说我们已经发现了暗物质，但为了观测到它，我们需要弄清楚我们预期它表现得像粒子还是像波