Where do "vampires" draw nutrients? The US media takes stock of the 10 weirdest scientific studies of 2019

According to the US media, the American fun science website took stock of the 10 weirdest scientific studies of 2019 on December 23: the Loch Ness monster, the vampire tree, frozen feces, the deformation of the paste...

Scientists delve into the scientific truth behind these strange phenomena and come up with some rather bizarre experiments. Other studies have looked at bizarre life forms such as vampire trees, snobbish mosquitoes and amphibian-eating plants. Sometimes science is just that weird – and that's why we love it! Read on for the 10 weirdest studies of the year.

Look for the DNA of the Loch Ness Monster

According to popular legend, the famous Loch Ness Monster has lived in Scotland's deep lakes for over 1,000 years. But a study conducted this year showed that there doesn't seem to be any sign of "water monster DNA" in Loch Ness. Geneticists took more than 250 water samples from this huge lake and examined fragments of DNA floating in each sample. The survey found traces of genes from more than 3,000 species living in and around Loch Ness, including fish, deer, pigs, bacteria and humans. But the team found no giant reptiles or aquatic dinosaurs, or even signs of the presence of large sturgeon or catfish that could be mistaken for mysterious water monsters. However, they did find large eels, so it is possible (though unlikely) that the Loch Ness Monster was actually a very large eel.

A knife made of feces?

Many scholars are familiar with a strange story about the Inuit. An Inuit man in the story is trapped in a snowstorm, who makes a knife out of his frozen feces and then uses it to slaughter a dog. While the story is well known among anthropologists, no one has ever tried to make a knife out of frozen feces — until this year, when a team of researchers tried to build their own. Study lead author Metin Ellen went through an 8-day "Arctic diet" to provide the "raw materials" needed, and then the research team froze these "raw materials" and made them into the shape of a knife with a metal file. But when the team tried to cut a piece of pork skin with their newly made knife, they only left a brown mark on the meat.

A plant that eats salamanders

Bottle grass, a northern cordyceps, can use its cup-shaped leaves to catch insects that are not careful enough and digest these insects to absorb their nutrients. But earlier this year, scientists were surprised to find that bottle grass can also swallow salamanders. A team of researchers sampled hundreds of bottlegrasses in Algonquin Park, Ontario, Canada, and found that about 20 percent of bottlegrasses caught at least one juvenile salamander, and many bottlegrasses captured several at the same time. Salamanders are drowned, starved or "boiled" in the acidic liquid of bottle grass, and once dead, their bodies decompose in about 10 days. The research team estimates that the greedy plant may ingest 5 percent of the juvenile salamanders within the swamp each year.

Your tongue can smell like a nose

No, that doesn't mean you should stop and lick the flowers to smell the scent – but our senses of taste and smell may be more entangled than we previously thought. In a study published in April, scientists exposed lab-grown human taste cells to odor molecules and found that these cells respond to odor in the same way as olfactory cells in our nasal cavity. When an odor molecule comes into contact with a taste cell, the chemical enters a receptor on the surface of the cell. In the human body, the interaction between odors and receptors often triggers a chain reaction within cells, causing cells to send signals to the brain.

The vampire tree draws nutrients from its neighbors

Deep in New Zealand's forests, an inconspicuous stump clings to the roots of the conifers next to it, sucking up their hard-earned water and nutrients. Scientists stumbled upon the plant "vampire" while hiking in West Auckland, New Zealand, surrounded by hundreds of kauri trees — a coniferous tree that can grow up to 165 feet tall. During the day, these towering trees carry water from the roots to the leaves. At night, the dwarf stump pumps the remaining water and nutrients from the neighbor's roots to its own roots. Sebastian Loizinger, an associate professor at Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand, one of the study authors, said in a statement: "Maybe we should not think of trees as individuals, but rather as a superorganism." ”

Loud enough to vaporize water

If scientists fired an extremely fine X-ray laser into a stream of water, would it make a sound? Yes, it will. This year, researchers used such a device to create what may be the loudest underwater sound. Inside the vacuum vessel, the pulsed beam of the X-ray laser collides with a jet of water as thin as a blade, instantly splitting the jet in two and vaporizing the liquid on both sides. The pressure wave spreads from the point of contact, making a 270-decibel sound, louder than the loudest rocket launch in NASA history. If it is a little louder, it may make the liquid it passes through boil.

Will black holes evaporate?

Stephen Hawking, a well-known theoretical physicist and cosmologist, predicted that black holes would not only suck objects into their depths, but would also emit particles into space. His theory is that these particles will slowly take away the mass and energy of the black hole until the black hole eventually disappears — but physicists never thought they would be able to prove it.

This year, however, a team of researchers finally discovered this elusive Hawking radiation in lab experiments. The team created a "waterfall" with an extremely cold stream of air to simulate the event horizon (an invisible boundary from which nothing can escape). Quantum sound waves injected into the gas could flow away from the waterfall if they were inserted into a nearby "stream", but the sound waves of the waterfall itself were trapped by the relentless air current. We can think of these escaping sound waves as light particles escaping from a black hole — suggesting that Hawking's theory is correct.

Mosquitoes don't like Skew rex's music

Research shows — if anyone wants to know — that female mosquitoes don't like the musical style of Schirex (American DJ, singer, guitarist and music producer). A study published in March found that after listening to a 10-minute Ske rex album, the pests had reduced blood sucking and mating activity, at least compared to mosquitoes in quiet environments. But why would an insect research team play Skelex music to these bugs in the first place? Oh, and they're wondering if it's possible to manipulate the mosquito's behavior with loud music that could become an "environmentally friendly" alternative to pesticides. The research team believes that loud music may have distracted mosquitoes, making them unable to find nearby food sources and potential mates.

A particle that is not a particle

This year, physicists may have finally discovered the "odd son" — a particle that doesn't actually exist. Particles such as electrons and protons exist for a long time, while odds as "quasiparticles" appear in a flash. As early as the 1970s, scientists predicted the existence of odd seeds for the first time. They believe that during the violent collision of protons and antiprotons, it is possible for an odd number of tiny particles called "quarks" to form. The researchers achieved particle collisions on the world's largest atomic shredder, the Large Hadron Collider, recreating a decades-old vision. The team found some strange differences in the way protons collide with those of antiprotons, and the presence of oddons may explain why such differences exist.

Ou does not crack

Oobleck is a lovely gelatinous semi-fluid that can flow like a liquid, but when you tap it, it can turn into a solid state again. You can mix cornstarch and water together to make your own euphoria, and with a new computer model, you can also predict how this strange substance will react to various forces. The scientists used this model to simulate how Euphorus would react when it was squeezed between two plates, hit by an aerial projectile, or crushed by a virtual wheel. They hope to find new uses for this sticky paste, such as temporarily filling dangerous potholes on the road.