科学也不能解释?看看这5个超自然现象吧

科学也不能解释？看看这5个超自然现象吧

1. Why People Yawn

人为什么会打哈欠

You yawn, I yawn, we all yawn. Reading or thinking about it makes you more likely to yawn. （Did you just yawn?） You can even “catch” yawns from other people, and from other animals like dogs. Thanks, biology—but what purpose does yawning serve?

你会打哈欠，我会打哈欠，大家都会打哈欠。特别是在阅读和思考的时候我们会打更多的哈欠，有时打哈欠还会“传染”，你看到身边的人甚至是狗打哈欠时，你可能也会情不自禁的打上一个。那到底我们为什么会打哈欠呢？

Ideas abound, but none seem to hold up to scientific scrutiny. One is that yawning helps to cool the brain by increasing blood flow to the jaws, neck, and sinuses, and then removing heat from this blood when inhaling a big breath. Counterintuitively, yawning occurs less frequently in hot weather, when air has less ability to cool the body. In short, yawning “fails precisely when we need it,” Dr. Adrian Guggisberg told WebMD. One hypothesis that has not （yet） been discarded: yawns “serve as a signal for our bodies to perk up, a way of making sure we stay alert,” Maria Konnikova wrote in The New Yorker. “A yawn is usually followed by increased movement and physiological activity, which suggests that some sort of ‘waking up’ has taken place.”

类似的解释有很多，但是没有几个能经受严格的科学论证。有一种说法是：打哈欠可以增加流向咽部，颈部和鼻窦的血液，让血液带走头部更多的热量，从而起到给大脑降温的作用。与我们直觉相反的是，在天热的时候人们打哈欠的频率反而更低。简单来说就是“在我们需要它的时候，它掉链子了” Adrian Guggisberg博士说。还有一个目前未被抛弃的假设是：打哈欠作为一个信号让我们身体活跃起来，保持警惕。Maria Konnikova在《纽约客》上写道：打哈欠后一般会伴有活动的增加和生理活动的活跃，这也许提示存在一种“唤醒”。

And why are yawns contagious? A recent study in PLoS ONE suggests they’re way of showing empathy. But another newer study concluded the opposite. So it goes.

那为什么打哈欠具有“传染”性呢？根据最近发表在Plos ONE上的文章，这也许和移情作用有关。不过又有更加新的研究得出相反的结论。我们就让它随风去吧。

2. Ghosts

鬼魂

“Alright,” you might say, “I understand that yawning thing, but ghosts don’t exist.” Well, a plurality of Americans—48 percent, in fact—believe they do, according to a CBS News poll in 2005. Most women—about 56 percent—believe in ghosts. And more than one-fifth of people CBS polled say they’ve seen or felt the presence of a ghost.

“好吧”，你也许会说，“我明白了打哈欠的事情了，那鬼魂呢？我不相信鬼魂的存在。”Well，根据美国CBS新闻在2005年的民意调查，其实48%的美国民众都相信鬼魂的存在。而过半数的女性（56%）相信鬼魂的存在。此外，还有超过五分之一的受访民众表示曾经看到过或者感受过鬼魂的存在。

Modern scientists haven’t delved into this topic all that much, but a few compelling explanations exist. One has to do with infrasound, or low-frequency sounds inaudible to humans but that storms and even household appliances can generate. Such rumbles can vibrate human organs and make people feel a sense of unease. Infrasound vibrations can also mess with vision and make people think they are seeing things. Another idea is that drafts may create “cold spots” thought to be signs of spirits.

A final theory is that some observations of ghosts may have been due to hallucinations caused by carbon monoxide poisoning.

现代科学对这个话题并没有深入的研究。不过也有一些让人大开眼界的解释。有一种说法是：与次声波，或者超出人类听觉范围的低频声音有关。次声波可以由风暴产生，也可以由家用电器产生。次声波可以使人类的器官发生振动而让人产生不安感。次声波还可以干扰人的视觉，让人误认为看到了什么。另外还有一个说法是：气流可能会造成一个“冷点”，让人误以为是鬼魂的存在。最后一个理论是，有一部分声称看到鬼魂的人，实质上是由于一氧化碳中毒而造成的幻觉。

3. Déjà Vu

似曾相识感

You’ve probably had this feeling before: As something happens, you feel you’re reliving a past moment. What causes this eerie feeling of déjà vu? In short: No one is certain, but some ideas exist.

你也许有过这样的感觉：有些场景好像在以前已经经历过，现在有重现了，让你感觉你是回到了过去。到底是为什么会产生这种似曾相识感?简单回答你吧：目前还没有明确解释，但是有些观点也许有帮助。

One study, which placed people in a virtual computer world, hints that the feeling triggers most frequently when a person encounters a place that’s similar in layout to another place he or she has visited, but doesn’t consciously recognize. “One

reason for the jarring sense that accompanies déjà vu may be the contrast between the sense of newness and the simultaneous sense of oldness—something unfamiliar should not also feel familiar,” cognitive psychologist Anne Cleary at Colorado State University told Scientific American. Another study found that one healthy male subject experienced a strong recurrent sense of déjà vu when he took two drugs to ward off the flu. Déjà vu might also come about when the brain improperly encodes a new memory, or when it misfires when establishing a sense of familiarity.

有一个研究，把研究对象置入到虚拟的电脑世界，研究人员发现，当研究对象遇到一个新场景，但是这个场景布局和他之前接触过的熟悉场景的布局比较接近，而他又没有意识到这一点的时候，他就很容易会产生似曾相识的感觉。科罗拉多州立大学的认知心理学家Anne Cleary告诉《科学美国人》：伴随似曾相识感的那种不安感可能是由于新旧场景的对比导致的，一个不熟悉的场景不应该同时又是熟悉的。还有一个研究发现，一位健康的男性在服用了两颗预防流感的药物后产生了强烈的似曾相识感。此外，这种感觉也可能是由于大脑在建立新记忆或者在产生熟悉感的过程中出错导致的。

4. Bigfoot

大脚怪

Bigfoot is a creature of many names — Sasquatch in the Pacific Northwest, Yeti in the Himalayas, “wild man” in Central Asia, and （my favorite）“Yowie” in Australia — but science knows it as a cryptid: a type of animal whose existence hasn’t been proven. Definitive proof of Bigfoot has never been established, but as scientists have been known to say, “absence of proof isn’t proof of absence.” Many speculate that Bigfoot sightings often involve large animals that could be mistaken for humans, such as bears. One recent study looked at DNA from hairs, which allegedly came from a large human-like beast. The study found that the hairs came from “raccoons, sheep, bears, dogs, humans and more,” the New York Times reported. （Bigfoot was not listed.）

大脚怪是一种有很多名称的生物：在太平洋西北地区，它称为“萨斯科奇人（Sasquatch）”，在喜马拉雅地区，它称为“雪人（Yeti）”;在亚洲中部，它称为“野人（wild man）”，而在澳大利亚，则被称为“幽微（yowie）”。而科学家们则是称之为神秘生物：一种为被证实存在的生物。关于大脚怪存在的证据尚未找到，但是“缺乏证明存在的证据并不能作为不存在的证据”，有很多推测认为：在发生大脚怪的目击中，通常会涉及到大型的生物，例如熊，这可能会让人误以为是大脚怪。最近有研究机构获得了一份据称是来自于大型人形野兽的毛发样品。研究人员对样品的DNA进行分析，结果是“可能来源于浣熊、羊、熊、狗、人类或其他生物”，《纽约时报》报道（大脚怪并没有被列入）。

5. The Placebo Effect

安慰剂效应

You surely know about the placebo effect: If you truly think something will have a particular somatic effect （like reduce pain）, it probably will—even if it is just a sugar pill and has no pharmacological activity. For this reason, placebo pills are used in all legitimate medical studies, to prove whether or not a drug actually has an effect that isn’t psychological. The placebo effect is actually more puzzling than you might expect, though—recent work has shown, for example, that it even works when participants are told they are taking a sugar pill. It also works for sleep. If you believe you got a better night of sleep compared to others who slept the same amount, you are more likely to perform better at a variety of tasks.

你肯定已经听说过安慰剂效应：如果你真心相信某样东西能产生特定的生理作用（例如说减轻疼痛），那它也许就真的能起作用，即使那样东西仅仅是一个小糖丸，而且完全没有药理学活性。因此，在所有的合法医学研究中，研究人员都说提供安慰剂，来证明药物的效果不是来源于心理作用。但是最近的研究表明，安慰剂的效果要远比我们想像的大，例如说，你即使已经告诉受试者，他所服用的药物为安慰剂，依然能产生效应。这也同样适用于睡眠这一领域。如果你确信自己和其他跟你睡了相同时间的人相比，睡得更好，那么你很可能在某些测试中表现得更加好。

There are some clues here and there as to how it might work. For example, one study found that in people given fake pain-relieving cream experienced less activity in pain-sensing regions of the brain. Another found a similar fake cream activated cells in the spinal cord （see the above image）. But how the exact process maps across a whole host of experiences—from fighting infection, to performing better on tests, to sleeping better—nobody really knows.

有一些实验也许能解释安慰剂效益，例如说，有研究人员发现，当受试者被给予假的疼痛缓解乳膏（安慰剂）时，受试者大脑的疼痛感觉中枢的活跃程度会下降。此外，一个类似的实验也发现，假的疼痛缓解软膏会激活脊髓细胞。但是安慰剂到底是如何做到抗感染、让受试者在测试中有更好的表现、睡眠质量更好等，这个具体的过程步骤和原理，我们还是不得而知。