越来越相似，我说的是挂钟啦！

The 350-year-old mystery of why pendulum clocks hanging from the same wall synchronize over time may finally be solved, scientists say.

350年前，摆钟的钟摆逐渐同步的现象被第一次观察到，而直到今天这个谜团才终于被解开。

In 1665, Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens, inventor of the pendulum clock, was lying in bed with a minor illness and watching two of his clocks hanging on a wall, said Henrique Oliveira, a mathematician at the University of Lisbon and co-author of a new study detailing the findings. Huygens noticed something odd: No matter how the pendulums on these clocks began, within about a half-hour, they ended up swinging in exactly the opposite direction from each other.

1665年，荷兰物理学家，也是摆钟的发明人克里斯蒂安·惠更斯正生着小病躺在床上，看着自家墙上的两个挂钟咔嗒咔嗒响。这时惠更斯发现了一件了不得的事!——不论两个挂钟的钟摆如何开始摆动，只要给它们半个小时，钟摆最终都会以相同的频率，相反的方向摆动。

The cause of this effect — what Huygens called an "odd kind of sympathy" — remained a mystery for centuries. But recently, scientists analyzing two pendulum clocks hanging from the same beam found that the clocks could influence each other through small forces exerted on the supporting beam. However, "nobody tested properly the idea of clocks hanging on the same wall," Oliveira told Live Science.

这个奇怪的效应自被发现起就成了一个谜。三百多年后的最近，终于有科学家认真研究了这个现象。科学家们将两个挂钟挂在同一根梁上，发现两个挂钟分别向这根横梁施加着微小的力来影响另一个钟。来自葡萄牙里斯本大学的数学家 Henrique Oliveira，也是本研究论文主要作者说虽然横梁上的实验被完成了，但还没有人研究过“同一面墙上的两个挂钟”这种情形。

In conversations over coffee, Oliveira andstudy co-author Luís Melo, a physicist at the University of Lisbon, decided to analyze how two pendulums might interact through an immobile wall, instead of investigating how they might interactthrough a movable beam as had been done in previous research.

在一次喝着咖啡的小憩中，Henrique Oliveira 与身为物理学家的同事 Luis Melo 决定分析在一堵固定墙体上的两台挂钟会不会相互影响。

The researchers calculated that, as pendulums move back and forth, sound pulses could travel through the wall from clock to clock. These pulses can interfere with the swings of the pendulums, eventually causing them to synchronize.

通过计算他们发现，当两个钟摆分别左右摆动时，脉冲声波可以通过墙体传播到另一个钟上。这些脉冲声波能够干扰钟摆的摆动，最终使两个钟摆同步。

The investigators tested their idea with experiments involving two pendulum clocks attached to an aluminum rail fixed to a wall. Their results showed that changes in the speed of the pendulum swings coincided with cycles of those sound pulses.

接着二人为了验证这个想法，在墙上固定了一条铝制轨道，再挂上俩挂钟。结果显示，钟摆速度的变化与脉冲声波的周期相一致。

In addition, they plan to expand their model to explain the behavior of other kinds of oscillators, such as the electronic oscillators used to synchronize activity on microchips, Melo said.

除了挂钟，这对科学家决意将研究范围扩展到更多类型的振荡器上，比如用于同步微芯片活动的电子振荡器。