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Fingering Fake Whiskeys with Isotopes²

“It came to our attention a few years ago that there were fraudulent whiskeys on the market.Gordon Cook of the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Center.

“几年前，市场上出现了假的威士忌，这引起了我们的注意。”苏格兰大学环境研究中心的戈登·库克说。

“Scotch³ whiskey is Scotland’s product, and we felt that being a radiocarbon laboratory in Scotland, we should take a lead on this.”

“苏格兰威士忌是苏格兰的产品，我们觉得作为苏格兰的一个放射性碳实验室，我们应该在这方面发挥带头作用。”

Scotch whiskey is made from barley⁴, which absorbs carbon dioxide from the air as it grows. Most of the carbon is carbon-12. But a small percentage is the radioactive isotope¹ carbon-14, which decays at a constant, known rate— and has therefore long been used to “carbon-date” biological samples.

苏格兰威士忌是用大麦酿造的，大麦在生长过程中会吸收空气中的二氧化碳。大部分是碳12。但是一小部分是放射性同位素碳14，它以一个恒定的、已知的速率衰变，因此长期以来一直被用于“碳定年”生物样本。

“Then, in the early 1950s, we had the start of the atmospheric⁵ weapons test, and these produce carbon-14. By 1960, you were twice the natural level. And ’63—there was a test ban treaty, so ’63 was the maximum. Since then, the level in the atmosphere has decreased as the radiocarbon goes into the biota⁶ and the oceans.”

然后，在20世纪50年代早期，我们开始了大气武器试验，这些武器产生了碳14。到1960年，是正常水平的两倍。63年有一个禁止核试验条约，所以63年是最高的。从那以后，随着放射性碳进入生物群和海洋，大气中的含量已经下降。”

So unusually high levels of carbon-14 are associated with barley grown during the years when nuclear testing was widespread.

因此，在核试验盛行的那些年里，大麦的碳14含量异常高。

There’s obviously a lot of money in whiskey. And some classics get bought not as imbibements but as investments. Last October, a 60-year-old 1926 bottle was auctioned⁷ off for $1.9 million.

威士忌显然有很多钱。有些经典作品不是作为饮料而是作为投资而被购买的。去年10月，一瓶有60年历史的1926年的葡萄酒以190万美元的价格被拍卖。

To make sure that the stuff inside bottles of Scotch whiskey matches what’s on the labels, Cook and his colleagues looked at levels of the carbon-14 in the drink. They calibrated⁸ levels of the radioactive variant⁹ of carbon in more than 200 different single-malt Scotch whiskey samples of known ages. The researchers then compared those levels to eight whiskeys claiming to have been bottled from 1847 to 1978.

为了确保苏格兰威士忌酒瓶里的东西与标签上的相符，库克和他的同事研究了饮料中的碳-14含量。他们校准了200多种已知年份的单一麦芽威士忌样品中碳的放射性变异水平。然后，研究人员将这些含量与声称从1847年到1978年间瓶装的八种威士忌进行了比较。

“We haven’t found any whiskeys purported¹⁰ to be from the 19th century that are genuine.”

 “我们没有发现任何来自19世纪的纯正威士忌。”

Because those allegedly 19th-century bottles contained material clearly produced during the nuclear-testing era. The study is in the journal Radiocarbon.

因为那些据说是19世纪的瓶子里装的显然是核试验时期生产的材料。这项研究发表在《放射性碳》杂志上。

Cook hopes these verification techniques will help keep the whiskey business true to the words of Robert Burns: “Here’s a bottle and an honest friend.”

库克希望这些验证技术将有助于保持威士忌业务忠实于罗伯特·伯恩斯的话:“这是一瓶酒，也是一个诚实的朋友。”