十大隱藏於世界的怪異神祕景緻(上)

Our world is a strange place. No sooner do we feel we've come to grips with it than it starts throwing weird fireballs or creepy rock formations our way, and freaks us out all over again. Go looking in the right place and you might even find something as unexpected or bizarre as the following.

我們的世界是個奇怪的地方，在我們還未來得及好好正視它時，它就開始投擲怪異的火球和岩石構建我們的道路，使我們一次又一次處於極度興奮和崩潰之中。去看看這個世界吧，你甚至可能找到一些和接下來的地方一樣，離奇而又意料之外的地方。

Erotic Rock Valley--Turkey

10.色情石谷——土耳其

Far out in the dry and dusty plains of Anatolia lies one of Turkey's biggest tourist draws: Cappadocia. A UNESCO World Heritage site of ancient rock homes, underground churches, and Byzantine art, it's probably one of the most historically important areas in the Middle East. So, it's kind of strange to discover it's also home to a forest of gigantic stone dildos.

遠在安納托利亞乾燥而又塵土飛揚的平原上，座落着土耳其最大的旅遊景點：卡帕多西亞。古老的岩石住宅，地下教會和拜占庭藝術被聯合國教科文組織列爲世界遺產，從歷史角度看，它可能是中東最重要的地區之一。所以，當發現它也是巨型陽具石頭森林的故鄉時，還是有點怪異的。

You read that right. Thanks to a long history of geological upheaval, rocks around the little town of Goreme have fashioned themselves into all kinds of weird shapes. Nowhere have these shapes been weirder than in Love Valley. Sticking straight up into the sky, and crowned with slightly conical bulges at the top, the rocks here look more or less exactly like Ron Jeremy's junk on steroids. The entire valley is full of them—enormous stone wangs, stretching off into the distance as far as the eye can see. Unsurprisingly, the area is now a favorite destination for European frat boys to go and take amusingly suggestive photos.

你沒有看錯。由於地質動盪的悠久歷史，格雷梅小鎮的岩石被塑造成各種奇怪的形狀。沒有比愛情谷更加怪異的石頭了。直直的伸入天空，頂端由輕微凸起的圓錐形爲其加冕，這裏的岩石多多少少像羅恩·傑里米（美國著名成人影片演員）的精液堆積起來。整個山谷全是——這種巨大的石頭，延伸到遠方一望無際。意料之中的是,該地區現在是歐洲兄弟團們最喜歡的目的地，他們會拍各種有趣的暗示性照片。

Devil's Bath--New Zealand

9.魔鬼的浴場——新西蘭

Ask a kid to draw you a radioactive pool, and you'll probably wind up with something like the Devil's Bath in New Zealand. A small lake in the Taupo Volcanic Zone near Rotorua, the pool is filled with water that glows a bright and unnatural green.

讓一個小孩畫一個放射性的池子，你可能最終會得到像新西蘭魔鬼的浴場一樣的畫。在羅託魯瓦附近的陶波火山帶有一個小湖, 湖裏注滿了水，發出明亮且不自然的綠色。

Since this is a volcanic zone, you can probably guess what causes the Bath's unnatural color. The whole thing sits over vast deposits of sulfur that break off and float to the top, giving the surface its distinctive hue. This ensures the stagnant waters never look like anything other than radioactive slime. It also ensures they stink to high heaven. In fact, the whole zone has such a thick, rotten egg smell that even guidebooks have compared the atmosphere to walking into the aftermath of a gigantic, infernal Devil's Bath isn't the only lake on Earth to achieve such a deep green color. Tiwu Nuwa Muri Koo Fai in Indonesia also looks like a secret nuclear dumping site.

因爲這裏是火山區，你大概能猜到是什麼引起池子不自然的顏色。 整個事情是由於大量的硫磺散落或漂浮在水上面，使湖的表面有着獨特的色調。這保證了這些死水看上去很像放射性的泥，同時臭氣熏天。事實上，整個區域有一股濃厚的臭雞蛋味，以至於旅行指南上將這種氛圍比作行走在地獄般的巨屁餘波之後。魔鬼的浴場並不是地球上唯一有着極深綠色的胡泊。印度尼西亞的克里穆圖火山也像是一個祕密的核傾倒堆。

rt Glass--Libya and Egypt

8.沙漠玻璃——利比亞和埃及

The last place on Earth you'd expect to find anything is the Libyan desert. The most inhospitable part of the already inhospitable Sahara, it's the sort of place where you can expect to encounter sand, rock, and nothing else. But go to one specific area and start digging in the sand, and you might well find one of the region's most mysterious artifacts: Libyan glass.

如果你還想在世界上尋找什麼，那麼最後一個地方一定是利比亞沙漠。已經荒涼無比的沙哈拉最荒涼的地方，在這樣的地方除了沙子，石櫟什麼都沒有。但是去一個特定的地區，開始在那裏挖沙子，你就很可能會發現這個地區最神祕的物件: 利比亞玻璃。

Large lumps of yellow silica, this glass has been confounding locals for millennia. The Aterian people used it to make tools and weapons. The Ancient Egyptians made elaborate jewelry from it. In the 1930s, the first Western explorers stumbled across it and tried to figure out what could possibly have caused it. Today, it's widely assumed that the glass was created by a long-ago meteor or comet crash superheating the sand to around 2,000 degrees Celsius (3,600° F). What the glassy desert must've looked like in the minutes immediately following the impact we can only imagine.

大堆黃色的硅，這種玻璃混雜在當地已經上千年了。阿梯爾人用它來做工具和武器，古埃及人用它製作精緻的珠寶。上個世紀30年代，第一批西方探險者偶然發現了它，並試圖找出造成這種玻璃存在的原因。如今，人們普遍認爲這種玻璃是很久以前由於隕石或彗星碰撞使沙漠過熱約2000攝氏度(3600°F)，我們只能想象，緊接着數分鐘後受波及的玻璃沙漠是何種模樣。

z Gsellmann's Weltmaschine--Austria

z Gsellmann的世界機器——奧地利

Tucked away in a small barn in Austria, the Weltmaschine (World Machine) may be one of the oddest projects undertaken in human history. A whirring, brightly colored collection of interlocking spokes, wheels, and gizmos, it was built by Franz Gsellmann over the course of 20 years for reasons that no one can explain.

在奧地利的一個小穀倉裏， Weltmaschine（世界機器）可能是人類歷史上從事的最奇怪的項目之一。收集着環環相扣，色彩鮮豔的條幅，滾動的車輪和一些新玩意，這是Franz Gsellmann歷時20年建造出來的，但其製造原因卻無人能解釋。

In 1958, Gsellmann—a poor farmer's son with no training in engineering or mechanics—saw a scale model of an atom at the Brussels World Exposition. Utterly fascinated, he instantly purchased it, returned to Austria, threw everything out of his barn, and placed the model in the very center. And then he began to build. For the next 20 years, Gsellmann secretly constructed his bizarre contraption around the atom model, adding in bells, clocks, fans, conveyor belts, whistles, chains, and even a xylophone. Plastic models of Joseph and Mary, an iron rooster, a spaceship, a tiny windmill, Christmas lights, and a toy gondola were also included, along with a whole heap of other stuff too insane to mention here. He kept the whole thing secret from his family until it was nearly finished. Then, he unexpectedly died without telling anyone what it was for. Today, there are many theories about why Gsellmann dedicated the best part of his life to his crazy machine. Perhaps the most poetic one is that he thought it would reveal the innermost workings of the human soul.

1958年，Gsellmann——一個貧窮農民的兒子，從未學過工程或機械，在布魯塞爾世界博覽會上看到一個原子的擴大比例模型。他完全被迷住了並且立即購買了它。回到奧地利，他把穀倉裏的東西都扔了出去，將模型放置在中心，然後他開始建造。此後的20年，Gsellmann祕密地在原子模型周圍建造他的奇特裝置，加上鈴鐺，時鐘，風扇，傳送帶，哨子，鏈條，甚至是木琴。約瑟和瑪利亞的塑料模型，一隻鐵公雞，一個太空飛船和小風車，聖誕燈飾和玩具纜車同樣包括在內，還有一堆其他的東西太過瘋狂就不贅言了。直到它快要完成之前，他一直保持着這個祕密。然後，他出乎意料的死去也沒有告訴任何人這個世界機器是做什麼的。今天，仍然有很多關於爲什麼Gsellmann要將最好的年華花費在這個瘋狂的機器上的說法。也許最有詩意的一種說法是，他認爲世界機器可以揭示人類靈魂深處的運作。

Abraham's Deadly Bubbles--Canada

6.亞伯拉罕湖的死亡氣泡——加拿大

Lake Abraham in Canada doesn't necessarily sound like the sort of place worth visiting. But make your way there during winter, and you'll come face-to-face with one of the simultaneously coolest and deadliest natural phenomena in the Americas. Beneath the frozen surface of the lake, flammable bubbles of methane gas bump up against the ice, just waiting for someone to light a spark and set them off.

加拿大的亞伯拉罕湖聽起來不像是個值得遊覽的地方。不過，如果冬季時去到那裏，你將會面對面看到美洲最酷同時也是最致命的自然現象之一。在結冰的湖面下方，甲烷氣體釋放出易燃的氣泡，碰撞到了冰層，只待有人點燃火花，引起爆炸。

Caused by bacteria feeding on decaying animal and plant matter, the methane bubbles usually rise to the surface without anyone ever noticing. But, in winter, they turn into white sacks of gas suspended at all sorts of angles in the frozen water. The results are unbelievably awesome towers of bubbles (like those above), trapped beneath the surface of the lake, where any walker can get a clear view of them. This annual show has led to Abraham Lake becoming one of the biggest photography hotspots in Canada.

由腐爛的動物和植物滋生的細菌產生的甲烷氣泡上升到湖面，通常沒有人注意到。但是，在冬天，他們變成白色袋子狀的氣泡懸浮在凍結湖面的各個角落。結果是令人難以置信的氣泡聚成塔（如上述），被困在湖面的下方，在那裏路過的人都可以清楚地看到這種場景。這種一年一度的景象，使得亞伯拉罕湖成爲加拿大最大的攝影熱點之一。

翻譯:喬夢月 來源:前十網