地球上十個看上去就像外星球的地方(下)

-ocean Thermal Vents, Galapagos Rift, Pacific Ocean

5.太平洋加拉帕戈斯裂谷的深海熱液噴口

The strangest, most seemingly alien place on Earth, at least to surface dwellers such as humans, has to be the deep ocean. Back in the mid-1970s, scientists discovered a particularly strange spot — the hydrothermal vents that penetrate a mile-and-a-half (2 kilometers) into the ocean floor near the Galapagos Islands in the South Pacific.

地球上最奇怪、最像外星球的地方不得不說應該是深海了，至少對地球表面的居民，比如人類來說是這樣。早在20世紀70年代中期，科學家們就發現了一處特別奇怪的地方——熱液噴口。這處噴口滲透了1.5英里的距離（2公里）最終注入南太平洋的加拉帕戈斯羣島附近的海底。

Inside the vents, water heated by volcanic activity sometimes reaches 750 degrees Fahrenheit (400 degrees Celsius), thanks to the intense pressure from the water above that keeps it from boiling away. That hot water dissolves metals and salts as it moves along rocks, eventually rising and pouring out into the bitter cold, pitch-black darkness. The vents also spout hydrogen sulfide, a gas which is poisonous to most land-based life. Even so, the vents are home to bacteria, which have evolved to use the seeming poison as an energy source. Scientists think these microbes may closely resemble the earliest life-forms in Earth's oceans.

在熱液噴口內，因火山活動所加熱的水的溫度有時能達到750華氏攝氏度（400攝氏度）。多虧了熱液噴口上方的水的巨大壓力阻止了水的持續沸騰。這滾熱的水能融化金屬和鹽類。它流經周邊的岩石，最終化爲水蒸氣上升，直到遇到嚴寒的海水及無邊的黑暗而冷卻下來。另外噴口還會噴發硫化氫—一種對大多數陸地生物有毒的氣體。即便如此，這噴口仍是很多細菌的家。這些細菌已經進化到用這種類似毒藥的硫化氫作爲能量來源。科學家認爲這些微生物可能與地球上最早的海洋生命類似。

uea Volcano, Hawaii

4.夏威夷的基拉韋厄火山

Venus, the second-closest planet to the sun, is home to more volcanoes than anywhere else in the solar system, and its landscape is composed largely of plains of basalt, a type of rock formed by their lava flow.

金星，離太陽第二近的行星，在太陽系中所擁有的火山最多，其景觀主要是有玄武岩構成平原，這一種是由熔岩流形成的岩石類型。

The closest thing on Earth to a Venusian environment, oddly, may be the slick, black basalt formations on Hawaii's Big Island. One of the best examples of a Venus-like volcano is Kilauea, the youngest and southernmost volcano on the island, and one of the world's most active. Since 1952, there have been more than 34 eruptions at Kilauea, which in Hawaiian tradition is the home of Pele, the volcano goddess.

奇怪的是，夏威夷大島(Hawaii’s Big Island)上滑溜溜的黑色玄武岩地貌也許是地球上最類似於金星環境的地方。坐落在該島最南端的基拉韋厄火山就是類金星火山最好的例子之一，它是島上最年輕的火山，也是地球上最活躍的火山之一。在夏威夷的傳統信仰中，基拉韋厄火山是火山女神貝莉(Pele)的家。自1952年以來，基拉韋厄火山至少爆發了34次。

Pinnacles, Australia

3.澳大利亞的尖峯石陣

Even if you were an artist painting a cover picture for some pulp science fiction novel, you probably wouldn't envision an alien landscape that looks weirder than The Pinnacles.

即便你是一名爲刺激科幻小說畫封面畫的藝術家，可能你也無法想象出比尖峯石陣更怪異的外星景觀。

This stretch of desert landscape in Australia's Nambung National Park boasts thousands of weathered rock projections that rise out of yellow sand dunes — some topped by domes, while others form jagged, sharp-edged columns. The spires, some of which reach 11 feet (3.5 meters) in height, are limestone formations sculpted by wind, vegetation, rain, sun and time over millions of years.

在澳大利亞南邦國家公園(Australia’s Nambung National Park)裏，沙漠景觀一路延展，風化了的巖柱從黃色沙丘中拔地而起，或成圓頂狀，或成鋸齒狀，或成鋒刃狀。有些巖柱甚至高達11英尺(即3.5米)。這大自然的鬼斧神工之作，經受了上百萬年的風吹日曬雨淋甚至植物侵襲，終於被自然之力雕琢成如今的模樣。

Tinto, Spain

2.西班牙的力拓河

Spain's Rio Tinto river conjures up images of what a river might look like on some alien world that future astronauts had turned into a mining colony.

西班牙的力拓河讓人聯想到一條在外星世界的河的樣子，在那個星球，未來的宇航員將會變成採礦移民隊。

For thousands of years, generations of miners have dug shafts into the local soil in pursuit of mineral wealth. The Romans fashioned some of their first coins from the Rio Tinto area's gold and silver, and today, the area is one of the most important sources of copper and sulfur on the planet.

幾千年來，爲追求財富，一代代礦工深挖立井，開墾土壤。羅馬人曾用力拓河區域的金礦銀礦打造他們的第一代錢幣。直至今日，這裏仍是地球上銅礦和硫磺礦資源最豐富的地區之一。

But the pollution runoff from thousands of years of mineral extraction has taken its toll upon the river, whose waters have turned deep red due to high acidity, heavy metals and bacteria that oxidize iron and sulfur — life-forms akin to what scientists hope they will find on distant worlds such as Mars or Jupiter's moon Europa.

但是千萬年來，礦物開採的污染物流經這條河流，高酸度、重金屬、細菌、氧化鐵和氧化硫導致河水變成了深紅色。科學家們希望能在遙遠的其他星球上，如火星、木星的衛星——歐羅巴（Europa）上找到類似的生物。

tapu, New Zealand

1.新西蘭的懷歐塔普地熱仙境

Imagine a harsh, inhospitable alien world where the surface is bubbling and contains bright orange and yellow swaths enshrouded in sublimely steamy mists. That should give you a pretty good picture of Waiotapu (sometimes rendered as Wai-O-Tapu), a thermal area of about 11 square miles (18 square kilometers) in New Zealand.

想象一下，一個粗糙的、荒涼的外星世界，地表覆蓋着氣泡以及亮麗的橘色和黃色的刈痕，籠罩在一片潮溼的迷霧中，這基本就是對懷歐塔普地熱仙境大致的印象了，該仙境是新西蘭的一個11平方英里（18平方千米）的溼地。

Steam and gases rising through the pool create bubbles of mud, at the site of what was once a volcano. While Waiotapu is a popular tourist spot, visitors are warned to stay on government-erected walkways, lest they fall through thin crust surfaces and risk being burned by hot geothermal gases or fluids, and inhaling possibly fatal concentrations of carbon dioxide and sulfur.

那裏曾經是一個火山，蒸汽從池子裏升騰出來，泥漿翻滾着氣泡。在懷歐塔普溼地成爲熱門的旅遊景點後，遊客們被警告不能呆在政府公示的過道，以免跌進稀薄的地表，承擔被高溫的地熱氣體或液體燙傷的風險，或者是吸入高濃度的二氧化碳和硫磺氣體而喪失性命。

審校:喵喵 校對:落花生 編輯:Freya然 來源：前十網