地球上十個看上去就像外星球的地方(上)

One of the most famous scenes in science fiction cinema comes at the end of the 1968 hit "Planet of the Apes." Astronaut George Taylor, after traveling in space for 2,000 years, apparently has landed on an alien planet ruled by intelligent apes that are determined to exterminate the planet's primitive human population.

科幻電影中最令人難忘的一幕，出現在1968年末的《人猿星球》中。宇航員喬治·泰勒，在太空中航行2000多年後，在一個由智猿統治的外星球着陸，這些人猿想消滅地球上的原始人類。

Taylor manages to free himself and an indigenous female companion from captivity and decides to ride off on horseback to explore the planet's so-called nuclear war-ravaged forbidden zone, despite warnings from ape elder Dr. Zaius that he won't like what he will find. Taylor and his partner struggle to cross a harsh, otherworldly looking landscape, full of deep, startlingly hued canyons, until they finally reach a shoreline. That's where Taylor finds the half-buried Statue of Liberty and realizes that he's not on a distant planet after all, but a future version of Earth.

泰勒不但試圖自救，還想解救一個被囚禁的土著女子，他不顧老猿Zaius博士的警告——“討厭星球上發現的異類”，決定騎馬去探索這個星球上的核戰損毀禁區。泰勒和他的同伴艱難爬過地貌奇特的領地（深度驚人的大峽谷）後，最終到達了海岸線。在那，泰勒發現了半埋在地裏的自由女神像，才意識到自己根本不是在什麼遙遠的外星球，而是穿越到了地球的未來。

A cynical moviegoer might wonder in retrospect why it took Taylor so long to realize that he actually was back on his own planet, since it had a breathable atmosphere, a hospitable climate, and vegetation and animals such as horses that he'd seen before. But the filmmakers managed to make Taylor's cluelessness believable, by putting him in a place that an unwary person easily could mistake for an alien world. Much of the Forbidden Zone, for example, actually was Red Rock Canyon State Park in California, where the towering, red-tinted rock formations look as if they belong on Mars.

挑剔的觀影人可能會想，既然那個星球氣候宜人，能正常呼吸，還有他熟悉的植被和動物（如馬），爲什麼泰勒要費那麼長時間才發現自己身處地球呢？但製片人爲泰勒設定的場景，很容易讓粗心人誤認爲他身處外星球，並覺得這些愚蠢的情節真實可信。但影片禁區中的大部分場景，實際取景於加州紅石谷州立公園，因爲那些高聳的紅色岩石看上去就像火星。

And Red Rock is just one of many places on Earth that are so strange-looking that they seem as if they ought to be on some other planet. Here are 10 of the most alien-looking locations right here on Earth.

紅谷似乎屬於外星球，但它僅是地球上各種怪模怪樣領地的冰山一角。本文將介紹地球上10個看上去最像外星球的地方。

ama Desert, Chile

10.智利的阿塔卡瑪沙漠

The Atacama, which stretches 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) from Peru's southern border into northern Chile, is what climatologists describe as an absolute desert. It is filled with sterile, bone-dry stretches where rain has never been recorded for as long as humans have been measuring the weather. As a result, much of this parched area is totally devoid of vegetation.

在智利的阿塔卡馬沙漠，雖沒有降雨記錄，卻生活着100萬居民，阿塔卡瑪沙漠從祕魯南部邊界開始，綿延1000千米（600英里）與智利北部接壤，氣候學家稱其爲“純沙漠”：此地貧瘠，乾燥，自人類測量天氣以來就沒有過降雨記錄。因其乾燥，沙漠大部分地區寸草不生。

With features such as sand dunes and lava flows, it's not hard to imagine the Atacama as being similar to the landscape that robotic probes — and someday, astronauts — would find on Mars. That's one reason that NASA has used the Chilean desert as a test site. In 2005, for example, a NASA probe detected microbial life in the Atacama's seemingly barren soil, as scientists are hopeful that they'll also be able to do on Mars.

所以，不難想象，配上沙丘和岩漿流，阿塔卡瑪沙漠儼然就是機器探測器（或將來的宇航員）在火星上探測到的地方；這也是爲什麼美國國家航空航天局，會把智利的沙漠當做測試地點。如在2005年，航空航天局在看似貧瘠的阿塔卡瑪沙漠裏探測到了微生物，因此，科學家們對在火星上發現生物一事充滿希望。

ers of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, Idaho

9.愛達荷州月球國家紀念碑和自然保護區

This 618-square-mile (1,600-square-kilometer) region bears an eerie resemblance to the meteor-battered lunar surface. Actually, though, its scarred landscape is the result of the stretching movement of Earth's crust over the past 30 million years. As the crust stretches, it releases pressure on to the hot rocks below, causing them to melt. The hot magma then flows along weaknesses in the surface and results in multiple periods of volcanic activity, the most recent one about 2,000 years ago.

這片自然保護區佔地1600平方千米（618平方英里），崎嶇不平的怪異地形就像被流星撞擊所形成的月球表面。但實際上，滿目瘡痍的地表，皆因過去300萬年的地殼運動而成。地殼運動時，會釋放熱量傳到下面的岩石，引起岩石融化。然後，炙熱的岩漿順着地表流淌，形成火山活動的多發期，而最近的一次火山活動發生在2000年前左右。

During that eruption, lava burst from the Great Rift, a series of deep cracks that stretch for 52 miles (84 kilometers). The Craters of the Moon continues to be volatile, and scientists predict that it will experience future eruptions that will alter its surface.

那次火山爆發，岩漿從東非大裂谷噴射而出，一連串裂縫行爲蔓延84千米（52英里）。月球國家紀念碑仍會再次爆發。科學家預測，未來它將繼續爆發，其爆發也將改變地表形狀。

rdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica

8.南極洲的麥克默多幹谷

The largest ice-free region in Antarctica is a windswept, frozen desert whose rugged terrain looks as if it belongs on Pluto rather than our planet. Covering 9,300 square miles (15,000 square kilometers), its valleys were carved by glaciers that long ago retreated, leaving in their wake a broken layer of boulders, gravel and pebbles, all of which have been worn down by the harsh weather and sorted by the strong winds.

南極洲最大的無冰區是一片寒風凜冽、地形崎嶇的冰凍沙漠，該區域地形看起來就像是冥王星，而根本不是我們的地球。該區域面積約爲9300平方英里(1.5萬平方公里)，很久之前，這裏的山谷就被冰川刻蝕，留下一層破碎的礫石和卵石，惡劣的天氣消蝕着這裏的一切。

The surface contains deposits of marine sediments, in addition to sand dunes and ash, and covers a layer of soil that's millions of years old. Scientists like the Dry Valleys because the lack of ice makes it easier for them to get a look at the current geological processes affecting Antarctica.

該區域表面有着海洋沉積物的沉積，除了沙丘和火山灰外，覆蓋在它上面的土壤已經有百萬年的歷史了。科學家們之所以喜歡南極幹谷是因爲這裏沒有冰層的阻礙，他們能夠更容易地知道當前的地質作用是怎樣影響南極洲的。

ha Pan, Namibia

7.納米比亞的埃託河鹽沼

When scientists studied images shot by the Cassini space probe of Ontario Lacus, a massive lake on Saturn's moon Titan, they discovered that it was a depression that drains and refills from below, at low ebb exposing liquid areas ringed by materials such as saturated sand and mudflats. If you get past the fact that it is filled with liquid hydrocarbons, Ontario Lacus bears an eerie resemblance to a place back on Earth — Namibia's Etosha Salt Pan.

當科學家們對由卡西尼號太空探測器拍攝的土衛六（土星的一顆衛星，又稱爲泰坦星）表面最大的湖泊”安大略湖”圖像進行研究時，他們發現這不過是一個從地下排水和補水的凹地，退潮時顯露出被物質環繞的例如飽和砂性土和泥灘的液態區域。如果你忽略此地充滿液態碳氫化合物這一點，就會發現“安大略湖”和地球上的納米比亞的埃託河鹽沼有着驚人的相似性。

This dried lake bed fills with a shallow layer of fluid from groundwater during the rainy season; the fluid evaporates during the dry season, leaving sediment marks. Etosha, whose name means "great white place" in the language of the Ovambo people, is a 1,800 square-mile (4,800 square-kilometer)expanse of shimmering, dry, baked clay that looks suitably otherworldly.

在雨季，埃託河鹽沼乾枯的河牀會被淺層地下水潤溼；在旱季，水將會蒸發留下沉積物。Etosha一詞，在奧萬博人（the Ovambo）的語言中指的是“巨大的白色之地”，1800平方英里(4800平方公里)範圍內一片波光粼粼，乾燥的氣溫，烘烤的粘土，看起來如此的超凡脫俗。

at Structure, Mauritania

6.毛里塔尼亞的理查特結構

You've probably seen pictures of Jupiter's mysterious Great Red Spot which actually is a gigantic storm about two to three times the size of our entire planet. But when viewed from space, Earth has a similarly strange-looking surface feature.

你可能見過木星神祕的大紅斑的照片，那實際上就是一場巨大的風暴，比我們地球上的風暴大了兩到三倍。當從太空中看的時候，地球表面也有類似的特徵。

The Richat Structure in Mauritania is a gigantic circular swirl, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) in diameter, that forms a bull's-eye in an otherwise featureless expanse of west African desert. When astronauts first noticed the Richat Structure in the 1960s, it was believed to be a crater left behind by an immense meteor, because of the uniformity of its curves. But scientists now think that it's a rock formation of Paleozoic quartzites, laid bare by erosion. Either way, though, it's plenty strange looking.

毛里塔尼亞的理查特結構是一個巨大的圓形漩渦，直徑大約三十英里（50千米）。另外這個漩渦在毫無特色的廣闊無垠的西非沙漠形成了一個靶心。20世紀60年代宇航員第一次注意到理查特結構時，基於結構曲線的均勻性，他們認爲那是一顆巨大的流星隕落時留下的隕石坑。但是現代科學家認爲那是古生代石英岩的岩層，因爲被侵蝕而裸露在外。然而，不管哪種說法纔是正確的，這種結構確實是夠奇怪的。

審校:喵喵 校對:落花生 編輯:Freya然 來源：前十網