听力课堂TED音频栏目主要包括TED演讲的音频MP3及中英双语文稿,供各位英语爱好者学习使用。本文主要内容为演讲MP3+双语文稿:关于生命起源,神秘的土卫六能告诉我们什么,希望你会喜欢!
【演讲者及介绍】Elizabeth Zibi Turtle
Elizabeth Zibi Turtle 将一生的事业奉献于探索太阳系附近的世界。她的最新项目叫作蜻蜓,一个用于探索泰坦的自动旋翼飞行器,泰坦是土星最大的卫星。
【演讲主题】关于生命起源,神秘的土卫六能告诉我们什么
What Saturn's most mysterious moon could teach us about the origins of life
【中英文字幕】翻译者Shu Fei Chow 校对者Yolanda Zhang
Picture a world with a variety of landforms. |想象一颗有着各式各样地貌的星球。
It has a dense atmosphere within which winds sweep across its surface and rain falls. It has mountains and plains, rivers, lakes and seas, sand dunes and some impact craters. |它有着高密度的大气层, 地表还有大风和降雨。 它有山丘和平原、 河流、湖泊和海洋, 沙丘以及一些撞击坑。
Sounds like Earth, right? This is Titan. |听起来很像地球,对吧? 这是泰坦(“土卫六”)。
In August 1981, Voyager 2 captured this image of Saturn's largest moon. |在1981年8月, 旅行者2号拍下了这颗土星最大卫星的影像。
The Voyager missions have traveled farther than ever before, making the solar system and beyond part of our geography. But this image, this hazy moon was a stark reminder of just how much mystery remained. |“旅行者”号的航行距离比以往任何时候都要远, 将太阳系以外更遥远的地方也纳入了我们的地理观测范围。 但这张图像,这颗朦胧的“月亮”, 时刻提醒着我们, 仍有许多未知需要去探索。
We learned an exponential amount as the Voyagers flew by it, and yet we had no idea what lay beneath this atmospheric blanket. |当旅行者飞过它时,为我们提供了关于这颗星球的海量信息, 然而我们仍无从得知它笼罩在大气层下的真实面貌。
Was there an icy surface with landforms like those of the other moons that had been observed at Saturn and Jupiter? Or perhaps simply a vast global ocean of liquid methane? |它是否像我们观测到的土星和木星的其他卫星那样, 具有表面由冰层覆盖的相似地貌呢? 或者只有一片液态甲烷的汪洋大海覆盖了整个表面?
Shrouded by the obscuring haze, Titan's surface was a huge, outstanding mystery that Cassini-Huygens, an orbiter lander pair launched in 1997, was designed to solve. After arrival in 2004, the early images Cassini sent back of Titan's surface only heightened the allure. |笼罩在阴霾下的泰坦是个巨大的谜团。 因而卡西尼-惠更斯号(Cassini-Huygens), 这台于1997年发射的轨道着陆器, 为的就是要解开这个谜团。 在2004年抵达泰坦后, 卡西尼号最初传回的泰坦表面影像更是加深了人们对它的好奇。
It took months for us to understand what we were seeing on the surface, to determine, for example, that the dark stripes, which were initially so unrecognizable that we referred to them as cat scratches, were actually dunes made of organic sand. |我们耗费了数月的时间才弄清楚我们在火星表面看到的是什么, 比如,那些我们一开始认不出来, 因而被称为“猫抓痕”的深色的条纹, 实际上是由有机沙土构成的沙丘。
Over the course of the 13 years Cassini spent studying Saturn and its rings and moons, we had the privilege of going from knowing almost nothing about the surface of Titan to understanding its geology, the role the atmosphere plays in shaping its surface, and even hints of what lies deep beneath that surface. |在卡西尼号研究土星、 土星环和其卫星的十三年里, 我们幸运的从对泰坦的表面一无所知, 到逐渐开始了解它的地理构造, 以及大气层对其表面地形的影响, 甚至对其地底深处的探索也有了些眉目。
Indeed, Titan is one of several ocean worlds, moons in the cold outer solar system beyond the orbits of Mars and the asteroid belt with immense liquid water oceans beneath their surfaces. |事实上,泰坦是若干个位于冰冷的外太阳系、 火星轨道和小行星带之外, 表面下覆盖着大面积液态水的卫星之一。
Titan's interior ocean may have more than 10 times as much liquid water as all of the Earth's rivers, lakes, seas and oceans combined. And at Titan, there are also exotic lakes and seas of liquid methane and ethane on the surface. |泰坦内部海洋的含水量可能是地球上所有河流、湖泊 和海洋体积总和的10倍以上,同时,其表面也覆盖着由液态甲烷和乙烷构成的奇异湖泊和海洋。
Ocean worlds are some of the most fascinating places in the solar system, and we have only just begun to explore them. |海洋世界是太阳系中最迷人的地方, 然而我们对它们的探索才刚刚启程。
This is Dragonfly. At the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, we're building this mission for NASA's new Frontiers program. |这是“蜻蜓号”, 是我们在约翰霍·普金斯大学的应用物理实验室为美国国家航空航天局新疆界计划而打造的。
Scheduled to launch in 2026 and reach Titan in 2034, Dragonfly is a rotorcraft lander, similar in size to the Mars rovers or about the size of a small car. | “蜻蜓号”预计将在2026年发射, 并于2034年抵达泰坦。 它是一个旋翼机着陆器, 其体积与火星探测车或小型汽车相近。
Titan's dense atmosphere, combined with its low gravity, make it a great place to fly, and that's exactly what Dragonfly is designed to do. |“蜻蜓号”的设计主要考量了泰坦稠密的大气层和低重力因素, 使得“蜻蜓号”非常适合在这样的环境内执行飞行任务。
Technically an octocopter, Dragonfly is a mobile laboratory that can fly from place to place taking all of its scientific instruments with it. |“蜻蜓号”实际上是个八旋翼飞机, 也是个移动实验室, 能随身携带科学仪器到处飞行。
Dragonfly will investigate Titan in a truly unique way, studying details of its weather and geology, and even picking up samples from the surface to learn what they're made of. | “蜻蜓号”将以非常独特的方式考察泰坦, 包括它的气候环境和地理构造, 甚至直接从地表采集样本, 以此了解它们的成分。
All told, Dragonfly will spend about three years exploring Titan, measuring its detailed chemistry, observing the atmosphere and how it interacts with the surface, and even listening for earthquakes, or technically titanquakes, in Titan's crust. |换言之,“蜻蜓号” 将耗费三年时间探索泰坦, 分析它具体的化学成分, 观察大气层是如何与地表产生作用, 甚至聆听地壳的震动, 或者叫“泰坦震”。
The Dragonfly team, hundreds of people across North America and around the world, is hard at work on the design for this mission, developing the rotorcraft, its autonomous navigation system and its instrumentation, all of which will need to work together to make science measurements on the surface of Titan. |“蜻蜓号”在北美和世界各地数百人的研究团队都为这个任务的设计付出了很多心血—— 研发旋翼飞行器、 自主导航系统及各种仪器。 所有这些部分都需相互配合, 以完成泰坦表面的科学测量任务。
Dragonfly is the next step in our exploration of this fascinating natural laboratory. In flying by, Voyager hinted at the possibilities. |“蜻蜓号”的内部实验室是引导我们探索泰坦的下一步。 旅行者在飞行时揭示了各种可能性。
In orbiting Saturn for over a decade and descending through Titan's atmosphere, Cassini and Huygens pulled Titan's veil back a bit further. Dragonfly will live in the Titan environment. |环绕土星运行十多年, 并穿过了泰坦的大气层后, 卡西尼-惠更斯号进一步揭开了泰坦的神秘面纱。 “蜻蜓号”将会继续考察泰坦。
In many ways, Titan is the closest known analogue we have to the early Earth, the Earth before life developed here. |在很多方面,泰坦都是我们已知的与生命出现之前的地球最相似的星体。
From Cassini-Huygens' measurements, we know that the ingredients for life, at least life as we know it, have existed on Titan, and Dragonfly will be fully immersed within this alien environment, looking for compounds similar to those that might have supported the development of life here on Earth and teaching us about the habitability of other worlds. |从卡西尼-惠更斯号的测量结果来看, 我们知道生命的组成部分—— 至少是我们所了解的生命—— 早已在泰坦上出现过, 而“蜻蜓号”将会完全沉浸在这个陌生的环境中, 寻找那些与可能促成了 地球上生命发展的化学成分相似的化合物, 并协助我们探索其他世界的宜居性。
Habitability is a fascinating concept. |宜居性是个令人着迷的概念。
What's necessary to make an environment suitable to host life, whether life as we know it here on Earth, or perhaps exotic life that has developed under very different conditions? |什么样的条件使得一个环境适合孕育生命—— 无论是我们已知的地球生命, 还是在不同情况下衍生的另类生命?
The possibility of life elsewhere has inspired human imagination and exploration throughout history. |其他星球存在生命的可能性在历史上激发了人类的想象和对太空的探索。
On a grand scale, it's why the ocean worlds in the outer solar system have become such important targets for study. It's the "what if" that drives human exploration. |在宏观的尺度上, 这就是为何外太阳系的海洋世界会成为如此重要的研究对象。 是人类的好奇心在推动着前所未有的探索。
We don't know how chemistry took the step to biology here on Earth, but similar chemical processes may have happened on Titan, where organic molecules have had the opportunity to mix with liquid water at the surface. |我们不知道化学物质如何在地球上演变成生物, 但类似的化学过程可能也发生在泰坦上, 因为那里的有机分子有机会与其表面的液态水混合。
Has organic synthesis progressed under these conditions? And if so, how far? We don't know ... yet. |有机合成反应在这些条件下是否催生了化学反应? 如果是的话, 究竟到了何种程度? 目前,我们还无从得知。
What we will learn from Dragonfly, this fundamentally human endeavor, is tantalizing. It's a search for building blocks, foundations, chemical steps like those that ultimately led to life on Earth. |我们通过“蜻蜓号”所见证的人类的不懈努力是很振奋人心的。 这是对生命的基础架构和化学步骤的探索, 正如那些最终为地球带来了生命的过程一样。
We're not sure exactly what we will find when we get to Titan, but that's exactly why we're going. | 我们不确定会在泰坦上发掘到什么, 但这也正是我们要前往那里的原因。
In 1994, Carl Sagan wrote, "On Titan, the molecules that have been raining down like manna from heaven for the last four billion years might still be there, largely unaltered, deep-frozen, awaiting the chemists from Earth." |1994 年,卡尔·萨根(Carl Sagan )写道: “在泰坦上,过去40亿年来像神赐的甘露一样从天而降的分子至今可能还在那里, 保持着冻结状态下的原貌, 等待着地球化学家的到来。”
We are those chemists. Dragonfly is a search for greater understanding, not just of Titan and the mysteries of our solar system, but of our own origins. | 我们就是那些化学家。 “蜻蜓号”的任务不仅能帮助我们掀开泰坦和太阳系的神秘面纱, 还能解开地球起源的奥秘。
Thank you. |谢谢。