【BBC纪录片】月球之谜 第十二期

And the answer that occurred to me first,

was it looked like another moon peeking out behind lo.

But when she looked closer she realised it

was something completely different.

When I explored it I was able to find

that this large strange object,

huge plume of a volcanic eruption arising 270 km

over the surface of lo and raining back down onto it.

So I had discovered the first ever

volcanic eruption ever seen on another world besides the earth.

Io's vibrant volcanic activity is caused

by the massive gravitational pull exerted by Jupiter,

which squeezes and heats the moon internally.

You could actually see by the edge of lo plumes of

what turned out to be sulphur dioxide gas shooting up

into space about 100 miles and dropping all this sulphur dioxide

snow back on the surface and the whole place is stained red

and yellow with sulphur.

It's an incredible place.

Here was a moon to swoon over.

It was far more exciting and exotic than our own boring,

lifeless moon.

And lo was just the beginning.

Soon another of Jupiter's moons Europa was also wowing scientists.

Europa's surface had no craters.

Close up it was covered in cracks and canyons.

Europaclearly had a very young surface.

We could tell that there weren't many large impact craters

and the surface was relatively smooth and, and cracked.

Not chasms going deep down into it

but cracks filled in with something darker.

A recently active surface.

Looking at it scientists realised it was similar

to scenes they knew from earth from the poles.

Europa was covered in ice.

And because there were no craters they knew

that the ice must have melted and refrozen many times.

And that could mean only one thing:

There had to be liquid water

the crucial ingredient for life on Europa.

It got even more exciting when scientists began to speculate

where the heat to melt the ice was coming from.

Again the answer lay within our own planet.

On the floors of the oceans of the earth,

scientists had discovered "black smokers";

volcanic heat sources coming from below the earth's crust,

warming the water from below.

Perhaps hot vents like these could exist under Europa's icy crust.

Scientists could barely contain their excitement

liquid water and a volcanic heat source sounded like

the kind of conditions that many believe gave birth to life on earth.

我首先想到的是

它看起来像是从木卫一后方露出来的另一个卫星

但仔仔观察后她才发现

完全不是这么回事

我仔仔研究后才发现

这个巨大的奇怪物体

原来是木卫一表面火山喷发

造成的270公里高的烟流

所以我是第一个在地球以外的地方

看到火山喷发的人

来自木星的巨大引力

挤压木卫一，并将它从内部加热

导致木卫一上的火山活动，特别活络

观察木卫一的边缘会发现

大量由二氧化硫组成的烟流

喷至一百里的高空

并像雪花般地落回木卫一的表面

整个木卫一被硫磺染得红黄相间

很不可思议

这是个令人着迷的卫星

它比我们单调、死寂的月球

刺激多了

而且木卫一只是开始

不久之后，木星的另一颗卫星：木卫二也让科学家大为惊艳

Europa's surface had no craters.

木卫二的表面没有陨石坑

仔看之下会发现其上布满了裂隙与峡谷

木卫二的表面显然非常年轻

看得出来它并没有很多大型撞击圆坑

表面相对而言十分平滑，上面有裂隙

不是深入地底的地表裂痕

而是充满某种黑色物质的裂隙

其表面近期内曾有过地质活动

科学家发现木卫二的表面看来十分眼熟

因为它跟地球的两极很像

木卫二曾被冰层复盖

因为表面没有坑洞

所以科学家知道冰层一定曾多次融解、结冻

这只有一个意义

木卫二上曾经存在

生命的关键元素，也就是水

科学家开始推测

融化冰层的热力来自何处时

情况就更令人兴奋了

这个问题的答案也存在地球上

科学家在海底发现了所谓的“黑烟囱”

也就是来自地壳下方的火山热源

由下方加热海水

也许木卫二的冰层下方也有像这样的热源

科学家兴奋得无法自持

对许多人来说，液态水和火山热源

听起来很像地球上出现生命时的状况

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