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Hey there, welcome to Life Noggin! Hey there! Welcome to my garage-slash-workshop-slash-Olympic-sized swimming pool room.
大家好！欢迎来到大脑洞开的生命奇想！欢迎来到我的车库兼车间兼奥运会大小的游泳池。
And it's the perfect place to work on my new invention, a water-powered car!
这是完美的来研究我的新发明的地方，一个水动力汽车！
Well, ok, it's not technically my invention. The idea for water-powered cars has been kicking around for ages.
严格来说，这不是我的发明。水动力汽车的观点已经出现了很久。
Jules Verne wrote that "water will be the coal of the future!" way back in 1874… so why aren't water-powered cars everywhere yet?
早在1874年，儒勒·凡尔纳写道，水将成为未来的煤！为什么水动力汽车还没有出现呢？
And why isn't mine working PERFECTLY as I planned? To get to the bottom of this,
为何我的汽车没能按计划完美地运行呢？为了弄清楚怎么回事，
we need to take a look at some of history's more recent attempts to go with h20
我们需要看一下历史上最近对水做的实验，
The idea became especially popular a century after Jules Verne's prediction, during the American oil crises of the 1970s.
儒勒凡尔纳的预测过去一个世纪后，在20世纪70年代的美国石油危机时期，这些观点变得尤其流行。
A prolific inventor named Stanley Mayer patented a vehicle that he said could drive cross country on only 75 litres of pure water.
一个名叫斯坦利·迈耶的多产发明家申请了一个车辆的专利，他声称该车辆可以只靠75升水就能穿越这个国家。
It was a beautiful vision, but the science didn't quite back this idea up, and he ran into some legal trouble because of it.
这个想象力很棒，但是科学并没有支撑这个观点，他还因此惹上了一些官司。
In the late 2000s, the internet was inundated by simple kits that promised to transform your car into a "water-burning hybrid" and increase your fuel economy by up to 300 percent.
在2000年代后期，互联网上充斥着一些简单的装备，它们承诺能将你的汽车变成一辆“烧水的混合动力车”，并将你的燃油经济性提高300%。
That same year, a company called Genepax began marketing a water-powered car they claimed was going to save the world from global warming.
就在同一年，一家名为Genepax的公司开始宣传一种水动力汽车，他们宣称此车能将地球从全球变暖中解救出来。
In the end, though, these prototypes ran into a teensy-tiny problem: the first law of thermodynamics. Energy cannot be created or destroyed.
但是在最后，这些原型遇到了一个很小的问题：热力学第一定律。能量不能被创造或者毁灭。
So what's the problem here? Well, water on its own is simply not a fuel; similar to CO2, it's only the product of a real fuel combusting.
所以问题是什么呢？水本身并不是燃料，与二氧化碳相似，它只是燃料燃烧的产物。
But water still carries energy locked up in its bonds, and Mayer's invention, like many others, is based on splitting these bonds in a process called electrolysis.
但是水仍然以化学键的形式携带能量，而梅耶的发明，就像许多其他的发明一样，是基于一种叫做电解的过程来分解这些化学键。
By separating the hydrogen and oxygen molecules in water, the hydrogen can be used as fuel, and fed back into the engine, or if its an electric car, the fuel cell.
通过分离水中的氢和氧分子，氢可以用作燃料，并反馈给发动机，如果是电动汽车，则反馈给燃料电池。
Even better, this consumed hydrogen only produces water as waste. So vroom vroom, there you go!
更棒的是，被消耗的氢只产生水这一种废物。呜呜，就是这样！
A super clean zero emissions fuel attached to zero guilt. Except not really.
非常清洁的零排放燃料，毫无愧疚之心。但是并不是这样。
Because water is very stable, and splitting it up requires a lot more work than it's worth, kinda like climbing up a steep slide.
因为水非常稳定，把它分离需要做的工作比它的价值要多得多，有点像爬上陡峭的滑梯。
Triangle Bob's having fun though, so that's good! Mayer thought he'd figured out an easy way to do it,
不过三角鲍勃玩得很开心，这很好！梅耶认为他能想到一个更简单的方式，
with far less energy wasted than a normal electrolytic cell, but what he created consumed more energy than it produced.
它比普通的电解槽浪费的能量少得多，但是消耗的能量比产生的能量多得多。
Today, after decades of research, the electrolysis of water has yet to prove itself a viable way to produce hydrogen fuel.
今天，在几十年的研究后，电解水还没有成为一种产生氢燃料的可行方式。
And if we can't get hydrogen fuel from water, it's not really clean energy at all.
如果我们不能从水中获得氢，它就不是真正清洁的能量。
Currently, only four percent of all hydrogen produced comes from water electrolysis, some of which is generated by renewable electricity.
现在，只有4%的生产的氢来自电解水，有些由可再生电力产生。
The rest mostly comes from fossil fuels. Still, some scientists are desperate to make hydrogen energy sustainable,
其余的大部分来自化石燃料。一些科学家正极力制造可持续氢能源。
and in recent years, efforts have more than doubled the efficiency of water electrolysis.
近年来，电解水的效率提升了两倍多。
In turn, researchers at Stanford claim they've figured out a way to generate hydrogen fuel using solar power and saltwater.
转而，斯坦福的研究人员宣称，他们已经发现了一种使用太阳能和盐水来生产氢燃料的方式。
So who knows maybe there'll come a day when you can just pull over to the side of the road and fuel up on the ocean,
谁知道呢，或许会有这么一天，你可以把车停在路边，靠海洋提供燃料，
but until then, maybe just try and ride your bike or take the bus as much as you can! Or ride your whale with legs to the local market and watch everyone scream.
但是在那之前，大家就尽多地骑车或者坐公交车！或者骑着你有腿的鲸鱼去当地市场，看每个人尖叫。
Whichever you prefer! So if you could power your car on anything imaginable, what would it be?
选你所想！如果你可以选择任何东西给你的汽车供能，你会选择什么呢？
Let me know in the comment section below, or tell me, what should I talk about next.
请在下方的评论区告诉我，或者告诉我接下来应该谈论什么。
Curious to know why these walls have legs, check out this video!
想知道为什么这些鲸鱼有腿吗，看看这个视频吧！
Perhaps they would look a bit like their other ancestor, Ambulocetus natans, whose name actually translates to "walking whale that swims.
或许他们会看起来有点像其他的祖先，陆行鲸，这个名字可以翻译成“会行走的鲸鱼”。
As always my name is Blocko, this has been life noggin, don't forget to keep on vrooming!
我是宝高，这里是脑洞大开的生命奇想。不要忘记加速！
