5.Deep-ocean Thermal Vents, Galapagos Rift, Pacific Ocean
5.太平洋加拉帕戈斯裂谷的深海热液喷口
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说应该是深海了，至少对地球表面的居民，比如人类来说是这样。早在20世纪70年代中期，科学家们就发现了一处特别奇怪的地方——热液喷口。这处喷口渗透了1.5英里的距离（2公里）最终注入南太平洋的加拉帕戈斯群岛附近的海底。
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.
在热液喷口内，因火山活动所加热的水的温度有时能达到750华氏摄氏度（400摄氏度）。多亏了热液喷口上方的水的巨大压力阻止了水的持续沸腾。这滚热的水能融化金属和盐类。它流经周边的岩石，最终化为水蒸气上升，直到遇到严寒的海水及无边的黑暗而冷却下来。另外喷口还会喷发硫化氢—一种对大多数陆地生物有毒的气体。即便如此，这喷口仍是很多细菌的家。这些细菌已经进化到用这种类似毒药的硫化氢作为能量来源。科学家认为这些微生物可能与地球上最早的海洋生命类似。
4.Kilauea Volcano, Hawaii
4.夏威夷的基拉韦厄火山
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，离太阳第二近的行星，在太阳系中所拥有的火山最多，其景观主要是有玄武岩构成平原，这一种是由熔岩流形成的岩石类型。
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，夏威夷大岛(Hawaii’s Big Island)上滑溜溜的黑色玄武岩地貌也许是地球上最类似于金星环境的地方。坐落在该岛最南端的基拉韦厄火山就是类金星火山最好的例子之一，它是岛上最年轻的火山，也是地球上最活跃的火山之一。在夏威夷的传统信仰中，基拉韦厄火山是火山女神贝莉(Pele)的家。自1952年以来，基拉韦厄火山至少爆发了34次。
3.The Pinnacles, Australia
3.澳大利亚的尖峰石阵
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.
即便你是一名为刺激科幻小说画封面画的艺术家，可能你也无法想象出比尖峰石阵更怪异的外星景观。
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.
在澳大利亚南邦国家公园(Australia’s Nambung National Park)里，沙漠景观一路延展，风化了的岩柱从黄色沙丘中拔地而起，或成圆顶状，或成锯齿状，或成锋刃状。有些岩柱甚至高达11英尺(即3.5米)。这大自然的鬼斧神工之作，经受了上百万年的风吹日晒雨淋甚至植物侵袭，终于被自然之力雕琢成如今的模样。
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.
西班牙的力拓河让人联想到一条在外星世界的河的样子，在那个星球，未来的宇航员将会变成采矿移民队。
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.
几千年来，为追求财富，一代代矿工深挖立井，开垦土壤。罗马人曾用力拓河区域的金矿银矿打造他们的第一代钱币。直至今日，这里仍是地球上铜矿和硫磺矿资源最丰富的地区之一。
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.
但是千万年来，矿物开采的污染物流经这条河流，高酸度、重金属、细菌、氧化铁和氧化硫导致河水变成了深红色。科学家们希望能在遥远的其他星球上，如火星、木星的卫星——欧罗巴（Europa）上找到类似的生物。
1.新西兰的怀欧塔普地热仙境
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，一个粗糙的、荒凉的外星世界，地表覆盖着气泡以及亮丽的橘色和黄色的刈痕，笼罩在一片潮湿的迷雾中，这基本就是对怀欧塔普地热仙境大致的印象了，该仙境是新西兰的一个11平方英里（18平方千米）的湿地。
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.
那里曾经是一个火山，蒸汽从池子里升腾出来，泥浆翻滚着气泡。在怀欧塔普湿地成为热门的旅游景点后，游客们被警告不能呆在政府公示的过道，以免跌进稀薄的地表，承担被高温的地热气体或液体烫伤的风险，或者是吸入高浓度的二氧化碳和硫磺气体而丧失性命。
审校:喵喵 校对:落花生 编辑:Freya然 来源：前十网
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