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As I thumb the throttle on my snowmobile, it skitters and glides across a sea of snow and ice.
我催下油门，驱动雪上摩托车飞快掠过一大片冰雪。
In the dusky twilight, the landscape is painted in shades of ethereal blue.
在昏暗的微光中，景色蒙上空灵而深浅不一的蓝。
I'm heading back to town after spending the day crisscrossing a frozen fjord, one of many in Norway's Svalbard archipelago, a cluster of mountainous islands in the high Arctic where auroras often dance overhead and narwhals, belugas, and walruses patrol the seas.
挪威的斯瓦巴群岛位于高纬度北极地区，是一系列多山的岛屿，这里的天空中常有极光舞动，海里则有独角鲸、白鲸和海象巡游，在花了一天穿梭于群岛其中一个冰封峡湾后，我现在要回去城镇了。
It's March, and the sun finally returned to the sky here about a month ago.
现在是3月，太阳终于在大约一个月前回到这里的天空。
I'm with a half dozen scientists who are hunting peculiar landforms called pingos -- or, more specifically, the microbes that live within them.
我跟着一群科学家去寻找一种名叫冰丘的特殊地形，或者更精确地说，是要寻找生存在其中的微生物。
Anchored in permafrost, these domes range in size from mounds to small hills and seasonally expand and contract as water seeping through them freezes and thaws. They're like an icy eruption in slow motion.
这种穹丘出现在永冻层上，规模大小从土堆到小山丘不等，因为渗入其中的水会结冰或融化，冰丘会跟著季节膨胀或收缩，就像慢动作的冰喷发。
Temperatures hover around minus 15°F as the bundled-up, rifle-toting scientists make multiple trips each day to their study sites, where they collect ice cores and water samples while keeping an eye out for polar bears.
现在气温维持在零下15华氏度左右，这群裹得严严实实、带着步枪的科学家，一天要去研究地点好几次，收集冰芯和水样本，同时还要提防北极熊。
The microbes populating the pingos could offer a glimpse at how alien life might survive on other worlds in the solar system -- icy moons with global seas tucked beneath frozen rinds.
生活在冰丘里的微生物，能让我们稍微了解在太阳系的其他世界--也就是在冰壳底下藏着全球性海洋的那些冰冷卫星上--外星生命可能的生存方式。
"That's because, in winter, life inside the pingo doesn't rely at all on solar energy -- it's only using chemical energy," says microbiologist Dimitri Kalenitchenko of Norway's University of Tromso, who is leading the project.
“因为在冬天，冰丘里的生命完全不依靠太阳能，只利用化学能”，领导这一项目的挪威特罗姆瑟大学微生物学家迪米崔·卡列尼琴科如是说。
The story of sunlight-starved life on Earth is relatively new.
直到最近，我们才开始了解地球上这些缺乏阳光的生命。
For a long time, "we still thought life on this planet was largely restricted to the surface, and entirely dependent on photosynthesis," says Barbara Sherwood Lollar, a geologist at the University of Toronto who studies microbes living deep within the Earth.
长久以来，“我们都认为地球上的生命大多局限在地表，而且完全仰赖光合作用”，芭芭拉·雪伍德·罗勒说，她是加拿大多伦多大学的地质学家，专门研究生存在地底深处的微生物。
Then, in the late 1970s, the Alvin submersible explored a dark oceanic hydrothermal vent near the Galápagos Islands, discovering a flourishing ecosystem about a mile and a half beneath the ocean's surface, and forever changed our conceptions of life's limits.
直到20世纪70年代末，阿尔文号潜水器探索了加拉帕戈斯群岛附近一处漆黑的海底热泉，发现在海面下约1.5英里处有一个欣欣向荣的生态系，永远改变了我们对生命极限的概念。
"It's one of the things that forces us to be humble," Sherwood Lollar says. "To think that even on our own planet we are still finding processes, still finding environments that we didn't know existed."
“这是迫使我们保持谦逊的原因之一，”雪伍德·罗勒说。“想想看，即使在我们自己的星球上，我们仍然处于探寻的过程，仍然在探寻我们不知道存在着的环境。”
Similarly, scientists used to think a world's habitability depended on its distance from the sun. But that picture is incomplete.
同样地，科学家以前认为一个世界的适居性取决于它与太阳之间的距离。但这一情况并不完整。
Now three faraway moons, warmed by the gravitational tug and pull of the giant planets they orbit, tempt scientists with their promises of alien life in their oceans:
现在，有三颗遥远的卫星因绕行的巨大行星所带来的重力牵引而变得温暖，暗示它们的海洋中可能有外星生命，因此让科学家产生浓厚兴趣。
Jupiter's moon Europa, where a salty sea containing more water than Earth's oceans sloshes beneath an ice shell;
这三颗卫星分别是：木星的卫星欧罗巴（木卫二），在冰封的外壳底下有一片咸海，水量比地球的海洋还多；
and Saturn's moons Enceladus -- a small, ice-encrusted world with a global ocean that erupts through fractures in its south pole;
土星的卫星恩赛勒达斯（土卫二），一个被冰覆盖的小卫星，冰壳底下的海水会从南极的裂缝喷发；
and Titan, with its unearthly terrain of liquid hydrocarbon lakes on its surface and an ocean nestled within its interior.
以及泰坦（土卫六），地形与地球截然不同，表面有液态碳氢化合物形成的湖泊，内部有一片海洋。
Observations suggest that each moon has the chemistry, water, and energy needed to support life as we know it, and maybe don't know it.
观察显示，每颗卫星都拥有我们所知道的、也许不知道的支持生命形式所需的化学物质、水和能量。
We might soon learn if these seas are inhabited.
我们可能很快就会知道这些海洋里是否有生命存在。
A European Space Agency spacecraft called JUICE is on its way to the Jovian system to surveil the giant planet and its icy moons, including Europa.
欧洲太空总署一艘名为“木星冰卫星探测器”的太空船正在前往木星系统，想要调查这颗巨大行星与它的冰冻卫星，其中包括木卫二。
Next year, NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft will also set sail for Europa, on a quest to solve the mysteries of its crust and salty sea.
2024年，NASA的“欧罗巴快船”太空船也将启航前往木卫二，想要解开它的冰壳与咸海之谜。
And later this decade, the U.S. space agency's Dragonfly mission will send an octocopter to Titan, carrying a suite of instruments that could detect signs of life on the hazy moon's surface. Missions to Enceladus are being planned too.
在这个十年的晚些时候，NASA的“蜻蜓任务”会将一具八旋翼直升机送到土卫六，上面将搭载一套仪器，能侦测这颗雾霾笼罩的卫星表面是否有生命迹象。前往土卫二的任务也在规划当中。
"It's a really exciting time to be a planetary scientist," says Morgan Cable of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We could, for the first time in human history, find life somewhere else."
“对一名行星科学家来说，现在是非常令人兴奋的时刻。”NASA喷射推进实验室的摩根·凯柏说。“这是我们有史以来第一次可能在其他星球上找到生命。”
