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Despite all the trouble on this cruise, the group managed to get its first good look at Aurora.
尽管这次航行碰到了许多问题，研究团队还是完成了第一次对奥洛拉的详细观察。
And the vents were active and more mysterious than expected.
这些喷口都很活跃，而且比想像中还要神秘。
The largest vent in the field, German said, was among the biggest black smokers he'd seen in his career.
杰尔曼说，那里最大的喷口是他研究生涯中所见过最大的黑烟囱之一。
It's colder in the Arctic than in those alien seas. This is not fun for someone as sensitive to the cold as I am.
有时候北极比那些外星海洋还要冷。对于像我这种对寒冷敏感的人来说，这可不好玩。
However, the damp, lingering chill of an Italian cave turned out to be even worse. It burrowed straight into my bones and refused to leave.
然而，意大利洞穴里那种潮湿且挥之不去的寒冷其实更糟。那股寒气直接钻进我的骨子里，不肯离开。
Wouldn't it be nice if the solar system's alien incubators were more tropical?
如果太阳系里培育外星生命的地点是在更热带的地方，那不是很好吗？
This past February I visited central Italy's Frasassi cave system with scientists searching for some of Earth's least known creatures: microbes that live deep within the cave's underwater passages.
今年2月，我和一群科学家造访了意大利中部的弗拉萨希洞穴系统，寻找地球上最不为人知的一些生物：生活在洞穴水下通道深处的微生物。
Growing in toxic, oxygen-starved waters, these improbable communities are powered by the slow burn of water interacting with the rock itself, producing metabolic fuels such as hydrogen sulfide and methane -- just like the organisms that depend on oceanic hydrothermal vents.
这群不可思议的微生物在有毒且缺氧的水域里生长，靠水和岩石的交互作用缓慢产生的热来提供能量，这种交互作用会产生硫化氢和甲烷等代谢燃料，情况就像依靠海底热泉生存的生物一样。
Scientists think these chemical reactions could exist on icy moons.
科学家认为这些化学反应可能存在于冰冷的卫星上。
They also suspect that Frasassi's chemistry is similar to Earth's ancient oceans, where the seeds of terrestrial biology might have sprouted.
他们也怀疑弗拉萨希洞穴里发生的化学反应与地球的古代海洋类似，而地球生物的种子可能就是在那里萌芽的。
"Earth was a very different planet when it was born," said Jennifer Macalady, a geomicrobiologist at Penn State University who's been visiting the cave system for more than 20 years.
“地球诞生时是一颗截然不同的行星。”造访这个洞穴系统超过20年的美国宾州州立大学地质微生物学家珍妮佛·马卡拉帝说。
"If we think this aquifer was like Earth's early oceans, and we think that Earth's early oceans might have some similarities with oceans on other planets, this is a great place to hone our skills for life detection."
“如果我们认为这个含水层就像地球早期的海洋，而地球的早期海洋和其他星球的海洋有一些相似之处，那么这里就是我们磨练生命侦测技巧的好地方。”
The system's largest chamber was discovered in the 1970s and is 65 stories tall.
这个洞穴系统最大的坑室发现于20世纪70年代，有65层楼高。
It's so big that the cathedral of Milan, an important unit of measurement for Italians, would fit inside.
大到可以把米兰大教堂--意大利人的重要计量单位--放进去。
But the only gargoyles here have been sculpted, one drop at a time, by the slow seepage of mineral-rich water.
只不过这里的滴水嘴是靠富含矿物质的水缓慢渗漏出来，一点一滴塑造而成。
Walking through this chilled, humid chamber is a bit like scoring a golden ticket to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory -- except the confections are crafted by limestone, water, and acid.
走过这个冰冷潮湿的洞室，有点像是拿到了威利·旺卡巧克力工厂的金奖券，只不过甜点是由石灰岩、水和酸所制成的。
Glistening, slimy, and sparkling with crystals, some of the stalagmites are 65 feet tall and as big around as old-growth redwood trees.
发亮、黏滑、因为晶体而闪烁的石笋，有些高达65英尺，直径跟古老的红杉差不多大。
No one knows the extent of Frasassi's network of lakes, which are connected by a vast subterranean aquifer.
弗拉萨希有一连串的湖泊，靠广大的地下含水层相连，但没有人知道范围有多大。
"There hasn't been much diving in the Frasassi aquifer because, one, it's toxic. Two, it's hard to obtain access. You have to be very good on a rope, and you have to be a pretty sturdy individual. And then you have to be a diver," Macalady told me.
马卡拉帝告诉我：“没有太多人潜进过弗拉萨希的含水层，其中一个原因是它有毒，另一个是它很难进入。你必须十分擅长使用绳索，而且身强体壮，还必须是一名潜水员。”
When she first visited Frasassi, she had zero caving experience; now she's a skilled caver and speaks fluent Italian.
她第一次造访弗拉萨希时，毫无探索洞穴的经验，如今她已经是熟练的洞穴探索者，能说一口流利的意大利语。
In the aquifer's depths, a layer of clear fresh water sits atop salt water that's saturated with toxic hydrogen sulfide.
在含水层深处，一层清澈的淡水就浮在充满有毒硫化氢的咸水之上。
That lower layer bubbles up from deep within the Earth, and in addition to being smelly, it's anoxic -- there's no dissolved oxygen to power microbial metabolisms.
下层的咸水是从地球深处冒出来的，除了气味难闻还缺氧，没有溶解的氧气可促使微生物进行代谢。
"In that hydrogen sulfide layer, we expected to find almost nothing," Macalady said. "Instead, we found a forest of microbes unexpectedly making a living."
马卡拉帝说：“在硫化氢层中，我们原本预期找不到什么东西。但相反地，我们意外发现有一大片微生物。”
In 2004, Italian divers discovered that the toxic layer in one of the Frasassi lakes, Lago Infinito, was surprisingly inhabited.
2004年，意大利潜水员在弗拉萨希其中一座名为无限湖的湖泊里，发现有毒层中竟然有生物栖息。
Black, stringy biofilms -- cooperative communities of microbes -- hung from the underwater rocky ceiling like tattered Gothic curtains, some of them three feet long.
黏稠的黑色生物膜（微生物共同形成的群落）像破烂的哥特式窗帘一样垂挂在水下的岩石天花板上，有些长达3英尺。
In the lake's seemingly sterile depths, the divers were spooked and fled.
在貌似贫瘠的湖泊深处，潜水员受到惊吓并慌忙逃离。
"If you see alien cave goo, your first instinct is to turn around," Macalady said, deadpan.
“看到外星洞穴的黏液，第一个直觉反应当然是转身离开。”马卡拉帝正经八百地说。
The Frasassi microbes Macalady is curious about are autotrophs, or organisms that make their own food from gases and minerals.
让马卡拉帝感到好奇的弗拉萨希微生物是自养生物，也就是利用气体和矿物质自行制造食物的生物。
These microbes have turned up in several underground lakes, sometimes looking dark and tentacular, other times gray and feathery.
这些微生物出现在好几个地下湖泊里，有时候看起来像黑色触手，有时候像灰色羽毛。
Preliminary work points to thousands of species collaborating to craft these eerie appendages.
初步研究显示，几千种微生物共同形成了这些怪异的附肢。
Some have recognizable genetic sequences, but none are fully known to science.
有些具有可辨识的基因序列，但没有一种是科学界完全已知的。
And a good fraction are what Macalady calls "genetic dark matter" -- the single-celled unknown.
其中有很大一部分是马卡拉帝所说的“基因暗物质”--未知的单细胞生物。
Finding those unknowns is not unprecedented, but as scientists sequence more microbes, it's "more rare to find a community that has so much of this genetic dark matter," she said.
发现这些未知生物并非前所未见，但随着科学家为更多微生物完成基因定序，“发现一个拥有这么多基因暗物质的生物群落就更罕见”，她说。
Dani Buchheister, one of Macalady's graduate students, was hoping the divers could collect biofilms so she can try to coax the mysterious autotrophs to grow in a lab.
马卡拉帝的研究生丹妮·布赫海斯特希望潜水员能够采集到生物膜，这样她就能尝试让这些神秘的自养生物在实验室里生长。
If she can do that, perhaps she can solve the mysteries of the microbes' identities and figure out how they survive in these pungent, suffocating waters -- with an eye to what that means for life farther afield.
如果能成功，或许可以解开这些微生物的身分之谜，弄清楚它们如何在这些气味刺鼻且令人窒息的水域里生存，及思考这对远方的生命来说代表什么。
"I've become more and more convinced that if we find life in our solar system, it's probably in subsurface environments," said Buchheister, who grew up in Florida and could sometimes see the fiery streaks of rockets launching from nearby Cape Canaveral.
“我越来越相信，如果我们在太阳系中找到生命，那很可能是在地下的环境。”布赫海斯特说。他在佛罗里达州长大，有时可以看到附近卡纳维拉尔角发射的火箭的炽热条纹。
"And my draw to microbiology was the idea that microbes are our best examples of the extremes of life poking at the edges of what's possible with the life we know."
“微生物学吸引我的地方在于，微生物是生命极限的最佳范例，能让我们对生命繁衍的各种可能性获得新认识。”
