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Bringing The Dead Back To Life? Is it possible to bring the dead back to life? Maybe not, but scientists at Penn State University have done the next best thing. They found a tiny bacterium that's been trapped miles below Greenland ice sheets for the past 120,000 years.
起死回生？有可能起死回生嗎？也許不能，但賓夕法尼亞州立大學的科學家做了差不多的事情。他們在格陵蘭島冰原的地下幾十英里處發現了一種12萬年以前的極小細菌。
After months of incubation, the bacterium woke up and began reproducing. Before long, the ancient organism was once again thriving. Now don't be alarmed. Unlike what may happen in a science fiction thriller, the bacterium isn't some deadly microbe that's going to turn us all into zombies.
經過了數月的培育，細胞已經復蘇并開始繁殖。很快，古生物再次繁榮起來。現在不要驚慌。與科幻驚悚片里場景可不一樣，這些細菌并不是那種會把我們變成僵尸的致命細菌。
Apparently, it's a very small, simple microbe not very different from billions of others that have lived on earth. What's interesting about the microbe is: A) how it managed to survive for so long beneath the ice; and B) what it suggests about the possibility of life on other planets.
顯然，這是種非常微小，簡單的生物，它與地球上其它數十億的細菌并無太大區別。這種微生物的有趣之處在于：首先，它如何能在久冰層下面存活那么久；其次，它的存在表明其他星球上可能存在生命。
The researchers think that the bacterium's small size might have helped it survive in microscopic, watery veins in ice crystals. Being small may also have helped the microbe absorb nutrients more efficiently.
研究人員認為，這種細菌能夠存活在冰晶紋理的潮濕細縫里可能是由于它體積微小的緣故。體積小可能也會幫助微生物更充分地吸收營養物質。
As for life on other planets, scientists have long suspected that if there is life out there, it might exist buried far beneath a planet's barren surface. So every time scientists find a microbe able to survive under extreme conditions on Earth, it raises the hope that the same might be the case in other worlds.
至于其他星球上是否存在生命，科學家們早就抱有懷疑：如果外太空有生命存在，那么它可能深埋在某個星球貧瘠的表層下。因此，每當科學家們發現新出現一種微生物能在極端的地球環境下生存，那么在其他星球上出現同樣情況的可能性就更大。
