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As I thumb the throttle on my snowmobile, it skitters and glides across a sea of snow and ice.
我催下油門，驅動雪上摩托車飛快掠過一大片冰雪。
In the dusky twilight, the landscape is painted in shades of ethereal blue.
在昏暗的微光中，景色蒙上空靈而深淺不一的藍。
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.
挪威的斯瓦巴群島位于高緯度北極地區，是一系列多山的島嶼，這里的天空中常有極光舞動，海里則有獨角鯨、白鯨和海象巡游，在花了一天穿梭于群島其中一個冰封峽灣后，我現在要回去城鎮了。
It's March, and the sun finally returned to the sky here about a month ago.
現在是3月，太陽終于在大約一個月前回到這里的天空。
I'm with a half dozen scientists who are hunting peculiar landforms called pingos -- or, more specifically, the microbes that live within them.
我跟著一群科學家去尋找一種名叫冰丘的特殊地形，或者更精確地說，是要尋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.
這種穹丘出現在永凍層上，規模大小從土堆到小山丘不等，因為滲入其中的水會結冰或融化，冰丘會跟著季節膨脹或收縮，就像慢動作的冰噴發。
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.
現在氣溫維持在零下15華氏度左右，這群裹得嚴嚴實實、帶著步槍的科學家，一天要去研究地點好幾次，收集冰芯和水樣本，同時還要提防北極熊。
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，能讓我們稍微了解在太陽系的其他世界--也就是在冰殼底下藏著全球性海洋的那些冰冷衛星上--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.
“因為在冬天，冰丘里的生命完全不依靠太陽能，只利用化學能”，領導這一項目的挪威特羅姆瑟大學微生物學家迪米崔·卡列尼琴科如是說。
The story of sunlight-starved life on Earth is relatively new.
直到最近，我們才開始了解地球上這些缺乏陽光的生命。
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.
長久以來，“我們都認為地球上的生命大多局限在地表，而且完全仰賴光合作用”，芭芭拉·雪伍德·羅勒說，她是加拿大多倫多大學的地質學家，專門研究生存在地底深處的微生物。
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世紀70年代末，阿爾文號潛水器探索了加拉帕戈斯群島附近一處漆黑的海底熱泉，發現在海面下約1.5英里處有一個欣欣向榮的生態系，永遠改變了我們對生命極限的概念。
"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."
“這是迫使我們保持謙遜的原因之一，”雪伍德·羅勒說?！跋胂肟矗词乖谖覀冏约旱男乔蛏希覀內匀惶幱谔綄さ倪^程，仍然在探尋我們不知道存在著的環境?！?/div>
Similarly, scientists used to think a world's habitability depended on its distance from the sun. But that picture is incomplete.
同樣地，科學家以前認為一個世界的適居性取決于它與太陽之間的距離。但這一情況并不完整。
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:
現在，有三顆遙遠的衛星因繞行的巨大行星所帶來的重力牽引而變得溫暖，暗示它們的海洋中可能有外星生命，因此讓科學家產生濃厚興趣。
Jupiter's moon Europa, where a salty sea containing more water than Earth's oceans sloshes beneath an ice shell;
這三顆衛星分別是：木星的衛星歐羅巴（木衛二），在冰封的外殼底下有一片咸海，水量比地球的海洋還多；
and Saturn's moons Enceladus -- a small, ice-encrusted world with a global ocean that erupts through fractures in its south pole;
土星的衛星恩賽勒達斯（土衛二），一個被冰覆蓋的小衛星，冰殼底下的海水會從南極的裂縫噴發；
and Titan, with its unearthly terrain of liquid hydrocarbon lakes on its surface and an ocean nestled within its interior.
以及泰坦（土衛六），地形與地球截然不同，表面有液態碳氫化合物形成的湖泊，內部有一片海洋。
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.
觀察顯示，每顆衛星都擁有我們所知道的、也許不知道的支持生命形式所需的化學物質、水和能量。
We might soon learn if these seas are inhabited.
我們可能很快就會知道這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.
歐洲太空總署一艘名為“木星冰衛星探測器”的太空船正在前往木星系統，想要調查這顆巨大行星與它的冰凍衛星，其中包括木衛二。
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“歐羅巴快船”太空船也將啟航前往木衛二，想要解開它的冰殼與咸海之謎。
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.
在這個十年的晚些時候，NASA的“蜻蜓任務”會將一具八旋翼直升機送到土衛六，上面將搭載一套儀器，能偵測這顆霧霾籠罩的衛星表面是否有生命跡象。前往土衛二的任務也在規劃當中。
"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."
“對一名行星科學家來說，現在是非常令人興奮的時刻?！盢ASA噴射推進實驗室的摩根·凱柏說。“這是我們有史以來第一次可能在其他星球上找到生命?！?/p>
