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Despite all the trouble on this cruise, the group managed to get its first good look at Aurora.
盡管這次航行碰到了許多問題，研究團(tuán)隊還是完成了第一次對奧洛拉的詳細(xì)觀察。
And the vents were active and more mysterious than expected.
這些噴口都很活躍，而且比想像中還要神秘。
The largest vent in the field, German said, was among the biggest black smokers he'd seen in his career.
杰爾曼說，那里最大的噴口是他研究生涯中所見過最大的黑煙囪之一。
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.
有時候北極比那些外星海洋還要冷。對于像我這種對寒冷敏感的人來說，這可不好玩。
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，意大利洞穴里那種潮濕且揮之不去的寒冷其實(shí)更糟。那股寒氣直接鉆進(jìn)我的骨子里，不肯離開。
Wouldn't it be nice if the solar system's alien incubators were more tropical?
如果太陽系里培育外星生命的地點(diǎn)是在更熱帶的地方，那不是很好嗎？
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，我和一群科學(xué)家造訪了意大利中部的弗拉薩希洞穴系統(tǒng)，尋找地球上最不為人知的一些生物：生活在洞穴水下通道深處的微生物。
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.
這群不可思議的微生物在有毒且缺氧的水域里生長，靠水和巖石的交互作用緩慢產(chǎn)生的熱來提供能量，這種交互作用會產(chǎn)生硫化氫和甲烷等代謝燃料，情況就像依靠海底熱泉生存的生物一樣。
Scientists think these chemical reactions could exist on icy moons.
科學(xué)家認(rèn)為這些化學(xué)反應(yīng)可能存在于冰冷的衛(wèi)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.
他們也懷疑弗拉薩希洞穴里發(fā)生的化學(xué)反應(yīng)與地球的古代海洋類似，而地球生物的種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.
“地球誕生時是一顆截然不同的行星。”造訪這個洞穴系統(tǒng)超過20年的美國賓州州立大學(xué)地質(zhì)微生物學(xué)家珍妮佛·馬卡拉帝說。
"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."
“如果我們認(rèn)為這個含水層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處，那么這里就是我們磨練生命偵測技巧的好地方。”
The system's largest chamber was discovered in the 1970s and is 65 stories tall.
這個洞穴系統(tǒng)最大的坑室發(fā)現(xiàn)于20世紀(jì)70年代，有65層樓高。
It's so big that the cathedral of Milan, an important unit of measurement for Italians, would fit inside.
大到可以把米蘭大教堂--意大利人的重要計量單位--放進(jìn)去。
But the only gargoyles here have been sculpted, one drop at a time, by the slow seepage of mineral-rich water.
只不過這里的滴水嘴是靠富含礦物質(zhì)的水緩慢滲漏出來，一點(diǎn)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.
走過這個冰冷潮濕的洞室，有點(diǎn)像是拿到了威利·旺卡巧克力工廠的金獎券，只不過甜點(diǎn)是由石灰?guī)r、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.
發(fā)亮、黏滑、因為晶體而閃爍的石筍，有些高達(dá)65英尺，直徑跟古老的紅杉差不多大。
No one knows the extent of Frasassi's network of lakes, which are connected by a vast subterranean aquifer.
弗拉薩希有一連串的湖泊，靠廣大的地下含水層相連，但沒有人知道范圍有多大。
"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.
馬卡拉帝告訴我：“沒有太多人潛進(jìn)過弗拉薩希的含水層，其中一個原因是它有毒，另一個是它很難進(jìn)入。你必須十分擅長使用繩索，而且身強(qiáng)體壯，還必須是一名潛水員。”
When she first visited Frasassi, she had zero caving experience; now she's a skilled caver and speaks fluent Italian.
她第一次造訪弗拉薩希時，毫無探索洞穴的經(jīng)驗，如今她已經(jīng)是熟練的洞穴探索者，能說一口流利的意大利語。
In the aquifer's depths, a layer of clear fresh water sits atop salt water that's saturated with toxic hydrogen sulfide.
在含水層深處，一層清澈的淡水就浮在充滿有毒硫化氫的咸水之上。
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.
下層的咸水是從地球深處冒出來的，除了氣味難聞還缺氧，沒有溶解的氧氣可促使微生物進(jìn)行代謝。
"In that hydrogen sulfide layer, we expected to find almost nothing," Macalady said. "Instead, we found a forest of microbes unexpectedly making a living."
馬卡拉帝說：“在硫化氫層中，我們原本預(yù)期找不到什么東西。但相反地，我們意外發(fā)現(xiàn)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，意大利潛水員在弗拉薩希其中一座名為無限湖的湖泊里，發(fā)現(xiàn)有毒層中竟然有生物棲息。
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）像破爛的哥特式窗簾一樣垂掛在水下的巖石天花板上，有些長達(dá)3英尺。
In the lake's seemingly sterile depths, the divers were spooked and fled.
在貌似貧瘠的湖泊深處，潛水員受到驚嚇并慌忙逃離。
"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，第一個直覺反應(yīng)當(dāng)然是轉(zhuǎn)身離開。”馬卡拉帝正經(jīng)八百地說。
The Frasassi microbes Macalady is curious about are autotrophs, or organisms that make their own food from gases and minerals.
讓馬卡拉帝感到好奇的弗拉薩希微生物是自養(yǎng)生物，也就是利用氣體和礦物質(zhì)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.
這些微生物出現(xiàn)在好幾個地下湖泊里，有時候看起來像黑色觸手，有時候像灰色羽毛。
Preliminary work points to thousands of species collaborating to craft these eerie appendages.
初步研究顯示，幾千種微生物共同形成了這些怪異的附肢。
Some have recognizable genetic sequences, but none are fully known to science.
有些具有可辨識的基因序列，但沒有一種是科學(xué)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馬卡拉帝所說的“基因暗物質(zhì)”--未知的單細(xì)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.
發(fā)現(xiàn)這些未知生物并非前所未見，但隨著科學(xué)家為更多微生物完成基因定序，“發(fā)現(xiàn)一個擁有這么多基因暗物質(zhì)的生物群落就更罕見”，她說。
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.
馬卡拉帝的研究生丹妮·布赫海斯特希望潛水員能夠采集到生物膜，這樣她就能嘗試讓這些神秘的自養(yǎng)生物在實(shí)驗室里生長。
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，或許可以解開這些微生物的身分之謎，弄清楚它們?nèi)绾卧谶@些氣味刺鼻且令人窒息的水域里生存，及思考這對遠(yuǎn)方的生命來說代表什么。
"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.
“我越來越相信，如果我們在太陽系中找到生命，那很可能是在地下的環(huán)境。”布赫海斯特說。他在佛羅里達(dá)州長大，有時可以看到附近卡納維拉爾角發(fā)射的火箭的熾熱條紋。
"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."
“微生物學(xué)吸引我的地方在于，微生物是生命極限的最佳范例，能讓我們對生命繁衍的各種可能性獲得新認(rèn)識。”
