Horizon - Life On Mars 火星生命 - 3

Conditions on Mars were so harsh that it was hard to imagine any life surviving there. The idea of sophisticated aliens was wiped out.

We know that conditions on Mars today are not very good for life. If you were to go out on the Mars without a spacesuit, I don't recommend it. But if you were, what would happen is your body fluids would literally¹ start to boil, because vapor² pressure on Mars is lower than the boiling point of water at body temperature. So this would not be a very good thing in terms of your ears, eyes, nose and throat. You would quickly suffocate³ and essentially⁴ drown in your own bodily fluid."

It was clear that Mars could not be home to advanced life forms. For a while it meant that perhaps we were alone after all. Mars, it seemed, was a dead end. It wasn't until years later during expeditions in the 70s that they saw that the image of Mars as a dead planet was not quite right.

After a while when people start thinking about it though, you look more into it, then you start realizing “Well, yeah, it is desolate⁵. It's very dry.” But you know there are other things going on.

Volcanoes and explosions had clearly once torn across this planet, leaving the surface pockmarked and scarred. Far from being dead, Mars had all the features of once being very much alive.

We started seeing all these incredible things.

It has mountains there bigger than any mountains on Earth. It's got canyons⁷ that are bigger than the Grand Canyon⁶.

All these volcanoes, parts of Mars was cratered⁸, parts weren't.

It's got tremendous altitude variations over the surface of the planet. It's just a very rich environment.

So that was a very exciting, exciting time. I was surprised by almost everything.

It wasn't just the geology of Mars that was surprising. It also contained all the basic ingredients for life.

Here was a planet that had all the elements needed for life, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, sunlight. And yet there was no clear evidence of life. To me this was a mystery story; it was a sort of lights-are-on-but-nobody's-home result.

So life could form on Mars. There's nothing there preventing it. We do have the basic building blocks.

body fluid: a natural bodily fluid or secretion of fluid such as blood, semen, or saliva; total body water, contained principally in blood plasma and in intracellular and interstitial fluids

vapor pressure: the pressure exerted by a vapor in equilibrium with its solid or liquid phase

pockmarked: marked by smallpox; pitted

1 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

2 vapor   

n.蒸汽，雾气

参考例句：

• The cold wind condenses vapor into rain.冷风使水蒸气凝结成雨。
• This new machine sometimes transpires a lot of hot vapor.这部机器有时排出大量的热气。

3 suffocate   

vt.使窒息，使缺氧，阻碍；vi.窒息，窒息而亡，阻碍发展

参考例句：

• If you shut all the windows,I will suffocate.如果你把窗户全部关起来，我就会闷死。
• The stale air made us suffocate.浑浊的空气使我们感到窒息。

4 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

5 desolate   

adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂

参考例句：

• The city was burned into a desolate waste.那座城市被烧成一片废墟。
• We all felt absolutely desolate when she left.她走后，我们都觉得万分孤寂。

6 canyon   

n.峡谷，溪谷

参考例句：

• The Grand Canyon in the USA is 1900 metres deep.美国的大峡谷1900米深。
• The canyon is famous for producing echoes.这个峡谷以回声而闻名。

7 canyons   

n.峡谷( canyon的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• This mountain range has many high peaks and deep canyons. 这条山脉有许多高峰和深谷。 来自辞典例句
• Do you use canyons or do we preserve them all? 是使用峡谷呢还是全封闭保存？ 来自互联网

8 cratered   

adj.有坑洞的，多坑的v.火山口( crater的过去分词 )；弹坑等

参考例句：

• The surface cratered with the constant dropping of water. 表面因经常滴水而成坑。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• Artillery cratered the roads. 炮击后大路布满了弹坑。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》