英语听力：自然百科 行星旅行指南：木星 Jupiter—17

 As these robot submarines accomplish great missions, the possibility of one day melting our way into Europa’s deep ocean is moving from fiction toward fact.

 

Let’s just imagine, there we’re on a little spacecraft with the capability¹ to melt to the ice, we push down, ‘mmm’, plowing² through the ice. We hit the water, that may be an interesting sound right there at the interface³ between the water and the ice. When we look around, what we might see is a community of organisms that are growing on energy that’s coming through the ice, and oxidants, maybe even oxygen, produced by sunlight on the surface of the ice, being mixed through the ice, reacting with the water at that interface. Energy is being released. Organisms are consuming that energy. OK, that’s cool. We are going to go deeper down to the bottom of the ocean. There we see maybe hot hydrothermal vents⁴, deep sea vents like we see on Earth or tidal energy, which is being caused by Jupiter’s gravitational pull, is pumping hot fluids through the crust. That’s a way we’re hoping to find.

 

On Earth we’ve found communities of life doing just fine, cut off from life above and huddling⁵ for warmth and sustenance⁶ around volcanic⁷ vents in the deep sea. This is what makes Europa so appealing. There should be warm salty water interacting directly with a hot rocky seafloor.

 

Life is like a little battery. It runs off a chemical reaction. If that rocky mantle⁸ is hot, then like black smokers⁹ on the ocean floors of the Earth, there could be the chemistry that powers life just pouring into that ocean from hot locations on that ocean floor. If Europa is an environment where we think there should be life, then it’s important to know, is there? Does life get going easily, given the right conditions? Or to that matter, if there is no life in Europa’s ocean and the conditions are favorable to life, why not? And how rare, then, is a life as we know it on Earth?

 

1 capability   

n.能力；才能；(pl)可发展的能力或特性等

参考例句：

• She has the capability to become a very fine actress.她有潜力成为杰出演员。
• Organizing a whole department is beyond his capability.组织整个部门是他能力以外的事。

2 plowing   

v.耕( plow的现在分词 )；犁耕；费力穿过

参考例句：

• "There are things more important now than plowing, Sugar. "如今有比耕种更重要的事情要做呀，宝贝儿。 来自飘（部分）
• Since his wife's death, he has been plowing a lonely furrow. 从他妻子死后，他一直过着孤独的生活。 来自辞典例句

3 interface   

n.接合部位，分界面；v.(使)互相联系

参考例句：

• My computer has a network interface,which allows me to get to other computers.我的计算机有网络接口可以与其它计算机连在一起。
• This program has perspicuous interface and extensive application. 该程序界面明了，适用范围广。

4 vents   

（气体、液体等进出的）孔、口( vent的名词复数 )； （鸟、鱼、爬行动物或小哺乳动物的）肛门； 大衣等的)衩口； 开衩

参考例句：

• He always vents his anger on the dog. 他总是拿狗出气。
• The Dandelion Patch is the least developed of the four active vents. “蒲公英区”在这四个活裂口中是发育最差的一个。

5 huddling   

n. 杂乱一团, 混乱, 拥挤 v. 推挤, 乱堆, 草率了事

参考例句：

• Twenty or thirty monkeys are huddling along the thick branch. 三十只猴子挤在粗大的树枝上。
• The defenders are huddling down for cover. 捍卫者为了掩护缩成一团。

6 sustenance   

n.食物，粮食；生活资料；生计

参考例句：

• We derive our sustenance from the land.我们从土地获取食物。
• The urban homeless are often in desperate need of sustenance.城市里无家可归的人极其需要食物来维持生命。

7 volcanic   

adj.火山的；象火山的；由火山引起的

参考例句：

• There have been several volcanic eruptions this year.今年火山爆发了好几次。
• Volcanic activity has created thermal springs and boiling mud pools.火山活动产生了温泉和沸腾的泥浆池。

8 mantle   

n.斗篷，覆罩之物，罩子；v.罩住，覆盖，脸红

参考例句：

• The earth had donned her mantle of brightest green.大地披上了苍翠欲滴的绿色斗篷。
• The mountain was covered with a mantle of snow.山上覆盖着一层雪。

9 smokers   

吸烟者( smoker的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Many smokers who are chemically addicted to nicotine cannot cut down easily. 许多有尼古丁瘾的抽烟人不容易把烟戒掉。
• Chain smokers don't care about the dangers of smoking. 烟鬼似乎不在乎吸烟带来的种种危害。