英语听力：自然百科:行星旅行指南 火星(25)

Come back six months later and it's like a different world.

六个月后回来,它就像一个不同的世界。

The sun is shining.

阳光闪耀。

It's wet. It's warm.

很湿，很温暖。

Things are alive and skirring around.

东西都是活的,而且在周围打转。

So we may be being misled, seeing its frozen, cold side.

所以我们可能被误导,看到其冻结，非常冰冷的一面。

And in fact, we are just there at the wrong season.

事实上,我们只是在错误的季节而已。

We know that on earth, some bacteria can survive being frozen for millions of years.

我们知道,在地球上,一些细菌被冻结了数百万年后仍可以存活。

They can also eat perchlorate,

它们还可以吃高氯酸盐,

the highly reactive chemical Pheonix found in the Martian soil.

土壤中发现的高活性化学物质。

Presumably if there's life at the Pheonix site,

大概在凤凰城这个地方有生命存在,

it had learned the same trick.

它学到了相同的诀窍。

So there might be organisms that are literally¹ eating the rocks and reacting with perchlorate,

所以可能有生物吃岩石并和高氯酸盐发生反应,

below the surface, shielded from the ultraviolet light,

在表面下,屏蔽紫外线,

just having a great old time five million years ago.

仅仅拥有一个伟大的五百万年前的旧时光。

The party is over because everybody is frozen,

聚会结束了,因为大家都被冷冻了起来,

but another five million years,

但另一个五百万年后,

the party will start up again as the Martian summer comes to the north polar regions and the ice turns to water.

火星的夏天来到北极地区，冰变成水后聚会再次开始。

The party might not be over everwhere.

聚会也许并不会结束。

The gas methane² has been found both by spacecraft in orbit and by telescopes from earth.

天然气甲烷都被在轨道中的宇宙飞船和地球上的望远镜所发现。

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 methane   

n.甲烷，沼气

参考例句：

• The blast was caused by pockets of methane gas that ignited.爆炸是由数袋甲烷气体着火引起的。
• Methane may have extraterrestrial significance.甲烷具有星际意义。