時差N小時:起死回生?

Bringing The Dead Back To Life? Is it possible tobring the dead back to life? Maybe not, but scientistsat Penn State University have done the next bestthing. They found a tiny bacterium that's beentrapped miles below Greenland ice sheets for thepast 120,000 years.

起死回生?有可能起死回生嗎?也許不能，但賓夕法尼亞州立大學(xué)的科學(xué)家做了差不多的事情。他們在格陵蘭島冰原的地下幾十英里處發(fā)現(xiàn)了一種12萬年以前的極小細(xì)菌。

After months of incubation, the bacterium wokeup and began reproducing. Before long, the ancientorganism was once again thriving. Now don't be alarmed. Unlike what may happen in ascience fiction thriller, the bacterium isn't some deadly microbe that's going to turn us allinto zombies.

經(jīng)過了數(shù)月的培育，細(xì)胞已經(jīng)復(fù)蘇并開始繁殖。很快，古生物再次繁榮起來。現(xiàn)在不要驚慌。與科幻驚悚片里場景可不一樣，這些細(xì)菌并不是那種會把我們變成僵尸的致命細(xì)菌。

Apparently, it's a very small, simple microbe not very different from billions of others thathave lived on earth. What's interesting about the microbe is: A) how it managed to survivefor so long beneath the ice; and B) what it suggests about the possibility of life on otherplanets.

顯然，這是種非常微小，簡單的生物，它與地球上其它數(shù)十億的細(xì)菌并無太大區(qū)別。這種微生物的有趣之處在于：首先，它如何能在久冰層下面存活那么久;其次，它的存在表明其他星球上可能存在生命。

The researchers think that the bacterium's small size might have helped it survive inmicroscopic, watery veins in ice crystals. Being small may also have helped the microbeabsorb nutrients more efficiently.

研究人員認(rèn)為，這種細(xì)菌能夠存活在冰晶紋理的潮濕細(xì)縫里可能是由于它體積微小的緣故。體積小可能也會幫助微生物更充分地吸收營養(yǎng)物質(zhì)。

As for life on other planets, scientists have long suspected that if there is life out there, it mightexist buried far beneath a planet's barren surface. So every time scientists find a microbe ableto survive under extreme conditions on Earth, it raises the hope that the same might be thecase in other worlds.

至于其他星球上是否存在生命，科學(xué)家們早就抱有懷疑：如果外太空有生命存在，那么它可能深埋在某個星球貧瘠的表層下。因此，每當(dāng)科學(xué)家們發(fā)現(xiàn)新出現(xiàn)一種微生物能在極端的地球環(huán)境下生存，那么在其他星球上出現(xiàn)同樣情況的可能性就更大。