《那些古怪又讓人憂心的問題》第98期:把海水抽乾(4)

There's evidence that-due to occasional heat waves-ice in the Martian soil occasionally melts and flows as a liquid. When this happens, the trickle of water quickly dries up before it can get very far. However, we've got a lot of ocean at our disposal.

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有證據表明，由於火星表面時不時會有熱浪產生，火星土壤中的冰會時不時地融化，並像液體一樣發生流動。這種情況發生時，涓涓細流走不了多遠就會蒸發完。不過別忘了我們手上可是有大把大把的海水的。

The water pools in the North Polar Basin:

海水開始灌進北極盆地：

Gradually, it will fill the basin:

慢慢地海水會填滿整個盆地：

However, if we look at a map of the more equatorial regions of Mars, where the volcanoes are, we'll see that there's still a lot of land far from the water:

不過如果我們在火星赤道地區（有好多火山）看的話，其實還是有許多陸地離海水很遠的：

[Mercator projection; does not show the poles.]

墨卡託投影圖，不包括極點

Frankly, I think this map is kind of boring; there's not a lot going on. It's just a big empty swath of land with some ocean at the top.

坦白來說，我覺得這張地圖有點無聊：沒有太大的變化，有的只是上面的陸地，還有海洋。

Would not buy again.

差評！

We haven't come close to running out of ocean yet although there was a lot of blue on the map of the Earth at the end of our last answer, the seas that remained were shallow; most of the volume of the oceans was gone.

可是我們手頭上的海水還遠遠沒用完呢。雖然在上篇的結尾處，地球從地圖上看上去還有許多藍色的地方，但它們都十分淺，大部分的海水已經不翼而飛了。

And Mars is much smaller than Earth, so the same volume of water will make a deeper sea.

而火星又比地球小很多，因而同樣體積的海水會形成更深的海洋。

At this point, the water fills in the Valles Marineris, creating some unusual coastlines. The map is less boring, but the terrain around the great canyons makes for some odd shapes.

此時此刻，海水漫進了水手號谷，並形成了許多不同尋常的海岸線。這張圖看起來就有趣多了，但大峽谷附近地區的形狀有些奇怪。

The water now reaches and swallows up Spirit and Opportunity. Eventually, it breaks into the Hellas Impact Crater, the basin containing the lowest point on Mars.

海水現在剛好淹沒“勇氣號”和“機遇號”。最終它會涌入海勒斯隕石坑，火星上的最低點就在這個隕石坑裏。

In my opinion, the rest of the map is starting to look pretty good.

在我看來，剩下的地圖變得越來越好看了。

As the water spreads across the surface in earnest, the map splits into several large islands (and innumerable smaller ones).

隨着水位繼續給力地上漲，現在地圖上只剩少數幾座大島（還有數不清的小島）了。

The water quickly finishes covering most of the high plateaus, leaving only a few islands left.

海水很快就淹沒了絕大多數的高原，現在只剩爲數不多的幾個小島了。

And then, at last, the flow stops; the oceans back on Earth are drained.

最後，我們斷水了！因爲地球上的海洋都已經幹了……

Let's take a closer look at the main islands:

現在讓我們仔細看看這些主要的島嶼：

No rovers remain above water.

所有火星探測器都已經被淹了

Olympus Mons, and a few other volcanoes, remain above water. Surprisingly, they aren't even close to being covered. Olympus Mons still rises well over 10 kilometers above the new sea level. Mars has some huge mountains.

奧林帕斯山和其他一些火山依然堅挺地露出了水面。令人驚訝的是，它們離被淹沒還遠着呢。奧林帕斯山比新的海平面高出10千米以上，火星上還是有巨型山脈的。

Those crazy islands are the result of water filling in Noctis Labyrinthus (the Labyrinth of the Night), a bizarre set of canyons whose origin is still a mystery.

這些驚人的島嶼是海水涌入諾克提斯迷宮（注：火星上位於水手號谷和塔爾西斯之間的區域，因其類似迷宮、深而陡峭的峽谷而得名）的產物，這些奇形怪狀的峽谷圍成了一個找不到起點的詭異迷宮。

The oceans on Mars wouldn't last. There might be some transient greenhouse warming, but in the end, Mars is just too cold. Eventually, the oceans will freeze over, become covered with dust, and gradually migrate to the permafrost at the poles.

但火星上的這個海洋不會存在太長時間。在消失前，火星上可能出現短暫的溫室效應，但說到底火星還是太冷了。最終海洋會徹底結冰，然後被灰塵覆蓋，然後逐漸移動到極點成爲永久凍土。

However, it would take a long time, and until it did, Mars would be a much more interesting place.

這個過程要花很長很長時間。不過一旦真的變成這樣了，火星會變得更加有趣。

When you consider that there's a ready-made portal system to allow transit between the two planets, the consequences are inevitable:

考慮到跨越兩個星球的傳送門運輸系統已經有現成的了，那麼以下結果就是不可避免的了：