《那些古怪又讓人憂心的問題》第97期:把海水抽乾(3)
Vacuuming up half the oceans would massively alter the climate and ecosystems in ways that are hard to predict. At the very least, it would almost certainly involve a collapse of the biosphere and mass extinctions at every level.
But it's possible-if unlikely-that humans could manage to survive. If we did, we'd have this to look forward to:
我們人類還是有可能倖存下來的，但我們將不得不直面這樣的景象：1 Remember to clean the whale filter every few days.
1． 記得每隔幾天清理一下濾鯨網。
DRAIN THE OCEANS: PART II
把海水抽乾（續集）Q. Supposing you did drain the oceans, and dumped the water on top of the Curiosity rover, how would Mars change as the water accumulated?
Q．如果你像上一期裏所說的那樣把海水都抽走，澆到“好奇號”火星探測器上，那麼隨着澆的水越來越多，火星會發生什麼變化？——Iain
——伊恩A. IN THE PREVIOUS ANSWER, we opened a portal at the bottom of the Mariana Trench and let the oceans drain out.
A．在前一篇文章中，我們在馬裏亞納海溝底部開了個洞，海水可以從那個洞流走。We didn't worry too much about where the oceans were draining to. I picked Mars; the Curiosity rover is working so hard to find evidence of water, so I figured we could make things easier for it.
至於要把海水抽到哪裏去這個問題，我隨手就選了火星，因爲“好奇號”探測器一直在苦苦尋找火星上有水存在的證據，所以我想把海水抽到火星上應該能讓“好奇號”輕鬆一點吧……Curiosity is sitting in Gale Crater, a round depression in the Martian surface with a peak, nicknamed Mount Sharp, in the center.
“好奇號”目前在火星一處叫作蓋爾隕石坑的低窪地上，窪地的中間有一座小山，人們喜歡叫它“夏普山”。There's a lot of water on Mars. The problem is, it's frozen. Liquid water doesn't last long there, because it's too cold and there's too little air.
火星上其實有很多水，但問題是它們都是以固態形式存在的。液態水在火星上維持不了太長時間，不是因爲那兒溫度太低，就是因爲那兒空氣太稀薄。If you set out a cup of warm water on Mars, it'll try to boil, freeze, and sublimate, practically all at once. Water on Mars seems to want to be in any state except liquid.
如果你在火星上潑一杯溫水，它會先沸騰，然後結冰，最後昇華，而這三個過程幾乎是同時發生的。看上去在火星上水似乎覺得除了液態怎麼着都行。However, we're dumping a lot of water very fast (all of it at a few degrees above 0°C), and it won't have much time to freeze, boil, or sublimate. If our portal is big enough, the water will start to turn Gale Crater into a lake, just like it would on Earth. We can use the excellent USGS Mars Topographic Map to chart the water's progress.
可問題是我們在以極快的速度往火星上灌水（而且水溫都在零上若干攝氏度），因而水沒有時間結冰、沸騰或昇華。如果你的傳送門足夠大，涌進來的水會把蓋爾隕石坑填成一個大湖，就跟在地球上一樣。我們可以用美國地質勘探局發佈的很讚的火星地形圖來記錄水位上漲的過程。Here's Gale Crater at the start of our experiment:
一開始蓋爾隕石坑是這樣的：As the flow continues, the lake fills in, burying Curiosity under hundreds of meters of water:
隨着越來越多的水涌進來，很快“好奇號”就被淹沒在幾百米深的水下：Eventually, Mount Sharp becomes an island. However, before the peak can disappear completely, the water spills over the north rim of the crater and starts flowing out across the sand.
最終，夏普山變成了一個小島：在水位沒過夏普山之前，海水就會先從隕石坑的北邊流出去，然後蔓延至整個沙地。
