A2-Home

Home

2020.5.26

Listen to me, please. You're like me, a Homo sapiens, a wise human. Life, a miracle in the universe appeared around four billion years ago and we humans only 200,000 years ago. Yet we have succeeded in disrupting the balance that is so essential to life on Earth. Listen carefully to this extraordinary story, which is yours and decied what you want to do with it.

• homo: 人属（灵长目人科的一属，包括早期人和现代人）
• sapiens: 人种；智慧人种
• Homo sapiens: 智人
• essential: a thing that is absolutely necessary

 

These are traces of our origins. At the beginning, our planet was  no more than a chaos of fire, formed in the wake of its star, the sun. A cloud of agglutinated dust particles, similar to so many similar clusters in the univers. Yet this was where the miracle of life occurred.

• chaos: complete disorder and confusion
• in the wake of: 随着
• star: 恒星
• agglutinated: 胶合的；粘着的；凝集的
• particle: 粒子；颗粒；微粒
• clusters:〔天〕星系团

 

Today, life-our life-is just a link in a chain of innumerable living beings that have succeeded one another on Earth over nearly four billion years. And even today, new volcanoes continue to sculpt雕塑；雕刻；使具有某种形状 our landscapes. They offer a glimpse of what our Earth was like at the birth, molten rock surging from the depths, solidifying, cracking, blistering起泡；（使表皮等）涨破；猛烈抨击；严厉批评 or spreading in a thin crust壳；表面；厚颜无耻 before fabling dormant休眠 for a time.

 

These wreaths花环；(烟,云等的)圈；一圈 of smoke curling from the bowels肠；内部最深处 of the Earth bear witness to the Earth's original atmospheres. An atmosphere devoid完全没有；缺乏 of oxygen, a dense atmosphere, thick充满；弥漫；厚的；粗的 with water vapor烟雾；【科技】水蒸气, full of carbon dioxide二氧化物. A furnace熔炉. But the Earth had an exceptional future, offered to it by water. At the right distance from the sun-not too far, not too near, the Earth was able to conserve节省；保护；节约；保存 water in liquid form. Water vapor condensed（由气体）冷凝；（使气体）凝结；变稠 and fell in torrential倾泻的；如注的 downpours on Earth and rivers appeared. The rivers shaped the surface of the Earth, cutting their channels, furrowing〈口〉犁地；给(田)作垄；使起皱纹；〈诗〉(破浪)前进 out valleys山谷；流域；峡谷；谷地. They ran toward the lowest places on the globe地球；地球仪；灯罩；球状物 to form the oceans. They tore“tear”的过去式 minerals from the rocks, and gradually the freshwater of the oceans became heavy with salt. Water is a vital必不可少的；对…极重要的；生命的；维持生命所必需的 liquid. It irrigated灌溉；【医】冲洗(伤口) these sterile贫瘠的；消毒的；不孕的 expanses宽阔的区域；广阔；广阔的区域. The paths it traced are like the veins of a body, the branches of a tree, the vesseles容器；船舶；血管 of the sap（植物体内运送养分的）液；笨蛋 that it brought to the Earth.

Nearly four billion yesrs later, somewhere on Earth can still be found these works of art, left by the volcanoes' ash, mixed with water from Iceland's glaciers. There they are-matter and water, water and matter-soft and hard combined, the crucial alliance shared by every life-form on our planet. Minerals and metals are even older than the Earth. They are stardust. They provide the Earth's colors. Red from iron, black from carbon, blue from copper, yellow from sulfur.

• glaciers: 冰川
• copper: 铜
• sulfur: 硫，硫磺；硫磺色
  

Where do we come from? Whers did life first spark into being? A miracle of time, primitive life-forms still exist in the globe's hot springs. They give them their colors. They're called archaebacteria. They all feed off the Earth's heat, all except the cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae. They alone have the capacity to turn to the sun to capture its energy. They are a vital ancestor of all yesterday's and today's plant species. These tiny bacteria and their billions of descendants change the destiny of our planet. They transformed its atmosphere. What happened to the carbon that poisoned the atmosphere? It's still here, imprisoned in the Earth's crust. We can read this chapter of the Earth's history nowhere better than on the walls of Colorado's Grand Canyon. They reveal nearby two billion years of the Earth's history.

• archaebacteria: n. 原始细菌；古细菌类
• feed off: 从…取食
• cyanobacteria: n. 蓝藻细菌
• algae: n. [植] 藻类；[植] 海藻
• descendant: n. 后裔，子孙
• crust: n. 地壳；外壳；面包皮；坚硬外皮
• Colorado's Grand Canyon: 科罗拉多州的大峡谷

2020.6.4

Once upon a time, the Grand Canyon was a sea inhabited by microorganism. They grew their shells by tapping into carbon from atmosphere dissolved in the ocean. When they died, the shells sank and accumulated on the seabed. These strata are the product of those billions and billions of shells. Thanks to them, the carbon drain from the atmosphere and other life-form could develop. It is life that altered the atmosphere. Plant life fed off the sun's energy, which enabled it to break apart the water molecule and take the oxygen, and the oxygen filled the air. The Earth's water cycle is a process of constant renewal. Waterfalls, water vapor, clouds, rain, springs, rivers, seas, oceans, glaciers. The cycle is never broken. There's always the same quantity of water on Earth. All the successive species on Earth have drunk the same water. The astonishing matter that is water, one of the most unstable of all. It takes a liquid form as running water, gaseous as vapor, or solid as ice.

• inhabit: 居住(在)；栖息(在)；占据；充斥
• accumulate: 累积；积聚
• strata: 层；[地质] 地层；阶层
• molecule:  [化学] 分子；微小颗粒，微粒
• gaseous: adj. 气态的，气体的；无实质的

In Sibera, the frozen surfaces of lakes in winter contain the traces of the forces that water deploys when it freezes. Lighter than water, the ice floats rather than sinking to the bottom. It forms a protective mantle against the cold, under which life and go on. The engine of life is linkage, everything is linked. Nothing is self-sufficient. Water and air are inseparable, united in life and for our life on Earth. Thus clouds form over the oceans and bring rain to the landmasses, whose rivers carry water back to the oceans. Sharing is everything. The green expanse peeking through the clouds is source of oxygen in the air. Seventy percent of this gas, without which our lungs cannot function, comes from the algae that tint the surface of the oceans. Our Earth relies on a balance in which every being has a role to play and exists onlt through the existence of another being. A subtle, fragile harmony that is easily shattered. Thus, corals are born from the marriage off algae and shells.

• mantle: 地幔；斗篷；覆盖物
• expanse: 宽阔；广阔的区域
• tint: 染（发）；给…着色

test