The career that I started early on in my life was looking for exotic life forms in exotic places, and at that time I was working in the Antarctic and the Arctic, and high deserts and low deserts. Until about a dozen years ago, when I was really captured by caves, and I really re-focused most of my research in that direction.
私はキャリアの始めの頃は 珍しい場所で珍しい生物を探しました 当時 私は南極 北極 各地の砂漠で 探索を行いました 10数年前 洞窟に興味を持ってから 私は研究の方向を洞窟に変えました
So I have a really cool day job-- I get to do some really amazing stuff. I work in some of the most extreme cave environments on the planet. Many of them are trying to kill us from the minute we go into them, but nevertheless, they're absolutely gripping, and contain unbelievable biological wonders that are very, very different from those that we have on the planet. Apart from the intrinsic value of the biology and mineralogy and geo-microbiology that we do there, we're also using these as templates for figuring out how to go look for life on other planets. Particularly Mars, but also Europa, the small, icy moon around Jupiter. And perhaps, someday, far beyond our solar system itself.
毎日の研究はとても楽しく とても驚くような仕事ができました 地球上で最も過酷と言われる洞窟にも行き 生命の危険も感じました しかし洞窟はどれも非常に魅力的で 信じられない程の生物学的神秘があり まるで地球上とは思えない程です 生物学 鉱物学 地質微生物学 本来の目的を探究する他に 私たちは研究成果を 他の惑星の生命の探索に 活用しています 特に火星や木星の小さな衛星で 氷で覆われたエウロパに注目しており そしておそらく将来は我々の 太陽系外も対象になります
I'm very passionately interested in the human future, on the Moon and Mars particularly, and elsewhere in the solar system. I think it's time that we transitioned to a solar system-going civilization and species. And, as an outgrowth of all of this then, I wonder about whether we can, and whether we even should, think about transporting Earth-type life to other planets. Notably Mars, as a first example.
私が情熱を注いでいるのは 月や火星 他の太陽系惑星における 人類の未来です 今は人類が太陽系全体の 文明や生命に目を向ける時代です そしてこれらの調査結果は 地球上の生命を他の惑星に送り込めるか 送り込むべきか 思案させるのです 特に火星は注目に値します
Something I never talk about in scientific meetings is how I actually got to this state and why I do the work that I do. Why don't I have a normal job, a sensible job? And then of course, I blame the Soviet Union. Because in the mid-1950s, when I was a tiny child, they had the audacity to launch a very primitive little satellite called Sputnik, which sent the Western world into a hysterical tailspin. And a tremendous amount of money went into the funding of science and mathematics skills for kids. And I'm a product of that generation, like so many other of my peers. It really caught hold of us, and caught fire, and it would be lovely if we could reproduce that again now.
私が学会で話さないのは どのようにして現在に至り なぜ普通の仕事をせずに この研究をしているかです それはもちろん ソ連のせいです 1950年代半ば 私はまだ小さな子供でした ソ連は大胆にもスプートニクという 初歩的な小さな衛星を打ち上げました それを目の当たりにした西側諸国は大いに狼狽し そして莫大な額の資金が 科学の振興と 子供たちの 数学教育に注ぎ込まれました 私は他の同僚と同じように その時代の産物なのです 私たちは本当に焚き付けられました また再現できれば素晴らしいと思います
Of course, refusing to grow up -- -- even though I impersonate a grown-up in daily life, but I do a fairly good job of that -- but really retaining that childlike quality of not caring what other people think about what you're interested in, is really critical. The next element is the fact that I have applied a value judgment and my value judgment is that the presence of life is better than no life. And so, life is more valuable than no life. And so I think that that holds together a great deal of the work that people in this audience approach.
もちろん成長するのを拒んだり 日常は大人のふりもできます 実際そのように振る舞っています それでも他の人の意見ばかり気にせず 童心を忘れないようにすることは とても大事なことです 他の要素として 私の価値基準は 単純に生命が存在することは 存在しないことよりも良く 存在自体に価値があるのです このような姿勢は この会場にいる皆さんにも 共通するものだと思います
I'm very interested in Mars, of course, and that was a product of my being a young undergraduate when the Viking Landers landed on Mars. And that took what had been a tiny little astronomical object in the sky, that you would see as a dot, and turned it completely into a landscape, as that very first primitive picture came rastering across the screen. And when it became a landscape, it also became a destination, and altered, really, the course of my life.
もちろん私は火星にとても関心があります バイキング着陸船が火星に降り立ったのは 私が学部生の頃のことです 火星は空に浮かんでいる ほんの小さな天体でしかなく 点にしか見えなかったのが スクリーン上に初めて描写される おぼろげな映像を通して 現実の景色となったのです 火星の景色は 目標にもなり 私の人生を変えました
In my graduate years I worked with my colleague and mentor and friend, Steve Schneider, at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, working on global change issues. We've written a number of things on the role of Gaia hypothesis -- whether or not you could consider Earth as a single entity in any meaningful scientific sense, and then, as an outgrowth of that, I worked on the environmental consequences of nuclear war.
私が大学院生の時 同僚 師 友人である アメリカ大気研究センターの スティーブ・シュナイダー博士は 地球変動を研究していました 私たちはガイア理論の役割について 多くの論文を執筆しました 私たちはガイア理論の役割について 多くの論文を執筆しました 地球を個別の存在として見なすべき 科学的論拠を検証しました その後派生した研究の中には 核戦争がもたらす環境破壊があります
So, wonderful things and grim things. But what it taught me was to look at Earth as a planet with external eyes, not just as our home. And that is a wonderful stepping away in perspective, to try to then think about the way our planet behaves, as a planet, and with the life that's on it. And all of this seems to me to be a salient point in history. We're getting ready to begin to go through the process of leaving our planet of origin and out into the wider solar system and beyond.
素晴らしい研究や ぞっとする研究です しかし研究のおかげで地球を棲み家でなく 一つの惑星として見ることを学びました 生命を育む地球の惑星としての特性を 考察するうえで 素晴らしい発想の転換を 得ることができました 私にはこれらは歴史の 転換点に見えます 私たちは母星を離れて 太陽系とその彼方に出発する 準備を始めようとしているのです
So, back to Mars. How hard is it going to be to find life on Mars? Well, sometimes it's really very hard for us to find each other, even on this planet. So, finding life on another planet is a non-trivial occupation and we spend a lot of time trying to think about that. Whether or not you think it's likely to be successful sort of depends on what you think about the chances of life in the universe. I think, myself, that life is a natural outgrowth of the increasing complexification of matter over time.
火星の話に戻りましょう 火星で生命の発見は どの位困難か? 地球上ですら お互いを 探すのはとても困難です 他の惑星で生命を見つけるのは 簡単な仕事ではありません 検討には多くの時間を費やします 発見できるかどうかは 宇宙に生命がいる可能性を どう考えるか次第でしょう 私が考えるのは 生命は長年にわたり物質が高度に 進化した自然な結果だということです
So, you start with the Big Bang and you get hydrogen, and then you get helium, and then you get more complicated stuff, and you get planets forming -- and life is a common, planetary-based phenomenon, in my view. Certainly, in the last 15 years, we've seen increasing numbers of planets outside of our solar system being confirmed, and just last month, a couple of weeks ago, a planet in the size-class of Earth has actually been found. And so this is very exciting news.
ビッグバンから始まり 水素が生まれ ヘリウム さらに複雑な物質が生まれ 惑星が誕生します 生命も同様に惑星の現象の 一つだと私は考えます この15年間で 我々は太陽系以外でも 多くの惑星を発見してきました そして 昨月 数週間前のことですが 地球と同程度の大きさの惑星が 見つかりました 非常に驚くべきニュースでした
So, my first bold prediction is that, is that in the universe, life is going to be everywhere. It's going to be everywhere we look -- where there are planetary systems that can possibly support it. And those planetary systems are going to be very common. So, what about life on Mars? Well, if somebody had asked me about a dozen years ago what I thought the chances of life on Mars would be, I would've probably said, a couple of percent. And even that was considered outrageous at the time. I was once sneeringly introduced by a former NASA official, as the only person on the planet who still thought there was life on Mars. Of course, that official is now dead, and I'm not, so there's a certain amount of glory in outliving your adversaries.
私が言う最初の大胆な予測は この宇宙には生命があふれているのです 生命を維持できそうな惑星系では 至る所で生命を発見できるでしょう そのような惑星系は普通にあります では火星に生命はいるでしょうか? もし10数年前に誰かが私に 火星に生命がある可能性を尋ねたら 数%と答えたことでしょう それでも当時としては無謀な意見でした 私は以前NASAの職員に 火星に生命があると考える 地球上唯一の人間だと 皮肉っぽく紹介されました その職員は亡くなりましたが私は健在です 自分の反対者より長生きすることは ある意味 名誉なことですね
But things have changed greatly over the last dozen years. And the reason that they have changed is because we now have new information. The amazing Pathfinder mission that went in '97, and the MER Rover missions that are on Mars as we speak now and the European Space Agency's Mars Express, has taught us a number of amazing things. There is sub-surface ice on that planet. And so where there is water, there is a very high chance of our kind of life. There's clearly sedimentary rocks all over the place – one of the landers is sitting in the middle of an ancient seabed, and there are these amazing structures called blueberries, which are these little, rocky concretions that we are busy making biologically in my lab right now.
しかしこの10数年で 状況が大きく変わりました 理由は新しい情報を 入手したからです 1997年のパスファインダー計画と 現在まさに火星で活動中の 火星探査車計画 そして欧州宇宙機関のマーズ・エクスプレスから 様々な驚くべきことを学びました 火星には地表下に氷があります 水がある場所では地球に似た 生命がいる可能性が高いです 地表は堆積した岩で覆われています 太古の海底に到達した着陸船があります そこには「ブルーベリー」と呼ぶ奇妙な構造があり その小さな岩の塊は 私の研究室で生物的に 作成するのと似ています
So, with all of these things put together, I think that the chances of life are much greater than I would've ever thought. I think that the chance of life having arisen on Mars, sometime in its past, is maybe one in four to maybe even half and half. So this is a very bold statement. I think it's there, and I think we need to go look for it, and I think it's underground. So the game's afoot, and this is the game that we play in astro-biology. How do you try to get a handle on extraterrestrial life? How do you plan to look for it? How do you know it when you find it? Because if it's big and obvious, we would've already found it -- it would've already bitten us on the foot, and it hasn't.
あらゆる発見を考慮すると 生命存在の可能性は かつてない程高まっています 火星で過去に生命が存在した確率は 25%〜50%程度と私は考えています とても大胆な見解です 生命はいます 探すべきです 探すべきは地下です これはいわば宇宙生物学のゲームです どうすれば地球外生命を 解明できるのでしょうか 探索の計画は? 生命の発見をいかに認識できるのか? 大型で判り易い生命なら既に 発見したはずですが そうはいきません 大型で判り易い生命なら既に 発見したはずですが そうはいきません
So, we know that it's probably quite cryptic. Very critically, how do we protect it, if we find it, and not contaminate it? And also, even perhaps more critically, because this is the only home planet we have, how do we protect us from it, while we study it? So why might it be hard to find? Well, it's probably microscopic, and it's never easy to study microscopic things, although the amazing tools that we now have to do that allow us to study things in much greater depth, at much smaller scales than ever before. But it's probably hiding, because if you are out sequestering resources from your environment, that makes you yummy, and other things might want to eat you, or consume you. And so, there's a game of predator-prey that's going to be, essentially, universal, really, in any kind of biological system. It also may be very, very different in its fundamental properties – its chemistry, or its size.
つまり 判り難いのです 重要なことは 発見した際に いかに守り 汚染を防ぐのか さらに重要なことは 私たちの唯一の母星である地球を 地球外生命から守りながら 研究を継続できるか? 発見が困難な理由は何でしょうか? 非常に微小だからです 微小物の研究は常に困難です 非常に微小だからです 微小物の研究は常に困難です 最新の機器を用いて さらに深く より小さい物質も 調査できる今日でも困難です 生命は隠れているはずです もし誰かが目立った存在ならば 格好の獲物になってしまうでしょう つまり生物界における捕食者と獲物の 関係はどこの生態系でも通用する普遍的な 仕組みなのです 化学的成分や大きさ等の根本的な性質は 全く異なることでしょう
We say small, but what does that mean? Is it virus-sized? Is it smaller than that? Is it bigger than the biggest bacterium? We don't know. And speed of activity, which is something that we face in our work with sub-surface organisms, because they grow very, very slowly. If I were to take a swab off your teeth and plate it on a Petri plate, within about four or five hours, I would have to see growth. But the organisms that we work with, from the sub-surface of Earth, very often it's months -- and in many cases, years -- before we see any growth whatsoever. So they are, intrinsically, a slower life-form.
ではどの位小さいのでしょうか ウイルス位? もっと小さい? 最大のバクテリアよりは大きい? 生物の活動速度は? 地中で調査する生物は 大変ゆっくり成長します もし私が誰かの歯をガーゼで拭い それをペトリ皿に入れたとします 4−5時間経てば細菌の成長を観察できます 私たちが研究する生物は 数ヶ月 数年の 期間を経てようやく 数ヶ月 数年の 期間を経てようやく 成長を観察できます これらの生物は成長が遅いのです
But the real issue is that we are guided by our limited experience, and until we can think out of the box of our cranium and what we know, then we can't recognize what to look for, or how to plan for it. So, perspective is everything and, because of the history that I've just briefly talked to you about, I have learned to think about Earth as an extraterrestrial planet. And this has been invaluable in our approach to try to study these things.
しかし根本的な問題は 私たちの経験が浅いため 発想を変えて 今ある知識を捨てない限り 何をどう探せばよいか 見当つかないことです 発想の視点が全てです 今お話した私自身の経験から 地球を一つの惑星として 考えるようになりました これは私の研究において 非常に重要な点です
This is my favorite game on airplanes: where you're in an airplane and you look out the window, you see the horizon. I always turn my head on the side, and that simple change makes me go from seeing this planet as home, to seeing it as a planet. It's a very simple trick, and I never fail to do it when I'm sitting in a window seat. Well, this is what we apply to our work. This shows one of the most extreme caves that we work in. This is Cueva de Villa Luz in Tabasco, in Mexico, and this cave is saturated with sulfuric acid. There is tremendous amounts of hydrogen sulfide coming into this cave from volcanic sources and from the breakdown of evaporite -- minerals below the carbonates in which this cave is formed -- and it is a completely hostile environment for us. We have to go in with protective suits and breathing gear, and 30 parts per million of H2S will kill you. This is regularly several hundred parts per million. So, it's a very hazardous environment, with CO as well, and many other gases. These extreme physical and chemical parameters make the biology that grows in these places very special. Because contrary to what you might think, this is not devoid of life.
飛行機でよくする遊びです 機内から窓の外を眺めると 地平線が見えますね そして頭を横に倒すと 地球が私たちの母星ではなく 一つの惑星のような 感覚になります 簡単な遊びで窓際に座ると いつもしています これを研究にも応用しました ここは最も過酷な洞窟の一つ メキシコ タバスコ州の ヴィラ・ルース洞窟で 洞窟内は硫酸が充満しています 火山やこの洞窟を形成する 炭酸塩のミネラル分である 石膏の分解により 大量の硫化水素が洞窟内に流入し 非常に過酷な環境です 防護服と防護マスクは欠かせません 30ppmの硫化水素でも死に至りますが ここでは数百ppmを超えます 一酸化炭素等の有毒ガスもあり 非常に危険な環境です この極端な物理的 化学的環境で 育つ生命は生物学的にとても特殊です 実はここは生命と無縁ではありません
This is one of the richest caves that we have found on the planet, anywhere. It's bursting with life. The extremes on Earth are interesting in their own right, but one of the reasons that we're interested in them is because they represent, really, the average conditions that we may expect on other planets. So, this is part of the ability that we have, to try to stretch our imagination, in terms of what we may find in the future. There's so much life in this cave, and I can't even begin to scratch the surface of it with you.
ここは私たちが発見した中で最も 豊かな洞窟の一つで 生命で溢れていました 地球上のへき地が興味深い 理由の一つは他の惑星で 遭遇する平均的環境を 再現していると思えるからです このようにして私たちは 想像力をかき立て 将来の発見に備えるのです この洞窟には多様な生命があり 今日紹介するのは ほんの一部だけです
But one of the most famous objects out of this are what we call Snottites, for obvious reasons. This stuff looks like what comes out of your two-year-old's nose when he has a cold. And this is produced by bacteria who are actually making more sulfuric acid, and living at pHs right around zero. And so, this stuff is like battery acid. And yet, everything in this cave has adapted to it. In fact, there's so much energy available for biology in this cave, that there's actually a huge number of cavefish. And the local Zoque Indians harvest this twice a year, as part of their Easter week celebration and Holy Week celebration.
ここで最も有名な生物は 「スノティテス」と呼ばれます まるで風邪をひいた2歳児の 鼻から流れ出るものと同じです この物体は実際に硫酸を作り出す バクテリアにより生成され pH0に近い状態で生息します まるで蓄電池の鉛酸です あらゆる生物がこの洞窟に適応しています 実際この洞窟には生物の エネルギーに満ち溢れており たくさんの洞窟魚もいます 現住民のソケ族は 年に二回 イースターと聖週間に この魚を収穫しています
This is very unusual for caves. In some of the other amazing caves that we work in -- this is in Lechuguilla cave in New Mexico near Carlsbad, and this is one of the most famous caves in the world. It's 115 miles of mapped passage, it's pristine, it has no natural opening and it's a gigantic biological, geo-microbiological laboratory. In this cave, great areas are covered by this reddish material that you see here, and also these enormous crystals of selenite that you can see dangling down. This stuff is produced biologically. This is the breakdown product of the bedrock, that organisms are busy munching their way through. They take iron and manganese minerals within the bedrock and they oxidize them. And every time they do that, they get a tiny little packet of energy. And that tiny little packet of energy is what they use, then, to run their life processes. Interestingly enough, they also do this with uranium and chromium, and various other toxic metals.
洞窟では非常に稀です 他に研究したことがある洞窟では― ニューメキシコ州 カールズバッド 近郊にあるレチュギヤ洞窟は 世界で最も有名な洞窟の一つです 長さは180Kmあり 開口部がない 手つかずの空間です 生物学 地質微生物学の いわば巨大な研究室です 洞窟内の大半は この赤い物質で 覆われており 非常に大きな石膏の水晶が 吊り下がっているのが見えます これらは生物学的に生成されたもので 微生物が岩盤を 捕食した結果です 岩盤から鉄とマンガンの成分を 取り出し酸化させます 岩盤から鉄とマンガンの成分を 取り出し酸化させます その際 非常に微量なエネルギーを発生します その微量なエネルギーがこの微生物の 糧となっているのです 面白いことに この微生物は ウランやクロム等 毒性の金属も 同様に消費します
And so, the obvious avenue for bio-remediation comes from organisms like this. These organisms we now bring into the lab, and you can see some of them growing on Petri plates, and get them to reproduce the precise biominerals that we find on the walls of these caves. So, these are signals that they leave in the rock record. Well, even in basalt surfaces in lava-tube caves, which are a by-product of volcanic activity, we find these walls totally covered, in many cases, by these beautiful, glistening silver walls, or shiny pink or shiny red or shiny gold. And these are mineral deposits that are also made by bacteria. And you can see in these central images here, scanning electron micrographs of some of these guys -- these are gardens of these bacteria.
このような微生物は 生物学的修復を確立する 明らかな基盤です 研究室に持ち帰った これらの微生物をペトリ皿で培養し 洞窟にあるのと全く同じ生体鉱物を 生成させようとしています これらが微生物たちが岩盤に残した印です 火山活動の副産物である溶岩洞の 玄武岩の壁面が 銀 ピンク 赤 金色等に 美しく輝く膜で 完全に覆われているのを 数多く発見しています これらはバクテリアが 作った鉱床なのです 中央に見える画像は このバクテリアの培養液の 電子顕微鏡写真です
One of the interesting things about these particular guys is that they're in the actinomycete and streptomycete groups of the bacteria, which is where we get most of our antibiotics. The sub-surface of Earth contains a vast biodiversity. And these organisms, because they're very separate from the surface, make a vast array of novel compounds. And so, the potential for exploiting this for pharmaceutical and industrial chemical uses is completely untapped, but probably exceeds most of the rest of the biodiversity of the planet.
興味深いのはこれらのバクテリアは 放線菌群に属しており 私たちが抗生物質を作る際に 使う菌種と同じです 地球の地下は生命の 多様性に満ちています これらの微生物は 地表から隔絶されているため 非常に多くの新しい混合物があります この分野を医薬や 工業化学へ応用するのは 全く手付かずの状況ですが 地球上の他の生物多様性よりも 大きな可能性があります
So, lava-tube caves-- I've just told you about organisms that live here on this planet. We know that on Mars and the Moon there are tons of these structures. We can see them. On the left you can see a lava tube forming at a recent eruption -- Mount Etna in Sicily -- and this is the way these tubes form. And when they hollow out, then they become habitats for organisms. These are all over the planet Mars, and we're busy cataloguing them now. And so, there's very interesting cave real estate on Mars, at least of that type.
溶岩洞について話します 地球の洞窟の生物はお話しました 火星や月にも似たような構造が 非常に多くあります 見てみましょう 左の写真は最近のシチリア島のエトナ火山が 噴火した際に溶岩洞が形成される様子を 示しています ここに空洞ができ 生物が発生するのです 火星の至る所にも溶岩洞があり 私たちは今それらを分類中です 火星には同様な種類の 興味深い洞窟が多くあります
In order to access these sub-surface environments that we're interested in, we're very interested in developing the tools to do this. You know, it's not easy to get into these caves. It requires crawling, climbing, rope-work, technical rope-work and many other complex human motions in order to access these. We face the problem of, how can we do this robotically? Why would we want to do it robotically? Well, we're going to be sending robotic missions to Mars long in advance of human missions.
これらの調査対象の 地下環境に到達するための 機器を現在開発中です 容易なことではありません 這って進んだり 登ったり ロープを使ったりと 到達するには様々な複雑な人間の動きが 要求されます この動作をロボットにどう仕込むかが問題です ロボットを使う理由は何か? 有人計画よりも前から ロボットを火星に送って 探査をするからです
And then, secondly, getting back to that earlier point that I made about the preciousness of any life that we may find on Mars, we don't want to contaminate it. And one of the best ways to study something without contaminating it is to have an intermediary. And in this case, we're imagining intermediary robotic devices that can actually do some of that front-end work for us, to protect any potential life that we find. I'm not going to go through all of these projects now, but we're involved in about half-a-dozen robotic development projects, in collaboration with a number of different groups. I want to talk specifically about the array that you see on the top.
そして既に話したとおり火星で 発見するであろう貴重な生命を 汚染したくありません 対象を汚染することなく調査するには 媒介を使うのが最善です この場合にはロボットが 媒介になり 発見できた 生命を保護しながら 私たちの研究の下準備を 実際にすることになります 今回は計画の全てはお話しませんが 私たちは現在様々な研究グループと共同で 数件のロボット開発計画に携わっています 本日特にお話したいのは 写真上部の機器です
These are hopping microbot swarms. I'm working on this with the Field and Space Robotics Laboratory and my friend Steve Dubowsky at MIT, and we have come up with the idea of having little, jumping bean-like robots that are propelled by artificial muscle, which is one of the Dubowsky Lab's specialties -- are the EPAMs, or artificial muscles. And these allow them to hop. They behave with a swarm behavior, where they relate to each other, modeled after insect swarm behavior, and they could be made very numerous. And so, one can send a thousand of them, as you can see in this upper left-hand picture, a thousand of them could fit into the payload bay that was used for one of the current MER Rovers. And these little guys -- you could lose many of them. If you send a thousand of them, you could probably get rid of 90 percent of them and still have a mission. And so, that allows you the flexibility to go into very challenging terrain and actually make your way where you want to go.
これは超小型の飛跳ねるロボット群です 私はMITロボティックス研究所の ドヴォースキー教授と共同開発しています 人工筋肉を付けた 豆のような小さくて 飛跳ねるロボットを 考案しました ドヴォースキー研究室の専門はEPAM (電場応答高分子型人工筋肉) つまり人工筋肉です これで飛跳ねることができます 昆虫の群れを真似て お互いに連携しながら 群れで行動します そして何より 非常に多くの個体を作れます 一度に千個を送ることができ 左上の画像にあるように 千個を貨物室に収めて 現在の火星探査計画でも使用しています たくさんの個体を失っても構いません 千個も送ることができれば 90%を失っても計画は遂行できます そして探索したい場所の 非常に困難な環境でも 柔軟に対応できます
Now, to wrap this up, I want to talk for two seconds about caves and the human expansion beyond Earth as a natural outgrowth of the work that we do in caves. It occurred to us a number of years ago that caves have many properties that people have used and other organisms have used as habitat in the past. And perhaps it's time we started to explore those, in the context of future Mars and the Moon exploration.
最後に私たちの洞窟での研究の延長線として 他の惑星の洞窟と移住の可能性を お話したいと思います だいぶ前に気付いたのですが 洞窟には人類や他の生物が 棲み家に利用するのに適した 条件が揃っています 将来の月や火星の探査を考える時 その条件を考慮すべき段階に来ているでしょう
So, we have just finished a NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts Phase II study, looking at the irreducible set of technologies that you would need in order to actually allow people to inhabit lava tubes on the Moon or Mars. It turns out to be a fairly simple and small list, and we have gone in the relatively primitive technology direction. So, we're talking about things like inflatable liners that can conform to the complex topological shape on the inside of a cave, foamed-in-place airlocks to deal with this complex topology, various ways of getting breathing gases made from the intrinsic materials of these bodies. And the future is there for us to use these lava-tube caves on Mars. And right now we're in caves, and we're doing science and recreation, but I think in the future we'll be using them for habitat and science on these other bodies.
私たちはちょうど NIAC の第2期研究を完了しました その中で月や火星の 溶岩洞で人間が生活するのに 必要不可欠な技術は 何かを研究しました 結果は非常に単純で短い項目で 比較的従来の技術で 対応しうる内容です 例えば洞窟の内部の 対応して自在に脹らむことができる 裏地膜であったり 複雑な形状に合わせてエアロックを作ったり 内部固有の物質を利用して呼吸する 空気を生成する技術等です 将来火星の溶岩洞を 活用するのは現実的です 私たちは今洞窟を科学や娯楽で使用しています しかし将来 地球外洞窟は 居住地や科学目的で活用されるでしょう
Now, my view of what the current status of potential life on Mars is that it's probably been on the planet, maybe one in two chances. The question as to whether there is life on Mars that is related to life on Earth has now been very muddied, because we now know, from Mars meteorites that have made it to Earth, that there's material that can be exchanged between those two planets.
さて 火星の生命の可能性について 現状の私の意見では おそらく存在したことがあった 確立は50%と見ます 火星の生命と地球の生命には 何らかの関連があるという仮説が 議論を呼んでいます 火星からの隕石が 地球に到達して二つの惑星間で 物質の交換があることが既に判明しています
One of the burning questions, of course, is if we go there and find life in the sub-surface, as I fully expect that we will, is that a second genesis of life? Did life start here and was it transported there? Did it start there and get transported here? This will be a fascinating puzzle as we go into the next half-century, and where I expect that we will have more and more Mars missions to answer these questions. Thank you.
最大の関心事の一つは もし火星の地下で 私たちが望むとおりに 生命を発見したら それは 「第二の生命の誕生」なのか? 地球で生命が誕生し 火星に移住したのか それとも火星から地球にやってきたのか? これは非常に心躍る話題です 今後50年に渡り より多くの火星探査計画を通して この問いの答えが明らかになるでしょう ご清聴ありがとうございました