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.
我在我人生早年開始的工作 是在奇特的環境裡尋找奇特的生命形式, 而在那個時候我工作的地方包括南極和北極, 還有美西的高地沙漠和低地沙漠。 直到大約十幾年前,當我真正深深的被洞穴的魅力所吸引, 我才真正的重新調整我大部分的研究往這個方向。
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.
於是我有個酷極了的日常工作——我能夠做一些驚人的事情。 我在這個星球上最極端的一些洞穴環境裡工作。 其中很多在我們進入的那一刻就試著要殺死我們, 但儘管如此,它們相當的引人入勝, 而且有著令人難以致信的生物奇蹟。 這些生命和我們所知的地球上的生物相當不同。 我們除了學習到 生物學、礦物學、和地質微生物學方面的本質以外, 我們也利用這些環境來當做 如何找出在其他星球上 尋找生命的模板。 其中特別是火星,但也包括歐羅巴(木衛二), 木星小而覆冰的衛星之一。 甚至,有一天也有可能到我們的太陽系之外去尋找生命。
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.
我對於人類的未來有著極為濃厚的興趣, 尤其是在月亮和火星上, 及在太陽系裡的其他地方。 我認為我們轉變為 一個太陽系橫越文明和種族的時候到了。 而這些推測的發展後果 令我思考我能究竟能不能和應不應該 考慮把地球上的生命傳送到別的星球去。 打比方來說:火星。
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.
我在科學學術會議上從來不提的 是我是如何到現在的情況 和我為什麼選擇做我在做的工作。 我為什麼沒有一個正常的工作,一個合乎邏輯的工作? 而當然,我歸咎於蘇聯。 因為在1950年代中期, 當我還是個小孩的時候, 他們膽大的發射了 一顆非常原始的小人造衛星-旅行者(史普尼克1號), 這壯舉把西方世界送入了歇斯底里的混亂。 於是大筆的資金 被投入到提升學童的自然 與數學能力的教育中。 而我就是那個時代的產物, 我許多的同事亦然 這不但啟發了我們,更點燃了我們對科學的熱情。 如果我們能在現在再重新經歷一次那就太完美了。
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.
當然,拒絕長大—— 雖然說我在日常生活扮演著一個成人, 而我在那方面上還蠻成功的—— 而真正的保持兒童般的特性 去不在乎別人對於 你有興趣的事情的想法是非常關鍵的。 另一個元素則是 我自己有一個價值觀 而我的價值判斷是有生命的存在 比沒有生命的存在好。 所以,有生命比無生命來的珍貴。 所以我認為我的價值判斷 把坐在觀眾裡的各為所接觸 的大量的工作結合連接在一起。
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.
理所當然的,我對火星非常的感興趣。 那是維京探測號在我還是個年輕大學生的時候 降落在火星上的產物。 而那把原來在天際裡 你只看的到一個點的 小小的天文物體, 藉由那第一張 播放在螢幕上的圖像 完全轉變成一塊實體有景有物的地。 而當它轉變成了一塊實體的地, 火星也同時變成了一個目的地, 同時,真正的改變了我的人生軌道。
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.
在我畢業後,我和我的 同事、導師、和朋友,史蒂夫‧史耐德一起 在國家大氣研究中心 做關於全球變遷的研究。 我們寫了一些關於 蓋亞假說—— 你是否能在任何科學的意義上 將地球看成一個獨立存在的實體——的著作 然後,進一步從那裡的延伸, 我又做了核子戰爭的環境影響的研究。
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.
整體而言,完美但又令人生畏的東西。 但這些研究讓我用外部的視角來看地球,一個星球, 而不只是我們的家。 而那讓我在思考方式上 有了完美的進步。 我能夠思考我們行星,作為一顆星球, 作為上面住有生命的行星,的行為。 而這一切對我來說 都是歷史中的轉折點。 我們已經準備好來開始 離開我們起源的星球 而出發到太陽系及其之外的過程了。
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.
所以,回到火星。 在火星上找到生命有多難? 有時候我們覺得找到彼此就是一件非常難的事情, 就同在一個星球上。 所以在別的星球尋找生命 的難度可想而知。 而我們花了很多時間來思考這個問題。 你是否覺得這有可能成功, 在某些程度上取決於你認為 生命在宇宙中存在的機率。 我個人認為, 生命是物質隨著時間逐漸 增加複雜程度的自然現象。
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.
我們從大爆炸到氫原子的產生, 然後到氦原子以及之後更複雜的東西, 一直到星球的形成, 在我看來,生命是一個普遍而已行星為基礎的現象。 沒錯,在過去十五年, 確認在我們的太陽系之外的行星 的數字不斷的增加, 而就在上個月,幾個星期以前, 人類其實找到了 一個地球大小的行星。 這是非常令人興奮的消息。
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.
所以,我第一個大膽的預測是, 在宇宙裡,生命將無所不在。 在我們所尋找的每個地方, 行星系統都有可能足夠的支持生命的。存在 而那些行星系統將會非常的普遍。 那麼火星上的生命呢? 如果有人在十幾年前 問我火星上生命存在的可能性, 我大概會回答說,百分之幾, 儘管在那個時候這種預測是很令人驚訝而嚇人的。 我曾經有一次 被一位前美國航太總署的官員輕蔑的介紹為 地球上唯一一個 還相信火星上有生命的人。 當然,那位官員現在已經過世了,而我還沒有, 所以在比對手活得長命來說, 我有些許的驕傲。
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.
但在過去的十幾年 很多東西都有了巨大的變化。 而這些變化 是因為我們現在有了新的資訊。 1997年發射的火星探路者任務 和現在在火星上的 火星探測漫遊者任務 以及歐洲太空總署的火星特快車 提供我們許多驚人的資訊。 火星地表下有冰。 而有水的地方 有非常高的機率存在我們所定義的生命。 火星很明顯的到處都是沉積岩—— 有一個登陸者在一個古老的海床降落, 而那裡有這些令人驚人被我們稱為藍苺的 小而硬的凝結物。 我的實驗室正在緊鑼密鼓 生物性合成的東西也是如此。
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.
將所有這些證據放在一起, 我想生命存在的可能性 比我想像中的還要大很多很多。 我認為在過去某個時期火星上產生過生命的機率 大概在百分之25到50之間。 這是個非常大膽的聲明。 我認為生命的確在那裡, 我們需要去尋找它,而它們住在地下。 好戲正在上演,而舞台就是天體生物學。 接下來的問題是我們該如何駕馭外星生命? 我們該如何去計畫尋找他們的過程? 當我們如何才能得知發現了生命? 因為如果生命夠大夠明顯的的話,我們早就該發現它了—— 它大概早就在咬我們的腳了,但它並沒有。
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.
所以我們知道那裡的生物大概很隱秘。 非常關鍵的一點是,當我們發現生命了之後, 應該要怎樣保護它並使它免於污染? 也許更關鍵的一點是, 由於地球是我們唯一的家園, 我們該怎樣在研究外星生命的同時保護自己? 那麼為什麼那裡的生命很難被發現? 當然,這種生命大概是顯微鏡尺度的, 想要研究這種生命也絕非易事, 即使我們現在有先進的工具 讓我們能比以前更加深入得 研究尺寸異常微小的生物。 但這些生命大概隱藏在暗處,因為如果你 出外從環境搜尋可用的資源與營養,你是個很可口的目標, 別的生物可能會想要吃你或消化你。 這種掠食與被掠食的關係 在任何生物系統中 都是存在的。 這種生命也許與我們有非常不同的本質區別, 無論是化學結構還是體積大小。
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.
我們說它小,但具體有多小? 跟病毒差不多大?還是比病毒更小? 有可能比最大的細菌還大?我們不知道。 還有它們的活動力,這是我們在研究 地下生物時所遇到的問題之一, 因為它們的生長速度是異常之慢。 如果我從你的牙齒上擦下來點東西 並放在培養皿上, 大概過四五個小時我們就會看到這些生物的生長。 但對我們研究的 地下生物來說, 我們經常要等待數月甚至數年, 才能觀察到生長現象。 所以他們從本質上說,是一種慢速生命形式。
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.
但其實真正的問題在於我們都習慣於 被自己有限的經驗所引導, 直到我們能衝破思想的樊籬後,我們才會意識到 我們無法辨識要找的是什麼 或者怎樣為其制定計劃。 所以,觀點,是一切的前提, 並且,正如我之前簡介的自己的那段經歷, 我已經學會在思考問題的時候將地球 看做一個普通的地外行星。 這已經成為我們研究相關問題的一個非常寶貴的手段。
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.
我搭飛機時喜歡的的一個遊戲 是在飛機上,從機窗眺望, 你可以看到地平線。 這時候我總是將頭靠在一邊, 這一小小的改變會讓我看地球的角度 從自己的家 換到一個行星。 這是個非常簡單的把戲,而當我坐在靠窗的座位的時候 我樂此不疲。 當然我們也把這應用在我們的工作上。 這幅照片展示的是我們工作過的洞穴裡最極端的。 這是位於墨西哥塔巴斯科州的明屋之洞, 洞內飽和著了氣態硫酸。 它同時也有 大量來自火山源 以及分解的蒸發石—— 這個洞穴產生的碳酸鹽之下的礦物—— 的硫化氫,這使洞穴環境變得對人類極為不友善。 要想進入洞穴,我們必須穿著保護服裝以及呼吸裝備。 百萬分之三十的硫化氫就會要了你的命, 而洞穴裡的硫化氫濃度高達百萬分之幾百。 除此之外那裡還有一氧化碳等氣體, 使得環境異常的危險。 這些極端的物理和化學因素 使得生長在這裡的生物變得非常特殊。 因為正好與你們可能想像的相反,那裡不是生命的禁區。
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.
這是我們發現的地球上 生命種類最豐富的洞穴之一。 簡直可以說是生機勃勃到了極點。 地球上的各種極端本身就是很吸引人的, 但我們之所以對它們感興趣的原因之一, 是因為這些環境極端惡劣的洞穴 可以為我們呈現我們想像中的其他星球的普通環境。 這使我們具有 部分擴展自我想像力 來預測未來可能的發現的能力 太多太多的生命生存在這個洞穴裡, 覆蓋了整個洞穴以至於 我甚至不知道要從哪裡開始向你們介紹。
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.
其中一種著名的物體 因為明顯的原因,我們叫它「鼻涕 」。 因為這玩意兒看起來像是從你感冒的兩歲小孩的鼻子裡流出來的東西。 這其實是一種細菌的產物。 這些細菌生產硫酸 並且生活在pH為零左右的環境中。 所以這些「鼻涕 」其實類似電池裡的酸液。 但這裡所有的生物都已經適應了環境。 事實上,這裡有大量的能量 足夠滿足各種生物的需求, 甚至可以養活許多的洞穴魚類。 當地的索克印地安人 每年捕捉兩次這些魚 來作為復活節週和聖週慶祝活動的一部分。
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.
這在洞穴來說是非常不尋常的。 我們也在其他一些令人驚奇的洞穴裡工作過—— 這是新墨西哥州卡爾斯巴德附近的墨西哥龍舌蘭洞, 而這是世界上最著名的洞穴之一。 它有著115英里長的通道, 完全保持著原始的面貌,它沒有天然洞口 而且是是一個巨大的生物 及地質微生物實驗室。 在這個洞穴中,一種淡紅色的物質 覆蓋了你可以看到的大片區域, 你還可以在這裡看到 懸掛著的亞硒酸鹽的巨大晶體。 這種東西是由生物合成的。 這是床岩分解後的產物, 上面有生物在忙著大快朵頤。 它們從床岩攝取鐵和錳 並將氧化它們。 每當它們這樣做的時候,它們都會得到一點點能量。 這些能量就是它們所用來 維持自己的生命活動。 有趣的是,它們還會利用鈾和鉻 或其他一些毒性金屬來完成相同的過程。
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.
因此,生物復育 這樣重要的淨化環境的手段 便需要依賴類似這樣的生物來進行 我們現在將這些生物帶進了實驗室, 而你可以看到它們有些在培養皿上生長, 我們在引導它們生產我們在洞穴壁上 找到的正確的生物礦物質。 這些是它們留在岩石紀錄上的信號。 即使是在由火山活動形成的 熔岩管洞穴內的玄武岩的表面, 在很多情況下, 我們都可以發現 有漂亮閃耀的銀色、 亮粉亮紅、兩金色的物質覆蓋。 這些都是由細菌產生的礦物質 堆積沉澱形成的。 你們可以看到中間的這些圖片, 這些是通過掃描電子顯微得到的圖像, 這裡簡直就是細菌的花園。
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.
這些特別的小傢伙們的有意思的是 它們屬於放線菌 和鏈黴菌類。 我們就是從它們得到身體裡面大部分的抗生素。 地球的表面之下 存在著驚人的生物多樣性。 由於這些生物 與地球表面隔離的非常徹底, 所以它們生產的化合物都是新的系列。 利用這些化合物 來發展製藥和工業化學的潛力 還完全沒有被開發出來, 也許它們在這方面的潛力 超出地球上其他生物的總和。
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.
熔岩管洞穴—— 我剛才剛告訴你們微生物在這顆星球上所存在的地方。 我們知道在火星和月球上 有很多這樣的結構。 我們看得到它們。 在左邊你可以看到熔岩管道正在形成 於西西里島上的埃特納火山最近的一次噴發, 而這是這些熔岩管形成的方式。 當它們變得中空時, 它們也變成生物的棲息地。 這些熔岩管在火星隨處可見, 我們現在正忙著對它們進行編目。 所以火星上有著, 或至少是這種的有趣的洞穴房地產。
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.
為了能夠進入 這些我們所感興趣的地下環境, 我們對於開發相關的工具非常的有興趣。 要知道,想要進入這些洞穴可不是易事。 這需要進行爬行、攀爬 纜繩作業、技術性纜繩作業 以及其他一些複雜的人類運作 才可以到達這樣的地方。 我們面臨的問題是怎樣,才能利用機器人完成? 我們為什麼要使用機器人呢? 那是因為我們將機器人 送上火星的任務 將遠進階於載人的任務。
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.
而另一點則是,回到前面我所提到的 珍惜我們在火星上 可能發現的任何生命,我們不要去污染它們。 而最好的避免污染同時又對其進行研究的辦法 就是有個中間人或媒介。 而在這個情況裡,我們認為 一個中間的機械設備 可以為我們完成一些 前端的工作, 來保護可能找到的潛在生命。 我不會一一介紹所有這些計畫, 但是我們現在跟其他很多組織 一起合作在數個機器人的開發計畫中。 我想向你們詳細介紹 最上面的這一系列。
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.
這些是微型機器人群。 我和我在麻省理工學院的朋友史蒂夫‧杜保斯基 及地表和太空機器人實驗室一起在做這方面的工作, 我們想出了 去製造一種由人造肌肉驅動的 可跳躍的 豆型小機器人。 這是杜保斯基的實驗室的專長之一—— EPAM,或人造肌肉。 EPAM使這些機器人具有跳躍的能力。 它們表現出 如同蟲群的行為, 尤其再和其他機器人連結的時候。 我們仿照蜂群的行為來打造這些機器人, 而且它們可以被無數地製造出來, 所以我們可以將一千個這樣的機器人送上火星, 如同你們在左上方這張圖上看到的, 一千個機器人可以被放在 現在用來載火星探測漫遊者之一太空梭的貨艙部份。 可能很多個小傢伙會消失。 如果你送了一千個到火星, 就算失去其中的百分之九十也依然可以完成任務。 這樣就可以允許有彈性去 進入富有挑戰性的地形 並且正確地到達我們想要去的地方。
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.
現在來總結一下,我想花兩秒鐘 來講一下洞穴和人類在地球外的擴張之間的關係, 即算是我們在洞穴方面工作的延伸。 若干年前我們就想到, 洞穴有很多特性, 它在過去作為人類 及其它一些生物的棲息地。 而或許現在是我們開始探索這些特性的時候了, 特別是在未來火星和月球探索的背景下。
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.
我們剛完成了一個美國航太總署進階觀念研究所的階段二研究, 著眼於不可或缺的技術 來讓你可以在 月球或火星上的 熔岩管內生活。 這是項比較簡單、工作量小的研究, 而我們已經 在相對原始的科技方向上有所進展。 我們在討論的是可充氣的襯層 可以和洞內複雜的地質形狀 相互吻合; 發泡氣鎖可以用來解決複雜的地質形狀; 太空服的內部材料 可以採用多種方法取得供人呼吸的氣體。 未來在等著我們 去利用這些火星上的熔岩洞。 而這是我們在洞穴裡,做科學研究和休閒活動, 但我認為在未來我們會穿著太空服 在其他行星居住和做科學研究。
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.
現在,我對於火星 目前潛在生命的狀況的看法是 生命可能已經存在於那個星球上, 百分之五十的機率。 火星的生命 是否與地球上的生命有連結 現在還是很模糊的一個問題。 因為現在我們 從到達地球的火星隕石得知 這兩個星球上的物質是可以進行交換的。
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.
一個急待解決的問題是, 如果我們到了火星,並如同我全心預期的 在地下發現了生命, 那麼這會是生命的第二個起源嗎? 生命是在地球發源 然後被傳播到達火星嗎? 還是生命是在火星發源然後傳播來地球的? 這將是在進入下半個世紀後一個引人注目的難題, 而我希望我們會有 越來越多的火星探索任務來解答這些問題。 謝謝你們。