《那些古怪又让人忧心的问题》第97期:把海水抽干(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:
我们人类还是有可能幸存下来的，但我们将不得不直面这样的景象：1 Remember to clean the whale filter every few days.
1． 记得每隔几天清理一下滤鲸网。
DRAIN THE OCEANS: PART II
把海水抽干（续集）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．如果你像上一期里所说的那样把海水都抽走，浇到“好奇号”火星探测器上，那么随着浇的水越来越多，火星会发生什么变化？——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，我们在马里亚纳海沟底部开了个洞，海水可以从那个洞流走。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.
至于要把海水抽到哪里去这个问题，我随手就选了火星，因为“好奇号”探测器一直在苦苦寻找火星上有水存在的证据，所以我想把海水抽到火星上应该能让“好奇号”轻松一点吧……Curiosity is sitting in Gale Crater, a round depression in the Martian surface with a peak, nicknamed Mount Sharp, in the center.
“好奇号”目前在火星一处叫作盖尔陨石坑的低洼地上，洼地的中间有一座小山，人们喜欢叫它“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.
火星上其实有很多水，但问题是它们都是以固态形式存在的。液态水在火星上维持不了太长时间，不是因为那儿温度太低，就是因为那儿空气太稀薄。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.
如果你在火星上泼一杯温水，它会先沸腾，然后结冰，最后升华，而这三个过程几乎是同时发生的。看上去在火星上水似乎觉得除了液态怎么着都行。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.
可问题是我们在以极快的速度往火星上灌水（而且水温都在零上若干摄氏度），因而水没有时间结冰、沸腾或升华。如果你的传送门足够大，涌进来的水会把盖尔陨石坑填成一个大湖，就跟在地球上一样。我们可以用美国地质勘探局发布的很赞的火星地形图来记录水位上涨的过程。Here's Gale Crater at the start of our experiment:
一开始盖尔陨石坑是这样的：As the flow continues, the lake fills in, burying Curiosity under hundreds of meters of water:
随着越来越多的水涌进来，很快“好奇号”就被淹没在几百米深的水下：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.
最终，夏普山变成了一个小岛：在水位没过夏普山之前，海水就会先从陨石坑的北边流出去，然后蔓延至整个沙地。
