As I climbed the narrow staircase of the gothic church tower in Nördlingen, Germany, the worn stone steps appeared to glimmer in the sunlight, bringing unexpected flashes of light to what should have been a dark, grey climb to the top.“That’s because the entire tower is made out of suevite stone, and enclosed in it are small diamonds,” Horst Lenner, the tower watchman, told me enthusiastically.“Luckily they’re very, very small, otherwise the tower would've been taken down a long time ago," he joked, a wide smile unfolding across his face.
當(dāng)我踏上訥德林根的哥特式教堂塔的狹窄樓梯時(shí)，這些磨損的石階出人意料地在陽(yáng)光下閃閃發(fā)光，它們本該保持黑灰色的。塔樓的守望者霍斯特·萊納熱情地為我解釋道：“那是因?yàn)檎麄€(gè)塔都是用砂石做的，里面有著一些小鉆石。幸運(yùn)的是，它們非常非常小，否則這座塔很久以前就被拆除了”。
Although light-hearted, Lenner’s words are true. During construction of the town, which was first mentioned in records in the 9th Century AD, the settlers didn’t realise the stone they were using was embedded with millions of tiny diamonds, in a concentration seen nowhere else in the world.
萊納說(shuō)的話聽(tīng)起來(lái)不可思議，但卻是真實(shí)的。來(lái)自9世紀(jì)的一份記錄顯示，在該城鎮(zhèn)建設(shè)的期間，定居者們并沒(méi)有意識(shí)到他們所使用的石頭內(nèi)嵌了數(shù)以百萬(wàn)計(jì)的小鉆石，這在世界上其他地方都看不到。
It was, in fact, a violent and otherworldly event – an asteroid strike that hit 15 million years ago – that led to the strange reality of Nördlingen becoming Germany’s diamond-clad town.Travelling at an estimated 25km per second, the 1km-wide asteroid slammed into the ground with such force that it not only created a 26km-wide crater in which the town lies, but subjected the bedrock to such intense heat and pressure that the bubbles of carbon within it transformed almost instantaneously into tiny diamonds all less than 0.2mm across – barely visible to the human eye.
事實(shí)上，是一件很神奇的事情導(dǎo)致了訥德林根成為德國(guó)鉆石城的奇怪現(xiàn)實(shí)。這一切都源于1500萬(wàn)年前的小行星撞擊。一顆全長(zhǎng)1公里的小行星以每秒25公里的速度撞擊該地區(qū)，留下了一個(gè)全長(zhǎng)26公里的隕石坑。與此同時(shí)，該地區(qū)的基巖承受了巨大的熱量和壓力，以至于其中的碳幾乎在瞬間就變成了一些十分微小的鉆石。這些鉆石的直徑不到0.02毫米，人眼幾乎看不見(jiàn)，于是后來(lái)的居民在毫不知情的情況下用這些石料修建了建筑物。
Never paying much notice to their homes’ shimmering quality, locals had always believed that Nördlingen was built in the crater of an extinct volcano until US geologists, Eugene Shoemaker and Edward Chao, visited the town in the 1960s. After studying Nördlingen’s landscape from afar, the scientists noticed the crater did not meet exact criteria for a volcano, and travelled to the town to test out their own hypothesis: that the land had instead been shaped from above rather than below. It didn’t take long for the scientists to prove their theory correct; they needed only to inspect the wall of Nördlingen’s church to discover the clusters of minute gemstones.
當(dāng)?shù)厝藦膩?lái)沒(méi)有注意到這些閃閃發(fā)光的巖石，他們一直以為訥德林根是在一座死火山的火山口建造的，直到美國(guó)地質(zhì)學(xué)家尤金·舒梅克和愛(ài)德華·晁在20世紀(jì)60年代造訪了小鎮(zhèn)?？茖W(xué)家們從遠(yuǎn)處觀察了訥德林根后，發(fā)現(xiàn)它的地貌并不符合火山口的準(zhǔn)確標(biāo)準(zhǔn)。于是，他們決定前往小鎮(zhèn)測(cè)試他們自己的假設(shè)：該地區(qū)是由上而下形成的。沒(méi)過(guò)多久，科學(xué)家們就證明了他們的理論是正確的。
Before the diamonds were discovered, Nördlingen residents believed they were living in a volcanic crater (Credit: Lothar Theobald/Getty Images)“The school books taught that the land was the way it was because of a volcano,” Feil said. “Then it was discovered that it was from an asteroid, and they had to change all the school books.”
當(dāng)?shù)鼐用裾f(shuō)道：“學(xué)校的教科書(shū)告訴我們，這片土地是因?yàn)榛鹕蕉纬傻?。后?lái)，有人發(fā)現(xiàn)它實(shí)際源自一顆小行星的撞擊，于是他們不得不修改所有的教科書(shū)”。
Not long after Shoemaker and Chao first visited Nördlingen, it was estimated by local geologists that the town walls and buildings contained approximately 72,000 tons of diamonds. Although suevite can be found in other parts of the world from similar impacts, nowhere is the gemstone concentration as high as it is in Nördlingen.
舒梅克和晁首次訪問(wèn)訥德林根后不久，當(dāng)?shù)氐牡刭|(zhì)學(xué)家估計(jì)，該鎮(zhèn)的城墻和建筑物中含有約72000噸鉆石。雖然在世界其他地區(qū)也可以發(fā)現(xiàn)這種砂巖，但沒(méi)有哪個(gè)地方的寶石含量比訥德林根高。
“It’s quite unique,” said Dr Stefan Hölzl, geologist and director of the RiesKrater Museum. Housed in a 16th-Century barn, the museum educates visitors on how the asteroid impact shaped the town’s future. Throughout its six rooms, display cases are filled with pieces of meteorite and, of course, suevite.
“這是獨(dú)一無(wú)二的，”斯蒂芬·赫茲博士說(shuō)道，他是里斯克拉特博物館的地質(zhì)學(xué)家和主管。該博物館坐落在當(dāng)?shù)匾粋€(gè)16世紀(jì)的谷倉(cāng)里，在這里，游客能夠了解小行星撞擊是如何影響小鎮(zhèn)的。在它的六個(gè)房間里，陳列著各種隕石碎片。當(dāng)然還有蘇維埃石。
Local geologists estimated that the town walls and buildings contained approximately 72,000 tons of diamonds (Credit: Julie Ovgaard)“You have some places in the world where this sort of asteroid impact material has been used for buildings, but nowhere near this amount,” Hölzl said as we moved from case to case. “Here it was used to build the whole town.”
赫茲說(shuō)道：“在世界上有一些地方，小行星的撞擊物質(zhì)也被用于建筑物了，但是規(guī)模遠(yuǎn)不及這里。在這里，它被用來(lái)建造整個(gè)城鎮(zhèn)”。
Yet despite this, many in town remain indifferent about living among millions of tiny diamonds. As one woman told me as I emerged from the church: “We see it every day, for us it's nothing special.”
盡管如此，這里的許多人仍然對(duì)生活在數(shù)以百萬(wàn)計(jì)的小鉆石中無(wú)動(dòng)于衷。一位當(dāng)?shù)嘏哉f(shuō)道：“我們每天都能看到這些東西，它們對(duì)我們來(lái)說(shuō)沒(méi)什么特別的”。
