地球在32億年前可能是一個水世界

地球在32億年前可能是一個水世界

In its early years, Earth may have looked like a post-apocalyptic waterworld, according to a new study.

根據(jù)一項新的研究，在早期，地球可能看起來像是一個后世界末日的水世界。

A new study published Monday in Nature Geoscience suggests that Earth was likely covered by a massive ocean 3.2 billion years ago, possibly even like the future depicted in the 1995 Kevin Costner film “Waterworld.”

周一發(fā)表在《自然地球科學》雜志上的一項新研究表明，32億年前地球可能被一個巨大的海洋所覆蓋，甚至可能與1995年凱文·科斯特納(Kevin Costner)電影《水世界》(Waterworld)中描繪的未來相似。

“The history of life on Earth tracks available niches,” Boswell Wing, an associate professor in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder and co-author of the research, said in a statement. “If you’ve got a waterworld, a world covered by ocean, then dry niches are just not going to be available.”

科羅拉多大學博爾德分校(University of Colorado Boulder)地質科學系副教授、這項研究的合著者博斯韋爾•榮(Boswell Wing)在一份聲明中說：“地球上生命的歷史顯示了現(xiàn)有的生態(tài)位。”。“如果你有一個水世界，一個被海洋覆蓋的世界，那么干生態(tài)位將是不可用的。”

In order to gather data, researchers analyzed more than 100 rock samples from across a dry area known as Panorama that’s located in northwestern Australia’s outback. Scientists compared it to analyzing coffee grounds to learn more about the water that flowed through it.

為了收集數(shù)據(jù)，研究人員分析了澳大利亞西北部內陸一個叫做全景的干旱地區(qū)的100多個巖石樣本?？茖W家解釋說，這個過程就像分析咖啡渣來收集有關倒進去的水的信息。

Researchers discovered a bit more Oxygen-18 atoms trapped in the stone around 3.2 billion years ago than one would find today.

研究人員發(fā)現(xiàn)，大約32億年前被困在石頭中的氧-18原子比今天發(fā)現(xiàn)的要多一些。

Next, they theorized that the most likely explanation for that excess Oxygen-18 in the oceans was that there weren’t any soil-rich land masses around to suck the isotopes up.

接下來，他們推測海洋中過量氧-18最可能的解釋是，周圍沒有任何可以吸收同位素的土壤肥沃的陸地。