在纳米比亚发现神秘的仙女圈

在纳米比亚发现神秘的仙女圈

Fairy Circles are circular gaps evenly distributed across the arid grassland throughout the Namib Desert that look like dots on fabric when viewed from above. But no one really knows how the Fairy Circles scattered across the Namib Desert formed.

仙女圈是在纳米布沙漠干旱的草原上均匀分布的圆形缝隙，从上面看就像织物上的小点。但是没有人真正知道散布在纳米布沙漠的仙女圈是如何形成的。

Until 2014, it was thought that they only appeared along the Namib Desert in southern Africa, but then similar Fairy Circles were discovered near the western Australian mining town of Newman. However, Namibia's Fairy Circles are still the most famous and attractive destination for scientists who have studied them since the 1970s.

直到2014年，人们一直认为它们只出现在非洲南部的纳米布沙漠，但后来在澳大利亚西部的纽曼矿镇附近也发现了类似的仙女圈。然而，纳米比亚的仙女圈仍然是自20世纪70年代以来研究它们的科学家最著名和最有吸引力的目的地。

“It's an empty circular area with nothing on it, and there's a ring of grass around it,” said Eugene Marais, director of research at the Gobabeb-Namib Research Institute, describing the Fairy Circles. . "When you look down from the air or from high points, it almost looks like measles."

“这是一个空的圆形区域，上面什么也没有，周围有一圈草，”戈巴比-纳米比研究所的研究主管尤金·马雷斯在描述这些仙女圈时说。“当你从空中或从高处往下看时，它几乎像麻疹。”

Scientists have tried to explain why these magical circles existed for decades. But until now we still have difficulty in understanding this mysterious natural phenomenon. As Professor Marais said, it was a phenomenon that was supposed to be very easy to explain but hard to imagine, no explanation was recognized.

科学家们试图解释为什么这些神奇的圆圈存在了几十年。但是直到现在我们仍然很难理解这个神秘的自然现象。正如马雷教授所说，这是一种很容易解释却很难想象的现象，没有人承认有任何解释。

In addition to mystical and sci-fi explanations like fairies dancing in circles and preventing trees from growing, or UFOs landing in the desert at night, there are a number of plausible explanations. More on why the Fairy Circles exist.

除了一些神秘和科幻的解释，比如仙女会绕圈跳舞，阻止树木生长，或者不明飞行物会在夜间降落在沙漠中，还有很多关于精灵圈存在的原因看似合理的解释。

Some scientists believe it is related to the termites that made Namib their home, and research has shown that there are colonies under most barren circles bordering this vegetation. The theory is that termite colonies intrude and invade each other, but when termite colonies of similar size meet, they cannot destroy each other, so they create "international" buffers between them.

一些科学家认为，这与在纳米布安家的白蚁有关，研究表明，在大多数贫瘠的环形植被周围都有蚁群。理论是白蚁群落相互入侵，但当相似规模的白蚁群落相遇时，它们无法摧毁彼此，所以它们在它们之间创造了“国际”缓冲。

Another plausible theory is that these Fairy Circles are the result of a competition of plants for scarce water in the Namib Desert. Plants help their closest neighbors by shading and maintaining water on the soil surface, but hindering the growth of other distant plants by growing long roots and absorbing water from the soil.

另一个似是而非的理论是，这些仙女圈是纳米布沙漠中植物争夺稀缺水源的结果。植物通过遮蔽和保持土壤表面的水分来帮助它们最近的邻居，但是通过长出长长的根和从土壤中吸收水分来阻碍其他远距离植物的生长。

There are also those who believe that the Namib Desert's fairy circle is somehow connected to the noxious Euphorbia bushes, as some remnants of this plant have been found in the circles.

也有人认为纳米布沙漠的仙女圈与有毒的大戟灌木有关，因为在仙女圈中发现了一些这种植物的残留物。

But the truth is that no one knows for sure whether any of these theories are correct, or the actual answer is a combination of theories.

但事实是，没有人确切知道这些理论是否正确，或者实际的答案是理论的组合。

Research done on newer Fairy Circles in Australia has found that termites do not cause barren soil, but they are the result of abiotic processes such as soil mechanical weathering due to rain.

在澳大利亚新仙女圈所做的研究发现，白蚁不会导致土壤贫瘠，但它们是非生物过程的结果，如由于降雨造成的土壤机械风化。

Dr Stephan Getzin from the University of Göttingen explained: “The vegetation void caused by the worker termites is only half the size of the fairy circle and not artfully arranged. In most cases, we didn't even find any hard termitaria species underground that prevented grass growth. ”

哥廷根大学的斯蒂芬·葛津博士解释说:“工蚁造成的植被空洞只有仙女圈的一半大小，没有巧妙地排列。在大多数情况下，我们甚至没有发现任何坚硬的白蚁物种在地下阻止草的生长。”

The mystery of the Fairy Circles remains unsolved. Although scientists have certainly made a lot of progress since the 1970s, we may never really know what the purpose of these formations is.

仙女圈的神秘仍然没有解决。尽管自20世纪70年代以来，科学家们确实取得了很大进展，但我们可能永远不会真正知道这些构造的目的是什么。