他们的房子都是钻石盖的！！！
当我踏上讷德林根的哥特式教堂塔的狭窄楼梯时，这些磨损的石阶出人意料地在阳光下闪闪发光，它们本该保持黑灰色的。塔楼的守望者霍斯特·莱纳热情地为我解释道：“那是因为整个塔都是用砂石做的，里面有着一些小钻石。幸运的是，它们非常非常小，否则这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.
莱纳说的话听起来不可思议，但却是真实的。来自9世纪的一份记录显示，在该城镇建设的期间，定居者们并没有意识到他们所使用的石头内嵌了数以百万计的小钻石，这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.
事实上，是一件很神奇的事情导致了讷德林根成为德国钻石城的奇怪现实。这一切都源于1500万年前的小行星撞击。一颗全长1公里的小行星以每秒25公里的速度撞击该地区，留下了一个全长26公里的陨石坑。与此同时，该地区的基岩承受了巨大的热量和压力，以至于其中的碳几乎在瞬间就变成了一些十分微小的钻石。这些钻石的直径不到0.02毫米，人眼几乎看不见，于是后来的居民在毫不知情的情况下用这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.
当地人从来没有注意到这些闪闪发光的岩石，他们一直以为讷德林根是在一座死火山的火山口建造的，直到美国地质学家尤金·舒梅克和爱德华·晁在20世纪60年代造访了小镇。科学家们从远处观察了讷德林根后，发现它的地貌并不符合火山口的准确标准。于是，他们决定前往小镇测试他们自己的假设：该地区是由上而下形成的。没过多久，科学家们就证明了他们的理论是正确的。
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.”
当地居民说道：“学校的教科书告诉我们，这片土地是因为火山而形成的。后来，有人发现它实际源自一颗小行星的撞击，于是他们不得不修改所有的教科书”。
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.
舒梅克和晁首次访问讷德林根后不久，当地的地质学家估计，该镇的城墙和建筑物中含有约72000吨钻石。虽然在世界其他地区也可以发现这种砂岩，但没有哪个地方的宝石含量比讷德林根高。
“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.
“这是独一无二的，”斯蒂芬·赫兹博士说道，他是里斯克拉特博物馆的地质学家和主管。该博物馆坐落在当地一个16世纪的谷仓里，在这里，游客能够了解小行星撞击是如何影响小镇的。在它的六个房间里，陈列着各种陨石碎片。当然还有苏维埃石。
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.”
赫兹说道：“在世界上有一些地方，小行星的撞击物质也被用于建筑物了，但是规模远不及这里。在这里，它被用来建造整个城镇”。
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.”
尽管如此，这里的许多人仍然对生活在数以百万计的小钻石中无动于衷。一位当地女性说道：“我们每天都能看到这些东西，它们对我们来说没什么特别的”。
