时差N小时:起死回生?

Bringing The Dead Back To Life? Is it possible tobring the dead back to life? Maybe not, but scientistsat Penn State University have done the next bestthing. They found a tiny bacterium that's beentrapped miles below Greenland ice sheets for thepast 120,000 years.

起死回生?有可能起死回生吗?也许不能，但宾夕法尼亚州立大学的科学家做了差不多的事情。他们在格陵兰岛冰原的地下几十英里处发现了一种12万年以前的极小细菌。

After months of incubation, the bacterium wokeup and began reproducing. Before long, the ancientorganism was once again thriving. Now don't be alarmed. Unlike what may happen in ascience fiction thriller, the bacterium isn't some deadly microbe that's going to turn us allinto zombies.

经过了数月的培育，细胞已经复苏并开始繁殖。很快，古生物再次繁荣起来。现在不要惊慌。与科幻惊悚片里场景可不一样，这些细菌并不是那种会把我们变成僵尸的致命细菌。

Apparently, it's a very small, simple microbe not very different from billions of others thathave lived on earth. What's interesting about the microbe is: A) how it managed to survivefor so long beneath the ice; and B) what it suggests about the possibility of life on otherplanets.

显然，这是种非常微小，简单的生物，它与地球上其它数十亿的细菌并无太大区别。这种微生物的有趣之处在于：首先，它如何能在久冰层下面存活那么久;其次，它的存在表明其他星球上可能存在生命。

The researchers think that the bacterium's small size might have helped it survive inmicroscopic, watery veins in ice crystals. Being small may also have helped the microbeabsorb nutrients more efficiently.

研究人员认为，这种细菌能够存活在冰晶纹理的潮湿细缝里可能是由于它体积微小的缘故。体积小可能也会帮助微生物更充分地吸收营养物质。

As for life on other planets, scientists have long suspected that if there is life out there, it mightexist buried far beneath a planet's barren surface. So every time scientists find a microbe ableto survive under extreme conditions on Earth, it raises the hope that the same might be thecase in other worlds.

至于其他星球上是否存在生命，科学家们早就抱有怀疑：如果外太空有生命存在，那么它可能深埋在某个星球贫瘠的表层下。因此，每当科学家们发现新出现一种微生物能在极端的地球环境下生存，那么在其他星球上出现同样情况的可能性就更大。