火星上有甲烷A.docVIP

火星上有甲烷！（图）?? 2009-08-25 06:28:15|??分类： 系内星闻 |??标签： |字号大中小?订阅 夏季期间，火星局部冒出一缕缕高浓度甲烷气体（见红色及黄色区域）。 Mars Has Methane, But Life? By Richard A. Kerr?? 胡德良 译 ?Its taken 5 years, but planetary scientists are finally confident that they have detected methane on Mars. At a press conference today at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., and in a paper published online today in Science, researchers announced that all the painstaking observations, analysis, and reanalysis now reveal summertime plumes of the gas from three regions on the planet. On Earth, methane is a byproduct of living bacteria, but whether thats whats producing the gas on Mars is anyones guess. ?行星科学家们花了5年的时间，他们最终确信在火星上发现了甲烷。今天，在华盛顿哥伦比亚特区美国国家航空航天管理局总部的一次新闻发布会上，以及在今天《科学》杂志的在线版上，研究人员宣布：现在所有艰辛的观测、分析和再分析显示，火星上三个地区在夏季冒出一缕缕的甲烷气体。在地球上，甲烷是活菌产生的副产品。然而，火星上的甲烷是否也是细菌产生的呢？这一点谁都猜不透。 ?The first news of martian methane claims came in 2004 . But the early data--from spacecraft and ground-based telescopes--were controversial. Spacecraft were not detecting all of the spectroscopic signatures of the gas, for example, and ground-based observers had to contend with interference from methane and other trace gases in Earths atmosphere. ?最初宣布火星甲烷的消息是在2004年，但是早期来自太空船和地面望远镜的资料产生了争议。例如，太空船并没有发现甲烷气体所有的光谱信息，后来地面观测人员不得不认为那是来自地球大气中甲烷和其他微量气体的干扰。 ?At todays press conference, astronomer Michael Mumma of NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, declared success. Weve eliminated most of the gremlins that were bothering us, he said. The biggest problem was working out how to reliably remove terrestrial contamination from the teams spectra. Weve done a lot of work that makes the current results robust, Mumma says. Planetary scientist Sushil Atreya of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, agrees. Measuring martian methane is really at the ragged edge of things, he says, but I think the detection is pretty solid. ?美国国家航空航天管理局戈达德太空飞行中心位于马里兰州的格林贝尔特市，该中心的天文学家迈克尔·穆马在今天的新闻发布会上宣布说：他们成功地发现了甲烷。“我们排除了一直困扰我们的绝大多数障碍，”穆马说。最大的问题是搞明白如何确保把来自地