恐龙灭绝的日子 - 一分一秒

【来源龙腾网】

正文原创翻译：

One of the greatest illusions in life is continuity.66 million years ago, the continuity of the dinosaurs had been going on for around 165 million years already - and it didn't seem this would change any time soon. The world was warm, and pleasant, and most of the land was covered with lush forests and an incredible diversity of trees, flowers, ferns and trillions of critters.

生命中最大的假象之一就是延续性。6600万年前，恐龙的延续已经持续了约1.65亿年——而且这种情况似乎不会很快改变。这个世界温暖宜人，大部分的土地被茂密的森林覆盖，还有令人难以置信的多样性的树木、花，蕨类植物和数以万亿的生物。

Dinosaurswere ubiquitous and had diversified into hundreds of species of all shapes and sizes. Titanosaurs, large gentle giants shared the world with famous beasts like Tyrannosaurus rex or Edmontosaurus. Pectinodon hunted in the undergrowth while Edmontosaurus wandered coastlines and swamps. 

恐龙无处不在，并且已多样进化为数百种不同形状和大小的物种。泰坦龙是一种温和的大型巨龙，与著名的猛兽像雷克斯暴龙或埃德蒙顿龙一起生活在这个世界。当埃德蒙顿龙在海岸线和沼泽游荡时，栉齿龙在灌木丛中猎食。

原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

An ancient paradise, a world of plenty, full of life.66 million years ago, maybe on a Tuesday afternoon, life was the same as it had been the day before or a thousand years before or pretty much a million years before. Things were good for our feathered dinosaur buddies. Until a tiny, tiny detail in the sky changed.If there were dinosaurs watching the stars, one night they may have noticed the appearance of a new star. A tiny dot, that for many weeks slowly became bigger and brighter. 

一个古老的天堂，一个富饶的世界，这里充满了生命。6600万年前，也许在一个星期二的下午，生活和前一天，或者一千年前，或者差不多一百万年前一样。对长有羽毛的恐龙来说情况一切安好。直到天空中一个非常非常小的细节发生了变化，如果有恐龙一直在观察星星，某一天的晚上它们可能会注意到一颗新的星星出现。起初是一个小点，几个星期后慢慢地变大变亮。

Until one fateful day, it looked like another, small moon in the night sky. And then it faded from sight as it dipped into earth's shadow. For a few more hours the illusion of continuity was upheld . Until it was not anymore. In the morning the obxt suddenly appears again. Now almost as large as the sun in the sky and growing every moment, heading for the coast near the Yucatan Peninsula. It takes the asteroid only two seconds to pass through the thin layer between space and the ground to make contact. 

直到一个命中注定的日子，这颗星星在夜空中看起来像另一个小月亮，然后消失在地球的阴影中。这种延续性的假象维持了几个小时，直到它不再存在。第二天早上，那个物体突然又出现了。现在它几乎和天空中的太阳一样大，且每时每刻都在增长，朝着尤卡坦半岛附近的海岸前进。这颗小行星只花费两秒就穿过了太空和地面之间的薄层，然后与地面接触。

As it enters the atmosphere at almost 60 times the speed of sound...Let us stop time.Here we see the unnamed asteroid about to commit extinction. Larger than Mount Everest, it reaches from the ocean high into the atmosphere, higher than passenger planes would fly millions of years later.At this moment the world was one way. In a fraction of a second it would be fundamentally different. Let us make the transition.As the asteroid hits the shallow ocean and the bedrock below，the energy of billions of nuclear weapons is released all at once as the asteroid vaporizes. 

它以几乎是音速60倍的速度进入大气层......让我们暂停一下，这里我们将看到一颗不知名的小行星毁灭地球。它比珠穆朗玛峰还要大，从海洋深处到大气层，比几百万年后飞行的客机还要高。此时此刻，世界只有一条出路。一瞬间，它就会完全不同。让我们来过渡一下，当小行星撞击浅海和底部的基岩时，数十亿核武器的能量在小行星蒸发的同时瞬间被释放出来。

A flash of light illuminates the sky as an eerie bright white sphere grows over the Gulf of Mexico . Bedrock melts into seething hot plasma at tens of thousands of degrees celsius. The thermal radiation from the explosion travels at the speed of light and immediately burns everything within a radius of about 1500 kilometers. 

一道闪光照亮了天空，同时一个神秘的明亮的白色球体在墨西哥湾上空越来越大。基岩在数万摄氏度的高温下融化成炽热的热等离子体。爆炸产生的热辐射以光速传播，并瞬间烧毁半径约1500公里范围内的一切。

while the energy from the impact pushes so hard against earth's crust that it loses all strength and flows away from the impact site like a liquid, creating a hole 25 kilometers deep and 100 kilometers wide. The ocean is pushed back for hundreds of kilometers, like when a kid jumps into a puddle.

撞击产生的能量强烈地冲击着地壳，以致失去了所有的力量，能量像液体一样从撞击点流出，并形成了一个25千米深，100千米宽的洞。海洋被向后推了数百公里，就像一个孩子跳进水坑一样。

As the crust bounces back, melted and flowing crust forms a temporary mountain stretching 10 kilometers into the sky.. An incredible amount of material is blasted into the higher atmosphere or even out into space, as much as 60 times the original mass of the asteroid.The violence of the strike is felt everywhere on earth within minutes. 

随着地壳的反弹，融化和流动的地壳形成了一座延伸至天空10公里的临时大山。大量的物质被喷射到更高的大气层，甚至进入太空，其质量是小行星原始质量的60倍。几分钟内，地球上到处都能感受到猛烈地撞击。

A magnitude 11 earthquake,maybe the most powerful quake any living thing has ever witnessed in billions of years. It is so insanely strong that in India it might have shaken gigantic lava fields and causes volcanic eruptions that would last for 30,000 years and cover half of the indian subcontinent with lava. Even on the side of earth opposite the impact, the ground still moved by several meters. 

一场11级的大地震，也许是数十亿年来地球生物见证的最强烈的一次地震。它是如此的强大，以至于在印度可能引起了巨大的熔岩地带震动，并导致持续3万年的火山喷发，火山喷发的岩浆覆盖了印度次大陆的一半。即使被撞击点在地球的另一侧，这边的地面仍然移动了几米。

Nobody would sleep through this day.The gigantic explosion crashes against the atmosphere with unprecedented violence and causes a shockwave that reaches speeds of more than 1,000 kilometers per hour near the site of impact, similar to the hyper hurricanes on gas giants like Neptune. 

没有谁会在这一天睡着。巨大的爆炸以前所未有的力量冲击大气层，在撞击点附近产生的冲击波，其速度超过每小时1000公里，类似于海王星等气态巨行星上的超级飓风。

原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

In middle America, basically any soil, vegetation or animal is just shredded into pieces and catapulted thousands of km away.Now the formally displaced oceans return. As the temporary mountain at the site of impact collapses, a ring of tsunamis as high as one kilometer, enough to cover all skyscrapers humans would ever build, heads in all directions. 

在美国中部，基本上任何土壤、植物或动物都会被碎成为碎片，并被弹射到数千公里之外。现在被正式移走的海洋又回来了。当撞击点的临时山崩塌时，形成高达一公里的海啸环，向四面八方涌去，足以覆盖人类建造的所有摩天大楼。

原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

As they crash into the coasts of the continents surrounding the impact, they will drown thousands of kilometers of coastline. 15 hours later some of the waves that get refracted around South America will still tower as much as 100 meters into the sky.But we still have not talked about the worst thing yet.A lot of the debris yeeted into space will orbit earth for thousands of years, some hit the moon or even Mars. But most of it comes right back. 

当它们撞上撞击点周围大陆的海岸时，会淹没数千公里的海岸线。15个小时后，一些在南美洲被折射的波浪仍将高达100米，但我们还没有谈到最糟糕的事情，有很多碎片被炸飞，进入太空将绕地球飞行数千年，有些撞上了月球甚至火星，但大部分都会返回地球。

When things fall through the atmosphere at such speeds they get very hot, like hundreds of degrees hot. And this happens to millions of tons of material everywhere. This rapidly heats up the atmosphere to insane temperatures. We don't know exactly how hot it got or how long this heat shock lasted but there are two ideas here.Either the air was heated to hundreds of degrees, for a few minutes. Or to thousands of degrees, for around one minute. 

当物质以这样的速度穿过大气层坠落时，它们会变得非常热，有几百度的高温。这种情况发生在世界各地数百万吨的物质上，这使大气温度迅速升高，达到了疯狂的高温。我们不知道到底有多热，也不知道热震持续了多久，但在这里有两种观点，要么空气被加热到几百度，持续了几分钟，要么就是达到几千度，持续一分钟左右。

In any case, the air becomes as hot as the inside of an industrial oven. How bad the global effects of this were is contested ，but if enough heat reached the surface,a lot of plants and animals would have died very quickly if they couldn't bury themselves or escape into caves. 

不管怎样，空气都会变得和工业烤箱内部一样热。这对全球的影响是多么严重还存在争议，但如果足够的热量到达地表，许多植物和动物不能掩埋自己或逃入洞穴，它们很快会死亡。

The heat together with raining debris also may have ignited material on forest floors and sparked wildfires as the earth rotated under the searing hot plume. In a few hours massive wildfires were probably burning around the globe. Some of them may have lasted for months and turned earth into a horrifying hot hell.

当地球在灼热的高温腾起之物下旋转时，热量伴随着雨点般的碎片可能也点燃了森林地面上的物质并引发野火。几个小时内，大规模的野火可能正在全球燃烧。其中一些可能已经持续了几个月，并把地球变成了一个可怕的炽热地狱。

As the day of the impact draws to an end, many of the dinosaurs are already dead, but the worst is still to come.The gigantic plume of vaporized material reaches the upper atmosphere and spreads around the whole globe. Together with the soot from the burning planet and the aerosols generated at impact, the planet sinks into a deep darkness, with only the remaining raging fires illuminating the scenery. 

当撞击的日子接近尾声时，很多恐龙已经死亡，但最糟糕的情况还在后面。大量腾起的汽化物质到达上层大气并扩散到全球各地，加上行星燃烧产生的烟尘和撞击产生的气溶胶，地球陷入深深的黑暗中，只有残留的熊熊大火照亮了天空。

Whatever plants survive the firstorms will now be starved for sunlight as global photosynthesis is temporarily shut down. Within days temperatures crash as much as 25° celsius.The oceans were especially hit hard. The lack of sunlight killed over 90% of plankton which form the basis of the food web of marine life. 

随着全球光合作用暂时停止，无论哪种植物以第一种形态下存活下来，现在都将缺乏阳光。几天之内，气温骤降至25摄氏度。海洋受到的冲击尤其严重，阳光的缺乏杀死了超过90%的浮游生物，而浮游生物是构成海洋生命食物网的基础。

Ultimately this would kill off the large marine reptiles and ammonites that used to dominate the seas.The biosphere the survivors now find themselves in is like an alien landscape. 

最终，这将杀死曾经主宰海洋的大型海洋爬行动物和菊石。幸存者发现它们自己现在所处的生物圈就像是一个外星景观。

Ash, debris and the burned remains of the formerly lush and blooming life cover the ground, the sky is dark and it is cold and fresh food is scarce, while fungi thrive. For months and years the planet will be a hostile and deadly place. The sudden global winter will last for decades. At least 75% of all species on earth will just vanish from existence.And so, as the day ends, the world is suddenly different. The continuity that went on for millions of years is no more. 

灰烬、碎片和曾经郁郁葱葱的生命燃烧后的残骸覆盖了地面，天空阴暗寒冷，新鲜食物匮乏，而真菌却茁壮成长。在未来的几个月甚至几年内，这个星球都将是一个充满敌意和致命的地方。突如其来的全球寒冬将持续数十年，地球上至少75%的物种将从存在中消失。所以，随着这天的结束，世界突然变得不同了，持续了数百万年的延续性已经不复存在。

The Era of the dinosaurs is over. Just like that.Eventually, from the ashes of the old world, survivors emerged. Birds that are the direct descendents of the dinosaurs and mammals that would eventually become the dominant animals on the planet. Without the Asteroid, who knows what life on earth would look like today. 

恐龙时代结束了，就像这样。最终从旧世界的灰烬中，幸存者出现了。鸟类是恐龙和哺乳动物的直系后代，最终成为地球上的主要动物。如果没有小行星，谁知道地球上的生命在今天会是什么样子。

原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

Without the sudden disruption of dinosaur continuity, that completely changed the planet and all life on it, we might have never had the opportunity to become what we are today.It is not clear how long the Human Era will last. So far modern humans have been around for 0.1% of the time the dinosaurs were. And in this short amount of time we've achieved impressive feats, from making the world our own, to reaching space and splitting the atom. 

如果没有恐龙延续性的突然中断，彻底改变了地球和地球上的所有生命，我们可能永远不会有机会成为今天的我们。人类的时代将持续多久还不清楚。到目前为止，现代人类存在的时间只有恐龙存在时间的0.1%。在这短短的时间里，我们取得了令人印象深刻的成就，从把世界变成我们自己的，如进入太空和分裂原子。

Yet our future and our long-term survival is not a given. If we are not careful, it could end in an instant, like the Age of the Dinosaurs ended. But in contrast to them, we know that our continuity is fragile, even if it doesn't feel like it. We can be prepared and be vigilant and hopeful. If we are lucky, our journey will go on for a long, long time.

然而，我们的未来和长期生存并不是一成不变的。如果我们不小心，它可能会在一瞬间结束，就像恐龙时代的结束一样。但与它们不同的是，我们知道我们的延续性是脆弱的，即使感觉不到这样。我们可以做好准备，保持警惕并且充满希望。如果我们幸运的话，我们的旅程将会持续很长很长的时间。