volcanoes-earth-shattering news英文文章翻译

When Mount Pinatubo suddenly erupted on 9 June 1991, the power of volcanoes past and present again hit the headlines.

当P火山在1991年6月1日突然喷发的时候，火山过去与现在的威力再一次成为头条。

volcanoes are the ultimate earthmoving machinery. A violent eruption can blow the top few kilometres off a mountain, scatter fine ash practically all over the globe and hurl rock fragments into the stratosphere to darken the skies a continent away.

火山是地质运动的终极形式。一个强烈的火山能喷发到山顶上空几千公里，把可怕的火山灰几乎覆盖整块地表，并且把岩石碎块喷到平流层把整块陆地变得昏天暗地。

But the classic eruptionconeshaped mountain, big bang, mushroom cloud and surges of molten lavais only a tiny part of a global story. Vulcanism, the name given to volcanic processed, really has shaped the world. Eruptions have rifted continents, raised mountain chains, constructed islands and shaped the topography of the earth. The entire ocean floor has a basement of volcanic basalt.

但是典型的喷发如C，B，M，S仅仅是火山的一小部分。火山确实塑造了地球。火山喷发能够分裂陆地，造就山脉，形成岛屿，以及塑造地球表层地形。整个海洋的海底表层就是火山玄武岩的构成的。

Volcanoes have not only made the continents, they are also thought to have made the world’s first stable atmosphere and provided all the water for the oceans, rivers and icecaps. There are now about 600active volcanoes. Every year they add two or three cubic kilometres of rock to the continents. Imagine a similar number of volcanoes smoking away for the last 3500million years. That is enough rock to explain the continental crust.

火山不仅仅造就了陆地，他们也被认为早就了地球上稳定的大气层和为海洋、河流、冰川提供所有的水源。实际上现存约600个活火山，它们每年都会为陆地增加两三立方公里的岩石。想象一下在过去35亿年中的火山喷发凉，就可以解释为什么有现在的陆地。

What comes out of volcanic craters is mostly gas. More than 90%of this gas is water vapour from the deep earth: enough to explain, over 3500million years, the water in the oceans. The rest of the gas is nitrogen, carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, methane, ammonia and hydrogen. The quantity of these gases, again multiplied over 3500million years, is enough to explain the mass of the world’s atmosphere. We are alive because volcanoes provided the soil, air and water we need.

从火山口喷发出来的大部分是气体，其中90%以上的气体是由地球深层的的水蒸发而来，这也就足以解释35亿年来形成的海洋的水量了。其余的气体主要是氮气、二氧化锑、二氧化硫等。35亿年来的这些气体总量就足以解释现在地球的大气层了。我们现在能够生存是因为火山为我们提供了我们所必须的土地、空气和水源。

Geologists consider the earth as having a molten core, surrounded by a semi-molten mantle and a brittle, outer skin. It helps to think of a soft-boiled egg with a runny yolk, a firm but squishy white and a hard shell. If the shell is even slightly cracked during boiling, the white material bubbles out and sets like a tiny mountain chain over the cracklike an archipelago of volcanic islands such as the Hawaiian islands. But the earth is so much bigger and the mantle below is so much hotter.

地理学家认为地球有一个炙热的由不完全融化的岩石和一个脆弱的表层所组成的内核，它就像一个煮的半熟的鸡蛋，有稳定但粘糊糊的蛋白和坚硬的外壳。一旦外壳在煮的时候哪怕有一点点破裂，蛋白就会喷出来在接口附近形成类似的小山脉，例如夏威夷群岛。但是地球比这个大得多也也热得多。

Even though the mantle rocks are kept solid by overlying pressure, they can still slowly ‘flow’ like thick treacle. The flow, thought to be in the form of convection currents, is powerful enough tofracture the eggshell of the crust into plates, and keep a few centimeters a year. These fracture zones, where the collisions occur, are where earthquakes happen. And, very often, volcanoes.

尽管地幔岩石坚硬地躺在上面，但是他们也会慢慢的浮动。尽管像液体一样流动，但也足以让地表折断成板材一样，并且保持每年几厘米的速度。折断的部分之间发生碰撞，就是地震发生的地方，并且也常常引发火山爆发。

These zones are lines of weakness, or hot spots. Every eruption is different, but put at its simplest, where are weaknesses, rocks deep in the mantle, heated to 1350`C, will start to expand and rise. As they do so, the pressure drops, and they expand and become liquid and rise more swiftly.

这些区域就是些脆弱区。每个火山的喷发都不一样，但是最简单地说，当这些脆弱区里面的岩石温度达到1350度时，地幔就会开始膨胀并上升，随着而来的就是压力下降，谈后导致地幔更加上升，岩浆变成液体和上升的速度更快。

Sometimes it is slow: vast bubbles of magmamolten rock from the mantlench towards the surface, cooling slowly, to show through as granite extrusions (as on skye, or the great whin sill, the lava dyke squeezed out like toothpaste that carries part of hadrian’s wall in northern England). Sometimesas in northern Ireland, wales and the karoo in south Africa- the magma rose faster, and then flowed out horizontally on to the surface in vast thick sheets. In the deccan plateau in western india, there are more than two million cubic kilometers of lava, some of it 2400merer thick, formed over 500000years of slurping eruption.

有时候会比较慢，因为从地幔深处会有大气泡冒出来达到表层，是的岩浆慢慢降温。例如……地方的火山；有时候岩浆上升或越来越快，并流出了地表，如……地方的火山。在印度西部的P高原，是由超过两百万立方公里的熔岩，有的超过2400米厚, 经过50万年喷发形成的。

Sometimes the magma moves very swiftly indeed. It does not have time to cool as it surges upwards. The gases trapped inside the boiling rock expand suddenly, the lava glows with heat, it begins to forth, and it explodes with tremendous force. Then the slightly cooler lava following it begins to flow over the lip of the crater. It happens on mars, it happened on the moon, it enen happens on some of the moons of Jupiter and Uranus. By studying the evidence, vulcanologists can read the force of the great blasts of the past. Is the pumice light and full of holes? The explosion was tremendous. Are the rocks heavy, with huge crystalline basalt shapes, like the gaint’s causeway in northern Ireland? It was a slow, gentle eruption.

有时候岩浆确实流动很快，来不及冷却就已经上升了。困在滚烫岩石中的气体突然喷发，岩浆也随着热气发光，于是突然猛烈地爆发了。稍微冷却一点的熔岩便开始随着而在火山口边沿流动。这种情况发生在火山，也曾经在月球上发生过，甚至在木星和天王星的一些行星上也发生。通过研究这些证据，火山地质学家能够看出过去火山爆发所呆在的巨大力量。爆炸非常剧烈。……

The biggest eruptions are deep on the midocean floor where new lava is forcing the continents apart and widening the atlantic by perhaps five centimeters a year. Look at map of volcanoes, earthquakes and island chains like the Philippines and japan, and you can see the rough outlines of what are called tectonic platesthe plates which make up the earth’s crust and mantle. The most dramatic of these is the pacific ’ring of fire’ where there have been the most violent explosionsmount Pinatubo near manila, mount st helen’s in the rockies and ei chichon in mexico about a decade ago, not to mention worldshaking blasts like Krakatoa in the sunda straits in 1883.

最大的火山爆发发生在深海中间的地表，那里的熔岩迫使陆地分离，并以每年大约5厘米的速度拓宽大西洋。看看火山、地震以及如菲律宾、日本等的岛屿分布图，你会看见所谓tp的大致轮廓。这个轮廓由地球表层和地幔组成。最戏剧性的是太平洋“火山环”，那里有最强烈的火山爆发，如……

But volcanoes are not very predictable. That is because geological time is not like human time. During quiet periods, volcanoes cap themselves with their own lava by forming a powerful cone from the molten rocks shopping over the rim of the crater; later the lava cools slowly into a huge, hard, stable plug which blocks any further eruption until the pressure below becomes irresistible. In the case of mount Pinatubo, this took 600 years.

但是火山的爆发很难预测。这是因为地质时间和人类时间不同，在平静期，火山会自己在火山口形成强有力外壳，随着岩浆冷却形成巨大坚硬稳定的接口时，它就会阻碍火山的进一步爆发，直到爆发的压力变得无法抵制。对于P火山，这个过程耗费了600年。

Then, sometimes, with only a small warning, the mountain blows its top. It did this at mont pelee in Martinique at 7.49a.m.on 8 may, 1902. Of a town of 28000, only two people survived. In 1815, a sudden blast removed the top 1280 meters of mount tambora in Indonesia. The eruption was so fierce that dust thrown into the stratosphere darkened the skies, cancelling the following summer in Europe and north America. Thousands starved as the harvests failed, after snow in june and frosts in august. Volcanoes are potentially world news, especially the quiet ones.

有时仅仅会产生一点小小的征兆，火山就爆发了。如1902年5月8日早上7.49分，M火山突然爆发，一个28000人的小镇仅有2人生还。1815年，突然的爆发把IT山升高了1280米。火山爆发非常猛烈以至于尘埃进入平流层，使天空变昏暗，欧洲和美国北部没有了一个夏天。数以千计的人由于六月下雪八月出迷雾而歉收遭受饥饿。火山是世界性消息，尤其是那些沉睡的火山

Shatter打碎，破坏，粉碎shattering惊天动地的fine 可怕的，糟透的hurl投掷，猛投rifted裂缝分裂cubic立方的，立方体的quantity量，总量，数量semi-半，不完全的意思brittle易碎的，脆弱的soft-boiled煮的半熟的鸡蛋mantle覆盖物，脸红，覆盖，地幔。Fracture破裂，折断magma岩浆lava熔岩火山岩（冷却之后的）crystalline水晶似的