地球在32亿年前可能是一个水世界

In its early years, Earth may have looked like a post-apocalyptic waterworld, according to a new study.

根据一项新的研究，在早期，地球可能看起来像是一个后世界末日的水世界。

A new study published Monday in Nature Geoscience suggests that Earth was likely covered by a massive ocean 3.2 billion years ago, possibly even like the future depicted in the 1995 Kevin Costner film “Waterworld.”

周一发表在《自然地球科学》杂志上的一项新研究表明，32亿年前地球可能被一个巨大的海洋所覆盖，甚至可能与1995年凯文·科斯特纳(Kevin Costner)电影《水世界》(Waterworld)中描绘的未来相似。

“The history of life on Earth tracks available niches,” Boswell Wing, an associate professor in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder and co-author of the research, said in a statement. “If you’ve got a waterworld, a world covered by ocean, then dry niches are just not going to be available.”

科罗拉多大学博尔德分校(University of Colorado Boulder)地质科学系副教授、这项研究的合著者博斯韦尔•荣(Boswell Wing)在一份声明中说：“地球上生命的历史显示了现有的生态位。”。“如果你有一个水世界，一个被海洋覆盖的世界，那么干生态位将是不可用的。”

In order to gather data, researchers analyzed more than 100 rock samples from across a dry area known as Panorama that’s located in northwestern Australia’s outback. Scientists compared it to analyzing coffee grounds to learn more about the water that flowed through it.

为了收集数据，研究人员分析了澳大利亚西北部内陆一个叫做全景的干旱地区的100多个岩石样本。科学家解释说，这个过程就像分析咖啡渣来收集有关倒进去的水的信息。

Researchers discovered a bit more Oxygen-18 atoms trapped in the stone around 3.2 billion years ago than one would find today.

研究人员发现，大约32亿年前被困在石头中的氧-18原子比今天发现的要多一些。

Next, they theorized that the most likely explanation for that excess Oxygen-18 in the oceans was that there weren’t any soil-rich land masses around to suck the isotopes up.

接下来，他们推测海洋中过量氧-18最可能的解释是，周围没有任何可以吸收同位素的土壤肥沃的陆地。