万物简史(MP3+中英字幕) 第337期:孤独的行星(2)
日期:2017-12-08 15:18

(单词翻译:单击)

On land, if you rose to the top of a five-hundred-foot eminence—Cologne Cathedral or the Washington Monument, say—the change in pressure would be so slight as to be indiscernible. At the same depth underwater, however, your veins would collapse and your lungs would compress to the approximate dimensions of a Coke can. Amazingly, people do voluntarily dive to such depths, without breathing apparatus, for the fun of it in a sport known as free diving. Apparently the experience of having your internal organs rudely deformed is thought exhilarating (though not presumably as exhilarating as having them return to their former dimensions upon resurfacing). To reach such depths, however, divers must be dragged down, and quite briskly, by weights. Without assistance, the deepest anyone has gone and lived to talk about it afterward was an Italian named Umberto Pelizzari, who in 1992 dove to a depth of 236 feet, lingered for a nanosecond, and then shot back to the surface. In terrestrial terms, 236 feet is just slightly over the length of one New York City block. So even in our most exuberant stunts we can hardly claim to be masters of the abyss.
在陆地上,要是你爬到150米的高处——比如科隆大教堂或华盛顿纪念碑——压力变化很小,你感觉不出来。而是要在水里,到了同样的深度,你的血管就会瘪掉,肺被压缩到大约可口可乐罐的大小。令人吃惊的是,居然有人为了好玩儿愿意下潜到这种深度,而且不戴呼吸器具。这种运动名叫裸潜。显然,有人觉得,内脏器官严重变形的经历是很刺激的(虽然回到岸上以后,内脏器官恢复原状的过程很可能就不那么刺激了)。然而,要达到这样的深度,潜水者非得由重物快速拖下去。在没有外力帮忙的情况下,你能达到并事后能活着回来谈论这次经历的最深深度是72米——这项业绩是由一个名叫翁贝托·佩利扎里的意大利人完成的。他于1992年潜到那个深度,逗留了1毫微秒,然后迅速返回水面。以陆地的标准来看,72米比足球场还短了一大截。因此,即使我们做了最出色的惊险表演,也很难声称自己已经成了大海的主人。
lonely planet

Other organisms do of course manage to deal with the pressures at depth, though quite how some of them do so is a mystery. The deepest point in the ocean is the Mariana Trench in the Pacific. There, some seven miles down, the pressures rise to over sixteen thousand pounds per square inch.
当然,别的生物成功的适应了深处的压力,不过究竟有多少种生物具有这等本事还是个谜。海洋最深的地方是太平洋里的马里亚纳海沟。在那里,要是到了11.3公里左右的深处,每平方厘米的压力会升高到11000牛以上。

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