"Life on the Rocks: Mines, Microbes, & Martians"

想象一下恐龙出现之前的世界，那时动植物还没有进化。在那里，火山产生了新的土地，并向无氧大气中喷出有毒气体。那时大陆刚刚形成，海洋里除了微小的单细胞生物几乎没有生命。但是有什么吃的呢？再看深一点。在海底深处的裂缝和裂缝中，海水渗入岩石，被加热，并剥离金属，然后集中在密集的黑色“烟”中，这些“烟”从矿化的烟囱中喷出，像畸形的尖塔一样上升到黑暗中。随着这些烟囱的生长，它们有时会在自身的重量下坍塌，形成土丘，短暂地暴露出它们闪闪发光的丰富金属硫化物，然后在寒冷、氧化、含盐的海水中迅速生锈。在这些深、暗、水的地方，已经发现微生物在硫化物土堆和玻璃状熔岩下面定居，从这个不太可能的食物来源中提取营养。熔岩在海底火山中不断喷发，形成了海底山脉，就像棒球上的接缝一样。这些洋中脊是动态环境，在这里，地球、水文和大气之间发生了具有全球意义的化学、生物和热通量。在洋脊轴线上形成的新洋壳和在俯冲带的旧壳与地幔的重新合并可能是板块构造旋回的最基本组成部分。这些过程控制着地球的地貌以及地壳和地幔的化学和热演化。提出的研究的指导原则是通过数十亿年的地球历史来研究海洋地壳的水-岩-微生物变化。这是一个处于跨学科研究前沿的新兴领域。微生物活动在地表以下深处的温度和深度限制还有待详细探索。热液活动与深层生物圈之间的相互作用可能对水-岩反应期间的化学通量产生深远影响，从而导致金属的大量经济富集，并可能是地球和其他行星上生命发展的关键。

Picture a world before the dinosaurs when plants and animals hadn't evolved yet. Where volcanoes gave birth to new land and spewed toxic gases into an oxygen free atmosphere. Where the continents were just being born and where the oceans were almost free of life except for tiny single celled organisms. But what was there to eat? Look a little deeper. In the cracks and crevices deep beneath the seafloor seawater seeps down into the rocks, gets heated, and strips metals that are later concentrated in jets of dense black "smoke" that exit through mineralized chimneys rising like misshapen spires into the darkness. As these chimneys grow they sometimes crumble under their own weight, forming mounds that briefly expose their glistening riches of metal sulfides before they quickly rust in the cold, oxidized, salty seawater. In these deep, dark, watery places microbes have been found that colonize the sulfide mounds and glassy lavas beneath, extracting nutrients from this unlikely food source. Lavas are continuously erupted at undersea volcanoes that form mountain chains beneath the sea like seams on a baseball. These mid-ocean ridges are dynamic environments where globally significant chemical, biological, and heat fluxes occur between the geo-, hydro-, and atmosphere. The formation of new oceanic crust at ridge axes and the reincorporation of aged crust into the mantle at subduction zones are perhaps the most fundamental components of the plate tectonic cycle. These processes control the physiography of the Earth and the chemical and thermal evolution of the crust and mantle. The guiding principle of the proposed research is the investigation of water-rock-microbial alteration of oceanic crust through billions of years of Earth history. This is an emerging field that is at the forefront of interdisciplinary study. The temperature and depth limits of microbiological activity deep beneath the surface have yet to be explored in detail. Interactions between hydrothermal activity and the deep biosphere may have a profound impact on chemical fluxes during water-rock reactions that lead to vast economic enrichments of metals and possibly hold the key to the development of life on the Earth and other planets.