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

想象一下恐龙出现之前的世界，那时植物和动物还没有进化。在那里，火山孕育了新的陆地，并向无氧大气中喷出有毒气体。那里的大陆刚刚诞生，那里的海洋几乎没有生命，只有微小的单细胞生物。但是有什么吃的？再深入一点。在海底深处的裂缝和缝隙中，海水渗入岩石，被加热，剥离金属，然后集中在密集的黑色“烟雾”中，这些烟雾通过矿化的烟囱排出，像畸形的尖顶一样上升到黑暗中。随着这些烟囱的生长，它们有时会在自身重量的作用下崩溃，形成土丘，短暂地暴露出它们闪闪发光的金属硫化物，然后在寒冷、氧化、咸的海水中迅速生锈。在这些深邃、黑暗、多水的地方，发现了微生物，它们在硫化物土丘和下面的玻璃状熔岩中定居，从这个不太可能的食物来源中汲取营养。熔岩在海底火山中不断喷发，在海底形成山脉，就像棒球上的接缝。这些洋中脊是动态环境，在地球、水和大气之间发生全球显著的化学、生物和热通量。新洋壳在洋脊轴上的形成和老壳在俯冲带上重新并入地幔，也许是板块构造旋回最基本的组成部分。这些过程控制着地球的自然地貌以及地壳和地幔的化学和热演化。拟议研究的指导原则是通过数十亿年的地球历史调查海洋地壳的水-岩石-微生物蚀变。这是一个新兴领域，处于跨学科研究的前沿。在地表以下深处的微生物活动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.