英语听力：自然百科 行星旅行：土星 Saturn—10

 It was unraveling a puzzle and so the magnetometer team says let’s go closer, as we go closer, we watched as the star went through and noticed the change in brightness, something is going on.

 

We can see even from a distance, there seem to be this material coming off the South Pole, and it was so dramatic and so unusual, that we thought what look might be a camera artifact. 

 

Enceladus is tiny, just 300 miles across, too small for any kind of dramatic geology. If you look at Enceladus, it kind of looks like it’s covered in snow, it’s very bright, it’s as bright as freshly fallen snow. 

 

Everywhere you look, there’s fractures, there’re mountain ranges, there are deep chasms¹ and when we finally looked at the South Pole, that’s when, it just became apparent, that’s where all the activities going on.

 

The team found something extraordinary, row after row of enormous geysers, shooting water and ice crystals out into space from the snowy white surface. 

 

And so it’s like a giant detective story, piece by piece putting the evidence together until finally we get back that really great picture, the smoking gun, showing the geysers actually coming out from the South Pole of Enceladus.

 

Water and water ice are spewing out of giant crevasse² from a region about the size of southern California that’s apparently³ just basically a big geothermal field, you can think of it that way.

 

It doesn’t look much like California from orbit, just cool as you’d expect an icy moon this far from the sun to be. But that’s the mystery of Enceladus.

 

I mean the bloody⁴ thing is hot, the South Pole is hot, ok, it’s like, it would be, it’s just crazy as seeing the North Pole of the earth is hotter than the equator. 

 

The best indication so far suggests the source of the water lies in a subterranean⁵ ocean or sea hidden beneath the icy crust under the South Pole, warmed by tidal heating. 

 

It’s been a mystery because Enceladus is so small, it’s not supposed to have that much heat, we think that heat source underground melts water and that melted water which may be mixed with some ammonia and other things to lower its melting point then wakes work its way out of the ground and spews up into space.

1 chasms   

裂缝( chasm的名词复数 )； 裂口； 分歧； 差别

参考例句：

• She found great chasms in her mathematics and physics. 她觉得她的数学课和物理课的知识还很欠缺。
• The sectarian chasms remain deep, the wounds of strife raw. 各派别的分歧巨大，旧恨新仇交织。

2 crevasse   

n. 裂缝，破口；v.使有裂缝

参考例句：

• The deep crevasse yawned at their feet.他们脚下的冰川有一道深深的裂缝。
• He fell down a crevasse.他从裂缝处摔了下来。

3 apparently   

adv.显然地；表面上，似乎

参考例句：

• An apparently blind alley leads suddenly into an open space.山穷水尽，豁然开朗。
• He was apparently much surprised at the news.他对那个消息显然感到十分惊异。

4 bloody   

adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染

参考例句：

• He got a bloody nose in the fight.他在打斗中被打得鼻子流血。
• He is a bloody fool.他是一个十足的笨蛋。

5 subterranean   

adj.地下的，地表下的

参考例句：

• London has 9 miles of such subterranean passages.伦敦像这样的地下通道有9英里长。
• We wandered through subterranean passages.我们漫游地下通道。