美国国家航空航天局（NASA）的科学家表示，汤加海底火山的爆发有助于他们了解火星和金星地表特征是如何形成的。汤加火山这场不同寻常的爆发——据计算，其威力是1945年投在日本广岛的原子弹的500多倍——为研究人员提供了一次难得的机会来研究水和熔岩是如何相互作用的。
How the Tonga eruption is helping space scientists understand Mars
NASA scientists say that the eruption of a submarine volcano in Tonga is helping them to understand how features formed on the surfaces of Mars and Venus.
美国国家航空航天局（NASA）的科学家表示，汤加海底火山的爆发有助于他们了解火星和金星地表特征是如何形成的。
The unusual explosion — which has been calculated at more than 500 times the force of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945 — is offering researchers a rare chance to study how water and lava interact.
汤加火山这场不同寻常的爆发——据计算，其威力是1945年投在日本广岛的原子弹的500多倍——为研究人员提供了一次难得的机会来研究水和熔岩是如何相互作用的。
Studying the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai volcano and its evolution in recent weeks is “important for planetary science”, says Petr Brož, a planetary volcanologist at the Institute of Geophysics of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague.
布拉格捷克科学院地球物理研究所的行星火山学家Petr Brož说，研究洪阿哈阿帕伊岛火山及其最近几周的演化“对行星科学很重要”。
The knowledge “might help us to reveal results of water–lava interactions on the red planet and elsewhere across the Solar System”, he says.
这些知识“可能有助于我们揭示火星这颗红色星球和整个太阳系其他地方的水—熔岩相互作用的结果”。
Front-row seat
前排座位
The volcanic island, which began to form from ash and lava expelled from an undersea volcano in early 2015, piqued the interest of researchers including James Garvin, chief scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, because of its similarity to structures on Mars and possibly also Venus. “We don’t normally get to see islands form,” explains Garvin, but this one offered “a front-row seat”.
这座火山岛于2015年初由海底火山喷出的火山灰和熔岩开始形成，这激起了美国宇航局戈达德航天飞行中心首席科学家詹姆斯·加文（James Garvin）等研究人员的兴趣，因为它与火星上的结构相似，也可能与金星上的结构相似。 “我们通常不会看到岛屿形成，”加文解释说，但这个火山岛提供了“前排座位”。
Volcanic islands typically last for just months before being eroded away. But Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai survived for years, allowing Garvin’s team to use satellite observations and seafloor surveys to study how such islands form, erode and persist1. The researchers wanted to use that knowledge to understand how small conical volcanoes found on Mars may have formed in the presence of water billions of years ago.
火山岛通常只持续几个月就会被侵蚀掉。但洪阿哈阿帕伊岛存活了数年，这使得加文的团队能够利用卫星观测和海底调查来研究这些岛屿是如何形成、侵蚀和持续存在的。研究人员希望利用这些知识来了解火星上发现的小型锥形火山是如何在数十亿年前存在水的情况下形成的。
Submarine eruptions differ significantly from those that occur on land, and can produce different landforms, says Brož. The presence of large quantities of sea water can make the explosions more violent, while also rapidly cooling the lava and restricting the amount of gas emitted from it.
Brož表示，海底火山喷发与陆地上的火山喷发有很大的不同，可以产生不同的地貌。大量海水的存在会使爆炸更加猛烈，同时也会迅速冷却熔岩并限制熔岩释放的气体量。
Many volcanoes on Mars are thought to have erupted with steady flows of lava, but some could have been explosive, like Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai, says Joseph Michalski, a planetary scientist at the University of Hong Kong.
“火星上的许多火山被认为是由稳定的熔岩流喷发而成。”香港大学的行星科学家约瑟夫·米哈尔斯基（Joseph Michalski）说，但有些火山可能是爆炸性的，比如洪阿哈阿帕伊岛火山。
The marine environment also mimics some aspects of the low-gravity settings on small planets such as Mars and “can shed unique light on Martian features that formed in lower gravity”, he adds.
他补充说，海洋环境还模仿了火星等小行星上低重力环境的某些方面，“可以为火星在低重力环境下形成的特征提供独特的启示”。
Last weekend’s violent explosion was preceded by a series of small eruptions starting in December, which increased the size of the island. That excited Garvin’s team. The researchers were in the process of submitting a paper describing the island’s slow erosion and a theoretical model for what makes it so stable — but “then BOOM. We had to hit reset,” says Garvin.
在上周末猛烈爆炸之前，从12月开始的一系列小规模喷发扩大了这座岛屿的面积。这让加文的团队兴奋不已。他们正在提交一篇描述该岛缓慢侵蚀的论文，以及一个使其如此稳定的理论模型，但是“一切随着‘砰’的一声回到原点，”加文说。
Teams around the world are now monitoring the island using optical, radar and laser satellites to measure what is left. The International Space Station’s Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation instrument has also collected data, says Garvin.
目前，世界各地的团队正在利用光学、雷达和激光卫星对该岛进行监测，以测量剩下的残骸。加文说，国际空间站的全球生态系统动力学调查仪器也收集了数据。
The vast majority of the island is now gone, says Daniel Slayback, a geographer at the Goddard Space Flight Center, who has visited Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai. “It’s kind of shocking to see,” he says. “It’s pretty dramatic.”
戈达德太空飞行中心的地理学家Daniel Slayback曾访问过洪阿哈阿帕伊岛，现在该岛绝大多数地区已经消失。“看到这一点有点令人震惊。”他说，“这很戏剧性。”
Garvin is hopeful that the giant chamber of magma deep under Earth’s crust that formed Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai will eventually create another island for researchers to study. If that happens, “we’ll measure it, and describe it and build a story about it”.
Garvin希望，地壳深处形成的洪阿哈阿帕伊岛巨大岩浆室最终会创造出另一个供研究人员研究的岛屿。如果发生这种情况，“我们将测量它，描述它，并构建一个关于它的故事”。