The boiling river of the Amazon 亚马逊的沸腾河流    Speaker: Andrés Ruzo 第三课

I've been back every year since that first visit in 2011, and the fieldwork has been exhilarating, demanding and at times dangerous.自从2011年第一次勘测后，我每年都会回来，实地工作结果甚是喜人，要求很高，有时也会遇到危险。

One story was even featured in National Geographic Magazine.  《国家地理》杂志甚至刊登了我的故事。

I was trapped on a small rock about the size of a sheet of paper in sandals and board shorts, in between an 80 degree C river and a hot spring that, well, looked like this, close to boiling. 我被困在一块小岩石上，大约有一张纸的大小，穿着凉鞋和短裤，置身于80摄氏度河和一个接近沸腾的热泉中。

And on top of that, it was Amazon rain forest. Pshh, pouring rain, couldn't see a thing. 最重要的是，那还是亚马逊雨林。嘘，那是倾盆大雨，什么也看不见。

The temperature differential made it all white. It was a whiteout. Intense.  温差使周围的一切看上去都是白色的。局势紧张。

Now, after years of work, I'll soon be submitting my geophysical and geochemical studies for publication. 现在，经过多年的工作，我将很快提交我的地球物理和地球化学研究结果以供出版。

And I'd like to share, today, with all of you here, on the TED stage, for the first time, some of these discoveries.  今天，我想和你们大家一起，在TED的舞台上，首次揭露其中的一些发现。

Well, first off, it's not a legend. Surprise!    首先，这不是一个传说。意想不到吧！

When I first started the research, the satellite imagery was too low-resolution to be meaningful. 当我第一次开始研究时，相关卫星图像分辨率太低，不太有意义。

There were just no good maps. 那时没有高质量的地图。

Thanks to the support of the Google Earth team,I now have this. 多亏了Google Earth团队的支持，现在我有了这个。

Not only that, the indigenous name of the river, Shanay-timpishka, "boiled with the heat of the sun," 不仅如此，这条河的土著名字——山奈·蒂皮什卡，“由太阳烧开的河”，

indicating that I'm not the first to wonder why the river boils, and showing that humanity has always sought to explain the world around us.【跟读】表明我并不是第一个想知道为什么河水会沸腾的人，也说明人类一直在试图解释我们周围的世界。

So why does the river boil? 那河水为什么会沸腾？

It actually took me three years to get that footage. 我花了三年时间才弄到这些图像。

Fault-fed hot springs.  地质断层滋长温泉。

As we have hot blood running through our veins and arteries, so, too, the earth has hot water running through its cracks and faults.  正如我们的血液流过我们的血管和动脉一样，地球的裂缝和断层里也流动着热水。

Where these arteries come to the surface, these earth arteries, we'll get geothermal manifestations: fumaroles, hot springs and in our case, the boiling river.  那些地球表面的动脉，就是地热的表现：喷气孔，温泉，正是我们沸腾的河流。

【跟读】Geothermal energy is produced by the heat from inside the earth.

What's truly incredible, though, is the scale of this place.    【跟读】  但真正令人难以置信的是这条河的规模。

Next time you cross the road, think about this. 下次你过马路的时候，想想这个。

The river flows wider than a two-lane road along most of its path. 这条河的大部分流经地都比一条双线道宽。

It flows hot for 6.24 kilometers. Truly impressive. 它的温水流经长度为6.24公里。真令人印象深刻。

There are thermal pools larger than this TED stage, 有比热水池比这个TED舞台更大，

and that waterfall that you see there is six meters tall -- and all with near-boiling water.    你看到的瀑布有6米高，全部都接近沸腾的水。

We mapped the temperatures along the river, and this was by far the most demanding part of the fieldwork.      我们绘制了沿河的温度，这是迄今为止野外工作中最困难的部分。

And the results were just awesome. 结果真是太棒了。

Sorry -- the geoscientist in me coming out. And it showed this amazing trend.    对不起，我的地球科学家本质暴露出来了。结过显示了这一惊人的趋势。

You see, the river starts off cold.你看，这条河的河口是冷的。

It then heats up, cools back down, heats up, cools back down, heats up again, 然后升温，冷却下来，升温，冷却下来，再升温，

and then has this beautiful decay curve until it smashes into this cold river. 于是有了这个美丽的衰变曲线，直到最终奔腾进寒冷的河流。

Now, I understand not all of you are geothermal scientists, so to put it in more everyday terms: Everyone loves coffee. 现在，我知道在座的各位不都是地热科学家，所以把它放在日常生活中：每个人都喜欢咖啡。

Yes? Good. Your regular cup of coffee, 54 degrees C, an extra-hot one, well, 60. 是吗？好的。你的普通咖啡为54摄氏度，特别烫的是60摄氏度。

So, put in coffee shop terms, the boiling river plots like this.所以，放在咖啡店的术语，沸腾的河流是像这样的。

There you have your hot coffee.  这是一杯热咖啡。

Here you have your extra-hot coffee, and you can see that there's a bit point there where the river is still hotter than even the extra-hot coffee. 这是加热的咖啡，你可以看到有一个尖尖的地方，这条河流比特别烫的咖啡更热。

And these are average water temperatures. 这些是平均水温。

We took these in the dry season to ensure the purest geothermal temperatures.  【跟读】    我们在旱季采样，以确保得到最纯粹的地热温度。

But there's a magic number here that's not being shown, and that number is 47 degrees C, 但是这里有一个未被显示出来的神奇数字，那个数字是47摄氏度，

because that's where things start to hurt, and I know this from very personal experience. 因为这是有害的临界点，我从个人的经验中知道这一点。

Above that temperature, you don't want to get in that water. 超过那温度，没人会想进入那水里。

You need to be careful. It can be deadly. 你要小心。它可能是致命的。

I've seen all sorts of animals fall in, and what's shocking to me, is the process is pretty much the same. 我看到过各种各样的动物，我感到震惊的是，这个过程几乎是一样的。

So they fall in and the first thing to go are the eyes. 所以它们掉进去后，首先受伤的就是眼睛。

Eyes, apparently, cook very quickly. 显然，眼睛很快就会煮起来。

They turn this milky-white color. 它们变成了乳白色。

The stream is carrying them. 河流把它们卷走。

They're trying to swim out, but their meat is cooking on the bone because it's so hot. 它们想游出去，但它们的肉在骨头上煮，因为水很热。

So they're losing power, losing power, until finally they get to a point where hot water goes into their mouths and they cook from the inside out.  所以它们正在丧失力气，丧失力气，直到最后他们到达一个点，热水冲进它们的嘴里，将它们从里到外煮熟。