揭开水星的秘密（图）   

Mercury's Secrets Revealed

More than 1,000 new images of the planet reveal startling results.

有关水星的1000多张新图片显示出几个令人吃惊的结果。

In the first pass by planet Mercury since Mariner 10’s 1975 visit, the Messenger spacecraft has captured 1,213 stunning new images. Sean Solomon, principal investigator on the mission, explains a few of the unique pictures of the solar system’s innermost planet:	1975年，“水手”10号太空船曾首次飞临并造访水星。此后，“信使”号太空船拍下了1213张水星的新图片。有关这颗太阳系最里面的行星，该太空飞行任务的首席研究员肖恩·所罗门解释了其中几张独特的图片。
Spider (left): “The ‘spider’ is unlike any feature Mariner ever saw. There are nearly a hundred sets of extensional faults that burst out from the central region. They look like the legs of some creature that was squished billions of years ago.”	蜘蛛网状图（左图）：“这张‘蜘蛛’网状图跟‘水手’号太空船所观察到的任何地貌特征都不相同。有近百道断层痕从中心区域散发延伸出去，看上去就像亿万年前被压扁的某种生物的一条条长腿。”
Fault lines (center): “This scarp [the black line running through the upper-left part of the picture] was formed by tectonic activity, where the right was pushed up over the left side, like a typical Earth fault line. This is Mercury’s dominant form of deformation [which, researchers believe, happened when] the planet was shrinking.”	断层线（中图）：“这条断层崖（贯穿图片左上方那条黑线）是由于地质构造活动而形成的，图中右部翘起高于左边，类似一条典型的地球断层线。科学家们认为，这是水星上主要类型的地质变形，是水星收缩时发生的情况。”
Concentric rings (right): “As an impact on any planet gets bigger, the nature of the crater changes. Here, the original crater is now the outer ring—the inner ring is formed by other complicated geological processes that are part of the same initial event.”	同心环状区（右图）：“任何行星都是这样，随着受到撞击的力度越来越大，陨石坑的自然状态就会发生变化。该图中，最初的陨石坑范围是现在的外圈，内圈是由于其他复杂的地质过程而形成的，而这一地质过程同样是由于起初那次撞击事件造成的。”