1.A 4 billion-year-old meteorite from Mars that caused a splash here on Earth decades ago contains no evidence of ancient, primitive Martian life after all, scientists reported Thursday.
科学家们周四报道，一颗来自火星的几十年前撞击在地球上的40亿年历史的陨石，其中并没有任何证据表明火星上有古老、原始的火星生命。
2.In 1996, a NASA-led team announced that organic compounds in the rock appeared to have been left by living creatures.
1996年，美国宇航局领导的研究小组曾宣布，陨石中的有机化合物似乎是由生物留下的。
3.Other scientists were skeptical and researchers chipped away at that premise over the decades, most recently by a team led by the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Andrew Steele.
对此科学家一直持怀疑态度，而几十年来的研究也推翻了这个假设，最近的研究团队是由《科学》杂志的安德鲁·斯蒂尔带领的卡内基大学研究小组。
4.Tiny samples from the meteorite show the carbon-rich compounds are actually the result of water — most likely salty, or briny, water — flowing over the rock for a prolonged period, Steele said.
斯蒂尔说，陨石的微小样本表明，富含碳的化合物实际上是水--很可能是咸水或盐水--长时间在岩石上流动的结果。
5.The findings appear in the journal Science.
这一发现发表在了《科学》杂志上。
6.During Mars' wet and early past, at least two impacts occurred near the rock, heating the planet's surrounding surface, before a third impact bounced it off the red planet and into space millions of years ago.
在火星较为潮湿和过去的早期，至少有两次撞击曾发生在这块岩石附近，加热了行星周围的表面，然后第三次撞击将其从火星弹出，并在数百万年前进入了太空。
7.The 4-pound (2-kilogram) rock was found in Antarctica in 1984.
这块4磅（2千克）重的陨石1984年发现于南极。
8.Groundwater moving through the cracks in the rock, while it was still on Mars, formed the tiny globs of carbon that are present, according to the researchers.
研究人员称，地下水在火星上时穿过岩石中的裂缝，形成了微小的碳球。
9.The same thing can happen on Earth and could help explain the presence of methane in Mars' atmosphere, they said.
他们说，同样的事情也可能发生在地球上，这也有助于解释火星大气层中甲烷的存在。
10.But two scientists who took part in the original study took issue with these latest findings, calling them “disappointing."
但两位参与过最初研究的科学家对这些最新发现表示异议，称他们“令人失望”。
11.In a shared email, they said they stand by their 1996 observations.
在一封公开的电子邮件中，他们说他们仍坚持1996年的观察结果。
12.“While the data presented incrementally adds to our knowledge of (the meteorite), the interpretation is hardly novel, nor is it supported by the research,” wrote Kathie Thomas-Keprta and Simon Clemett, astromaterial researchers at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
“虽然提供的数据逐渐增加了我们对陨石的了解，但解释并不新颖，也没有得到研究的支持，”休斯顿美国宇航局约翰逊航天中心的天体材料研究人员凯瑟·托马斯-凯普塔和西门·克莱默特写道。
13.“Unsupported speculation does nothing to resolve the conundrum surrounding the origin of organic matter” in the meteorite, they added.
他们补充道：“没有根据的推测对解决陨石中有机物来源的难题没有任何帮助。”
14.According to Steele, advances in technology made his team's new findings possible.
斯蒂尔则认为，技术的进步使他的团队的新发现成为了可能。
15.He commended the measurements by the original researchers and noted that their life-claiming hypothesis “was a reasonable interpretation" at the time.
他赞扬了原始研究人员的测量结果，并指出当时他们的生命声称假说“是一种合理的解释”。
16.He said he and his team — which includes NASA, German and British scientists — took care to present their results “for what they are, which is a very exciting discovery about Mars and not a study to disprove” the original premise.
他说，他和他的团队--包括美国宇航局、德国科学家和英国科学家--都很谨慎地展示了他们的研究成果，这是一项关于火星的非常令人兴奋的发现，而不是一项旨在反驳最初假设的研究。
17.This finding “is huge for our understanding of how life started on this planet and helps refine the techniques we need to find life elsewhere on Mars, or Enceladus and Europa,” Steele said in an email, referring to Saturn and Jupiter’s moons with subsurface oceans.
斯蒂尔在一封电子邮件中说，这一发现“对于我们理解地球上的生命是如何开始的，并有助于完善我们在火星其他地方，或者土卫二和木卫二上寻找生命所需要的技术”。斯蒂尔在一封电子邮件中说，他指的是土星和木星的拥有地下海洋的卫星。
18.The only way to prove whether Mars ever had or still has microbial life, according to Steele, is to bring samples to Earth for analysis.
斯蒂尔说，要证明火星是否有微生物生命，唯一的方法就是将样品带到地球进行分析。
NASA's Perseverance Mars rover already has collected six samples for return to Earth in a decade or so; three dozen samples are desired.
19.美国宇航局的毅力号火星漫游者已经在大约十年内收集了6个返回地球的样本，而总共需要30多个样本。
