Scientific American 本周科學人又來啦,訓練英聽好耳力聽短篇英文廣播:techno fossil科技化石怎麼來的,下載檔案就知道了。

這就是人類製造出來的科技化石 the so-called techno-fossil.
海灘營火烤肉聽起來好玩又浪漫,但是被營火融化的塑膠可樂瓶,
會產生黏巴巴的液態塑膠,這些玩意兒又跟砂礫與岩石融合在一起,
便成為人類占據地球的永恆印記。



I Just Want to Say One Word to You: Plastiglomerate

Thanks to us humans, there's a new type of rock in the geologic record. And it's part plastic.

David Biello reports

Humanity inscribes itself into the rock record of Earth’s history. People now move more sediment 沉積/沉澱物than all the world’s rivers combined. Fossil fuel burning 燃燒石化燃料has changed the composition of the atmosphere大氣的成分. Everywhere are traces of the sudden appearance of rare radioactive elements放射線元素 like plutonium, a legacy of nuclear weapons. And now there’s even a new type of rock—that people brought into existence.

Geologists found the
novel全新的 stone on the beaches of Hawaii. Its constituents include solids of volcanic origin火山岩, sand, shells and, yes, plastic. The discoverers dubbed the material plastiglomerate塑膠合成岩. The finding is in the journal GSA Today, published by the Geological Society of America美國地質學會.


People’s
campfires 營火on the beach inadvertently不經意的 helped create plastiglomerate. Some plastic, from a soda bottle, fishing line or a plethora of許多 other possible polymeric高分子聚合物 sources, found itself near the fire and melted. The resultant sticky goo結果出現的黏稠物體 cemented all the disparate 完全不同的bits together.

The new substance appears to be
persistent持久性的, destined to注定會 stick around 一直留著(不會消失)for a long, long time. And that's the kind of techno-fossil 科技化石that may prove to be a hallmark of the Anthropocene age人類世時代的一大特質, this time of humanity shaping the planet.

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