跟李想死磕TED｜01-01 The tiny creature that secretly powers the planet

The tiny creature that secretly powers the planet I'd like to introduce you to a tiny microorganism that you've probably never heard of: its name is Prochlorococcus, and it&`&s really an amazing little being. 我想要给大家介绍一种非常微小的微生物，你可能从来没有听说过，它的名字叫原绿球藻，真的是一种令人兴奋的生灵。 For one thing, its ancestors changed the earth in ways that made it possible for us to evolve, and hidden in its genetic code is a blueprint that may inspire ways to reduce our dependency on fossil fuel. But the most amazing thing is that there are three billion billion billion of these tiny cells on the planet, and we didn't know they existed until 35 years ago. 首先，它的祖先在很多方面改变了地球，使得地球提供给让我们进化的可能，另外隐藏在它的基因序列里的是一张蓝图，它可以赋予我们减少对石油能源依赖诸多方法。但是最令人不可思议的是它们在这颗星球上有300亿亿亿之多，而我们直到35年前才知道它们的存在。 So to tell you their story, I need to first take you way back, four billion years ago, when the earth might have looked something like this. There was no life on the planet, there was no oxygen in the atmosphere. So what happened to change that planet into the one we enjoy today, teeming with life, teeming with plants and animals? 为了给你们讲述他的故事，我需要首先带大家回到40亿年前，当地球看上去可能是这样。地球上没有生命，大气中没有氧气。那么是发生了什么才让地球变得像今天我们能够适应的样子？到处是生命、到处有植物和动物。 Well, in a word, photosynthesis. About two and a half billion years ago, some of these ancient ancestors of Prochlorococcus evolved so that they could use solar energy and absorb it and split water into its component parts of oxygen and hydrogen. And they used the chemical energy produced to draw CO2, carbon dioxide, out of the atmosphere and use it to build sugars and proteins and amino acids, all the things that life is made of. And as they evolved and grew more and more over millions and millions of years, that oxygen accumulated in the atmosphere. Until about 500 million years ago, there was enough in the atmosphere that larger organisms could evolve. There was an explosion of life-forms, and, ultimately, we appeared on the scene. While that was going on, some of those ancient photosynthesizers died and were compressed and buried, and became fossil fuel with sunlight buried in their carbon bonds. They're basically buried sunlight in the form of coal and oil. Today's photosynthesizers, their engines are descended from those ancient microbes, and they feed basically all of life on earth. Your heart is beating using the solar energy that some plant processed for you, and the stuff your body is made out of is made out of CO2 that some plant processed for you. Basically, we're all made out of sunlight and carbon dioxide. Fundamentally, we're just hot air. 那么，用一个词，叫“光合作用”。 大概在25亿年前，这些古老的原绿球藻的祖先开始进化，所以他们吸收并利用阳光中的能量从水中分离出氧和氢这两种组成物质。并且利用化学能来生产，它们从大气中吸收二氧化碳，并用它来构造糖、蛋白质和氨基酸这些构成生命的物质。随着他们的进化和生长得越来越多，时间也过了成千上万年，氧气就在大气中积累出来。直到5亿年前，足够多的氧气在大气中，更大的生物才得以进化。物种大爆发产生了，并且最终，我们出现在这场大爆发中。在这个过程中，那些古老的光合作用体死亡了，它们被挤压、覆盖，最终变成了石油燃料，也就是阳光被储存在碳键中。通常来说阳光以煤和石油的形式掩埋这。今天的光合作用体，它们的能量继承于古代的微生物，并且供养者几乎地球上所有的生命。你心脏持续的跳动，使用的是植物为你转换过来的太阳能，组成你躯体的材料是由植物为你转换的二氧化碳组成的。基本上我们都是由阳光和二氧化碳组成的。原则上，我们只是热空气。