I love minerals, and they're so important in our lives.

我喜歡礦物質，它們在我們的生活中非常重要。

Virtually all the raw materials we use for technology, for our automobiles, for agriculture, indeed every living thing depends on minerals.

實際上，我們用於技術、汽車、農業以及每種生物的所有原材料都依賴於礦物。

But what else?

但還有什麼呢？

Minerals tell stories because they're incredibly information rich.

礦物之所以能講述故事，是因為它們蘊含著豐富的資訊。

Every mineral is a time capsule.

每一種礦物都是一個時間膠囊。

And they tell us about the four and a half billion year history of our planet.

它們告訴我們地球 45 億年的歷史。

So we wouldn't be here, we wouldn't be able to talk about minerals if it weren't for the minerals themselves.

是以，如果不是因為礦物本身，我們就不會在這裡，我們就無法談論礦物。

Minerals were fundamental to the origin of life.

礦物是生命起源的基礎。

There were all sorts of key steps, catalysis, reactants, protective surfaces, that you couldn't have made life's chemistry without those special characteristics of minerals.

在催化、反應物、保護表面等各種關鍵步驟中，如果沒有礦物的這些特殊特性，就不可能產生生命化學。

What we've learned, and this is astonishing, is that Earth has gone through these complete changes in character, in color.

我們所瞭解到的，令人吃驚的是，地球在性質和顏色上都發生了徹底的變化。

Earth started off as a black planet covered with basalt.

地球最初是一個被玄武岩覆蓋的黑色星球。

And then the rains came, and the oceans came, and Earth transformed to a blue planet, where it was covered by an ocean.

然後，雨水來了，海洋來了，地球變成了一個被海洋覆蓋的藍色星球。

Then we started plate tectonics, a process by which the near surface and the deep interior are churned in a way that creates gray continents of granite.

然後，我們開始了板塊構造，這是一個近地表和深層內部攪動的過程，從而形成了灰色的花崗岩大陸。

Life evolves to produce an oxygen rich atmosphere that rusts the planet, and you get a red planet now, much like Mars, but that's what our continents would have looked like two billion years ago.

生命進化產生了富含氧氣的大氣層，使地球生鏽，於是就有了現在的紅色星球，很像火星，但這就是 20 億年前我們大陸的樣子。

Then we went through periods of getting very hot and very cold, and in the coldest stages, we think the entire planet was covered by the white mineral, ice.

然後，我們又經歷了酷熱和嚴寒時期，在最寒冷的階段，我們認為整個地球都被白色的礦物--冰所覆蓋。

The ice melted, and the continents became green, because life learned to live on land.

冰雪消融，大陸變綠，因為生命學會了在陸地上生活。

And so you now had a green planet, and you also had all kinds of biomineralization.

於是，你現在有了一個綠色的星球，你也有了各種生物礦化。

We had shells, and we had teeth, and we had bones that show the struggle for survival in life, but that struggle involved minerals as well.

我們有貝殼，我們有牙齒，我們有骨骼，這些都顯示了生命中的生存鬥爭，但這種鬥爭也涉及礦物質。

So for that entire four and a half billion history, we've seen the co-evolution of the geosphere and life, the abundant life we see on Earth today.

是以，在整個 45 億年的歷史中，我們看到了地圈和生命的共同進化，也就是我們今天在地球上看到的豐富生命。

My favorite mineral, I suppose I should say, it's hazelnite, which was named after me, but there's a little bit of a downside here.

我最喜歡的礦物應該說是榛子石，它是以我的名字命名的，但也有一點缺點。

It's only found in one place in the world.

世界上只有一個地方能找到它。

It disappears every time it rains, and it's basically microbial poop.

每次下雨，它就會消失，而且基本上是微生物便便。