“You didn’t mention camping on Mars.”
“你没提到在火星上露营。”

My wife had a point: thin air, thinner soil, extreme UV, rocks straight from a Nasa red-planet image, jagged ranges – all ideal backdrops for a movie set. No wonder the place was considered for training by the Apollo program. Its sparse life forms include an intimidating shrub whose thorns mimic the stingers on the scorpions that come out after dark. A harsh, forbidding place, but beautiful too. We made shade with our camper awning and waited for magic time: the desert at dusk.
我妻子说得有道理：稀薄的空气、更贫瘠的土壤、强烈的紫外线、直接来自 NASA 火星图像的岩石、崎岖的山脉——所有这些都是电影布景的理想背景。难怪这里曾被阿波罗计划选为训练地点。这里稀疏的生物包括一种令人望而生畏的灌木，其刺模仿了夜间出现的蝎子的毒刺。这是一个严酷、令人望而生畏的地方，但也同样美丽。我们用露营车的遮阳篷制造了阴凉处，等待着神奇的时刻：沙漠的黄昏。

Travelling along the Stuart Highway it’s easy to miss the Henbury Meteorites conservation reserve, 12km off the tarmac along a rough track 1.5 hours south of Alice Springs. We’d seen samples of its space rock in the excellent display at the Museum of Central Australia in Alice and were keen to see where they fell. There are six known impact sites in the Territory and the two most accessible are Henbury and Tnorala (Gosse Bluff). We visited both during Victoria’s fifth Covid lockdown in 2021.
沿着斯图尔特公路旅行时，很容易错过亨伯里陨石保护区，该保护区距离公路 12 公里，沿着一条崎岖小路，位于艾伦斯普林斯以南 1.5 小时车程处。我们在艾伦斯普林斯的中央澳大利亚博物馆看到了其太空岩石的样本，并渴望知道它们坠落的地方。该地区有六个已知的撞击地点，其中最易到达的两个是亨伯里和特诺拉（戈斯角）。我们在 2021 年维多利亚州第五次新冠疫情封锁期间参观了这两个地方。

Henbury is a site where a nickel-iron meteor about the size of a garden shed disintegrated before striking the land to carve out over a dozen impact craters, just 4,500 years ago – so recently that the site has significant cultural meaning as a sorry place for the Luritja people, whose sacred songs and oral histories tell of this devastating event.
亨伯里是一个地点，一颗大小约等于花园小屋的镍铁陨石在撞击地面之前解体，形成了十几个撞击坑，这一事件发生在 4500 年前——如此之近，以至于该地点对卢里贾人具有重大的文化意义，他们视此为悲伤之地，其神圣歌曲和口头传说都讲述着这场毁灭性的事件。

The site’s 12 craters are best viewed when the sunlight’s low angle reveals the smaller, heavily eroded examples. Among the youngest of Earth’s known impact sites, Henbury’s pits have been scoured by wind and rare deluges down the Finke River flood plain. Extreme temperatures do the rest.
该地 12 个陨石坑在阳光以低角度照射时观赏效果最佳，此时能显现出较小且严重风化的陨石坑。亨伯里是地球上已知最年轻的撞击遗址之一，其坑洞被风和罕见的芬克河洪泛平原洪水侵蚀。极端温度则完成了剩余的工作。

The largest crater is 180m across, the smallest the size of a back yard spa. The explosion sprayed out tonnes of pulverised rock in a distinctive rayed pattern still visible around Crater No.3 – the only known terrestrial example. Temptingly, specimens of the actual meteorite hurled out with this ejecta may still be found. The 45kg chunk in the Museum of Central Australia is one example of 680kg collected so far, though digging or damaging the site without a permit is illegal. We don’t find any meteorite fragments, but we leave with memories of a humming sunrise and night with a billion almost touchable stars.
最大的陨石坑直径 180 米，最小的只有后院泳池那么大。爆炸喷出了数吨粉碎的岩石，形成了一种独特的放射状图案，至今仍在 3 号陨石坑周围可见——这是已知唯一的地表陨石坑实例。诱人之处在于，与这些喷射物一起飞出的实际陨石碎片可能仍可找到。中央澳大利亚博物馆中的 45 公斤碎片是迄今为止收集到的 680 公斤陨石的一部分，尽管未经许可挖掘或破坏该地点是违法的。我们没有找到任何陨石碎片，但带走了关于嗡鸣日出和亿万几乎可触摸的星星的夜晚的记忆。

From Tylers Pass lookout, two hours west along the Namatjira Drive from Alice Springs, Tnorala (Gosse Bluff) appears as a mountain range thrusting incongruously from the endless western plains. In fact, these peaks were created in seconds when an object up to 1km wide hit the Earth at about 250,000km/h, 142m years ago, with an explosive force at least 20 times more powerful than all the world’s nuclear weapons.
从 Tylers Pass 观景点望，沿着 Namatjira Drive 向西行驶两小时，Tnorala（Gosse Bluff）呈现出山脉从无垠的西部平原中突兀而出的景象。事实上，这些山峰是在 1.42 亿年前，一个直径高达 1 公里的物体以 25 万公里每小时的速度撞击地球时，在几秒钟内形成的，其爆炸力至少是全世界所有核武器总力量的 20 倍。

No trace of that object has been found, so it was likely an icy comet that vaporised on impact. Erosion has since reduced the crater from its original 22km diameter. Satellite images uncannily resemble a staring eye under a sunburnt brow.
尚未找到该物体的任何痕迹，因此它很可能是一颗冰冻的彗星，在撞击时汽化。此后，风化作用使陨石坑的直径从最初的 22 公里缩小。卫星图像奇异地像是在一个被晒伤的额头下凝视的眼睛。

Specimens in the Museum of Central Australia show that early Cretaceous central Australia was wetter and cooler than it is now, with abundant dinosaurs. Locally, they would have been vaporised, and anything living within 100km killed by the massive shock wave and extreme heat. The sound of the explosion likely travelled around the world. The Tnorala bolide event was a prelude to the big one, Chicxulub on Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula, which wiped out the dinosaurs 77m years later.
澳大利亚中部博物馆的标本显示，白垩纪早期的澳大利亚中部比现在湿润凉爽，恐龙种类丰富。在当地，它们会被汽化，而 100 公里范围内的任何生物都会因巨大的冲击波和极端高温而死亡。爆炸的声音可能传遍全球。托诺拉陨石事件是后来墨西哥尤卡坦半岛的希克苏鲁布大事件的前奏，后者在 7700 万年后导致了恐龙的灭绝。skip past newsletter promotion
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In their oral traditions, Western Arrernte people understand Tnorala as a cosmic impact site. A group of star woman were dancing in a corroboree in the Milky Way when one woman placed her baby in a turna (wooden cradle). The dancing shook the galaxy and the turna slipped, with the baby falling to Earth as a blazing star, striking the ground to create the crater’s distinctive bowl shape.
在他们的口头传统中，西方阿伦特人将 Tnorala 视为一个宇宙撞击地点。一群星女在银河系中跳着科罗博雷舞，当其中一位女子将她的婴儿放在一个 turna（木制摇篮）中时，舞蹈震动了银河，摇篮滑落，婴儿坠落到地球成为一颗明亮的星星，撞击地面形成了陨石坑独特的碗状结构。

These days “awesome” is a word debased by glib use. It’s apt driving into the 5km-wide Tnorala crater, surrounded by cliffs 180 metres high, formed in a blink by a literally Earth-shattering event as our planet’s crust rebounded to form the crater’s inner ring. The rock strata in these peaks show that some were lifted from a depth of 4km by incredible explosive force, and are now inverted.
如今，“太棒了”这个词因轻率的使用而被贬低。当你驾车驶入直径 5 公里的 Tnorala 陨石坑时，周围是高达 180 米的悬崖，这些悬崖在瞬间形成，是地球地壳反弹形成陨石坑内环的真正震撼事件。这些山峰中的岩石层表明，一些岩石被不可思议的爆炸力从 4 公里的深处升起，现在被倒置。

It’s not just awareness of this ancient violence that marks Tnorala as a sorry place. Local information boards describe it as a pre-colonial massacre site. So it’s doubly proper that camping is forbidden.
不仅仅是意识到这古代的暴力，才使 Tnorala 成为一个令人悲伤的地方。当地的信息板将其描述为殖民前的大屠杀遗址。因此，禁止露营在这里是双重恰当的。

It’s an unwelcoming place, where an object large enough to be classified as a city-killer fell from the sky. This kind of comet is now thankfully detectable by telescopes such as the new Vera C Rubin observatory in Chile, and also proven as feasible to steer off course.
这是一个不欢迎的地方，一个足够大以至于被归类为城市毁灭者的物体从天而降。这种彗星现在值得庆幸的是，可以通过智利的新 Vera C Rubin 天文台等望远镜探测到，并且已被证明可以改变其轨道。

So forget Mars. Cancel that ticket. Instead, visit awesome central Australia – where the mountains are upside down, the stars greet your fingertips and the dawns are so silent you can hear the sun sing.
所以忘掉火星吧。取消那张票。相反，去令人敬畏的中澳大利亚——在那里，山脉是颠倒的，星星迎接你的指尖，黎明如此寂静以至于你能听到太阳歌唱。

Need to know  需要了解

The Museum of Central Australia is hosting a Henbury Meteorite reserve discovery day on 10 August as part of National Science week.
中央澳大利亚博物馆将在 8 月 10 日举办亨伯里陨石保护区发现日，作为国家科学周的一部分。

Henbury: Day trips to the Henbury Meteorites conservation reserve require a Northern Territory parks pass and the site can be reached by 2WD vehicles, however 4WDs are recommended. The reserve’s basic facilities include picnic shelters and a drop toilet. Water and firewood are not available. Campsites must be booked online through Northern Territory Parks and fees apply. The nearest food and fuel supplies are available 85km south at the Erldunda Roadhouse on the Stuart Highway.
亨伯里：前往亨伯里陨石保护区进行一日游需要购买北领地公园通行证，该地点可由两驱车辆到达，但建议使用四驱车。保护区的基本设施包括野餐棚和简易厕所。没有水和木柴供应。露营地点必须通过北领地公园在线预订，并需支付费用。最近的食品和燃料供应位于 Stuart 高速公路上的 Erldunda 道路旅馆，距离此地 85 公里。

Tnorala (Gosse Bluff): The Tnorala crater is accessible via a sandy track and offers picnic shelters and a drop toilet. Camping is not permitted in the reserve due to its status as a registered sacred site of the Western Arrernte people. Fuel and food is available at Hermannsburg, 62km east on the Namatjira Way. Travel beyond Tnorala is by 4WD only and requires a Mereenie Tour pass. Many of these roads may be impassable in wet weather.
Tnorala（戈斯峭壁）：Tnorala 陨石坑可通过沙地小路到达，提供野餐棚和简易厕所。由于该保护区是西方阿伦特人的注册圣地，因此不允许在此露营。燃料和食品供应位于 Hermannsburg，距离此地 62 公里，位于 Namatjira Way 东部。前往 Tnorala 以外的地区只能使用四驱车，并需要 Mereenie 旅游通行证。许多这些道路在雨季可能无法通行。