The Crystal Fuel

摘要

In 1976 scientists on an international drilling expedition off the coast of Guatemala brought up a core of gritty mud from the deep-sea floor. In it were several softball-size nodes of a whitish, icelike material no one on board had ever seen before. The nodes popped, hissed, and snapped like frying bacon, sputtering out gas and throwing off droplets of liquid. Within minutes the only thing left was a puddle of water. "We measured and photographed it every which way," says Bill Harrison, a geologist at the Idaho National Environmental Engineering Laboratory, who was on board. "We knew what we had."