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In 1959, the US Army started building a town in Greenland. It was named Camp Century.
1959年，美军开始在格陵兰岛建一座名为世纪营的小镇。
And while science wasn't its primary goal, Camp Century was the source of the first long ice core ever acquired --
虽然科学并不是这个小镇的最初目标，但世纪营是首个长冰芯源——
an ice core that opened the door to the history of Earth's climate. Oh, also: Camp Century wasn't built on the ice sheet but inside it.
一个打开了了解地球气候历史大门的冰芯，此外，世纪营并不是建在冰盖上的，而是建在冰盖里边的。
Camp Century wasn't the only US base in Greenland, but it was the only one completely underground.
世纪营并不是格陵兰岛唯一一个美国基地，但它却是唯一一个完全建于地下的基地。
And this was no cramped, one-room burrow, either.
而且也不是一个狭小的，仅有一个房间的地洞。
Camp Century had a barbershop and a theater and everything you'd expect from a small city.
世纪营内有一家理发店、一家剧院以及你对一个小城市所期望的一切。
All inside the ice -- generally around eight meters beneath the surface.
全部都建在冰内——通常是在距离表面之下约8米处。
All that ice meant that even after the tunnels were completed in 1960, Camp Century was plagued by construction issues.
所有这些冰意味着，即使在1960年隧道完工后，世纪营仍受到建设问题的困扰
Between the weight of the ice pressing down on every ceiling, the heat generated by both buildings and humans,
压在每块天花板上的重量，建筑和人类产生的热量
and the movement of the ice itself, the whole base required constant upkeep.
以及冰层本身的移动，整个基地需要经常维护。
By the time it was just a few years old, about fifty people spent their days cutting through ice with chainsaws to maintain the tunnels
在隧道建成的短短几年时间里，大约有50个人整天用电锯凿冰来维护隧道
and avoid collapse —in a base that only ever had about 200 occupants at most.
避免坍塌——这个基地里最多曾住过约200人。
And then there was the nuclear reactor. Camp Century was powered by the world's first portable nuclear reactor.
然后就有了核反应堆。世纪营由世界上第一个便携式核反应堆提供动力。
It was designed off-site and built almost IKEA-style in Greenland so that the people in the camp didn't have to spend too much time tinkering.
反应堆建在场地之外，且几乎是宜家风格，所以世纪营内的人不需要花太多时间修修补补。
The reactor produced plenty of electricity, but it also made a lot of heat -- compounding the problem of melting walls.
反应堆能够生产充足的电力，但也会制造出大量热量——恶化了墙面融化的问题。
Plus, it made radioactive waste, which was left in the ice when the camp was abandoned. But we'll come back to that.
此外，它还产生了放射性废料，当世纪营被废弃，这些废料也被留在了冰里。这个问题，我们待会再讲。
To the outside world, Camp Century was for research.
对外界而言，世纪营的存在是为了研究。
The Army wanted to study how to live and build in such an extreme, remote environment because this was the Cold War,
军队想要研究如何在这种极端偏远的环境中生活，因为此时是冷战时期，
and everyone thought that the Army might end up somewhere with famously murderous winters.
并且大家都认为军队可能会在某个以凶残冬天著称的地方终结。
But a team of scientists got to tag along, too. It was, after all, the perfect chance to study Greenland's ice sheet.
但一组科学家也尾随其后，毕竟，这可是研究格陵兰岛冰盖的好机会。
Ice sheets are made of years of snow piled on top of each other, with deeper ice being made of older snow.
冰盖是由多年的积雪堆积而成，其中更深层的冰是由更久以前的雪形成。
Air gets trapped between the snowflakes -- air that scientists can use to find out what the atmosphere was like when the snow first fell.
空气被困在雪花之间——科学家可以利用其中的空气了解第一次下雪时的大气层是什么样的。
They can see how much carbon dioxide there was at the time, for instance, or even if a volcano erupted and threw a bunch of ash into the air.
例如，他们可以知道那时的二氧化碳含量，甚至是否有火山爆发，并向空中抛洒了一堆火山灰。
But global temperatures also affect the amounts of certain isotopes (or atomic variants) of hydrogen and oxygen.
但全球气温也影响了某种氢和氧同位素（或原子变量）的数量。
So scientists can use those elements to understand global temperatures when that snow fell and became part of the ice sheet.
所以科学家可以利用这些元素了解雪落下并成为冰盖一部分时的全球气温。
We've used ice this way since the 1930s, but Camp Century provided the first opportunity to dig more than a kilometer down into an ice sheet.
自20世纪30年代以来，我们都是以这种方式利用冰了，但世纪营为向冰盖深处钻探一公里以上提供了首次机会。
And that ice core is its most lasting scientific legacy. It showed Earth's climate evolving over the last hundred thousand years,
而冰芯则是其最持久的科学遗产。其显示了地球的气候在过去十万年间发生的变化，
with ice ages and warm periods right where scientists expected them based on other kinds of evidence.
在冰河时代和温暖时期，科学家根据其他的证据预测了它们的变化。
Because it's one long, continuous sample of the past, the Camp Century ice core showed that these other,
因为它是过去的一个漫长而持续的样本，世纪营冰芯表明，这些其他更加零碎的数据源
more piecemeal sources of data were accurate pictures of Earth's climate.
是地球气候的准确画面。
The data weren't quite detailed enough to show the effects of climate change, which also wasn't as pronounced then as it is now.
这些数据还不够详细，不足以展现气候变化的影响，也不如现在这么明显。
But Camp Century's ice helped provide a baseline for future research.
但世纪营的冰帮助我们为将来的研究提供了一条基线。
We now know from it and other ice cores that what's happening now is not part of any natural cycle; it's our fault. The core keeps giving, too.
现在我们从这条基线以及其他冰芯中了解，到现在所发生的一切并不是任何自然循环中的一环；这是我们的错。冰芯也一直在付出。
In 2019, one researcher used mud trapped in the ice to figure out that Greenland's ice sheet is probably around one million years old.
2019年，一名研究人员利用困在冰中的污泥计算出，格陵兰岛的冰盖可能约有100万年的历史。
But science wasn't Camp Century's main goal because, again: Cold War.
但科学并不是世纪营的主要目标，因为冷战。
Camp Century was really built to test out a plan to dig hundreds of tunnels throughout Greenland and fill each one with a nuclear missile.
世纪营的建造是为了测试在格陵兰岛挖掘数百个隧道，并在每个隧道内装入一枚核导弹的可行性。
Luckily for the world in general, the ice didn't cooperate.
对整个世界来说幸运的是，冰并不配合。
They'd dig and reinforce a tunnel to fit a missile, but then the ice would shift or melt and change the shape of the tunnel.
他们挖掘并加固了隧道来安装导弹，但冰会转移或融化，并改变隧道的形状。
And you don't want that happening with missiles in there. Once the Army realized that, Camp Century was on borrowed time.
你不想装有导弹的隧道中发生这种情况。一旦军队意识到这一点，世纪营就时日无多了。
With its tunnels falling apart around them, the tiny city was abandoned by 1967.
随着周围隧道的崩裂，这座小城市于1967年被废弃。
They'd removed the nuclear reactor a few years earlier,
几年前，他们拆除了核反应堆
but they left behind buildings and diesel fuel and nuclear waste --to be encased in ice forever.
但他们将建筑、柴油机燃料以及核废料留下了——它们被永远封在了冰层中。
But the very climate change that Camp Century helped reveal has also put a much shorter timeline on that "forever" bit.
但世纪营帮助揭露的气候变化也缩短了“永远”一词的时间轴。
Greenland's ice is on the move; radar has shown that Camp Century is a couple hundred meters west of where it used to be.
格陵兰岛的并正在移动；雷达显示世纪营往西移动了几百米。
And while it's currently under even thicker ice than it was back in the day, that's changing, too.
虽然它现在所处的冰层比以前更厚，但这种情况也在改变。
In 2016, a team calculated that as Greenland's ice melts, Camp Century's waste
2016年，一个团队计算出，随着格陵兰岛冰层的融化，世纪营的废料
will be exposed to the elements by around the year 2090 —maybe sooner, if climate change keeps getting worse.
将在2090年左右暴露于这些环境中——如果气候变化持续恶化，或许会更快。
That's not just nuclear waste, but other hazardous materials as well.
不仅仅是核废料，还有其他有害材料。
The ice is too thick for us to retrieve anything right now. But we'll need to do it eventually.
现在冰层太厚，我们不能将这些废料取出来，但最后我们仍需这么做。
It's up to us to learn from this city buried under the ice.
我们应该从这座埋在冰层下的城市中有所收获。
Because as Camp Century helped teach us, that ice might not last forever.
因为世纪营教会我们，冰或许不能永存。
Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow.
感谢收看本期节目。
If you want to help us make videos about everything from bees to nuclear disasters in waiting, check out patreon.com/scishow.
如果你想帮助我们制作关于蜜蜂核灾难等一切的视频，请点击patreon.com/scishow。
