纪录片《地球劫难日》 第07期 泛布玄武岩喷发（在线收听）

One of the first scientists who looked at it in detail was Vincent Courtillot.

Vincent Courtillot是首批对此深入调查的科学家之一。

I probably would have seen a curtain of red glowing fire rising a mile high up in the atmosphere,

我仿佛看到耀眼的火墙蹿上天空1英里高，

extending from end to end of the horizon over a distance of hundreds of kilometers

从地平线的一端烧到另一端，绵延数千英里。

It's a phenomenon known as a flood basalt eruption.

这种现象叫做泛布玄武岩喷发。

When the earth crusts splits apart and releases curtains of lava across an entire continent.

当时地壳撕裂，熔岩如洪流般涌没整个大陆。

The eruptions can last for millions of years.

这种喷发可持续几百万年。

Nobody is quite sure why they happen.

谁都无法解释它发生的原因。

You get a huge eruption and another and another,

先是一座火山大规模爆发，然后一座接一座地爆发，

and maybe a lull and another bunch of 10 and then another, all together over a few hundred thousand years.

可能有短暂的停歇，接着10座火山一起爆发，最后所有火山都开始爆发，仅在短短几十万年内。

The earth is almost continuously spewing out lava, until after a million years or so,

直到大约100万年后，地球才停止涌出熔岩，

millions of cubic kilometers have erupted,

那时已喷发了数百万立方公里的熔岩，

so this is a truly gigantic volcanic object thousands, tens of thousands of times larger than anything man has ever seen.

所以这场规模巨大的火山活动比人们先前所见的都要大好几万倍。