Exciting new research suggests there could be living things in the clouds above Venus (金星)， whose orbit brings it closer to Earth than any other planet. A study of Venus's atmosphere shows a type of gas called phosphine (磷化氢),which on Earth can be produced by certain microbes (微生物).If such creatures are found on Venus, they would be the first evidence of life existing anywhere else in the universe.
Scientists found the phosphine in thick clouds about 35 miles above Venus's equator (赤道). On the Earth, the gas is produced by special forms of life一microbes that live in airless environments such as in swamps (沼泽) and inside animals’guts(内脏). It can also be made in factories but neither explanation helps scientists to understand what phosphine is doing on Venus.
To get to the bottom of the mystery, the scientists have now made their data public in the hope that others may be able to find a clue that they have missed.Professor Greaves explained that the gas might be produced by some non-living natural processes that we haven't yet discovered, but for now, the idea of life on Venus has to be considered. She added, “In my whole career, I have been interested in the search for life elsewhere in the universe, so I’m just blown away that this is even possible. We are sincerely encouraging other people to tell us what we might have missed. This is how science works. " If scientists on the Earth are unable to find an explanation, then a future mission to Venus might be needed to prove whether or not life exists there. The US space agency NASA is already planning an exploration that would float on a balloon through the clouds of Venus, and this could be launched some time in the 2030s.
1. What can we know about Venus according to paragraph 1?| A．The thickness of its clouds |
| B．The distance of the Earth form it |
| C．The result of a study of its atmosphere |
| D．The exact temperature of its atmosphere |
| A．To announce their successful experience |
| B．To hope others can help find the truth |
| C．To prove they found life on Venus |
| D．To change the wrong conclusion before |
| A．Impressed | B．postponed | C．ignored | D．shot |
| A．Can a Kind of New Gas Be Found on Venus? |
| B．Is There a Possibility of Life on Venus? |
| C．Is What the Scientists Said Right? |
| D．Can Humans Live on Venus? |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】With lunar exploration rocketing, it poses many challenges. Among them is a fundamental question metrologists (计量学家)worldwide are working to answer: what time is it on the Moon?
The Moon doesn’t currently have an independent time. Each lunar mission uses its own timescale to coordinated universal time, or UTC—the standard against which the earth’s clocks are set. The approach works when the Moon hosts a handful of independent missions, but it will be a problem when there are multiple craft working together. Space agencies will also want to track them using satellite navigation, which relies on precise timing signals.
The most pressing need for lunar time comes from plans to create a dedicated global navigation satellite system (GNSS) for the Moon. To tackle this problem, representatives of space agencies and academic organizations worldwide met in November 2022 to start drafting recommendations on how to define lunar time.
Defining lunar time is not simple. According to the Special Theory of Relativity, clocks tick slower in stronger gravitational fields. The Moon’s gravitational pull is weaker than Earth’s, meaning a lunar clock would run faster than an Earth one.
Defining a lunar standard, with which all clocks are compared, will involve installing at least three master clocks that tick at the Moon’s natural pace, and whose output is combined by an algorithm (算法)to generate a more accurate ‘virtual’ timepiece.
What happens then depends on which option metrologists choose. They might decide to base lunar time on UTC. The alternative would be to use the synthesized (同步)output of the lunar atomic clocks as the Moon’s own independent, continuous time, and to track its relationship to UTC. That way, even if the connection with Earth is lost, clocks on the Moon will still agree with each other, allowing safe navigation and communications.
Setting lunar time is part of a much bigger picture. It will one day work for the more-distant planets that space agencies are ultimately targeting, such as Mars.
1. What’s the main idea of paragraph 2?| A．The working principle of UTC. |
| B．The achievements of space mission. |
| C．The urgency to develop satellite navigation. |
| D．The problem of current lunar timing method. |
| A．Lack of professional guidance. |
| B．The disagreement among metrologists. |
| C．Different gravitational pull on the Moon. |
| D．The complexity of installing master clocks. |
| A．Keeping the clocks on the Moon corresponding. |
| B．Preventing spacecraft losing connection with the Earth. |
| C．Helping humans land on the more-distant planets. |
| D．Making it easier to synchronize with UTC all the time. |
| A．What Time Is It on the Moon? |
| B．When will Man Settle on the Moon? |
| C．Lunar exploration: A Career Bound to Revive |
| D．GNSS: A More Precise Lunar Tracking System |
【推荐2】China’s second national botanical (植物学的) garden, South China National Botanical Garden, was set up in Guangzhou on July 11th, 2022.
With a total of 319 hectares of core functional area planned, the new national botanical garden was built based on South China Botanical Garden. It spans Guangzhou and Zhaoqing, two cities in Guangdong Province.
The South China National Botanical Garden aims to strengthen the conservation, scientific research and knowledge broadcasting of tropical (热带的) and subtropical (亚热带的) plants. The garden has three research centers, two national-level field stations and three key laboratories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. There are 17, 168 protected plants, 643 rare and endangered plants, and 337 national key wild protected plants in the garden at present.
The garden will participate in plant diversity protection both in China and the world and achieve the conservation goal of 20, 000 species. Meanwhile, it aims to play a world-leading role in collection and storage of living plants, among which 6, 000 species are economic plants.
Besides, 95 percent of rare and endangered plants in South China will be effectively protected, thus to provide plant resources for green development.
China is one of the countries in the world with the richest biodiversity, having more than 37, 000 known species of higher plants, accounting for about one tenth of the world’s total.
The South China National Botanical Garden, together with the national botanical garden in Beijing, has formed a system of collection and complete the retention of wild plant groups, which is helpful to maintain the country’s plant diversity.
1. What can be inferred about South China National Botanical Garden?| A．It is well equipped. | B．It only offers service for research. |
| C．It has become a popular scenic spot. | D．It is the largest national botanical garden. |
| A．They are dying out sharply. |
| B．Most of them will be protected well. |
| C．They will be used to improve economic development. |
| D．Most of them are transplanted to botanical gardens. |
| A．Development. | B．Comparison. | C．Preservation. | D．Improvement. |
| A．A Garden For Collecting And Studying Plants |
| B．A Novel Way To Strengthen Plant Conservation |
| C．China’s Various Environmental Protection |
| D．China’s Second National Botanical Garden |
【推荐3】Scientists have known for a long time about a link between chronic (慢性的) stress and obesity. But they couldn’t find the key factor in the past. Recently researchers at Georgetown University in Washington D. C. made what they call a “perfect advance”.
Dr. Zofia Zukowska says, “Thanks to our hard work of the past years, we have actually discovered the exact reason why people get fat when they are stressed and eat a high fat, high sugar diet. And by knowing the reason, we can now deal with obesity.” Dr. Zukowska and her colleagues put laboratory mice under the same type of stress they would experience in the wild such as meeting up with a more aggressive and dangerous mouse. They then fed these mice a fast food diet. The mice became fat.
What’s more, they found an increased amount of a chemical called neuropeptide Y, or NPY for short, in these mice, which is activated by stress and helps stimulate (刺激) the growth of fat cells. And the fat in mice grew around their middle, just as it does in humans. Middle fat is the most dangerous kind, as it affects the heart and liver, causing heart disease, adding to cholesterol (胆固醇) levels, high blood pressure, and so on. But the researchers found they could block the fat-causing NPY with another chemical, and thus could manipulate obesity effectively.
To their pleasant surprise, NPY seems to work in the human body much like it does in mice. If so, Dr. Zofia Zukowska says it would be a major advance in the battle against obesity, which will be used to cure the patient of the disease caused by stress and obesity. However, the researchers say many more studies need to be done before human trials can begin.
1. According to the passage, the “perfect advance” refers to discovering ________.| A．the reason why mice get stressed and fat |
| B．the cause leading to people’s stress and obesity |
| C．the reason why stressed people tend to become fat |
| D．a way to cure people of obesity caused by stress |
| A．the weak one is likely to become worried and take in more fat and sugar |
| B．the weak one will be afraid and eat less and less |
| C．the aggressive one will suffer from stress and obesity |
| D．the aggressive one will eat the weak one’s food as well as its own |
| A．pick up | B．take control of |
| C．make the most of | D．have a knowledge of |
| A．it can cause some serious diseases if not treated properly |
| B．it causes stress which helps stimulate the growth of fat cells |
| C．the very important chemical NPY will be cut off by it |
| D．chronic stress and obesity will gradually develop from it |
【推荐1】Sleeping with a dim(昏暗的) light like a television or nightlight is enough to the raise blood sugar and heart rates of healthy people, according to a new study. Light helps our body maintain an internal clock, but artificial light at night can disturb the rest and repair that should happen during the sleep. New research suggests that even when our eyes are closed, a small amount of light can disrupt the way our bodies normally keep our blood sugar within a healthy range.
In the study published in Sciences on Monday, scientists asked 20 participants aged 19 to 36 to spend two nights in their lab. On the first night of sleep, the volunteers slept in a very dark room. For their second night of sleep, half of the group slept with streetlights through a window, and half spent their second night in a dark room.
During the trial, all participants were connected to devices that measured different markers of their sleep quality. They were each connected via a special tube, allowing researchers to collect samples without waking the individual. Researchers also recorded participants’ heart rates and brain waves.
When the volunteers awoke in the morning, the team tested their blood sugar and found that participants that slept in rooms with a dim light spent less time in deep sleep. In addition to having slightly worse blood sugar control, the group exposed to dim light had a higher heart rate on average. By comparison, those that spend two nights in the dark room had little difference in their blood sugar control. “They thought they slept well, but your brain knows that the lights are on,” says Zee, “you should clearly pay attention to the light in your bedroom. If you can’t give up your night light, keep it dim and at floor level.”
Earlier work has linked exposure to light during sleep to an increased risk of obesity (肥胖) in women. Zee recommends, “Make sure that you start dimming your lights at least an hour or two before you go to bed to prepare your environment for sleep.”
1. What does the underlined word “disrupt” in Paragraph 1 probably mean?| A．Bother. | B．Keep. |
| C．Disagree. | D．Follow. |
| A．By comparing earlier work. |
| B．By asking and answering questions. |
| C．By conducting experiments. |
| D．By analyzing the data from scientific texts. |
| A．Their heart rate would raise higher. |
| B．Their blood sugar control wouldn’t change. |
| C．They would have worse blood sugar control. |
| D．They would actually sleep more than average. |
| A．Sleep Well, Eat Well, Good Health |
| B．The Darker, the Lower Blood Sugar |
| C．Sleeping With a Dim Light contributes to health |
| D．Sleeping With a Dim Light Can Raise Health Problems |
【推荐2】Filtration (过滤) systems are designed to remove multiple harmful substances from water or air at the same time, but pollutants in soil can only be tackled individually or a few at a time — at least for now. A method developed by research center could help turn soil improvement processes from piecemeal to wholesale.
Current methods of removing pollutants from soil take a lot of time and are expensive. Some purification techniques also generate secondary waste streams and use up significant amounts of water or electricity. A team of researchers from the research center showed that mixing polluted soil with non-poisonous compounds that drive electrical current, then destroying the mix with short bursts of electricity does flush out both organic pollutants and heavy metals without using water or generating waste.
The electricity bring soil temperature up to 1000 – 3000 degrees Celsius as needed in seconds, turning organic pollutants into non-poisonous minerals and poisonous heavy metals into steam. Moreover, the process is beneficial to soil fertility (肥沃).
“This newly established method, which we called high-temperature electrothermal process (HET), can remove multiple pollutants at a time,” said Bing Deng, the leader of research team. “It was surprising to us that we do not damage the soil in the process. Being able to regenerate the soil and put it right back where it was is a huge advantage over existing technologies,” said Tour, “Plants actually like it more, because of the minerals that get freed up in the thermal cycling.”
According to researchers, the process worked equally well on wet soil and it was economical and environmentally friendly. They developed two models for both off-and on-site experiments, and were looking forward to taking this process to the next stage—field testing.
1. What is the problem of the existing filtration system?| A．It is hard to operate. | B．It worsens pollution. |
| C．It is costly to repair. | D．It consumes more time. |
| A．Leave out. | B．Make up for. | C．Get rid of. | D．Mix up. |
| A．By heating the soil. | B．By adding new minerals. |
| C．By integrating pollutants. | D．By pouring in more water. |
| A．The new technology is still at experimental stage. |
| B．The new methods have proved useful to economy. |
| C．The two models have been widely used in the field. |
| D．The soil is greatly improved because of the research. |
【推荐3】Climate change has been blamed for killer hurricanes，sea level rise，and drought，but a new report suggests the effects of climate change might hit the world's coffee supply. Up to 70 percent of the world's coffee supply could be threatened over the next 66 years，according to a new study by researchers at England's Royal Botanic Gardens.
Nearly 100 percent of the world's Arabica coffee growing regions could become unsuitable for the plant by 2080，according to the study. Beans from Arabica coffee plants account for about 70 percent of the world's coffee，but the plant also has to be grown under strict weather conditions: they grow well at temperatures between 64 and 70 degrees Celsius，and are highly influenced by frost or temperatures higher than 73 degrees Celsius.
With temperatures estimated to increase by between 1.8 and 4 degrees Celsius by the end of the century，the fragile plant might become increasingly expensive and difficult to grow，especially in places such as Ethiopia and Kenya. In that worst case，nearly all of the world's native Arabica coffee would die out. Under more conservative(保守的) estimates，about 65 percent of the regions used to grow the coffee would become unsuitable for it. The evidence from coffee farmers and coffee growing regions around the world is that they are already suffering from the influences of increased warming.
Some farmers would likely be able to move their operations to other areas or would be able to overcome climate change with artificial cooling techniques，but wild Arabica is generally considered to be much more suitable for making high－quality coffee.
If Arabica becomes impossible to raise in its native areas，it could do serious damage to the economies of the mainly third－world countries in which it grows. Coffee is the world's most popular drink and is the second most traded product in the world，behind oil.
1. What can be learned from Paragraph 2 and Paragraph 3?| A．According to the study，by 2080 nowhere can be suitable for Arabica coffee growing. |
| B．65 percent of the world's coffee gets raw materials from Arabica coffee plants. |
| C．Arabica coffee plants will grow well at temperatures lower than 60 degrees Celsius. |
| D．Coffee farmers are the biggest victims of climate change. |
| A．would make efforts to produce high－quality coffee |
| B．would bring in artificial cooling techniques |
| C．would tend to move to some warm places |
| D．would grow more wild Arabica |
| A．Coffee will replace oil to be the first most－traded commodity. |
| B．Coffee is likely to become less popular than before. |
| C．Some countries will suffer great economic losses. |
| D．Farmers will plant other crops instead of coffee. |
