These findings are good news for life in the universe as they dispel concerns that potentially habitable planets could not form too close to very massive stars. Previously, scientists thought the intensity of ultraviolet (紫外线的) radiation produced by massive stars would interfere (干扰) with the distribution of dust and gas in planet-forming stars, possibly preventing the formation of rocky planets like Earth, for instance. The NGC 6357 group contains more than ten super bright and massive stars, suggesting most of the group’s matter is exposed to high levels of ultraviolet radiation.
What does the underlined word “dispel” in paragraph mean?
A.Strengthen. | B.Remove. | C.Ignore. | D.Prove. |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】Fiery Visitors from Outer Space
1. On the next clear summer night, look up into the sky. If you are lucky, you may see a “shooting star”. They look just like stars falling down from the sky.
2. But shooting stars are not stars at all. The real name for a shooting star is “meteor”. There are millions of meteors out in space. They are pieces of rock and metal. When they are in space, meteors do not glow. In fact, we can’t see them at all. But when a meteor comes close to the earth, it starts to fall toward the earth. As it passes through the air, it gets very hot. It starts to glow, and finally it begins to burn. We see the burning meteor as a shooting star.
3. Sometimes meteors travel by themselves in space. But many meteors travel in groups called swarms. The swarms have orbits like planets have. They pass close to the earth every year. A famous swarm is the Perseid swarm. It passes close to the earth in summer, usually in August. Each year a few meteors from the Perseid swarm fall to the earth, so August is a good month to watch for shooting stars.
4. Most meteors are small, so they burn up before they crash into the earth and are buried in the ground. Once a meteor reaches the earth, we call it a meteorite. The biggest meteorite, which weighs seventy tons, landed in Africa.
Question 19
1. Circle the main idea of paragraph 3.
A.Sometimes meteors travel by themselves in space. |
B.Sometimes meteors travel in swarms. |
C.A famous swarm is the Perseid swarm. |
D.August is a good month to watch for shooting stars. |
Question 20-23
Match the word on the left with the phrase on the right that fits best by writing letters.
2.
3.
4.
5.
a. a famous swarm of meteors
b. a meteor that has reached the earth
c. the real name for a shooting star
d. a group of meteors
Question 24-25
Answer questions in complete sentences and in your own words.
6. Why is August a good month to watch shooting stars?
7. There is an old saying that if you make a wish when you see a shooting star, your wish will come true. So when you see a shooting star, what wish will you make? Why?
【推荐2】The US space agency NASA has revealed an astonishing picture revealing new secrets of the Earth’s home galaxy (星系), the Milky Way. The sun is just one of hundreds of billions of stars that form the huge shape of our galaxy. Our solar system sits in an outlying region but the new image focuses on the centre of the Milky Way, a “noisy” area because of all the crowded stars. Light from this region takes about 26,000 years to reach Earth. For comparison, light takes just eight minutes to reach us from the sun.
The researchers use the data collected by two telescopes that see the sky in ways that are very different from the visible light our eyes can see to form the new image. Most of the data comes from 370 different pictures taken over the past 20 years by NASA’s Chandra X Observatory. This satellite telescope detects X-rays out in space. X-rays are a from of radiation that is sent out when violent events heat matter to temperatures of millions of degrees. Other data comes from the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa, which can detect radio waves from space. These waves have much less energy than X-rays. They are usually produced by cooler material, such as huge clouds of gas between the stars.
The brightest sources include neutron stars which are the cores of huge stars that ran out of fuel and collapsed to city-sized balls of super hot matter. Many neutron stars and black holes jet out gases that appear in the picture as purple streaks (斑纹). Powerful magnetic fields in the area cause the jets to bend as they get further from their source. Astronomer Dr Daniel Wang, who has worked on the image over the past year, said the new picture described “a violent or energetic ecosystem”.
What may be the best title for the text?
A.Our galaxy’s violent heart | B.An attempt to travel in outer space |
C.Radio waves from outer space | D.Stars’ purple streaks |
【推荐3】Using first-of-their-kind observations from the James Webb Space Telescope. a University of Minnesota Twin Cities-led team looked more than 13 billion years into the past to discover a unique, minuscule galaxy cluster (星系团) that generated new stars at an extremely high rate for its size. The galaxy is one of the smallest ever discovered at this distance —around 500 million years after the Big Bang — and could help astronomers learn more about galaxies that were present shortly after the universe came into existence.
......
What does the underlined word “minuscule” in paragraph l mean?A.Extremely small. | B.Remarkably dark. |
C.Especially remote. | D.Quite complicated. |
【推荐1】Steven Stein likes to follow garbage trucks. His strange habit makes sense when you consider that he’s an environmental scientist who studies how to reduce litter, including things that fall off garbage trucks as they drive down the road. What is even more interesting is that one of Stein’s jobs is defending an industry behind the plastic shopping bags.
Americans use more than 100 billion thin film plastic bags every year. So many end up in tree branches or along highways that a growing number of cities do not allow them at checkouts(收银台). The bags are prohibited in some 90 cities in California, including Los Angeles. Eyeing these headwinds, plastic-bag makers are hiring scientists like Stein to make the case that their products are not as bad for the planet as most people assume.
Among the bag makers’ argument: many cities with bans still allow shoppers to purchase paper bags, which are easily recycled but require more energy to produce and transport. And while plastic bags may be ugly to look at, they represent a small percentage of all garbage on the ground today.
The industry has also taken aim at the product that has appeared as its replacement: reusable shopping bags. The stronger a reusable bag is, the longer its life and the more plastic-bag use it cancels out. However, longer-lasting reusable bags often require more energy to make. One study found that a cotton bag must be used at least 131 times to be better for the planet than plastic.
Environmentalists don’t dispute(质疑) these points. They hope paper bags will be banned someday too and want shoppers to use the same reusable bags for years.
What has Steven Stein been hired to do?A.Help increase grocery sales. |
B.Recycle the waste material. |
C.Stop things falling off trucks. |
D.Argue for the use of plastic bags. |
【推荐2】How long we stay on the clock and how we spend that time are under careful examination in many workplaces. The young banker who eats lunch at his desk is probably seen as a go-getter, while his colleagues who chat over a relaxed conference-room meal get dirty looks from the corner office. “People from cultures that value relationships more than ours does are shocked by the thought of eating alone in front of a computer”, says Art Markman, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas, Austin. Social interaction has been shown to lift mood (情绪) and get people thinking in new directions and in ways that could help improve any post-lunch effort.
The underlined word “go-getter” in paragraph refers to someone who_______.
A.is good at handling pressure | B.works hard to become successful |
C.a has a natural talent for his job | D.gets on well with his co-workers |
Surprisingly, since modern PR was largely an American invention, America’s relations is being threatened by PR efforts in other countries. Ten years ago, for example, the world’s top five public relations agencies were American-owned. In 1991, only one was. The British in particular are becoming more sophisticated and creative. A recent survey found that more than half of all British companies include PR as part of their corporate (公司的) planning activities, compared to about one-third of U.S. companies.It may not be long before London replaces New York as the capital of PR.
Why is America lagging behind in the global PR race? Firstly, Americans as a whole tend to be fairly provincial and take more of an interest in local affairs. Knowledge of world geography, for example, has never been strong in this country. Secondly, Americans lag behind their European and Asian counterparts (相对应的人) in knowing a second language. Less than 5 percent of Burson—Marshall’s U.S.employees know two languages. Ogilvy and Mather have about the same percentage. Conversely, some European firms have half or more of their employees fluent in a second language. Finally, people involved in PR abroad tend to keep a closer eye on international affairs. In the financial PR area, for instance, most Americans read the Wall Street Journal. Overseas, their counterparts read the Journal as well as the Financial Times of London and The Economist, publications not often read in this country.
Perhaps the PR industry might take a lesson from Ted Turner of CNN (Cable News Network). Turner recently announced that the word “foreign” would no longer be used on CNN news
broadcasts. According to Turner, global communications have made the nations of the world so interdependent that there is no longer any such thing as foreign.
1. Compared with the American PR personnel, what is/are an advantage (s) of the non-Americans involved in PR?
A. They tend to be more internationally minded
B. They speak more and better foreign languages.
C. They usually pay more attention to global financial situation.
D. Both A and B.
2. What is the immediate cause of the downfall of America’s public relations?
A.The number of US public relations agencies had greatly decreased by 1991. |
B.Other countries have increased their efforts in public relations. |
C.On the global scale, cultural differences have significantly shrunk. |
D.The British companies are becoming especially sophisticated and creative in public relations. |
A.an American | B.a Briton | C.Ted Turner | D.an Asian |
A.strict in thinking | B.like people from rural areas |
C.limited in outlook | D.interested in geographical knowledge |
【推荐1】But he’s nervous."I’m here to tell you today why you should … should…"Chris trips on the"-ld,"a pronunciation difficulty for many non-native English speakers. His teacher, Thomas Whaley, is next to him, whispering support."…Vote for …me …"Except for some stumbles, Chris is doing amazingly well. When he brings his speech to a nice conclusion, Whaley invites the rest of the class to praise him.
What does the underlined word "stumbles" in paragraph 2 refer to?
A.Improper pauses. | B.Bad manners. |
C.Spelling mistakes. | D.Silly jokes. |
【推荐2】Preparing Cities for Robot Cars
The possibility of self-driving robot cars has often seemed like a futurist’s dream, years away from materializing in the real world. Well, the future is apparently now. The California Department of Motor Vehicles began giving permits in April for companies to test truly self-driving cars on public roads. The state also cleared the way for companies to sell or rent out self-driving cars, and for companies to operate driverless taxi services. California, it should be noted, isn’t leading the way here. Companies have been testing their vehicles in cities across the country. It’s hard to predict when driverless cars will be everywhere on our roads. But however long it takes, the technology has the potential to change our transportation systems and our cities, for better or for worse, depending on how the transformation is regulated.
While much of the debate so far has been focused on the safety of driverless cars (and rightfully so), policymakers also should be talking about how self-driving vehicles can help reduce traffic jams, cut emissions (排放) and offer more convenient, affordable mobility options. The arrival of driverless vehicles is a chance to make sure that those vehicles are environmentally friendly and more shared.
Do we want to copy — or even worsen — the traffic of today with driverless cars? Imagine a future where most adults own individual self-driving vehicles. They tolerate long, slow journeys to and from work on packed highways because they can work, entertain themselves or sleep on the ride, which encourages urban spread. They take their driverless car to an appointment and set the empty vehicle to circle the building to avoid paying for parking. Instead of walking a few blocks to pick up a child or the dry cleaning, they send the self-driving minibus. The convenience even leads fewer people to take public transport — an unwelcome side effect researchers have already found in ride-hailing (叫车) services.
A study from the University of California at Davis suggested that replacing petrol-powered private cars worldwide with electric, self-driving and shared systems could reduce carbon emissions from transportation 80% and cut the cost of transportation infrastructure (基础设施) and operations 40% by 2050. Fewer emissions and cheaper travel sound pretty appealing. The first commercially available driverless cars will almost certainly be fielded by ride-hailing services, considering the cost of self-driving technology as well as liability and maintenance issues (责任与维护问题). But driverless car ownership could increase as the prices drop and more people become comfortable with the technology.
Policymakers should start thinking now about how to make sure the appearance of driverless vehicles doesn’t extend the worst aspects of the car-controlled transportation system we have today. The coming technological advancement presents a chance for cities and states to develop transportation systems designed to move more people, and more affordably. The car of the future is coming. We just have to plan for it.
What does the underlined word “fielded” in Paragraph 4 probably mean?
A.Employed. |
B.Replaced. |
C.Shared. |
D.Reduced. |
【推荐3】If you are of the “no regrets” school of life, you may think that all this regret is a recipe for unhappiness. But that isn’t the case. Letting yourself be overwhelmed by regret is indeed bad for you. But going to the other extreme may be even worse. To extinguish your regrets doesn’t free you from shame or sorrow but causes you to make the same mistakes again and again. To truly get over our guilt requires that we put regret in its proper place.
......
What does the underlined word “extinguish” in paragraph 2 mean?A.Admit. | B.Destroy. | C.Treasure. | D.Encounter. |