2 . Once there was a little star. She lived in space, next to her parents. She was curious and always wanted to know everything. She wanted to travel around by herself, but her parents told her that she was still too little to go alone.

One day, she saw a blue planet（行星）. It looked lovely. She went to get a better look at it. When she arrived in the blue planet, which was the Earth, everyone wanted to catch her. She was afraid and ran away quickly. She got lost soon. Then she had other experiences（经历）. She began to miss her parents. She cried for a while, but then she got an idea to help herself find her parents. She went to a very high mountain and found a big rock. Looking up at the sky, she hid（藏）behind it, then came out, then hid again.

Her parents were very worried about her. They were searching everywhere to find her. They saw her light and flew to find her quickly.

1. Why couldn’t the star’s parents let her travel alone?

A．Because she was too old.	B．Because she was too slow.
C．Because she was too little.	D．Because she was too quick.

2. The underlined word “curious” means “________” in Chinese.

A．好奇的

B．淘气的

C．糟糕的

D．伶俐的

3. What’s the blue planet?

A．The moon.

B．The Earth.

C．The Sun.

D．Mars.

4. What’s the right order for the little star?
a. She cried for a while.             
b. She arrived in the blue planet.
c. Everyone wanted to catch her.       
d. Her parents found her quickly.

A．abcd

B．abdc

C．bcda

D．bcad

5. What’s the best title for the passage?

A．What’s the Planet like	B．Experiences of a Little Star
C．How to Find Your Baby	D．Try to Leave Alone

3 . What do you know about Mars? What does it look like?

Mars is the fourth planet from the sun in our solar system and is ___________ after Mars, the Roman god of war.___________ diameter(直径) is 53% as ___________ as that of the earth. Mars goes around the sun at a distance of about 228 million kilometers. You can tell ___________ planet is Mars because it is bright red in the night sky. It ___________ like a red and orange ball. It’s very beautiful. But during spring and summer, the surface of Mars is covered ___________ strong storms. The gravity on the surface of Mars is about ___________ as strong as it is on earth. So a person who weighs 90 kilos on earth weighs only 36 kilos on Mars. The temperature on Mars is ___________ -138℃ and 28℃. The air has only 0.13% oxygen.

It takes a spaceship about eight months to ___________ Mars from the earth when the two planets are ______________ to each other. Scientists are still searching for more information about Mars.

1.

A．name

B．named

C．names

2.

A．It

B．It’s

C．Its

3.

A．wide

B．widely

C．wider

4.

A．that

B．which

C．what

5.

A．be

B．is

C．looks

6.

A．by

B．in

C．of

7.

A．two-fifth

B．two-fifths

C．two fifth

8.

A．among

B．during

C．between

9.

A．reach

B．get

C．arrive

10.

A．close

B．closer

C．closest

6 .

China Builds Beidou

On May 17, 2019 China launched a new satellite at the Xichang Launch Center (西昌卫星发射中心). It was the forty-fifth Beidou satellite that China had sent into space.

So what is Beidou?

Beidou is a positioning system (定位系统). It is developed by China. China is the third country in the world to have its own positioning system. With Beidou, China no longer has to depend on foreign system. This is very important for national safety.

Work on Beidou began in 1994. However, the first two Beidou satellites were not sent into space until 2000. Since then, China has launched dozens of Beidou satellites. These satellites have formed a global network. Now, China is further improving the system. It plans to launch ten more Beidou satellites. If all goes well, Beidou will be completed before 2020.

The completed Beidou will be more powerful than any existing (现存的) positioning system. Yang Changfeng is a designer of Beidou. He says the system can notice the sway (摇摆) of a building in strong winds.

Beidou has brought many advantages to our lives. In Shanghai, thousands of buses have been using Beidou. When we are waiting for a bus, we can know when it is about to come.

Many smart phones have also been using Beidou. “Many people say, ‘Let me turn on my GPS.’ In fact, their phones are using Beidou,” jokes a salesperson in Beijing.

1. Where did China launch a new satellite on May 17, 2019?

A．At the Taiyuan Launch Center.	B．At the Jiuquan Launch Center.
C．At the Wenchang Launch Center.	D．At the Xichang Launch Center.

2. According to the article, how many countries had developed their own positioning systems before China?

A．Two.

B．Three.

C．Forty-four.

D．Forty-five.

3. When did China send the first two Beidou satellites into space?

A．In1994.

B．In 2000.

C．In 2008.

D．In 2018.

4. What can we learn from the last paragraph?

A．Beidou is very powerful.	B．Many people have been using Beidou.
C．GPS can be more powerful than Beidou.	D．Few smart phones have been using Beidou.

5. Which of the following is NOT true?

A．Beidou system hasn’t been completed yet in 2019.

B．China used to depend on foreign positioning systems.

C．The completed Beidou system will have 45 satellites in all.

D．Beidou will be the most powerful positioning system in the world.

7 .

What will astronauts eat when a space trip takes years?

“Lots of fresh vegetables,” says Dr. Janet Williams, whose team have spent the last 10 years learning how to grow plants in a space station. And it’s a good thing that she has already started her work, because space gardening can be really hard.

As usual, astronaut George White looked into the closed plant room. He had planted Dr. Williams’s quick-growing seedlings none of the stems were showing. He opened the room to check and found the problem. The stems weren’t growing upward and the roots weren’t growing downward. On Earth, gravity (重力) helps a plant’s stems and in it, but roots (根) to find “up” and “down”. However, in the space station, there was almost no gravity.

Dr. Williams suggested a method: give the plants more light, as plants also use sunlight to find their way. And it worked. When the plants had more light, the stems turned up and the roots went down.

Now Dr. Williams was free to worry about the next problem: Would her baby plants live to flower? Can we grow food on a space journey?

Many plants died in the space station. Dr. Williams thought she knew why: the space plants were hungry for air. Plants live by taking up CO₂ from the air. Since a plant uses it up in the air around, the plant needs moving air to bring more CO₂ close to its surface! On Earth, the air is always moving. Gravity pulls down cold air, and warm air rises. And with these air movements, plants get enough CO₂.

Many earlier experiments (实验) with plants in space had used closed rooms. Dr. Williams tried a new greenhouse that had a fan (电扇) to keep the air move. The plants loved it. They flowered and even produced more seeds. Using Dr. Williams’s method, astronaut George completed the first seed-to-seed experiment in space, and moved one plant closer to a garden in space.

“And this,” says Dr. Williams, “is good news for long-term space travel.”

1. Why have Dr. Williams’s team tried to grow plants in space?

A．To produce fresh air for astronauts.

B．To help astronauts relax themselves.

C．To provide food for long space journeys.

D．To make the space garden more beautiful.

2. How did light help solve the problem mentioned in Paragraph 3?

A．It caused the gravity to change.

B．It encouraged the plants to grow faster.

C．It helped the plants to grow in the right direction.

D．It showed the astronauts where to plant vegetables.

3. Why did many plants die in the space station?

A．The light was too strong.

B．There was too much CO2.

C．There was not enough room to grow.

D．The air condition was not good enough.

4. What can we learn about Dr. Williams’s team from the text?

A．They mainly live on fresh vegetables.

B．They have successfully built a space garden.

C．They invented a special fan for their greenhouse.

D．They have worked on space gardening for many years.

5. Where is the text most probably taken from?

A．An art magazine.	B．A science magazine.
C．A news report.	D．An education magazine.

8 . What do black holes look like? We finally got the answer: They look like dark circles with a bright ring around the outside. Scientists took the world’s first photo of a black hole. The black hole is very far from the Earth—about 55 million light years away. This is not the only black hole in the universe.

Black holes are mysterious in the universe. A photo can help us learn more about them. How much do you know about black holes? Try to answer the following questions.

Q: What is a black hole?

A: A black hole comes from a dying star. The star turns into a small point. The point has much mass and strong gravity. The strong gravity of a black hole pulls things. The black hole “eats” these things. Black holes can even “eat” light. That’s why a black hole looks “black”.

Q: If black holes are “black”, how do scientists know they are there?

A: We cannot see black holes. But we can see how their strong gravity works on the things around them. A black hole’s gravity pulls dust and gas into it. And if a star is orbiting a point in space, scientists can study the star’s orbit. They can tell if the star is orbiting a black hole.

Q: How did scientists take the picture of the black hole?

A: Scientists didn’t use a camera to take the picture. They used eight radio telescopes in different places across the world. The telescopes got information from the black hole. Scientists used computers to deal with the information. It took them two years to get the final picture.

Q: Will the sun turn into a black hole? And if it does, will it “eat” the Earth?

A: The sun won’t become a black hole. According to NASA, it does not have enough mass to turn into one. When the sun dies, it will become a smaller and cooler star. Even if the sun becomes a black hole, the Earth would still be safe.

1. Which of the following is NOT true about black holes?

A．They look like dark circles with a bright ring around the outside.

B．They are about 55 million light years away from the Earth.

C．Black holes look “black” because they pull light and “eat” it.

D．Scientists say that there is more than one black hole in space.

2. The underlined word “pulls” in the first answer most probably means “________”.

A．moves

B．adds

C．touches

D．plants

3. Scientists know black holes are there by ________.

A．using cameras to take pictures

B．using radio telescopes around the world

C．watching the stars carefully in the sky

D．watching the shape and color of the sun

4. What will happen if the sun becomes a black hole?

A．The Earth will die at once.

B．The Earth will become black.

C．The Earth will still be safe.

D．The Earth will become a cool star.

5. The best title for the passage may be “________”.

A．Learning about black holes

B．The Earth and the black holes

C．Something about the universe

D．The sun and the Earth

9 . 阅读短文，从方框中选择适当的单词填空（每词限用一次）。

night   but   bigger   any   to

The moon looks     1     than the stars at night.     2     in fact, it is smaller than any other stars. The moon looks big to us, because it is closer     3     us than any stars. The moon goes around the earth. It makes one trip about four weeks. The moon is a round ball and looks beautiful.

Now people know quite a lot about the moon. There is no air or water on the moon, so there are not     4     trees or animals, or people on it. The moon gets its light (光) from the sun, but some places on the moon are quite dark. It’s very hot on the moon during the day, but it’s very cold at     5    .

10 . Have you heard of parallel universes? Some scientists believe that there might be other universes right alongside ours. Our universe may be just a part of a tree of universes that are all there at the same time—only in different states of time with different pasts and different futures.

What does this mean? It means there is a different “you” in these parallel universes. You might be a Hollywood star in one of them!

In parallel universes, there may be completely different physical laws (物理法则). World wars might have different results. Really, humans themselves might have become extinct (灭绝的) in certain parallel universes!

The idea of parallel universes dates back to 1954. Hugh Everett Ⅲ, a Princeton University student in the United States, developed the idea that parallel universes—exactly like and related to our universe—are there. However, many physicists and astronomers say that this theory can’t be tested, so it’s not really a theory at all.

But since then, the idea has shown up in comic books, television and movies. Shows like Star Trek and Doctor Who use the idea to develop their stories.

Parallel universes might not only be there in the movies. If their stories are true, some people might have already experienced other realities.

First covered by newspapers in 1952, Cornelio Closa, a schoolboy from the Philippines, kept disappearing right in front of his friends and family. Sometimes disappearing for days, he would somehow disappear from his locked family home and crowded school classroom.

While such stories may sound crazy, even the known universe is far older and larger than we are. So, who’s to say that one day we won’t learn to cross dimensions (维)?

1. What are parallel universes?

A．Everyone lives in two universes.

B．Other universes are right beside ours.

C．They are past universes and future universes.

D．Different countries are different universes.

2. The idea of parallel universes was thought up by ________.

A．a physicist	B．an astronomer
C．a Hollywood star	D．a university student

3. After the idea of parallel universes started to appear, ________.

A．it was thought to be a theory

B．it showed up in comic books

C．it was experienced by some people

D．it was considered to cause humans to die out

4. Cornelio Closa’s story tells us parallel universes________.

A．can be really there

B．will be our home

C．have killed some people

D．can make a person disappear

5. Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?

A．The idea of parallel universes appeared a century ago.

B．Star Trek and Doctor Who are books about parallel universes.

C．You may see another “you” in parallel universes.

D．We will travel to another parallel universe.