Have You Got the Time?

People today are always thinking about the time.

There never seems to be enough time to do all the things we want to do. Believe it or not, there was a time before time was so important.

It was enough to know that the ________ was out in the sky. That meant it was daytime. During these days when the clock seems to control us, doesn’t that sound kind of nice?

Time can mean a lot of different things. That’s one way we know ________ important it is for us. We have so many words about it! The ________ amount (量) of time we can measure (测量) is called a second (秒). When you put 60 seconds together, you get one ________. If you take 60 minutes, you get one hour. The hands (指针) of the clock go all the way around twice in 24 hours, giving us one day.

If you want to look at time more than one day, you look at a calendar (日历) ________ a clock. There are about 30 days in one month. Some months have an extra day; February has a couple less. There are 12 months in one year. Time ________ stops.

5 . Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second smallest planet of the Solar System.

It is around two times smaller than Earth with a diameter of 6,779 km. If you stand on Mars and look at the Sun, it will appear about half the size we see it on Earth. Mars is widely known as the red planet. Its red appearance is caused by the rusty iron in the ground.

In many ways, Mars can be considered Earth’s brother. On Mar’s surface, we have discovered the biggest mountain in the Solar System. It is named Olympus Mons, and it is three times bigger than the largest mountain on Earth. A day on Mars is also a little longer than a day on Earth. It lasts about 24.6 hours. A year on Mars, however, or the time that takes for the red planet to circle our Sun, lasts about 687 Earth days. That is almost twice as long as a year on Earth !

In the 19th century, it was believed that life on Mars existed. An astronomer said that he “found” straight lines on Mars’s surface. Many people believed that those were the work of clever life as the straight lines were most likely to be canals for irrigation.

However, as more advanced telescopes were built, it was found that the straight lines were an optical illusion.

To this day, humans are still trying to find out whether there was life on Mars!

Stargazing（观星）takes imagination. People who love stargazing see the stars as shining spots in a dot-to-dot（点对点）drawing game. They imagine lines that connect groups of stars called constellations. A constellation is a group of stars that looks like a person, an animal, or an object.

The constellation Orion is known as the hunter, after a hero from ancient Greek stories. To find Orion, first find the Big Dipper. The Big Dipper looks like a huge cup with a long handle. After you find the Big Dipper, turn around. There’s Orion! He is outlined by four bright stars that form two triangles. The tips of the triangles seem to come together. Where they meet, there are three more bright stars.

Different kinds of stars are in the constellation Orion. The star Betelgeuse makes Orion’s right shoulder. Betelgeuse is an Arabic word that means “shoulder of the giant（巨人）.” The star itself is so huge that it is called a supergiant. Its diameter is 400 times greater than that of our sun. Betelgeuse is considered a cool star. It is probably not as hot as our Sun. Rigel is the star that makes Orion’s left foot. Rigel is the Arabic word for foot. Rigel is much brighter than Betelgeuse because it is much hotter. It’s more than three times as hot as our Sun. However, Rigel is just a baby in size compared to Betelgeuse.

8 . 请你用英语写一个火星生活指南，具体介绍一下火星上的情况。

Here is a guide to living on Mars.________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Welcome to Mars!

9 . Do you ever get the feeling that you’re being watched? Well, you might be right.

According to a study published in Nature on June 23, astronomers(天文学家) have found that 1,715 stars have had a direct view of Earth since humans were here.

In order to do this, scientists used a method that looked for life on other planets. But instead, they changed the method so it could try to decide what places could see us.

The team looked at 331,312 stars within 326 light-years of Earth. Out of all those stars, only 1,715 of them could see Earth within the last 5,000 years, with an extra 319 stars that will be able to see us in the next 5,000 years.

“When I look up at the sky, it looks a little bit friendlier because it’s like, maybe somebody is waving,” said Lisa Kaltenegger, director of the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell University, US, and the study’s lead writer.

If a planet circling around one of those 1,715 stars is home to advanced life, they could easily see that there is life here because of the oxygen on Earth. If that didn’t give it away, then the radio waves we have sent out into space would also be an indicator. In fact, human-made radio waves have already travelled through 75 of the closest stars on Kaltenegger’s list.

Why haven’t we heard from anyone yet, then?

It takes a long time for messages to travel between star systems. By the time a message could be received, that advanced life would probably not exist anymore.

Alan Boss, a scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in the US who wasn’t part of the study, wrote in an email that this long time would limit the chances for different life to exchange “emails and TikTok videos”.

“So we should not expect aliens to show up anytime soon,” Boss said.

The Shenzhou XIII mission was sent on October 16th, 2021. The astronauts are Zhai Zhigang, Wang Yaping and Ye Guangfu. They planned to spend six months working in the space station. Early last month, 41, was China’s first woman spacewalker in the space.

They gave space-based classes from space station to students around the world. The astronauts showed the space station and their scientific experiments to the students, and showed some interesting physical phenomena to them.

On October 13th, almost all students watched the space-based classes around China. It was the first time for Chinese students to have classes in this new way. It is a good way to make more young people be more interested in the space and study science and technology harder.