1 . For years, planet-hunters have been searching for a planet other than Earth that can support life. They may have found one.
The planet is the sixth found orbiting a star called Gliese 581. Steven Vogt, one of the scientists involved, expects the new planet to have water. On Earth, when we find water, we find life.
A planet that can support life has to be just the right size for its system and just the right distance from its star. Some planets orbit so close to their stars that they’re much too hot for liquid water—or for life as we know it.
But a right-sized planet that's neither too close nor too far might be just right for water. Gliese 581 is probably just right. It is about three times as huge as Earth.
The new planet is 20 light years away, which is as far as 250 million trips to the Moon and back.
Gliese 581 is an exciting discovery—and astronomers are likely to find more soon, thanks to new, powerful telescopes specifically designed to look for planets.
| A．We can’t travel at the speed of light. |
| B．It’s pretty hard to imagine that water wouldn't be there. |
| C．Human beings won’t be visiting this planet any time soon. |
| D．So scientists looking for life on other planets look for water first. |
| E．It orbits its star so closely that it goes all the way around in only 37 days. |
| F．Astronomers will probably find more potential life-supporting planets soon. |
| G．Other planets keep their distance from the stars—where they’re too cold to have water or life. |
2 . You are just waking up in the spring of 2030. Your Internet of Things (IoT) bedroom opens solar powered e-windows and plays gentle music while your smart lighting displays a montage (剪辑的) of beachfront sunrises from your recent vacation.
Your shower uses very little water or soap. It recycles your grey water and puts the extra heat back into your home’s operating system. While you dress, your artificial intelligence (Al) assistant shares your schedule for the day and plays your favorite tunes.
You still start your day with a coffee but it comes from your IoT refrigerator which is capable of providing a coffeehouse experience in your home. A hot breakfast tailored to your specific nutritional needs (based on chemical analysis from your trips to the “smart toilet”) is waiting for you in the kitchen.
When it’s time to leave, an on-demand transport system has three cars waiting for you, your wife (or husband) and your kids. On the road, driverless cars and trucks move with mathematical accuracy, without traffic jams, routine maintenance or road rage. Accident rates are near zero.
On the way, you call your R&D team, who are enveloping a day’s work in Shanghai. Your life-sized image is projected (投射) into the China Innovation Centre and your colleagues see you as if you were sitting in the room. It’s a bit strange for them to see you in the morning light because it’s dark on the Bund, Shanghai’s waterfront, though the novelty disappears after a few uses.
You review the day’s cloud- based data from your Shenzhen manufacturing center, your pilot project in San Diego, and your QA team in Melbourne. The large amounts of datasets were collected in real-time from every piece of equipment and have been beautifully summarized by your company’s AI. All these facilities are closely maintained and operated through an advanced predictive analytics platform.
Pleased with the team’s progress, you end the call and ease into a good book.
This is the future and it will be here sooner than you think.
1. How can we describe the life in the future?| A．Virtual | B．Romantic |
| C．Inspiring | D．Intelligent |
| A．We can have a bath without using water. |
| B．We can drive to work without concerning any accidents. |
| C．We can enjoy the coffeehouse experience without going there. |
| D．We can deal with all our work at home without turning to others for help. |
| A．To attract us to use the AI system. |
| B．To introduce the life in the future. |
| C．To teach us how to use the AI system. |
| D．To encourage us to study hard for the future. |
Life on Mars
Some people believe humans could live on the planet Mars by the year 2100. Our own planet, the Earth, is becoming more and more crowded and polluted because of the rapid increase in population.
4 . The European Space Agency(ESP) wants to build a village on the moon, said Woerner, the head of the agency, in a video interview posted on its website on March 21.
“I would like to build a base station on the moon, meaning that it’s an open station...for different states around the globe,” Woerner said to Euronews. He said the village could replace the International Space Station(ISS) in the future, which will be ended in 2024. In December Nexgen Space, a consultant(咨询) company for NASA, said that a lunar refueling station could “reduce the cost to NASA of sending humans to Mars by as much as $10 billion per year.”
According to the ESA’s plan, starting from the early 2020s, robots will be sent to the moon to begin building different facilities(设备), followed a few years later by the first humans to live there. Instead of bringing expensive resources from Earth, the moon’s natural resources like metal and frozen water could be used to build the village.
Having a lunar base could be challenging because of space radiation(辐射), meteorite(陨石) and extreme temperatures from 123℃ to 153℃, according to CNN. But Woerner said these risks could be made smaller by choosing the right locations on the moon.
“If we go into the shadow on the moon, we’ll have places where we don’t have the radiation... At the South Pole, we can find water,” he said.
Right now, the moon village is just an idea. But as the BBC said, there is a growing interest in returning to the moon and the idea will be taken seriously.
“Inside all of us there is something that goes beyond being practical,” Woerner said. “We like to discover. This is humankind and this is what brings us into the future.”
1. What is most likely to happen after robots finish building different facilities?| A．Humans will be sent to Mars. |
| B．Humans will be sent to live on the Moon. |
| C．Expensive resources will be sent to the moon. |
| D．International Space Station(ISS) will be ended. |
| A．It is too hot to live there. |
| B．There is too much radiation. |
| C．It’s too far away from the earth. |
| D．There may be rocks landing from outer space. |
| A．Humans are very practical. |
| B．Humans want to experience the future. |
| C．Humans don’t like to stay in the same place. |
| D．Humans are nature-born to explore the unknown. |
| A．To inform. | B．To analyze. | C．To persuade. | D．To criticize. |
5 . Several recent studies examined how machine automation and artificial intelligence (AI) will change the future of work.
Some people predict these technologies could replace up to 30 percent of workers worldwide by 2030. The possibility of being replaced will greatly increase for workers with less education, said Price Waterhouse Coopers, an international company providing financial and tax services. It estimated(估计) that in Britain, up to 46 percent of workers without a college degree could be in danger because of automation. This would drop to about 12 percent for workers with undergraduate degrees or higher.
“New smart machines have the hidden power to replace our minds and to move around freely in the world,” the study said. It added that the greatest job replacement is expected to come in the areas of transportation, storage, manufacturing (制造业)and retail（零售）.
The Rand Corporation recently published its own report on the future effects of automation and AI on jobs and the workplace. Osonde Osoba was a co-author of the report. He noticed that fears over machines taking jobs from humans goes back centuries. He agrees there will be major job disruptions(混乱) because of AI and automation, especially for lower skilled workers. But he believes the future problems have been overestimated(高估) without historical evidence to support the predictions. “It’s not so much that the jobs are getting replaced, but it’s more like tasks are getting replaced and jobs are reconfiguring(重新装备) over time to account for that automation.” He added that it will be very difficult for companies to completely automate most jobs, because they request a worker to perform many different duties and to respond to unexpected situations.
“If you are thinking about detailed things an individual(个人) might do to prepare themselves, I guess being more adaptable and being able to reeducate yourself to fit into a different job.” Osonde Osoba suggests.
1. According to the whole passage, _________are most likely to lose their job?| A．scientists in laboratories | B．teachers in colleges and universities |
| C．milkmen in milk companies | D．officers in governments |
| A．Companies have completely automated most jobs for saving cost. |
| B．Humans have feared to be replaced by AI and automation. |
| C．The job replacement has come in transportation and retail. |
| D．People with high degrees get higher danger of losing jobs than those with no college degree. |
| A．Future workers: what to do to keep the job. |
| B．Job replacement: who is to blame. |
| C．Automation and AI: how to replace the future job. |
| D．New studies: why the future job is replaced. |
