2 . When astronauts land on Mars, a couple of decades from now, perhaps, they’ll need to find a way to communicate-with each other, with equipment on and around the planet, and with mission control back on Earth. Despite living so far from home, they’ll no doubt want to connect with loved ones, or stream their favorite shows or music.

But setting up a Wi-Fi connection to Earth’s internet won’t be a choice. Earth is simply too far away—around 55 million to 400 million kilometers, depending on where the planets are in their orbits. We will need another strategy.

Establishing good communication equipment is essential for human missions to Mars. Researchers are testing ways to upgrade existing networks, along with some far-out alternatives. For example, NASA’s Psyche mission, which lifted off in October with the job of exploring an asteroid (小行星) between Mars and Jupiter, will also test the communication using lasers. Lasers could carry far more data than the radio waves that have been used from the earliest days of space travel.

There is no strategy which can get rid of the time lag in communications between Earth and Mars; a message moving at the speed of light takes anywhere between 4 and 24 minutes for a one-way trip. In other words, a quick ping to mission control is out of the question, not to mention a WhatsApp call home.

There’s also the issue of solar conjunction (聚合), says Parfitt, when the sun comes between Earth and Mars. This happens for a couple of weeks every two years or so, cutting off communications between the planets. The last one took place in November.

But new approaches could open possibilities that make communications on Mars more like what we experience here on Earth. At least one research team has wondered: What if Mars had its own internet?

1. What discourages Mars to have a net connection to Earth?

A．The Earth is too far to reach.	B．The Earth is hard to identify.
C．The current strategy doesn’t work well.	D．Many planets are blocking the signals.

2. What writing skill is used in paragraph 3?

A．Raising a question.	B．Giving an example.
C．Listing numbers.	D．Comparing facts.

3. What do we know about the communications between Earth and Mars?

A．Laser carries less data than the radio waves.	B．There is no such thing as time lag.
C．It takes only four minutes for a single trip.	D．The process could sometimes be cut off.

4. What is going to be talked about in the following paragraph?

A．The possible mission of the astronauts on Mars.

B．The communication among the astronauts on Mars.

C．The possibility for Mars to have its own network.

D．The opinions given by experienced astronomers.

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.

6 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

The Voyager Program was conceived as a grand tour of the solar system. It was actually     1     engineer in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that realized in the late ‘70s there was going to be a     2     (gold) opportunity. And that was     3     the planets were all going to more or less line up on one side of the sun. And that’s really important when you’re trying to explore one planet after another, because of course all the planets in the solar system are orbiting     4     (independent). Sometimes we’re on, say, the same side of the sun as Jupiter is     5     sometimes Jupiter is way on the other side of the sun from us, you know, many, many, many billions of miles away. So, there was this time coming in the late ’70s       6     you could launch a spacecraft and it could actually go to Jupiter, but then onto Saturn, because they were both on the same side of the sun, and you could even possibly get Uranus and Neptune and maybe even Pluto.

The fly-by trips     7     (involve) the four planets became known as the Voyager “Grand Tour.” And this was the Voyager program: Voyager I and Voyager II. NASA officials have said that when first     8     (launch), the Voyager mission was expected to last five years. Both Voyagers are the only spacecraft so far     9     (explore) interstellar (星际的) space. And over the last couple of years, we     10     (follow) them through this transition truly out of the range of our solar system.

7 . Even though they may appear to be completely unrelated, black holes and Las Vegas have one thing in common: Whatever happens there stays there, much to the displeasure of astrophysicists who are trying to understand how black holes grow.

The event horizon can be conceptualized as an outer ring that surrounds black holes and is the boundary beyond which nothing, including matter, light, or information, may pass. It takes in every bit of evidence about the black hole’s past and has the appearance of being “stuck” to the eyes of an observer.

“Because of these physical facts, it had been thought impossible to measure how black holes formed,” said Peter Behroozi, an associate professor at the University of Arizona Steward Observatory.

Behroozi co-led an international team to rebuild the growth histories of black holes using machine learning and supercomputers, successfully avoiding the event horizon information barrier for individual black holes to show what is beyond. Millions of artificial universes were simulated (模拟), and the results showed that supermassive black holes grew at the same pace as their host galaxies (星系). Scientists had a theory about this for 20 years, but had not been able to confirm this relationship until now. The team’s research was reported in a publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

“As the galaxy grows from small to large, its black hole, too, is growing from small to large, in exactly the same way as we see in galaxies today all across the universe,” Behroozi said.

Trinity is a platform developed by the researchers that uses a novel type of machine learning to generate millions of different universes on a supercomputer. The goal of Trinity is to find answers. The project’s three main research areas are galaxies, their supermassive black holes, and their dark matter halo (晕). The same Trinity is in inference to these three areas. Millions of galaxies and their dark matter halo were simulated using the researchers’ older University Machine in past investigations.

The researchers found that galaxies expanding in their dark matter halo have a very particular relationship between the galaxy’s mass and that of the halo.

1. Which of the following is one of the physical facts according to Behroozi?

A．The event horizon can allow matter and light to pass.

B．Black holes and Las Vegas are completely different.

C．The event horizon absorbs the black hole’s past.

D．Observers can see the event horizon clearly.

2. What have the researchers prove about black holes?

A．Their exact locations in the universe.

B．Their influence on artificial universe.

C．Their links with their dark matter halo.

D．Their relationship with their host galaxies.

3. What can be learned about Trinity?

A．It refers to the University Machine.

B．It creates millions of artificial universes.

C．It shows how galaxies form in the real universe.

D．It is a platform to study the development of machine learning.

4. Which is the most suitable title for the text?

A．Trinity Finds Answers to Machine Learning

B．Machine Learning Could Reveal How Black Holes Grow

C．Supermassive Black Holes Are Beneficial to Their Host Galaxies

D．Astrophysicists Have Confirmed the Significance of the Event Horizon

8 . Until recently, gravitational waves could have been the stuff of Einstein’s imagination. Before they were detected, these waves in space time existed only in the physicist’s general theory of relativity, as far as scientists knew. Now, researchers are on the hunt for more ways to detect the waves. “The study of gravitational waves is booming,” says astrophysicist Karan Jani of Vanderbilt University in Nashville. “This is just remarkable. No field I can think of in fundamental physics has seen progress this fast.”

Just as light comes in a variety of wavelengths, so do gravitational waves. Different wave lengths point to different types of origins of the universe and require different kinds of detectors. Gravitational waves with wavelengths of a few thousand kilometers—like those detected by the United States, Italy and Japan—come mostly from pairs of black holes 10 or so times the mass of the sun, or from collisions of dense cosmic blocks called neutron stars (中子星). These detectors could also spot waves from certain types of exploding stars and rapidly moving neutron stars.

In contrast, huge waves that span light-years are thought to be created by orbiting pairs of bigger black holes with masses billions of times that of the sun. In June, scientists reported the first strong evidence of these types of waves by turning the entire galaxy (星系) into a detector, watching how the waves make slight changes to the timing of regular blinks from neutron stars throughout the Milky Way.

Physicists now hope to dive into a vast, cosmic ocean of gravitational waves of all sorts of sizes. These waves could reveal new details about the secret lives of exotic objects such as black holes and unknown parts of the universe.

Physicist Jason Hogan of Stanford University thinks there are still a lot of gaps in the coverage of wavelengths. “But it makes sense to cover all the bases. Who knows what else we may find?” he says. The search for capturing the full complement of the universe’s gravitational waves exactly could take observatories out into the moon, to the atomic area and elsewhere.

1. What does Karan Jani think of the current study on gravitational waves?

A．It is rapid and pioneering.

B．It is slow but steadily increasing.

C．It is interrupted due to limited detectors.

D．It is progressing as fast as any other field.

2. What do the detected gravitational waves mostly indicate?

A．The creation of different kinds of detectors.

B．Collisions of planets outside the solar system.

C．The presence of light in different wavelengths.

D．Activities involving black holes and neutron stars.

3. How did scientists manage to find huge waves’ evidence?

A．By analyzing sunlight.

B．By locating the new galaxy.

C．By using the whole galaxy as a tool.

D．By observing the sun’s regular movement.

4. What can be inferred about the future study according to the last paragraph?

A．It’ll exclude the atomic field.

B．It’ll focus exactly on the mapping of the galaxy.

C．It’ll require prioritizing certain wavelengths on the moon.

D．It’ll explore potential places to detect gravitational waves.

10 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, with the development of production, astronomy attained many achievements. The Ganshi Star Classic,     1    (write) between 375-350 BC, is the earliest astronomical work in the world. 

Gan De and Shi Shen respectively conducted astronomical observations in their own aspects     2     published their works to the world. They had     3     (systematic) observed the movements of the five planets, namely, gold, wood, water, fire and earth, and had     4     grasp of the laws of the movements of these planets for the first time. They recorded the names of 800 stars, and determined the positions of 121. Later     5    (generation)called the records of Gan De and Shi Shen’s determination of stars ”Ganshi Star Classic“. The Ganshi Star Classic is the earliest star table in the world, about 200 years earlier than the first     6     (Europe) star table created by a Greek astronomer. To date, their achievements     7     (recognise) internationally. Shi Shen was referred to     8    one of the outstanding contributors to world astronomy, after     9     the largest crater (环形山) on the back of the moon was named. Many later astronomers use the data in the ”Ganshi Star Classic“ when     10     (measure) the position and motion of the sun, moon and planets. Therefore, the ”Ganshi Star Classic“ occupies an important position in the history of astronomy in China and the world.