1 . Fans of Star Wars might remember Luke Skywalker’s home planet. Called Tatooine, the planet orbits two stars. A new study suggests similar planets might be the best focus in the search for places that can host life outside our solar system.
Many suns come in pairs called binary stars. Lots of these should have planets orbiting them. That means there could be more planets orbiting around binary stars than around lone stars like our sun. But until now, no one had a clear idea about whether those planets could host life. New computer models suggest that in many cases planets like Tatooine could be fit for life.
The researchers ran computer models of binary stars arranged in thousands of ways. Each had an Earthlike planet orbiting the two stars. The team modeled different sizes and shapes of the stars’ orbit around each other. They then tracked the movement of the planets for up to a billion years of simulated (模拟) time. That showed whether the planets would stay in orbit over timescales that might develop conditions to start life. They also checked to see if the planets stayed in a habitable zone. That’s the region around a star where an orbiting planet’s temperatures are never extremely hot or cold, and water could stay liquid (液态).
“An atmosphere and oceans could make a great difference,” says Mariah MacDonald, who took part in the new modeling work. Plentiful air and water could change the picture. Adding atmospheres to the modeled planets should increase the number of stars that could host life. She hopes to build more advanced models in coming months.
“Models of planets orbiting binary stars could guide future efforts to look for them with telescopes,” says Jason Wright, who studies the physics of stars at Pennsylvania State University. “This is an under-explored population of planets. There’s no reason why we can’t go after them,” he says. “And it might be worthwhile to try.”
1. Why does the author mention Tatooine in Star Wars?| A．To attract movie lovers. | B．To introduce the topic. |
| C．To remember an old friend. | D．To present a newfound planet. |
| A．Its preparation. | B．Its application. | C．Its process. | D．Its finding. |
| A．Improve the study. | B．Lead a peaceful life. |
| C．Start another project. | D．Travel into outer space. |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Positive. | C．Concerned. | D．Uncaring. |
2 . A planet that suffers 475 C beneath a thick acid atmosphere may be the last place you'd expect alien (外星的) life in our solar system. But one NASA scientist claims that extraterrestrials (天外来客) are most likely hiding on Venus amid conditions that are unbearable for humans. The new theory was put forward by the research scientist Dr Michelle Thaller. She says that possible signs of life have already been seen within the carbon-dioxide filled atmosphere, adding that she was absolutely certain that life exists somewhere.
Venus is often described as Earth's twin due to its similar size and structure. But their conditions couldn't be further apart, as astronomers believe it would be impossible for humans to exist on Venus. Positioned 67 million miles from the Sun, Venus is the hottest planet in our solar system, suffering temperatures that can even melt lead. Its atmosphere also adds to the uninhabitable situation.
Despite this, scientists have long debated whether Venus' clouds may host microbial (微生物的) life forms that can survive. Many scientists think that photosynthesis (光合作用) is possible on the planet's surface as Venus receives enough solar energy to pass through its thick clouds.
However, Professor Dominic Papineau, a biologist at the University College of London, believes Dr Thaller's views are “difficult to realistically assume”. He explained, “For life-related chemical reactions to take place, liquid water is necessary. Hence, to find extraterrestrial life, we need to find liquid water, and to find extraterrestrial fossils requires looking for special rocks that were associated with liquid water in the past.”
This makes life on Venus today difficult to realistically assume, because its surface is too hot, although Venus might have had liquid water in its past. Even still, both Professor Papineau and Dr Thaller agree that the icy moons of our solar system could also be sites of potential microbial life. NASA suggests there are 290 “traditional moons” in our solar system-excluding 462 smaller minor planets.
1. What can we know about Venus?| A．Its atmosphere is thin acidic. |
| B．It is much bigger than Earth. |
| C．It is 77 million miles from the Sun. |
| D．Venus and Earth are considered as twins. |
| A．Photosynthesis can happen on Venus's surface. |
| B．Thick clouds make photosynthesis in Venus hard. |
| C．Liquid water is important for the extraterrestrials. |
| D．Some rocks can prove life exists on Venus. |
| A．The surface temperature of Venus is high. |
| B．It's very easy to confirm life on Venus. |
| C．Venus might have liquid water now. |
| D．Many icy moons go around Venus. |
| A．Education. | B．Science. | C．Culture. | D．Sports. |
3 . 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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 |
4 . For those of us who grew up watching Star Trek, exploring space has been about discovering strange new worlds. And there are plenty of worlds to explore in time, but we still need major technological advancements to reach planets that are light years away.
What we are doing in space today is providing unbelievable benefits right now, right here on Earth. From space, we can monitor, manage and care for our planet. Satellite-based sensors show us the short- and long-term effects of human activity on our environment. Many companies are using their interest in space to help solve problems here, from using hyperspectral imaging(高光谱成像), which enable us to map vegetation(植被) and rain forests, to microsatellites that provide global connectivity for the network of things.
My company, OneWeb, is focusing on what I believe is one of the world’s most important issues: the need for equal access to the Internet. The Internet has become our economic lifeblood. And yet, nearly half of the world’s population doesn’t have Internet access. Space is playing a key role in bridging this digital divide. OneWeb is launching 1,980 satellites to help bring Internet access to people everywhere, and our first production satellites are already flying in space and have shown very high download speeds.
Fiber and cable Internet access technologies already cover most financially viable(可行的) major cities. Similarly, these regions will also be the first to be served with 5G. Poor communities are the last to get connected, and without connectivity, those communities have no chance to lift themselves from poverty. OneWeb’s satellites will reach every community in the world and enable equal access to the Internet for the world’s less developed places.
Fifty years from the day when man first walked on the moon, we are still only approaching the possible. There will be tens of thousands of new satellites, space stations and factories in the coming years to bring advancements in communications, scientific research, monitoring the earth, exploring space and more. This is exciting, but we must take action carefully.
1. What is the second paragraph mainly about?| A．Benefits space exploration can bring to us. |
| B．Problems space exploration leads to. |
| C．Steps of space exploration requires. |
| D．Equipment space exploration needs. |
| A．Increase download speeds. |
| B．Narrow the gap in Internet learning. |
| C．Help people set up and maintain a website. |
| D．Enable people to make use of the Internet equally. |
| A．More than six decades ago, man first walked on the moon. |
| B．More than half of the world’s people have no access to the Internet. |
| C．OneWeb’s satellites will make it possible for most people to be served with 5G. |
| D．Without the Internet, poor communities can hardly help themselves out of poverty. |
| A．The risks of furthering space exploration. |
| B．The value of setting up space stations. |
| C．The way we could monitor our earth. |
| D．The features of microsatellites. |
5 . The combined quantity of water on Earth has varied over the course of our planet’s geological history, and it still does.
Today, Earth includes some 1,386 million cubic kilometres of water, a volume that includes water in oceans, lakes and rivers, plus ground water, vapour in the atmosphere, and the frozen water of glaciers and ice caps. On the young Earth — some four billion years ago — vast quantities of water were added to the planet by ice-containing comets (a mass of ice and dust that moves around the sun and looks like a bright star with a tail) that struck us, eventually making our world a “blue planet”. But such events became increasingly rare in Earth’s more recent history, and today we are in an age during which Earth is losing water.
The water loss is due to the fact that particles (微粒) sometimes escape Earth’s gravity to travel into space. This is particularly true of the light hydrogen atoms that form part of water molecules (分子) together with oxygen. Every time the atmosphere loses hydrogen, we lose one of the building blocks of water. Scientists estimate that Earth loses about 3kg of hydrogen per second. At this pace, Earth would run out of water in three billion years — but that assumes that we don’t get any new water supplies.
New water need not come from space — it might come from the inside of the Earth. At depths below 50km, minerals contain water that is not reckoned within the water cycle. Some of it dates back to Earth’s formation; the rest is part of slow geological exchange between the planet’s layers. When Earth’s plates sink and melt, deep minerals can release these bound water molecules so that they can subsequently rise to the surface via volcanic eruptions, adding to the planet’s overall water resources.
1. How did Earth become a “blue planet” in geological time?| A．By getting water from comets | B．By making use of glaciers. |
| C．By releasing its inside water. | D．By storing water in the ocean. |
| A．Serious. | B．Regretful. | C．Uncertain. | D．Unworried. |
| A．locked | B．displayed | C．counted | D．marked |
| A．Where Can Water Be Stored? | B．Could Earth Run Out of Water? |
| C．How Can New Water Be Found? | D．Will There Be More Water on Earth? |
6 . Meteorites (陨石) can offer clues about what the early solar system was like. But finding them is far from difficult. Now, some scientists are turning to drones (无人机) and machine learning to help spot freshly fallen meteorites much more efficiently. “A team of six people on a meteorite-hunting expedition can search about 200,000 square meters per day,” says Seamus Anderson, a planetary scientist in Australia.
Around 2016, Anderson began toying with the concept of using drones to take pictures of the g round to look for meteorites. That idea blossomed into a Ph.D. project. In 2022, he and his colleagues reported their first successful recovery of a meteorite spotted with a drone. They’ve since found four more meteorites at a different site. Drone-based searches are much faster than the standard search way. “You’re going from about 300 days of human effort down to about a dozen or so,” he says.
Anderson and his workmates have used drones to search for meteorites in remote parts of Western Australia and South Australia. The team is tipped off about a fall site by networks of ground-based cameras that track meteoroids flashing through the Earth’s atmosphere. The researchers have to do a series of fun but difficult work before the hunt. They pack a four-wheel drive vehicle with drone and computer equipment, battery charging stations, generators, fuel, food, camping equipment, tables, chairs and much more. The drive to the fall site can take more than a day, often on rough or nonexistent roads. Anderson says, “You hope you don’t pop a tire.”
After arriving, the team flies its primary drone at an altitude of about 20 meters. Its camera takes an image of the ground once every second, and the scientists download the data every 40 minutes or so when the drone lands to receive fresh batteries. A typical day of flying can net over 10,000 images, which are then divided digitally into 100 million or so smaller sections. Those “tiles”, each 2 meters on a side, are fed into a machine learning algorithm (算法) that has been trained to recognize meteorites based on images of real land rocks which are spray-painted black.
1. Why do the scientists study meteorites?| A．To spot the planetary course. | B．To promote machine learning. |
| C．To test the functions of drones. | D．To explore the past of solar system. |
| A．Their barriers. | B．Their causes. |
| C．Their efficiency. | D．Their concept. |
| A．Fun and light. | B．Smooth and flexible. |
| C．Difficult and unpleasant. | D．Complicated and tough. |
| A．By dividing them in half. | B．By storing them for analysis. |
| C．By combining them into a picture. | D．By linking them with a digital printer. |
7 . Scientists say they have found detailed evidence of ancient rivers on Mars. The discovery supported existing evidence that Mars once had water. The researchers said their findings suggested rivers may have flowed on the surface of Mars for hundreds of thousands of years.
These images were captured by a camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The camera is able to take detailed pictures of the surface while orbiting the planet from about 400 kilometers away. A team of scientists studied the images, which showed a valley network on Mars.
The team was led by Francesco Salese, a geologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Salese said the scientists studied sedimentary (沉淀物) rocks from a 200 meters high rocky cliff. Sedimentary rocks form when sedimented (使沉积) and transported by water or wind.
“These are sedimentary rocks and were formed by rivers that were likely active for over 100,000 years,” Salese said, adding even without the ability to examine the cliff area on Mars, the pictures show strong similarities to sedimentary rocks found on the earth.
William McMahon is another geologist who was part of the investigation team. He said sedimentary rocks have long been studied on the earth to learn what conditions were like on our planet millions or even billions of years ago. Another leader of the team was Joel Davis, a researcher with Britain’s Natural History Museum. He said scientists had never before been able to examine such a rock formation with such great detail. They created 3D images of the area to get a more detailed understanding of it, which suggested some ancient Martian rivers were several meters deep.
1. What is the text mainly about?| A．Scientists are able to study rock formation on Mars. |
| B．Scientists found evidence that there was water on Mars. |
| C．Mars sedimentary has many similarities to that on the earth. |
| D．A camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took pictures of the planet. |
| A．By comparing data. |
| B．By analyzing images. |
| C．By studying rivers on the earth. |
| D．By observing Mars through a telescope. |
| A．Excited. | B．Unsatisfied. | C．Unexpected. | D．Disappointed. |
| A．A novel. | B．A notebook. | C．A travel guide. | D．A newspaper. |
8 . Water makes up 71% of the Earth’s surface, but no one knows how or when such massive quantities of water arrived on the Earth. A new study published in the journal Nature brings scientists one step closer to answering that question.
Led by University of Maryland Assistant Professor of Geology Megan Newcombe, researchers analyzed melted meteorites (熔化的陨石) that had been floating around in space since the solar system’s formation 4.5 billion years ago. They found that these meteorites had extremely low water content — in fact, they were among the driest materials ever measured outside the Earth.
These results, which let researchers rule them out as the primary source of the Earth’s water, could have important information for the search for water — and life — on other planets. It also helps researchers understand the unlikely conditions making the Earth a livable planet.
Researchers wanted to understand how our planet managed to get water because it’s not completely obvious. Getting water and having surface oceans on a planet that is small and relatively near the sun is a challenge.
“We knew that plenty of outer solar system objects were differentiated, but it was sort of secretively assumed that because they were from the outer solar system, they must also contain a lot of water,” said Sune Nielsen, a study co-author and geologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. “Our paper shows this is definitely not the case. As soon as meteorites melt, there is no remaining water.”
The findings have applications beyond geology. Scientists of many fields — and especially exoplanet (系外行星) researchers — are interested in the origin of the Earth’s water because of its deep connections with life.
“Water is considered to be a must for life to be able to exist, so as we’re looking out into the universe and finding all of these exoplanets, we’re starting to work out which of those planetary systems could be potential hosts for life,” said Newcombe. “In order to be able to understand these other solar systems, we want to understand our own.”
1. What did the new study focus on?| A．The history of the Earth. | B．The origin of the Earth’s water. |
| C．The source of meteorites. | D．The structure of solar system. |
| A．The driest materials coming from other planets. |
| B．An impossible source of the Earth’s water. |
| C．The challenge of getting water near the sun. |
| D．The likely conditions making the Earth habitable. |
| A．Because it is closely related to life. |
| B．Because it can make them famous. |
| C．Because it concerns many disciplines. |
| D．Because it is deeply connected with outer space. |
| A．A science fiction. | B．A geography textbook. |
| C．A book review. | D．A research report. |
9 . Astronomers long thought that an odd star system observed by the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite was a simple case of a star orbiting a black hole. But two astronomers are challenging that claim, finding that the evidence suggests something far stranger: a never-before-seen type of star made of invisible dark matter. The system consists of a sun-like star, and its mysterious dark companion, which is much more massive.
What could that dark companion be? Maybe, as suggested, it’s a clump (团) of dark matter. Dark matter is an invisible form of matter that makes up the vast majority of the mass of every single galaxy (星系). We still don’t have a solid understanding of its identity. Most theoretical models assume that dark matter is smoothly distributed in each galaxy, but there are models that allow it to come together on itself.
One of these models supposes that dark matter in this case is a new kind of boson (玻色子). These bosons would have the ability to form clumps. Some of them could be the size of entire star systems, but some could be much smaller. The smallest ones could be as small as stars, and they get a new name: boson stars. Boson stars would be entirely invisible. Because dark matter doesn’t interact with other substances or light, we could detect them only through the gravitational influence on their surroundings. The researchers pointed out that a simple model of boson dark matter could produce enough boson stars to make the two astronomers’ finding reasonable.
While it’s unlikely that this is actually the discovery of a boson star, follow-up observations are still urged. Most importantly, this unique system gives us a rare opportunity to study the behaviour of strong gravity, allowing us to examine Einstein’s theory of general relativity to see if it holds. Secondly, if it is a boson star, this system is the perfect experimental set-up. We can keep studying our models of boson stars, see how well they can explain the orbital dynamics of this system and use that information to glimpse into the dark corners of the universe.
1. What does the evidence show about the odd star system?| A．Its mass is less than the sun. |
| B．It is a simple case for astronomers. |
| C．It is made of a star and a black hole. |
| D．Its star is made of invisible dark matter. |
| A．It can be gathered. |
| B．It is solid and inactive. |
| C．It can be a clump of visible matter. |
| D．It makes up a minority of the galaxy’s mass. |
| A．The smallest dark matter. |
| B．The smallest boson clumps. |
| C．The smallest boson models. |
| D．The smallest star systems. |
| A．Einstein’s theory holds true. |
| B．Boson stars have been confirmed. |
| C．More relevant studies will be needed. |
| D．A perfect model contains a boson star. |
10 . Robots in space will be extracting (提取) gold from asteroids (小行星) within ten years if anew project backed by a Silicon Valley billionaire goes as planned. Peter Diamandis, the founder of Planetary Resources, said the company attempts to make the resources of space available to humanity.
The initial stage, to be achieved in the next 18 to 24 months, is to launch a series of private telescopes which will orbit Earth. These will be used to search for the right type of asteroids. The plan is to use commercially built robotic ships to extract rocket fuel and valuable minerals from the rocks that regularly pass by Earth. Diamandis predicts that they could have their version of a space-based petrol station up and running by 2025.
Several scientists not involved in the project argued that the project was daring, difficult and very pricey. They do not see how it could be cost-effective. But the founder of Planetary Resources has a track record of profiting from space exploration business. Diamandis was the first person to sell rides into space to tourists. “Before we started launching people into space as private citizens, people thought that was a ridiculous idea,” Diamandis said. “This is a long-term project. But it’s not a charity. We’ll make money.” The idea that asteroids could be mined for resources has been around for years. There are probably 1,500 asteroids that pass near Earth that would be good initial targets. They are at least 50 meters wide, and Diamandis figures ten percent of them have water and other valuable minerals.
Richard Binzel, Professor of Planetary Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says, “The idea might be many decades ahead of its time. But you have to start somewhere as it might offer a new perspective of saving the earth from being over explored.”
1. What is supposed to be the first step of the project?| A．Launching robots into Earth orbit. | B．Sending some telescopes into space. |
| C．Building a space-based petrol station. | D．Using robotic ships to extract rocket fuel. |
| A．By extracting gold from asteroids. | B．By providing space travels for tourists. |
| C．By being the first person to ride into space. | D．By selling tickets to sce tourists' rides into space. |
| A．It is risky. | B．It is complex. | C．It is worthwhile. | D．It is demanding. |
| A．Mining Asteroids | B．Humans and Asteroids |
| C．Space Exploration in Progress | D．The Project of Extracting Minerals |
