1 . 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
2 . Based on new data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission and other space science data sets, astronomers have created an animation to model dust in the Milky Way. The work was presented this week at a national astronomy meeting.
The animation shows the cumulative build-up of dust looking from Earth’s local neighbourhood to about 13,000 light years towards the galactic centre—around 10% of the overall distance across the Milky Way. Close by, dust swirls all around but, further out, the concentration of dust along the galactic plane (银道面) becomes clear. Two ‘windows’, one above and one below the galactic plane, are also revealed.
“Dust clouds are related to the birth and death of stars, so their distribution tells a story of how structures formed in the galaxy and how the galaxy evolves,” said Nick Cox, coordinator of the EXPLORE project which is developing the tools. “The maps are also important, for cosmologists (宇宙学家) in revealing regions where there is no dust, allowing us to have a clear, unobstructed view out of the Milky Way. This helps in studying the Universe beyond, such as to make Deep Field observations with Hubble or the new James Webb Space Telescope.”
“State-of-the-art machine learning and visual analytics have the power to greatly enhance scientific return and discovery for space science missions, but their use is still relatively novel in the field of astronomy,” said Albert Zijlstra, of the University of Manchester and the EXPLORE project. “With a constant stream of new data, we have an increasing wealth of information to mine—way beyond the scope of what humans could process in a lifetime. We need tools like the ones we are developing for EXPLORE to support scientific discovery, such as by helping us to characterize properties within the data, or to pick out the most interesting or unusual features and structures.”
1. What can we learn about the animation from the first two paragraphs?| A．It is created to replace the dust in the Milky Way. |
| B．It shows dust in a long span of space. |
| C．It employs space data from an individual data base. |
| D．The animation hasn’t been presented. |
| A．The distribution of dust clouds helps to dig the past of the galaxy. |
| B．Only Hubble and the new James Web Telescope can help explore the galaxy. |
| C．Cosmologists use maps to find where there is full of precious star dust clouds. |
| D．Dust clouds are closely related to the formation and death of various kinds of galaxies. |
| A．Fruitless. | B．Controversial. | C．Unrealistic. | D．Challenging. |
| A．Open Invitation of the Wide Galaxy | B．Thrilling Project for the European Team |
| C．Deep Dive into the Dusty Milky Way | D．Immersing Trip to the Grand Solar System |
3 . Sometimes called “Earth’s twin,” Venus is similar to our world in size and composition. The two rocky planets are also roughly the same distance from the sun, and both have an atmosphere. While Venus’s cold and unpleasant landscape does make it seem far less like Earth, scientists recently detected another striking similarity between the two, the presence of active volcanoes.
When NASA’s Magellan mission mapped much of the planet with radar in the 1990sit revealed an unexpectedly youthful surface-there were surprisingly a few craters (火山口)which suggested active geologic (地质的) processes. Although few missions have visited Venus since then, researchers have continued to mine the collection of data from.
Using this decades-old data, planetary scientist Robert Herrick discovered that a Magellan. volcano called Maat Mons is alive with volcanic activity. In this case, lava(岩浆)flows that moved for eight months during an imaging cycle from 1990 to 1992, according to a study published in Science in 2023. The findings are the first real evidence that volcanoes have erupted on Venus during modern times.
What’s more, volcanic activity on Venus could be even more common and dramatic than on Earth. A study published in JGR Planets in 2023 mapped out enormous potential volcanic features on Venus’ surface, and there’s a good chance that some of them could be active today. On top of that, another 2023 study, also in JGR Planets, found that the very high surface temperature on Venus, over 900 degrees Fahrenheit, allows lava flows to slowly leak out.
A list of new missions are headed to Venus over the next decade, including NASA’s Veritas mission, which aims to map the planet’s surface to better understand its geologic history. These projects should settle the question of how the paths of Venus and Earth divided so sharply, with one becoming a hell and the other able to harbor life, and confirm whether volcanoes are still erupting on the planet today.
1. Why does the writer mention Venus is Earth’s twin in Paragraph 1?| A．To prove a theory. | B．To introduce the topic. |
| C．To clarify a concept. | D．To make predictions. |
| A．Robert Herrick’s discovery was based on previous data. |
| B．The findings are the first evidence of volcanoes on Venus. |
| C．There are more huge volcanoes on Venus than on Earth. |
| D．Volcanic activities on Venus are as common as on Earth. |
| A．Mapping the surface of Venus with accuracy. |
| B．Analyzing how volcanoes came into existence. |
| C．Understanding how the two planets evolved differently. |
| D．Confirming whether Venus is suitable for humans to live. |
| A．Venus Is Earth’s Twin. | B．Venus Is an Awful Hell. |
| C．Venus Is a Youthful Planet. | D．Venus Is Volcanically Active. |
4 . If a scientist sees a unicorn (独角兽), she’ll probably want to see more than one before telling the world about her discovery. But sometimes one unicorn is enough.
In 2007 an astronomer named Duncan Lorimer reported finding a new kind of astronomical event. It was a brief stream of energy so powerful that it could reach Earth from a galaxy billions of light-years away. He called it a fast radio burst (FRB). This remarkable find, if real, could make huge contributions to the study about universe. He predicted there would be many more – but that year, he spotted just one.
It’s not unheard of for one event to kick off a whole new field of scientific inquiry. Still it’s rare. When Lorimer’s paper came out in the journal, it was not surprising that many were skeptical. “Sometimes, what seems like a remarkable scientific discovery turns out to be an error in the data,” some commented.
Later, a young graduate student was assigned the task of finding more FRBs. Using the same radio telescope Lorimer once used, she found more bursts that just looked like FRBs. But because of the ways they appeared in the telescope data, she was virtually certain that they were some other kind of radio interference and gave them another name: perytons. As years ticked by and no more FRBs were discovered, some astronomers began to conclude Lorimer had found nothing more than an unusual example of one of these perytons.
Good news: in 2011, there was a report of a second FRB. Four more were found in 2013. Bad news: all of them came from the same Lorimer’s radio telescope. But ultimately, in 2014, there was a report from another radio telescope. More discoveries started showing up from other telescopes on a somewhat regular basis. At last the conversation about FRBs shifted – from whether they were real to where they came from.
Years of research have passed by since then. Now, Victoria Kaspi, a physics professor and principal investigator on the FRB team, predicts that once the more advanced telescopes come online in 2024, the location and distance of most FRBs detected can be found out, which will provide “golden opportunities for astronomers to study the large-scale structure of the universe”.
Finally, this “unicorn” story came to a somehow surprising end. Several years ago, a team reanalyzed the same data from the radio telescope by which Lorimer found the first FRB. There was one more that they had previously missed. Since then, other teams have analyzed even older data and found FRBs in those datasets too.
“They were just sitting there, waiting to be discovered by better techniques,” Lorimer says.
1. Which of the following has the closest meaning to the underlined word in paragraph 3?| A．Optimistic. | B．Curious. | C．Supportive. | D．Doubtful. |
| A．To suggest that the new scientific discovery was a myth. |
| B．To imply magical creatures may actually exist in the world. |
| C．To symbolize the previously unknown and unseen discoveries. |
| D．To quote an incident that once happened in the field of science. |
| A．Because it might mean the results were not reliable. |
| B．Because they were all found by a young graduate student. |
| C．Because these were given the name perytons and were not real FRBs. |
| D．Because not every astronomer had the same type of telescope as Lorimer. |
| A．It’s possible for just one event to start a new field of scientific research. |
| B．New scientific discoveries can’t be made without advanced research techniques. |
| C．Scientists shouldn’t deny new discoveries even if they lack evidence temporarily. |
| D．Scientists should be careful to distinguish new discoveries from errors in the datasets. |
5 . 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. |
When she was just three years old, Alyssa Carson from the USA took an interest
Alyssa’s goal is to help others understand the potential for human life in outer space. She also wants to be one of the first humans
She is studying astrobiology (天体生物学) at the Florida Institute of Technology. It is
Alyssa is a(n)
7 . The surface of Mars is etched with ancient river valleys and lake basins. Some researchers think that liquid water once flowed on the Red Planet. Today, Mars is too cold for much, if any, liquid water to exist. And 3.8 billion years ago, when the flowing water formed, the sun was fainter than it is today, making it even harder to imagine a warm Martian climate. That’s why many researchers think Mars may have gone in and out of deep freezes.
Some researchers have suggested that early Mars only thawed out when large asteroid impacts or volcanic eruptions temporarily warmed the planet. But Kasting, a geologist at Penn State University, thinks warm windows from such dramatic events would have been too brief to carve the vast canyons that exist on Mars. Now, Kasting and his colleagues have come up with an alternative explanation. They think Mars may have experienced a series of climate cycles.
The idea goes like this: When Mars was cold and frozen, volcanoes continued to belch out the greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and hydrogen into the atmosphere. There, the gas blanket trapped heat and warmed the planet up until liquid water began to flow, forming Mars’ rivers and lakes. However, warm temperatures and abundant water would also have sped up certain chemical reactions that consumed carbon dioxide, reducing the greenhouse effect and cooling the planet back down again. Then the cycle would repeat.
Kasting shared his theory with other astronomers at the December meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, and in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. So far, Kasting’s team has only shown that such an explanation is possible, according to climate models. But the researchers say field trips could help test the idea by looking for evidence of multiple warm events, and their durations.
1. What made researchers believe that liquid water once existed on Mars?| A．The surface of Mars is with liquid water. |
| B．The temperatures of the sun. |
| C．The geological features of Mars. |
| D．The faintness of the sun. |
| A．Large asteroids had no impact on Mars. |
| B．Deep valleys couldn’t be formed in a short period of time. |
| C．Volcanic eruptions were very frequent on Mars. |
| D．Carbon dioxide and hydrogen were abundant in the atmosphere. |
| A．Carbon dioxide and hydrogen would not be changed. |
| B．The greenhouse gases played an important role in this cycle. |
| C．The climate cycles would experience three times in total. |
| D．Hot environment and a large amount of water would accelerate certain chemical reactions to generate carbon dioxide. |
| A．Climate Cycles Could Have Carved Canyons on Mars |
| B．Large Asteroid Impacts on the Red Planet |
| C．Liquid Water Existing on Mars |
| D．Ancient River Valleys Have Been Found on Mars |
8 . 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. |
9 . Earth’s oceans are changing color and climate breakdown is probably to blame, according to a research. The deep blue sea is actually becoming steadily greener over time, according to the study, with areas in the low latitudes(纬度)near the equator especially affected.
“The reason why we care about this is not that we care about the color, but that the color is a reflection of the changes in the state of the ecosystem,” said BB Cael, a scientist and author of the study published in Nature.
The previous research focused on changes in the greenness of the ocean to learn about trends in the changing climate. But Cael’s team pored over 20 years of observations by NASA’s Modis-Aqua satellite, a comprehensive database, and looked for patterns of change in the ocean’s color through a fuller color spectrum(色谱)including red and blue.
The changes have been detected in over 56% of the world’s oceans. In most areas there’s a clear “greening effect”, Cael said, but he added that there are also places where red or blue colorings are rising or falling. “These are not massive ecosystem-destroying changes. They may be mild,” said Cael. “But this gives us an additional piece of evidence that human activity is likely affecting large parts of the global biosphere(生物圈)in a way that we haven’t been able to understand. ”
Although this discovery firmly documents another consequence of a changing climate, what is not yet clear is how strong these changes are and what is happening inside the ocean to cause them, according to Michael J Behrenfeld, a researcher of ocean productivity, who was not involved in the research.
NASA will be launching an advanced satellite mission in January 2024 called Pace which will also measure hundreds of colors in the ocean instead of a handful, progressing studies like these further. “Making more meaningful inferences about what the changes actually are is definitely a big next step,” said Cael.
1. Why should attention be drawn to the changing color of oceans?| A．It reflects ecosystem changes. |
| B．It causes climate breakdown. |
| C．Human activities are affected. |
| D．Low latitude areas are influenced. |
| A．Copied. | B．Covered. | C．Studied. | D．Borrowed. |
| A．Unclear. | B．Dismissive. | C．Objective. | D．Indifferent. |
| A．Pace’s function. |
| B．Cael’s suggestions. |
| C．Meaningful inferences. |
| D．NASA’s further research plans. |
10 . The United States space agency, NASA, says its Mars exploration vehicle recently recorded a high level of methane gas on the planet. The discovery is exciting because the presence of methane gas could support the case for life on Mars.
NASA’s Curiosity vehicle recently recorded the largest level of methane ever measured during its 7-year Mars mission.
Methane has no color or smell. A special instrument on Curiosity’s Mars Science Laboratory recorded the increased gas level. It measures levels of chemical elements and gases in the Martian atmosphere. In addition to methane, it can record levels of water and carbon dioxide.
Nearly all the methane gas found in Earth’s atmosphere is produced by living things. It usually comes from animal and plant life. But it can also be formed by geological (地质的) processes, such as interactions between rocks and water.
It was not the first time that Curiosity had found methane gas in the Martian atmosphere. About a year ago, NASA announced that Curiosity had discovered sharp seasonal increases in the gas. This time NASA said the measured methane gas level was clearly larger than any others observed in the past. “It’s exciting because microbial (微生物的) life is an important source of methane on Earth,” NASA said in a statement announcing the discovery.
However, Curiosity’s team carried out a follow-up methane experiment that showed a sharp drop in levels of the gas. “That number was close to the background levels Curiosity sees all the time,” NASA said. The rise and fall of the methane gas levels left NASA scientists with more questions than answers.
“The methane mystery continues,” said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity’s project scientist, “we’re more active in keeping measuring and putting our brains together to figure out how methane behaves in the Martian atmosphere.”
1. What can we know about methane gas?| A．It is highly necessary for Mars. | B．It can easily be found anywhere. |
| C．It is mainly related to biological activity. | D．It smells more or less like carbon dioxide. |
| A．Humans have known much about Mars. | B．There will be more methane gas on Mars. |
| C．There is no progress in the 7 years’ research. | D．The level of methane gas on Mars is changeable. |
| A．Life may exist on Mars. | B．Methane gas on Mars is increasing fast. |
| C．The mystery about Mars will be solved soon. | D．They know where methane gas on Mars is from. |
| A．Worried. | B．Stressed. | C．Confident. | D．Serious |
