1 . The night sky has been an endless source of fascination since the start of human history. For example, the mysterious large-eyed, bronze statues of the ancient Shu Kingdom, discovered at the Chinese archeological site at Sanxingdui, were believed to have been able to look across great distances into the stars. In reality, humans can see very little of the night sky with the naked eye. And, for a long while, people were unable to understand what they could see.     1    

Our power to investigate and thus understand space changed dramatically when the first telescope (望远镜) was angled at the night sky, increasing as it did the power of the human eye and enabling us to understand that the universe is far larger than was previously imaginable. The planets were seen to be worlds similar to our own, many of them even having their own moons.     

    2     Some 300 years later, we learnt that the Milky Way itself was just one galaxy among billions of others, spread across the blackness of space like great islands of light and matter floating in a vast cosmic ocean.

Almost 400 years after the first Earth-based telescope was invented, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched into orbit, giving astronomers indeed all of us — the first breathtakingly beautiful images of our universe taken from beyond Earth.     3     It has also helped us to work out the age and nature of the universe, and discover the incredible fact that the universe is expanding at an ever-increasing speed.

    4     Currently, China operates the world’s largest and most powerful radio telescope, the FAST telescope, completed in 2016. The 500-metre dish of the “Eye of Heaven”, as it is known, is being used in the search for dark matter. This vast dish also has the ability to explore regions of space billions of light years away, right at the edge of the visible universe.

2 . Hoping to live on the moon one day? Your chances just got a tiny bit better. Researchers found that lunar pits and caves reach stable temperatures, making them potentially suitable for human life.

Planetary scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles have been doing the research. Although much of the moon’s surface temperatures ranges from as high as 260 degrees during the day to as low as 280 degrees below zero at night, the moon has pits and caves where temperatures stay at roughly 63 degrees Fahrenheit, making human habitation a possibility, according to their new research.

For perspective, a day or night on the moon equals a little over two weeks on the earth—making long-term research and habitation difficult with such extremely hot and cold temperatures. Researchers say these stable spots could transform the future of lunar exploration and long-term habitation. The shadowed areas of these pits could also offer protection from harmful elements, such as solar radiation, universal rays and micrometeorites (微小陨石).

About 16 of the over 200 discovered pits most likely come from collapsed lava tubes—tunnels that form from cooled lava or crust, according to Tyler Horvath, a UCLA doctoral student and head of the research. The researchers think overhangs inside of these lunar pits, which were initially discovered in 2009, could be the reason for the stable temperature.

The research team also includes UCLA professor of planetary science David Paige and Paul Hayne at the University of Colorado Boulder. “Humans evolved living in caves, and to caves we might return when we live on the moon,” said Paige in a UCLA press release.

There are still plenty of other challenges to establishing any sort of long-term human residence on the moon—including growing food and providing enough oxygen. The researchers made clear that NASA has no immediate plans to establish a base camp or habitations there.

3 . In a former gold mine a mile underground, inside a titanium tank(钛储罐)filled with a rare liquified gas, scientists have begun the search for what so far has been unfindable: dark matter.

Scientists are trying to understand why the universe is not what it seems. One part of the mystery is dark matter, which has by far most of the mass in the universe. Astronomers know it’s there even though it’s nowhere to be seen, because when they measure the stars and other regular matter in galaxies, they find that there is not nearly enough gravity to hold them together. If nothing else was out there, galaxies would be quickly flying apart.

The race to solve this enormous mystery has brought one team to the depths under Lead, South Dakota.

The idea is that a mile of dirt and rock, a giant tank, a second tank and the purest titanium in the world will block nearly all the cosmic rays and particles (粒子) around us every day. But dark matter particles, scientists think, can avoid all those obstacles. They hope one will fly into the liquid xenon (疝气) in the inner tank and smash into a xenon nucleus (原子核), revealing its existence in a flash of light seen by a device called “the time projection chamber.”

Scientists announced Thursday that the five-year, $60 million search finally got underway two months ago after a delay caused by the pandemic. So far the device has found...nothing. At least no dark matter.

And if all their calculations and theories are right, they figure they’ll see only a couple signs of dark matter a year. By the time the experiment finishes, the chance of finding dark matter with this device is probably less than 50% but more than 10%.

While that’s far from a sure thing, “you need a little enthusiasm,” said Kevin Lesko, a physicist at Lawrence Berkeley Naonal Laboratory. “You don’t go into rare search physics without some hope of finding something.”

These scientists tried to a similar, smaller experiment here years ago. After coming up empty, they figured they had to go much bigger. Another large-scale experiment is underway in Italy run by a rival team, but no results have been announced so far.

8 . You look up at the sky on a clear and dark night, you’ll see more stars than your eyes can count. Most of these stars have planets, similar to our own, orbiting them. With so many celestial bodies floating out in space, you can’t help but question whether other forms of life exist in the universe. And if that’s the case, is it possible to contact them?

Science is still somewhat divided on this issue. Currently, no evidence exists to suggest that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe. Yet with an estimated one trillion planets in our galaxy alone, it seems highly likely that Earthlings aren’t the only intelligent creatures out there. Some claim that life can only develop under perfect circumstances, and Earth is perhaps the only example of this. Other scientists object to this claim, and point out that even on Earth, life can find a way under the most extreme circumstances.

Some people believe that aliens have already visited our planet, but this information is being kept secret by governments. The most famous incident of this kind occurred in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. On that date, many residents reported seeing an unusual flying disc streak through the sky, before it crashed in a field. When the military heard about the crash, they quickly sealed off the area. A few hours later, the army base announced that it had recovered a flying disk. Shortly after, this statement was retracted and it was said that it was a weather balloon that crashed. However, years later one local mortician even claimed that the military had him secretly perform an autopsy on a dead alien body.

Others believe that there certainly are other life forms out there, but the distance between us is too great. Even if we could somehow create a spaceship that travels at the speed of light, it would still probably take several lifetimes to reach them. Then again, we might never have to do this if aliens reach us first.

On 15 May, the China National Space Administration (CNSA)       1    (say) that its Zhurong rover（探测器）had landed on Mars.

Zhurong is named after the god of fire in ancient Chinese mythology (神话). The rover       2     was sent to Mars on board the Tianwen-1 spacecraft took off in July 2020. Tianwen-1 has been moving around Mars since February this year,       3    (take) pictures of the surface to find the safest place for the rover       4    (land).

Zhurong landed in a part of Mars       5    (know) as Utopia Planitia. It is thought there might once have been sea there. Over the course of 90 Martian days, Zhurong will study the planet's surface. A day on Mars lasts about 24 hours and 39 minutes. The rover, which       6    (power) by solar panels (太阳能电池板), has cameras, a laser (激光)     7     a radar (雷达)．The radar will look for signs of water and ice up to 100 meters under the surface and the laser can be used to study         8     (rock) to see what they’re made of.

China has received worldwide praise for the       9    (success) landing. Thomas Zurbuchen, head of science at the US space agency NASA, said, “I look forward       10     the important influence this task will have on people’s understanding of Mars.

10 . A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, there was a large and magnificently brilliant star that shone across the young expanding universe. The light from that blue star travelled through space for billions of years, and then one day a few thin beams crashed into a polished mirror-the light bucket of the Hubble Space Telescope.

In a report published Wednesday in the journal Nature, a team of astronomers asserts that this is the most distant individual star ever seen. They describe it as 50 to 100 times more massive than our sun, and roughly 1 million times brighter, with its starlight having travelled 12.9 billion years to reach the telescope.

The lead author on the report, Brian Welch, gave the star a name: Earendel, meaning “morning stars”. “Earendel was found in a young galaxy known as the Sunrise Arc, and ‘morning stars’ seemed appropriate,” Welch said.

“This is one of the major discoveries of the Hubble Space Telescope in its 32 years of observation, ” said Rogier Windhorst, a co-author of the report. In recent decades, astronomers have seen galaxies at that distance, and even farther away, but galaxies are collections of billions of stars and the very distant ones have typically been nothing more than smudges of light.

Despite its mass and brilliance, Earendel’s discovery would not have been possible were it not for the cosmic alignment. Between Hubble and the star lies a galaxy cluster, WHL0137-08，which is so huge that its mass wraps the fabric of space, creating a power of natural magnifying (放大) glass that magnifies the light form objects behind it, a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing (引力透镜效应). Earendel sits on or close to that space ripple, causing it to “pop out” from the general glow of its galaxy because the phenomenon magnified its brightness at least a thousand fold.

In interviews this week, several scientists who are not part of the Earendel team praised the discovery, noting that further observations could firm up the claim and potentially provide insights into the early evolution of stars.