2024年专四阅读练习：太空探索

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　　太空探索

　　If our solar system has a Hell. it's Venus. The air ischoked with foul and corrosive sulfur. heaved fromancient volcanoes and feeding acid clouds above. Although the second planet is a step farther fromthe sunthan Mercury, a runaway greenhouse effectmakes it hotter indeed. It's the hottest of the nineplants, a toasty 900 degrees Fahrenheit of baking rocky flats from equator to poles. All thisunder a crushing atmospheric pressure 90 times that of where you're sitting now. From theearthly perspective, a dead end. It must be lifeless.

　　"Venus has nothing," is the blunt word from planetologist Kevin Zahnle of NASA AmesResearch Center in California's Silicon Valley. "We've written it off. "

　　Yet a small group of advanced life-forms on Earth begs to differ. and theorizes that bizarremicrobial ecosystems might have once populated Venus and. in fact. may be there still. Members of this loose band of researchers suggest that their colleagues have water too muchon the brain, and are, in a sense, H2O chauvinists(盲目的爱国者).

　　"Astrobiologists are neglecting Venus due more io narrow thinking than actual knowledge of theenvironment,or environments. where life can thrive." says Dirk Schulze-Makuch, ageobiologist at the University of Texas at El Paso who recently co-authored a Venus-boostingpaper in Astrobiology wich colleague Louis Irwin.

　　The bias against life on Venus is partly rooted in our own biology. Human experience instructsthat liquidwater, preferably lot of it. is essential for life. In search for extraterrestrial life, weobsess over small rivers in Mars' surface apparently carved by ancient gushes of water. anddelight in hints of permafrost (永久冻结带) just underneath its surface. (By comparison. Venusisn't even that interesting to look at:A boring cue ball (台球的白色母球) for backyardastronomers, its clouds reflects 75% of visible light.) Attention and then funding follow thewater: Three more landers will depart for Mars this spring. and serious plans for sample-return missions hover in the midterm future.

　　"If you have limited resources, you base exploration on what you know." says Arizona StateUniversity planetary geologist Ronal Greeley. It's like losing your keys on the way home alnight: The first place you look is under the streetlights not because they're more likely to bethere. but because if they are. you’llspot them. For astrobiologists. the streetlights are thespectral (光谱的) lines for water. and they've spotted that potential on Mars, Jupiter's moonEuropa. even Neptune's moon Triton. Not on the baking rocky flats of Venus.

　　1. Venus is the hottest of all the nine planets inthe solar system because_____________.

　　A) it is not so close to the sun as Mercury

　　B) many volcanoes spread the whole planet

　　C) it is covered by a thick layer of cloud

　　D) greenhouse effect is uncontrollable on it

　　2. Some planetologists believed there had never been lives on Venusbecause____________.

　　A) they couldn't find any trace of water on it

　　B) they found Venus is too hot for any Jives

　　C) Venus is covered by dirty and poisonous cloud

　　D) Venus is the second nearest planet to the sun

　　3. It can be inferred from the passage that the small group of advanced lifeforms onEarth believed that_____________.

　　A) life could exist in hot environment

　　B) life could exist without water

　　C) there are still lives on Venus

　　D) There used to be lives on Mars

　　4. What do we learn from the passage about Venus and Mars?

　　A) The atmospheric pressure of Venus is stronger than that of Mars.

　　B) Venus attracts more attention and funding than Mars.

　　C) Venus is closer to the sun than Mars.

　　D) Venus looks more beautiful than Mars.

　　5. The purpose of the co-authored paper by Dirk Schulze-Makuch and Louis Irwin wasto_______.

　　A) introduce their findings about Venus

　　B) promote the exploration of Venus

　　C) convince others that there used to be lives on Venus

　　D) criticize omer scientists that they are narrow-minded

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