新概念英语第三册课文内容55 From the earth: Greetings

2024-08-23 08:10:00来源:网络

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  Which life forms are most likely to develop on a distant planet?

  Recent developments in astronomy have made it possible to detect planets in

  our own Milky Way and in other galaxies. This is a major achievement because, in

  relative terms, planets are very small and do not emit light. Finding planets is

  proving hard enough, but finding life on them will prove infinitely more

  difficult. The first question to answer is whether a planet can actually support

  life. In our own solar system, for example, Venus is far too hot and Mars is far

  too cold to support life. Only the Earth provides ideal conditions, and even

  here it has taken more than 4 billion years for plant and animal life to

  evolve.

  Whether a planet can support life depends on the size and brightness of its

  star, that is its 'sun'. Imagine a star up to 20 times larger, brighter and

  hotter than our own sun. A planet would have to be a very long way from it to be

  capable of supporting life. Alternatively, if the star were small, the

  life-supporting planet would have to have a close orbit round it and also

  provide the perfect conditions for life forms to develop. But how would we find

  such a planet? At present, there is no telescope in existence that is capable of

  detecting the presence of life. The development of such a telescope will be one

  of the great astronomical projects of the 21st century.

  It is impossible to look for life on another planet using earth-based

  telescopes. Our own warm atmosphere and the heat generated by the telescope

  would make it impossible to detect objects as small as planets. Even a telescope

  in orbit round the earth, like the very successful Hubble telescope, would not

  be suitable because of the dust particles in our solar system. A telescope would

  have to be as far away as the planet Jupiter to look for life in outer space,

  because the dust becomes thinner the further we travel towards the outer edges

  of our own solar system. Once we detected a planet, we would have to find a way

  of blotting out the light from its star, so that we would be able to 'see' the

  planet properly and analyze its atmosphere. In the first instance, we would be

  looking for plant life, rather than 'little green men'. The life forms most

  likely to develop on a planet would be bacteria. It is bacteria that have

  generated the oxygen we breathe on earth. For most of the earth's history they

  have been the only form of life on our planet. As Earth-dwellers, we always

  cherish the hope that we will be visited by little green men and that we will be

  able to communicate with them. But this hope is always in the realms of science

  fiction. If we were able to discover lowly forms of life like bacteria on

  another planet, it would completely change our view of ourselves. As Daniel

  Goldin of NASA observed, 'Finding life elsewhere would change everything. No

  human endeavour or thought would be unchanged by it.'

  New words and expressions 生词与短语

  astronomy

  n. 天文学

  relative

  adj. 相对的

  infinitely

  adv. 无限地,无穷地

  solar

  adj. 太阳系的

  Venus

  n. 金星

  Mars

  n. 火星

  orbit

  n. 运行轨道

  astronomical

  adj. 天文学的

  generate

  v. 产生

  particle

  n. 微粒,粒子

  Jupiter

  n. 木星

  blot

  v. 遮暗

  analyse

  v. 分析

  bacteria

  n. 细菌

  oxygen

  n. 氧气

  realm

  n. 领域

  endeavour

  v. 努力

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