首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
SECTION 4 Questions 31-40 Questions 31-36 Circle the correct letters A-C.
SECTION 4 Questions 31-40 Questions 31-36 Circle the correct letters A-C.
admin
2012-09-10
20
问题
SECTION 4 Questions 31-40
Questions 31-36
Circle the correct letters A-C.
Male: Good evening and welcome to this month’s
Observatory Club lecture. I’m Donald Mackie and I’m here to talk to you about the solar eclipse in history.
A thousand years ago, a total eclipse of the sun was a terrifying religious experience - but these days an eclipse is more likely to be viewed as a tourist attraction than as a scientific or spiritual event. People will travel literally miles to be in the right place at the right time- to get the best view of their eclipse.
Well, what exactly causes a solar eclipse - when the world goes dark for a few minutes in the middle of the day? Scientifically speaking, the dark spot itself is easy to explain; it is the shadow of the moon streaking across the earth. This happens every year or two, each time along a different and, to all intents and purposes, a seemingly random piece of the globe.
In the past people often interpreted an eclipse as a danger signal heralding disaster and in fact, the Chinese were so disturbed by these events that they included among their gods one whose job it was to prevent eclipses. But whether or not you are superstitious or take a purely scientific view, our earthly eclipses are special in three ways.
Firstly, there can be no doubt that they are very beautiful. It’s as if a deep blue curtain had fallen over the daytime sky as the sun becomes a black void surrounded by the glow of its outer atmosphere.
But beyond this, total eclipses possess a second more compelling beauty in the eyes of us scientists ... for they offer a unique opportunity for research. Only during an eclipse can we study the corona and other dim things that are normally lost in the sun’s glare.
And thirdly, they are rare. Even though an eclipse of the sun occurs somewhere on earth every year or two, if you sit in your garden and wait, it will take 375 years on average for one to come to you. If the moon were any larger, eclipses would become a monthly bore; if it were smaller, they simply would not be possible. The ancient Babylonian priests, who spent a fair bit of time staring at the sky, had already noted that there was an 18- year pattern in their recurrence but they didn’t have the mathematics to predict an eclipse accurately.
It was Edmund Halley, the English astronomer, who knew his maths well enough to predict the return of the comet which, incidentally bears his name, and in 1715 he became the first person to make an accurate eclipse prediction. This brought eclipses firmly into the scientific domain and they have since allowed a number of important scientific discoveries to be made. For instance, in the eclipse of 1868 two scientists, Janssen and Lockyer, were observing the sun’s atmosphere and it was these observations that ultimately led to the discovery of a new element. They named the element helium after the Greek god of the Sun. This was a major find, because helium turned out to be the most common element in the universe after hydrogen.
Another great triumph involved Mercury ... I’ll just put that up on the board for you now. See - there’s Mercury- the planet closest to the Sun - then Venus, Earth, etc. For centuries, scientists had been unable to understand why Mercury appeared to rotate faster than it should. Some astronomers suggested that there might be an undiscovered planet causing this unusual orbit and even gave it the name ’Vulcan’. During the eclipse of 1878, an American astronomer, James Watson, thought he had spotted this so-called ’lost’ planet. But, alas for him, he was later obliged to admit that he had been wrong about Vulcan and withdrew his claim.
Then Albert Einstein came on the scene. Einstein suggested that rather than being wrong about the number of ,planets, astronomers were actually wrong about gravity. Einstein’s theory of relativity - for which he is so famous - disagreed with Newton’s law of gravity in just the right way to explain Mercury’s odd orbit. He also realised that a definitive test would be possible during the total eclipse of 1919 and this is indeed when his theory was finally proved correct.
So there you have several examples of how eclipses have helped to increase our understanding of the universe, and now let’s move on to the social aspects...
选项
A、religious experience.
B、scientific event.
C、popular spectacle.
答案
C
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://jikaoti.com/ti/MEtYFFFM
本试题收录于:
雅思听力题库雅思(IELTS)分类
0
雅思听力
雅思(IELTS)
相关试题推荐
Inventionwas(i)________theworkoftheancientGreekhistorians,whosewritingswerefilledwithlongandoftenpurelyfictit
Becausefolkartisneithercompletelyrejectednoracceptedasanartformbyarthistorians,theirfinalevaluationsofitnec
Herlecturegaveasenseofhowemptytheuniverseis,inspiteofthe____numberofstarswithinit.
Thepressureofpopulationonavailableresourcesisthekeytounderstandinghistory;consequently,anyhistoricalwritingthat
CarlaL.Peterson’sDoersoftheWord(1997),astudyofAfricanAmericanwomenspeakersandwritersfrom1830-1880,isanimpor
PART1Theexaminerwillaskyouquestionsaboutyourself,suchas:—What’syourname?—Whatnationalityareyou?—Whatpart
Whatsortofactivitiesdostudentshaveafterschool?
Questions28-29Completethenotes,whichshowhowtheapproachestodefining’talent’havechanged.ChooseONEorTWOWORDSfro
【21】Martinathinksthatnon-nativespeakerstudentscanimprovethesituationbybeing______.
ChooseTWOletters,A-E.WhichTWOrecentdevelopmentsinroof-gardenbuildingarementioned?AwaterproofbarriermaterialsBd
随机试题
窗体上有一个按钮,当单击该按钮后窗体标题改为“信息”,则设计按钮对应的宏时应选择的宏操作是()。
下列不属于右心衰竭体征的是()
国产天然气氨压缩浅冷装置2D12压缩机紧急停机操作的第一步是()。
根据《处方管理办法》规定,关于药品剂量与数量说法错误的是()
()是立足于国内生产的国际营销方式。
检验、评价和保持应急能力的一个重要手段是()。
信息是( )。
请认真阅读下列材料。并按要求作答。请根据上述材料回答下列问题:根据拟定的教学目标和重点,设计新授部分的教学方案。
有以下程序:main(){inta[]={2,4,6,8,10),y=0,x,*P;P=&a[1];for(x=1;x<3;x++)y+=p[x];printf("%d\n",y);}程序运行后的输
Scholarsandstudentshavealwaysbeengreattravelers.Theofficialeasefor"academicmobility"isnowoftenstatedinimpress
最新回复
(
0
)