The unknown pervades the universe. That which people can see, with the aid of various sorts of telescope, accounts for just 4% o

admin2011-02-25  40

问题     The unknown pervades the universe. That which people can see, with the aid of various sorts of telescope, accounts for just 4% of the total mass. The rest, however, must exist. Without it, galaxies would not survive and the universe would not be gently expanding, as witnessed by astronomers. What exactly constitutes this dark matter and dark energy remains mysterious, but physicists have recently uncovered some more clues, about the former, at least.
    One possible explanation for dark matter is a group of subatomic particles called neutrinos. Neutrinos are thought to be the most abundant particles in the universe. According to the Standard Model, the most successful description of particle physics to date, neutrinos come in three varieties, called "flavors". Again, according to the Standard Model, they are point-like, electrically neutral and massless. But in recent years, this view has been challenged, as physicists realized that neutrinos might have mass.
    The first strong evidence came in 1998, when researchers at an experiment, based in Japan, showed that muon neutrinos produced by cosmic rays hitting the upper atmosphere had gone missing by the time they should have reached an underground detector. Its operators suspect that the missing muon neutrinos had changed flavor, becoming electron neutrinos or-more likely-tau neutrinos. Theo- ry suggests that this process, called oscillation, can happen only if neutrinos have mass.
    Over the coming months and years, researchers hope to produce the most accurate measurements yet. The researchers created a beam of muon neutrinos first. On the other side of the target sat a particle detector that monitored the number of muon neutrinos leaving. The neutrinos then travelled 750km (450 miles) through the Earth to a detector in a former iron mine in Soudan, Minnesota. Researchers then were able to confirm that a significant number of muon neutrinos had disappeared-that is, they had changed flavor. While their mass is so small that neutrinos cannot be the sole constituent of dark matter, they have an advantage in that they are at least known to exist.
    The same cannot be said for sure of another possible form of dark matter being studied by a group of physicists in Italy. If the result continues to withstand scrutiny, it would appear to be evidence for an exotic new sort of fundamental particle, known as an axion, which could also be a type of dark matter.
What does the word "pervades"(Line 1, Para. 1) mean?

选项 A、Be of higher rank or authority.
B、To spread through the whole extent of.
C、To gain the victory or superiority.
D、To make something come true.

答案B

解析 词义题;符合新大纲中仍然包含的“根据上下文推测生词的词义”的阅读理解要求。要结合句子和整个段落的意思来确定它的意思;从段落表达的意思来看,人类已知的部分只占整个宇宙的百分之四。而对于其他部分,都属于第一句中的“unknown”的部分, 所以未知世界和宇宙之间的关系,也就是unknown和universe之间的关系就确定了pervade 的意思。所以这里的pervade应当解释成“占据,遍布”之类的意思,结合4个选项,B选项的表述正反映了这样的意思,是正确选项。
转载请注明原文地址:https://jikaoti.com/ti/d07RFFFM
0

随机试题
最新回复(0)