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  3. " My very educated mother just served us nine pizzas. " Many American school children are taught this sentence to help them reme

" My very educated mother just served us nine pizzas. " Many American school children are taught this sentence to help them reme

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问题     " My very educated mother just served us nine pizzas. " Many American school children are taught this sentence to help them remember the order of the planets of the solar system. Soon though, this may change because, on July 29th, a team of astronomers announced the discovery of a very distant celestial body larger than Pluto. The researchers claim that the new body—which they are informally calling Xena—should be classified as a planet.
    The new body—temporarily named 2003 UB313—orbits the Sun once every 560 years. It is currently over 14 billion kilometres away, about three times farther out than Pluto, making it the most distant object ever discovered in the solar system. The researchers think it is part of the Kuiper belt, a ring of rocky objects that extends beyond Neptune.
    Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology, Chad Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory and David Rabino witz of Yale University discovered the object in data recorded at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego in October 2003, but its motion did not become apparent until they reanalysed the data in January 2005.
    The question of whether or not the new body should be considered a planet has rekindled the debate over what exactly counts as a planet. A handful of objects of similar size to, but smaller than, Pluto have been discovered in the Kuiper belt over the past few years. These have not been considered planets, mainly because they were smaller than Pluto. But 2003 UB313 is larger than Pluto. If Pluto is a planet, shouldn’t it be as well?
    The case is not so clear cut. Many astronomers argue that Pluto should not be considered a planet. It is more like a large asteroid, they hold. Meanwhile, Dr Brown asserts that as Pluto has historically been considered a planet, anything larger should also be considered one.
    Ultimately,the International Astronomical Union, a group of professional astronomers, will end this existential anxiety. Dr Brown expects the process to take months, and the team is not allowed to reveal its suggested name until then. Since most Greek and Roman names have already been used, he and his colleagues have previously drawn upon Native American and Inuit mythology for names. He will only hint that the new name comes from a different tradition altogether.
    Time will tell whether mother will be serving " nine polished xylophones", " nine pizzas" or just "noodles".  
In which case will mother be serving "noodles" ?
选项 A、The new planet is named after noodles.
B、The new object is not counted as a planet.
C、Both Pluto and the new object are not counted as planet.
D、Both Pluto and the new object are counted as planet.
答案C
解析 推断题。本题比较难，需要考生结合常识及英文基本词汇积累来解题。根据题干内容定位至末段。该段指出：时间会告诉我们妈妈提供的是九把精致的木琴，九张比萨饼，还是仅仅是面条。由这部分内容本身无法直接推断，需要浏览全文寻找答案。与此话有关的是文章开篇的第一句话：“My very educatedmother just served us nine pizzas”，接着第二句说许多美国学生都通过这句话来记住太阳系中各行星的顺序，可见这句话中隐含了九大行星的顺序。实际上这句话是一个藏头谜，即句中每一个单词的首字母与九大行星的首字母是一样的，这九个单词代表了九大行星，且出现的顺序与九大行星距离太阳的远近顺序一致，它们分别是：Mercury(水星)，Venus(金星)，Earth(地球)，Mars(火星)，Jupiter(木星)，Saturn(土星)，Uranus(天王星)，Neptune(海王星)，Pluto(冥王星)。接着再来看本题，本题问妈妈只提供noodles时意味着什么，很显然，那就是将文章开篇第一句改成八个单词，去掉了以P开头的单词，即：冥王星也不再被视为是行星，由此可知，新发现的天体同样也不会被归为是行星，因此应选[C]。[A]“新的行星将根据面条来命名”显然不合理，可排除；[B]“新天体不被视为是行星”是最后一段中提到妈妈仍提供“nine pizzas”的情形，即仍然确认冥王星为行星，而新的星体不是行星；[D]“冥王星和新的星体都被认为是行星”是指妈妈提供nine polished xylophones的情形，也即行星中多了一个名字以X开头的行星，这里X只代表该新的行星还未被命名。注意这几个词不应按字面意思理解，句中用polished或pizzas没有区别，都仅代表以字母P开头的单词Pluto(冥王星)。
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