题目内容
--Well, Dick. I'm sorry but I have to leave.
--______. I hope to hear from you soon.
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阅读快车系列答案US researchers have found traces of an anc
ient lake on Mars recently, increasing hopes of discovering evidence that billions of years ago the Red planet hosted life.
The lake, which dates back some 3.4 billion years, appears to have covered as much as 80 square miles and was up to 1,500 feet deep, said the team from the U
niversity of Colorado.
“This is the first clear evidence of shorelines on the surface of Mars,”said Boulder’ s research associate, Gaetano Di Achille, in a study published in the latest edition of Geophysical Research Letters.
“The identification of the shorelines and accompanying geological evidence allows us to calculate the size and volume of the lake, which appears to have formed about 3.4 billion years ago.”
Analysi
s of the images has shown the water carved out the canyon (溪谷) in which it was found, which then opened out into a valley depositing (使淤积) sediment (沉积) which formed a delta (三角洲).
“Finding shorelines is a great discovery to us,” said assistant professor Brian Hynek, adding it showed the lake existed at a time when Mars was thought to have been cold and dry.
Scientists believe the oldest surfaces on Mars formed during the wet and warm era known as the Noachan epoch, about 4.1 billion to 3.7 billion years ago.
The newly discovered lake is believed to date from the Hesperian era and postdates the end of the warm and wet period on Mars by 300 million years, according to the study.
Scientists believe deltas next to the lake may well hold secrets about past life on Mars as such places on Earth have become the natural deposits of organic carbon and other markers of life.
【小题1】The size of the lake found on Mars is ______.
| A．80 square miles | B．1,500 square miles |
C．3.4 billion square miles | D．300 million square miles |
| A．hot and wet | B．wet and warm | C．cold and dry | D．cold and wet |
A．Because similar places on Earth have become natural deposits of marker s of life. |
| B．Because someone has put secrets about past life on Mars there. |
| C．Because past life has been found in other deltas on Mars. |
| D．Because some people are said to have already seen life marks there. |
| A．The Noachan epoch was a wet and warm era. |
| B．The lake might have existed 3.4 billion years. |
| C．The discovery can’ t fully prove that the Mars once hosted life. |
| D．The lake traces prove that there exists life on Mars now. |
D
I shall never forget the night, a few years ago, when Marion J. Douglas was a student in one of my adult-education classes. He told us how tragedy had struck at his home, not once, but twice. The first time he had lost his five-year-old daughter. He and his wife thought they couldn’t bear that first loss; but, as he said, “Ten months later, God gave us another little girl and she died in five days.”
This double bereavement was almost too much to bear. “I couldn’t take it,” this father told us. “I couldn’t sleep, eat, rest or relax. My nerves were entirely shaken and my confidence gone.” At last he went to the doctors; one recommended sleeping pills and another recommended a trip, but neither helped. He said, “My body felt as if it was surrounded in a vice(大钳子), and the jaws of the vice were being drawn tighter and tighter.” The tension of grief(悲伤) — if you have ever been paralyzed(使瘫痪) by sorrow, you know what the meant.
“But thank God, I had one child left — a four-year-old son. He gave me the solution to the problem. One afternoon as I sat around feeling sorry for myself, he asked, ‘Daddy, will you build a boat for me?’ I was in no mood to build a boat; in fact, I was in no mood to do anything. But my son is a persistent fellow! I had to gave in. Building that toy boat took me about three hours. By the time it was finished, I realized that those three hours spent building that boat were first hours of mental relaxation and peace that I had had in months! I realized that it is difficult to worry while you are busy doing something that requires planning and thinking. In my case, building the boat had knocked worry out of the ring. So I determined to keep busy.”
“The following night, I made a list of jobs that ought to be done. Scores of items needed to be repaired. Amazingly, I had made a list of 242 items that needed attention. During the last two years I have completed most of them. I am busy now that I have no time for worry.”
No time for worry! That is exactly what Winston Churchill said when he was working eighteen hours a day at the height of the war. When he was asked if he worried about his huge responsibilities, he said, “I am too busy. I have no time for worry.”
53. The underlined word “bereavement” in the second paragraph refers to _____.
| A. having lost a loved one | B. having lost a valuable article |
| C. having lost a profit-making business | D. having lost a well-paid job |
| A. he couldn’t earn enough money to support his family |
| B. he was suffering from sleeplessness disease |
| C. he couldn’t get out of mental pressure |
| D. he felt tired of adult-education classes |
A. he hadn’t been able to spare time to mend them
B. he wanted to kill his free time by repairing them
C. the items had actually been broken and needed attention
D. repairing the items helped crowd worry out of his mind
56. At the end of the passage, the author wrote about Winston Churchill in order to _____.
A. prove that he followed Churchill’s example
B. support his student’s solution to his problem
C. show that he was successful in his career
D. make it clear how his conclusion was reached