题型:阅读理解 题类:常考题 难易度:普通
辽宁省抚顺市第一中学2020届高三上学期英语期中考试试卷
Most of us have looked up at the stars that fill the night sky and wondered whether we're alone in the universe. Indeed, the question of whether there's life out there has been something humankind's been asking itself for countless years. But thanks to China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), the answer to this question may come a lot sooner than we expected.
The telescope has a huge round reflector, which measures 500 meters across and has a perimeter(周长)of 1.6 kilometers. Because of its great size, it would have been both difficult and inefficient to get FAST to move like a regular telescope. Instead, FAST's designers came up with a great solution: its surface is made up of 4450 panels which can be individually adjusted. This clever design feature allows scientists to detect radio signals from any angle with a great degree of accuracy. "Panels can change their positions through connected wires and parallel (关联的) robots. We can control their position with an accuracy of 1mm," Zheng Yuanpeng, chief engineer of the telescope's panel project, told Xinhua News Agency.
FAST's engineers also had the task of finding a suitable location. As any interference would affect its ability to detect distant radio waves, it needed to be built in a remote area. Luckily, the perfect spot was found in the beautiful mountains of Guizhou Province. "There are three hills about 500 meters away from one another, creating a valley that is perfect to support the telescope," Sun Caihong, chief engineer of FAST's construction, told Xinhua.
And although it wasn't yet fully operated, FAST had already made great discoveries by October 2017. Since 1967, only around 2000 pulsars (脉冲星) have been discovered, yet FAST had detected six more by October 2017. Once FAST is fully up and running, we may finally have the answer to one of the biggest questions in history.
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