问题 单项选择题

Passage Two

When imaginative men turn their eyes towards space and wonder whether life exists in any part of it, they may cheer themselves by remembering that life need not resemble closely the life that exists on Earth. Mars looks like the only planet where life like ours could exist, and even this is doubtful. But there may be other kinds of life based on other kinds of chemistry, and they may multiply on Venus or Jupiter. At least we cannot prove at present that they do not.
Even more interesting is the possibility that life on their planets may be in a more advanced stage of evolution. Present-day man is in a peculiar and probably temporary stage. His individual units retain a p sense of personality. They are, in fact, still capable under favorable circumstances of leading individual lives. But man’s societies are already sufficiently developed to have enormously more power and effectiveness than the individuals have.
It is not likely that this transitional situation will continue very long on the evolutionary time scale. Fifty thousand years from now man’s societies may have become so close-knit that the individuals retain no sense of separate personality. Then little distinction will remain between the organic parts of the multiple organism and the inorganic parts (machines) that have been constructed by it. A million years further on man and his machines may have merged as closely as the muscles of the human body and the nerve cells that set them in motion.
The explorers of space should be prepared for some such situation. If they arrive on a foreign planet that has reached an advanced stage (and this is by no means impossible), they may find it being inhabited by a single large organism composed of many closely cooperating units.
The units may be "secondary"—machines created millions of years ago by a previous form of life and given the will and ability to survive and reproduce. They may be built entirely of metals and other durable (耐用的) materials. If this is the case, they may be much more tolerant of their environment, multiplying under conditions that would destroy immediately any organism made of carbon compounds and dependent on the familiar carbon cycle.
Such creatures might be relics of a past age, many millions of years ago, when their planet was favorable to the origin of life, or they might be immigrants from a favored planet.

According to this passage, some people believe that eventually ______ .

A.human societies will be much more cooperative

B.man will live in a highly organized world

C.machines will replace man

D.living beings will disappear from Earth

答案

参考答案:C

解析:细节题。本题是对人类前途的一种推测。根据作者的看法,人体的有机部件和无机的机械装置会融为一体,经过这个短暂的过渡时期后,由碳化合物构成的有机物将最终被取代,因此C为正确答案。

阅读理解

Short and shy, Ben Saunders was the last kid in his class picked for any sports team. "Football, tennis,cricket — anything with a round ball, I was useless." he says now with a laugh. But back then he was the object of jokes in school gym classes in England's rural Devonshire.

It was a mountain bike he received for his 15th birthday that changed him. At first the teen went biking alone in a nearby forest. Then he began to cycle along with a runner friend. Gradually, Saunders set his mind building up his body, increasing his speed, strength and endurance. At age 18, he ran his first marathon.

The following year, he met John Ridgway, who became famous in the 1960s for rowing an open boat across the Atlantic Ocean. Saunders was hired as an instructor at Ridgway's school of Adventure in Scotland, where he learned about the older man's cold-water exploits (成就). Intrigued, Saunders read all he could about Arctic explorers and North Pole expeditions, then decided that this would be his future.

Journeys to the Pole aren't the usual holidays for British country boys, and many people dismissed his dream as fantasy. "John Ridgway was one of the few who didn't say, 'You are completely crazy,'" Saunders says.

In 2001, after becoming a skilled skier, Saunders started his first long-distance expedition toward the North Pole. He suffered frostbite, had a closer encounter (遭遇) with a polar bear and pushed his body to the limit.

Saunders has since become the youngest person to ski alone to the North Pole, and he's skied more of the Arctic by himself than any other Briton. His old playmates would not believe the transformation.

This October, Saunders, 27, heads south to explore from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole and back, an 1800-mile journey that has never been completed on skis.

小题1:The turning point in Saunders'life came when ________.

A.he started to play ball games

B.he got a mountain bike at age 15

C.he ran his first marathon at age 18

D.he started to receive Ridgway's training小题2:We can learn from the text that Ridgway ________.

A.dismissed Saunders' dream as fantasy

B.built up his body together with Saunders

C.hired Saunders for his cold-water experience

D.won his fame for his voyage across the Atlantic小题3:What do we know about Saunders?

A.He once worked at a school in Scotland.

B.He followed Ridgway to explore the North Pole.

C.He was chosen for the school sports team as a kid.

D.He was the first Briton to ski alone to the North Pole.小题4:The underlined word "Intrigued" in the third paragraph probably means ________.

A.Excited

B.Convinced

C.Delighted

D.Fascinated小题5:It can be inferred that Saunders' journey to the North Pole ________.

A.was accompanied by his old playmates

B.set a record in the North Pole expedition

C.was supported by other Arctic explorers

D.made him well-known in the 1960s

名词解释