探索外星生命

陕西 李红娟

在他研究太空的一生中，德雷克的科学贡献及以他的名字命名的方程式，成为科学家们寻找外星生命的基础。

主题语境：人与社会 篇幅：313词 建议用时：6分钟

1Frank Drake was famous for searching for life beyond our planet. He established the methods still used today by those who hope to prove the existence of alien life. As a result, Drake was an astronomer known to just about everyone. After all, his search for radio signals coming from two nearby Sun-like star systems is covered in most astronomy courses.

2Born on May 28, 1930, in Chicago, Drake began his journey to the stars around the age of eight.“My father told me there were other planets in space like the Earth and this excited me. The idea that there are other creatures in space is fascinating,”he said. That fascination triggered many questions. It's the basis of so much exciting science fiction and the most popular movies ever made. It's just a subject that excites our curiosity.“What would those other creatures be like?Do they have technologies which we could benefit from?All of those things were the reasons that interested me,”he said.

3Drake pursued his boyhood interest and studied radio astronomy at Cornell and Harvard. In 1960, he conducted the first search for alien life, a project now known as the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI). He looked for signals from these alien civilizations by setting up a 25-meter radio telescope in Green Bank, West Virginia and aiming it at two nearby stars.

4To me, Frank was a friend and mentor. When we were both at SETI, his office was just a short walk from my own.He was always happy to lend an ear if I wanted to talk about astronomy or something else.He was never moody,never angry,and he didn't show theslightest annoyance if you walked into his office and took his attention away from whatever he was doing.That truly impressed me.

Reading Check

1.What was Frank Drake famous for?

A.His teaching methods.

B.His curiosity about radio signals.

C.His looking for alien life.

D.His experiences in outer space.

2.Who made Frank Drake become interested in stars?

A.His students. B.One of his workmates.

C.Some famous scientists. D.His father.

3.What does the underlined word“triggered”in paragraph 2 mean?

A.Mentioned. B.Caused. C.Solved. D.Ignored.

4.Which word can best describe Frank Drake according to the author?

A.Friendly. B.Sensitive. C.Mean. D.Humorous.

Language Study

Difficult sentences

1. Do they have technologies which we could benefit from? 它们有我们可以从中受益的技术吗？

【点石成金】该句中的which 引导一个限制性定语从句，technologies 为先行词，benefit from意为“从……中受益”。

2.He was never moody,never angry,and he didn't show the slightest annoyance if you walked into his office and took his attention away from whatever he was doing.他从不喜怒无常，从不生气，如果你走进他的办公室，把他的注意力从他正在做的任何事情上转移开，他也不会表现出丝毫的恼怒。

【点石成金】该句中的and连接两个并列句，其中第二个并列句中含有一个if引导的条件句，whatever意为“无论什么”。