A black hole is a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light cannot get out. The gravity is so strong because matter has been squeezed into a tiny space. This can happen when a star is dying.
Because no light can get out, people can’t see black holes. Space telescopes with special tools can help find black holes. The special tools can see how stars that are very close to black holes act differently from other ones.
Black holes can be big or small. Scientists think the smallest black holes are as small as just one atom. These black holes are very tiny but have the mass of a large mountain. Mass is the amount of matter, or “staff”, in an object.
Another kind of black hole is called “stellar”(星球黑洞). Its mass can be up to 20 times more than the mass of the sun. There may be many stellar mass black holes in Earth’s galaxy. Earth’s galaxy is called the Milky Way.
The largest black holes are called “supermassive”(超大质量黑洞). These black holes have masses that are more than one million suns together. Scientists have found proof that every large galaxy contains a supermassive black hole at its center. The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy has a mass equal to about four million suns and would fit inside a very large ball that could hold a few million Earths.
Scientists think the smallest black holes formed when the universe began. Stellar black holes are made when the center of a very big star falls in upon itself, or falls apart. When this happens, it exploded part of the star into space. Scientists think supermassive black holes were made at the same time as the galaxy they are in.
A black hole can not be seen because strong gravity pulls all of the light into the middle of the black hole. But scientists can see how the strong gravity affects the stars and gas around the black hole. Scientists can study stars to find out if they are flying around, or orbiting a black hole.
When a black hole and a star are close together, high-energy light is made. This kind of light cannot be seen with human eyes. Scientists use satellites and telescopes in space to see the high-energy light. The gravity of a black hole may become so strong that light cannot get out when_.
| A．the star is going to die |
| B．special tools are used on it |
| C．other stars come close to it |
| D．it is seen from the space telescopes |
According to the passage, which of the following is NOT true?
| A．A black hole can be very tiny but extremely heavy. |
| B．The gravity of a black hole holds all light in its center. |
| C．Scientists observe high-energy light through their own eyes. |
| D．Some small black holes came into being as early as the universe. |
Which can be inferred from the passage?
| A．Every galaxy must have a black hole. |
| B．A galaxy is the center of the universe. |
| C．A galaxy consists of a large group of stars and planets. |
| D．Earth’s galaxy is called the Milky Way. |
What does the last sentence in Paragraph 5 suggest?
| A．Neither the sun nor the earth is as heavy as a black hole. |
| B．There is only one supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. |
| C．The supermassive black hole had existed before the Milky Way was formed. |
| D．There is a reason why the large black holes are called “supermassive”. |
The last two paragraph mainly focus on the question of _________.
| A．what a black hole is |
| B．how black holes form |
| C．how big black holes are |
| D．how scientists know about black holes |
A cancer-stricken British teenage girl said Thursday she had been moved by messages of support from around the world after writing an online “Bucket List” of things she wanted to do before dying．
Alice Pyne，l5，created an Internet blog in which she described her fight against a cancer of the white blood cells．“I’ve been fighting cancer for almost four years and now I know that the cancer is gaining on me and it doesn’t look like I’m going to win this one，” she wrote ．
For her list，the teenager took inspiration from the 2007 film “The Bucket List” in which two men who were badly ill，draw up a list of things they wish to do before they die．
On her list，at the site www．alicepyne．blogspot．com，she has included making everyone sign up to be a bone marrow donor（骨髓捐赠者），swimming with sharks ，meeting boy band Take That and getting a purple iPad computer．
Messages of support and offers of help quickly flooded her webpage and it became one of the most talked about subjects on Twitter．
“Oh, dear and I thought that I was just doing a little blog for a few friends!” she wrote after her site attracted huge attention．“Thank you so much for all your lovely messages to me．”
Pyne，who lives with her family in the northwest English town of Ulverston，revealed（透露）the management of Take That had arranged for her to see the band after reading her blog．A group of local lawmakers have also joined forces with the Anthony blood cancer charity to encourage people to join its stem cell register．What happened after Alice Pyne wrote her “Bucket List”?
| A．People around the world sent messages to support her． |
| B．People sent gifts to her from all over the world． |
| C．A lot of people offered to donate bone marrow to her． |
| D．The media called on people to help her． |
Alice Pyne wrote her “Bucket List” to ．
| A．catch people’s attention |
| B．say goodbye to a few friends |
| C．give comfort to two terminally ill men |
| D．express her last few wishes |
It can be inferred from the second paragraph that Alice Pyne．
| A．is unaware of her own conditions |
| B．is very sad to know that she will die |
| C．is calm to know that death is approaching |
| D．is still quite confident in fighting against cancer |
Which of the following is NOT on Alice Pyne’s “Bucket List”?
| A．To ask people to donate bone marrow． | B．To get a cool computer． |
| C．To swim with shark． | D．To meet a boy． |
Take That will arrange to．
| A．meet Pyne in person |
| B．help Pyne in any possible way |
| C．donate money to Pyne |
| D．invite Pyne to join the band |
In a cab, a woman seemed in such a hurry．She constantly rushed the cab driver to drive quickly．She was so absorbed in her own thoughts of getting to the airport as soon as possible that she was not aware they were going by a different route.
All of a sudden, a young man got inside the cab．He took her handbag in which she had put her visa, passport, and all the money for the trip.
The cab driver, who was in collusion with the robber, left her in the exactly middle of a dark street．She thought that she was rather unfortunate in the very situation.
During the very night, she was told a piece of shocking news．Tears came down her cheek．Flight 360, the plane that she should have got on board, had crashed．Had she not lost her important belongings, she could surely have lost the thing far more precious——her life.
Sometimes bad things really happen．There are times when nothing seems to go our way．So what should we do about it? We must get rid of all these frustrations and start all over again in the faith that we will get what we deserve．
Don’t waste your time and energy on things that can’t be changed．Continuous worrying will only affect your health and you’ll be doing much more damage than what was previously done.
What if it was the other way round? What if we never ran out of good luck?
There was a man who won the lottery．He became greedy and wasted all his money on everything he could get his hands on.
But when he one day made it to the front page of the newspaper again, it was a different story．He had been killed because of his riches．If you attain good luck, you can never be too secure about it．Life is so unpredictable．You never know what will happen next.
Live one day at a time．We sometimes subject ourselves to unnecessary emotional trouble．But please don’t forget: sometimes misfortune can be the source of happiness．Live for the moment．Do what must be done for the present and the future will turn out just fine．Believe me．And believe in yourself．As Captain Planet always says, “The power is yours！”The underlined phrase “in collusion with” in Paragraph 3 probably means “________.”
| A．was forced by | B．was fighting bravely against |
| C．was doing one’s best to beg | D．had cooperated with |
From the passage, we learn that ________.
| A．robbers are sure to get what they want |
| B．somebody never runs out of good luck |
| C．the woman was lucky to miss her flight |
| D．if one feels oneself lucky, he or she will continue to be so |
The writer presents the second example in order to ________.
| A．warn people of the danger of winning the lottery |
| B．tell people life is unpredictable |
| C．encourage people to buy lottery |
| D．persuade people not to be greedy |
According to the author, which of the following choices is the correct attitude to adopt to life?
| A．Never waste any time or energy because time is so limited. |
| B．One needn’t be worried or feel frustrated．Believe in yourself. |
| C．Even while everything appears to be going smoothly, we should keep fully alert. |
| D．Worrying about what you don’t have |
The passage above is intended to tell us ________.
| A．misfortune sometimes is a blessing |
| B．we should save up for a rainy day |
| C．fortune just goes with those prepared minds |
| D．both losses and gains go hand in hand |
The United Nations climate talks in Doha, Qatar, continued into their second week, Wednesday, as delegates from nearly 200 countries struggle to craft a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol, the global agreement on climate change that expires at the end of this month.
The negotiations are deadlocked （陷入僵局）over demands by poorer nations for financial help in coping with climate change.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called on delegates at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change to speed up their work on an agreement to address a warming planet.
“Let us be under no illusion（幻想）, this is a crisis, a threat to us all, our economies, our security and the well-being of our children and those who will come after," he said. "No one is immune to climate change, rich or poor.”
Delegates from nearly 200 countries --- rich and poor --- are in Doha to extend the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 global climate change agreement that expires （到期）at the end of this month, and to begin to forge a new agreement to replace it.
Two issues block the way forward. Developing countries are demanding that industrialized nations fulfill their pledges(保证)under Kyoto to reduce their climate-changing industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and to put new, larger emission curbs on the table.
The developing nations, led by China, are also insisting that rich nations provide more aid to poorer countries to help them cope with the effects of climate change, including rising sea levels and more violent storms.
In Doha Wednesday, Tim Gore, a climate change policy advisor for Oxfam International, a confederation of groups working on social justice issues, applauded efforts by England, Germany and Sweden to increase their climate aid and expects other nations to follow.
“Those announcements are truly welcome. And they shine a spotlight on those that have remained silent: the U.S., Canada, Japan, even Australia," Gore said. "But we need to be very clear as well that those types of announcements made in press conferences can be no substitute for clear commitments in the text that poor countries have come here to negotiate.”What’s the main idea of the passage?
| A．China plays an important role in The United Nations climate talks in Doha, Qatar. |
| B．The United Nations climate talks in Doha, Qatar, continued into their second week, Wednesday. |
| C．Developing countries want rich nations to pay for climate change. |
| D．Ban Ki-moon called on delegates at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change to speed up their work on an agreement to address a warming planet. |
What did United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in Paragraph 4 mean?
| A．Climate change will do harm to all the countries in the world. |
| B．There is no hope to deal with the problem. |
| C．Illusion（幻想）is a crisis, a threat to us all. |
| D．Ban Ki-moon called on delegates to cope with a warming planet. |
What does the underlined word in Paragraph Five forge mean?
| A．put aside | B．deal with | C．call off | D．work out |
Which of the following is Not true?
| A．Climate change includes rising sea levels and more violent storms. |
| B．All the industrialized nations will carry out their promises under Kyoto to reduce their climate-changing industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and to put new, larger emission curbs on the table. |
| C．Tim Gore thought highly of the efforts by England, Germany and Sweden to increase their climate aid and expects other nations to follow. |
| D．The U.S., Canada, Japan, even Australia didn’t make announcements to be responsible for the climate changes. |
Beauty has always been regarded as something praiseworthy. Almost everyone thinks attractive people are happier and healthier, have better marriages and have more respectable jobs. Personal advisors give them better advice for finding jobs. Even judges are softer on attractive defendants. But in the executive (主管的) circle, beauty can become a liability.
While attractiveness is a positive factor for a man on his way up the executive ladder, it is harmful to a woman.
Handsome male executives were considered having more honesty than plainer men; effort and ability were thought to lead to their success.
Attractive female executives were considered to have less honesty than unattractive ones; their success was connected not with ability but with factors such as luck.
All unattractive women executives were thought to have more honesty and to be more capable than the attractive female executives. Interestingly, though, the rise of the unattractive overnight successes was connected more to personal relationships and less to ability than that of the attractive overnight successes.
Why are attractive women not thought to be able? An attractive woman is considered to be more feminine (女性的，娇柔的) and has an advantage in traditionally female jobs, but an attractive woman in a traditionally manly position appears to lack the “manly” qualifies required.
This is true even in politics, “When the only clue is how he or she looks, people treat men and women differently,” says Anne Bowman, who recently published a study on the effects of attractiveness on political candidates (候选人). She asked 125 undergraduate students to rank two groups of photographs, one of men and one of women, in order of attractiveness. The students were told the photographs were of candidates for political offices. They were asked to rank them again, in the order they would vote for them.
The results showed that attractive males completely defeated unattractive men, but the women who had ranked most attractive unchangeably received the fewest votes.The underlined word in the first paragraph “liability” most probably means_________.
| A．trust | B．trouble | C．disadvantage | D．benefit |
Bowman's experiment shows that when it comes to politics, attractiveness________.
| A．is more of a disadvantage than an advantage to women |
| B．turns out to be a disadvantage to men |
| C．has more effects on men than on women |
| D．has nothing to do with one’s work |
It can be inferred from the passage that people's views on beauty are often__________.
| A．objective | B．supportive | C．old-fashioned | D．subjective |
The author writes this passage to_________.
| A．give advice to job-seekers who are attractive |
| B．discuss the disadvantages of being attractive |
| C．emphasize the impact of appearance on both sexes |
| D．make women pay more attention to their appearance |
All it took was a slice of Xinjiang cake to spark heated debates online over China's policy on ethnic minorities (少数民族) .
Since Monday,qiegao(cut cake) has been a trending topic on Sina Weibo, China’s main Twitter-like microblogging service.
The cake was a reference to Xinjiang’s famed nut cake, sometimes known by its old Turkic name baklava, a popular pastry across Central Asia and the Middle East. In Xinjiang, they are sold by Uygur vendors on tricycles who are known to charge dubious prices depending on the time and season.
The ethnic flare-up started after the Yueyang police from Hunan province posted a message on their official Weibo account. It reported a dispute in Pingjiang countyover an overpriced piece of nut cake between a Xinjiang Uygur vendor and a villager named "Ling".
Villager Ling got into a fight with a Uygur due to a misunderstanding. The verbal dispute eventually escalated into a fight and then a mass fight. As a result, two people were injured and Xinjiang nut cakes worth about 160,000 yuan (US$25,000) were destroyed. The total damage was worth 200,000 yuan which included a broken motorcycle and injuries to people. Local police have detained Ling. The 16 Uygur sellers were dully compensated and sent back to Xinjiang.
"Yueyang police incident" quickly became one of the most popular topics on Weibo. Yueyang police removed the post shortly after. As of Tuesday night, the topic was still amassing more than 66,000 hits.
The incident is just one of many similar cases of ethnic tensions across China, notably in Xinjiang province, where deeply entrenched social and racial frictions between the dominant ethnic Han Chinese and minority Uygur Muslims occasionally spark violence. Many Uygurs living in major Chinese cities are viewed by locals as thieves, crooks and even terrorists.Which of the following is true?
| A．The dispute is between a Xinjiang Uygur vendor and a policeman. |
| B．Nut cake is a popular pastry across East Asia and the Middle East. |
| C．The prices of Baklava will change according to the time and season. |
| D．The demand of the 16 Uygur sellers were refused and they were sent back to Xinjiang. |
How much did the broken motorcycle cost？
| A．160,000 yuan | B．200,000 yuan | C．40,000yuan | D．We don’t know |
What’s the best title of the passage?
| A．World's most expensive baklava |
| B．Ethnic tensions across China |
| C．Pay attention to the Uygurs |
| D．Misunderstanding caused a fight |
What can we infer from the passage?
| A．Yueyang police are afraid of the Xinjiang Uygur vendor |
| B．It’s not the only ethnic tension across China, |
| C．Many Uygurs living in major Chinese cities are viewed by locals as thieves, crooks and even terrorists. |
| D．Villager Ling got into a fight with a Uygur due to a misunderstanding. |