Mostpeople associate space with silence. But the story of how we came to underst-组卷网

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Most people associate space with silence. But the story of how we came to understand the universe is just as much a story of listening as it is by looking. And yet despite this, hardly any of us has ever heard space. How many of you could describe the sound of a single planet or star?

And you may wonder: How do we know what these sounds are? How can we tell the difference between the sound of the sun and the sound of a pulsar (脉冲星)? Well, the answer is the science of radio astronomy. Radio astronomers study radio waves from space using sensitive antennas (天线) and receivers, which give them precise information about what an astronomical object is and where it is in our night sky. And just like the signals that we send and receive here on earth, we can convert these transmissions into sound using simple analog techniques (模拟技术). And therefore, it’s through listening that we’ve come to uncover some of the universe’s most important secrets—its scale, what it’s made of and even how old it is.

In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell worked with Thomas Watson on the invention of the telephone. A key part of their technical set-up was a half-mile long length of wire, which was thrown across the rooftops of several houses in Boston. The line carried the telephone signals that would later make Bell a household name. But like any long length of charged wire, it also inadvertently became an antenna. Thomas Watson spent hours listening to the strange crackles and hisses and whistles that his accidental antenna detected...

As he correctly guessed, some of these sounds were caused by activity on the surface of the sun. So while inventing the technology that would usher in the telecommunications revolution, Watson had discovered that the star at the center of our solar system emitted (发射) powerful radio waves.

【小题1】How do the radio astronomers discover the universe’s secrets?

A．By watching.

B．By calculating.

C．By listening.

D．By measuring.

【小题2】What does the underlined word “inadvertently” in the third paragraph mean?

A．By chance.

B．On purpose.

C．In surprise.

D．On average.

【小题3】What did Thomas Watson discover from the solar system’s star?