By Global Times

May 12th, 2022

______▲______

China’s Zhurong rover (祝融号) has found evidence (证据) showing that water has been on Mars (火星) much longer than expected.

Zhurong, named after the Chinese god of fire, landed safely on Mars on May 15th, 2021, making China only the second behind the United States to fully succeed.

Zhurong, the Mars rover, is 1.85 meters high and weighs about 240 kilograms. It has six wheels and four solar panels (太阳能面板) and it can move at 200 meters an hour on Mars.

The rover’s three-month primary mission (任务) was to search for signs of ancient life. It has done research on the minerals, environment and location of water and ice in the plain. The rover continues to research into its landing place and send information back to the Tianwen-1. The rover returned some information from its primary survey of the basin. It shows that Utopia Planitia basin had water during a time, but many scientists used to believe Mars to be dry and cold.

“Mars is the planet we are most likely to live on in the future. That’s why we want to understand it,” said Ge, a scientist in China’s space program. “Zhurong’s evidence of water on Mars makes great progress in future Mars missions!”

A．

B．

C．

D．

Mars is an empty planet, but that could change. Someday, it might have farms where fruit and vegetables could grow.

Growing food on Mars has always seemed hard. But scientists think they have found a way to do it. They put sheets (薄膜) of material on the ground. The sheets could change the cold, dry planet into land for farming. Robin Wordsworth worked on the sheets at Harvard University in a Massachusetts. He said the sheets could let people live on another planet. On Mars, the conditions are not good, though. Most importantly, the planet is cold and dry. The soil might have polluted parts, and the air does not have much nitrogen (氮气) that plants need to grow.

The sheets do not solve all the problems. Still, they could help to set up a place for plants. The plants would grow only under the sheets. So there is less worry about harming the rest of Mars. The sheets would cover the plants.

The scientists worked with sheets about an inch thick. Those allowed light through for plants. They also warmed the ground and trapped enough heat to melt ice on Mars. Placing the sheets over icy parts of Mars could let plants alive there. Their study was printed in Nature Astronomy. The sheets could be on the ground to grow water plants and they also could be hung. That would give room to plants to grow on land below them.

Wordsworth said, "You can imagine this being used in a number of ways. It could be used for visitors to Mars. Later it could be for people who live there. However, it's a pity that the sheets are being studied in the lab."

What do black holes look like? Human beings have wanted to know about it for a long time. In 2019, we finally got the answer: They look like dark circles with a bright ring around the outside.

Scientists took the world’s first photo of a black hole. Scientists didn’t use a camera to take the picture. They used eight radio telescopes (射电望远镜) in different places around the world. The telescopes got signals (信号) from the black hole. Scientists used computers to process the signals. It took them two years to get the final picture.

The black hole is very far from Earth—about 55 million light-years away. One light-year is the distance that light travels in one year. One light-year is about 9 trillion (万亿) kilometers.

This is not the only black hole in the universe (字宙). Actually, scientists believe every large galaxy (星系) has a big black hole at its center. The one in our galaxy is called Sagittarius A.

Black holes are some of the most mysterious things in the universe. This photo can help us learn more about them.