Орлова Г.Д. и др. Английский для бакалавров. Часть II

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I. Read the text ‘Is it possible to make predictions?’ and find the answers to the

questions:

1. What scientific and technological achievements of the past century affect

our lives today?

2. What problems does mankind face in the 21

century?

3. Does the text answer the question put in its headline?

4. Do you agree with Ch. Darwin’s idea stated in the text?

II. Translate the text.

Text 3. NANO-TECHNOLOGY AND

MICRO-ELECTRO-MECHANICAL SYSTEMS (MEMS) –

SYSTEMS OF SYSTEMS

Although microelectronics continue to shrink and more and more processors are

embedded in aerospace and electronic systems, even more drastic size reductions are

on the horizon. Nanotechnology works at the molecular level to create complex new

systems. Chip level integration, including mixing of technologies in the same wafer,

is just around the corner. As electronic and mechanical elements are combined on the

same piece of silicon, MEMS builds complex machines so small that they are

measured in microns. MEMS include systems that integrate electrical, mechanical,

optical, fluidic, magnetic and other technologies. The research is supporting the

integration of micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) gears and actuators into

semiconductor assemblies. Micromirrors that individually move can serve as a low

cost fiber optics switch. Familiar MEMs that total more than $1 billion in sales

include airbag accelerometers, medical pressure sensors, and ink jet printer heads.

We may soon have entire inertial guidance systems on a chip combined with a

GPS(Global Positioning System) receiver. How far can system size be reduced? Is an

entire system on a chip very far away?

Look around. Let your engineering imagination run. Keep in mind that, whatever

you envision, the chances are excellent. It will be a system or systems of systems, and

will require the experience of many systems and subsystems engineers to bring it into

everyday use.

( IEEE Aerospace & Electronic Systems Magazine, Jubilee Issue, October 2000 )

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I. Read the text ‘Nano-technology and Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems

(MEMS) – Systems of Systems’ and get its central idea.

II. Say which of the facts in the text seems to you the most interesting and new.

III. Find in the text and put down the key words.

IV. Use the key words to retell the text.

Text 4. WANDERING CONTINENTS

Anyone who has looked at a world map must have noticed how snugly the

coastline of Africa and the Americas could be made to fit together, if the intervening

ocean were removed. Modern geophysics has established that all of the Earth's

landmasses were indeed joined together in one supercontinent, Pangaea, hundreds of

millions of years ago, and that this supercontinent was broken apart, with the land

masses drifting to their present positions on the globe.

His idea took many years to become established. Speculations about the fit of

the continents go back to Francis Bacon (1561-1626), but the acknowledged “father”

of the idea of continental drift was the German astronomer and meteorologist Alfred

Wegener, who published the first comprehensive statement of the theory in 1912.

Wegener thought that the continents might move through the thinner crust of the

ocean floor, like icebergs ploughing through the sea, and he gathered a wealth of

evidence showing how well the continents could be fitted together like some global

jigsaw puzzle. But the idea of continents moving through the rocks of the sea floor

did not seem feasible, and found little favour until the 1950s, when the development

of new geological techniques provided conclusive evidence that the continents do

move.

The key evidence came from magnetic studies of the ocean floors. These

showed that the crust of the Atlantic Ocean floor is arranged symmetrically on either

side of a great ridge of volcanic activity which runs roughly down the center of the

ocean bed. The interpretation of this discovery is that new oceanic crust is being

created at the mid-ocean ridge, where it wells up through a crack in the Earth’s crust

and is pushing out on either side, steadily widening the Atlantic.

In other parts of the world the reverse happens. The North Pacific, for example,

has no oceanic ridge, but there is a deep trench running down the west of the ocean

floor, next to the Eurasian landmass. There the thin crust of the ocean floor is being

pushed under the continent, back down into the mantle where it melts and is

ultimately recycled. The net effect is that there is no change in the surface area of the

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Earth — spreading in the Atlantic and at other sites is balanced by contraction of the

Pacific. A piece of the Earth’s crust that is bounded by spreading ridges and

subduction zones is called a “plate”, which gives the concept of continental drift its

modern name, “plate tectonics”. In some places, two pieces of crust — two plates —

rub side by side, with no net creation or destruction of sea floor. This happens today

along the notorious San Andreas fault in California.

The whole process of break-up and re-arrangement of the continents may have

happened several times in the Earth’s history, and is responsible for building

mountain ranges, where continents collide. India, moving northward into Eurasia, has

forced up the Himalayas, which are still growing. By contrast, the line of the Red Sea

marks a new (by geological standards) crack in the Earth's crust, a spreading ridge

which is splitting Africa off from Arabia, and which may eventually cause this

narrow sea to expand into an ocean as large as the Atlantic is today.

Overwhelming evidence for the reality of continental drift, or plate tectonics,

was collected during the 1960s and 1970s. But the "icing on the cake" has been

provided only in the past few years. Using laser beams bounced off artificial satelites

in orbit around the Earth, it is now possible to measure directly the steady widening

of the Atlantic, calculated at a couple of centimetres every year.

From “The Courier”

I. Read the text ‘Wandering Continents’. Arrange the following sentences in a

logical sequence corresponding to the contents of the text.

1. Magnetic studies of the ocean floors gave the key evidence of the

continental drift.

2. Hundreds of millions of years ago all of the Earth’s landmasses were joined

together in one supercontinent.

3. The net effect is that there is no change in the surface area of the Earth –

spreading in the Atlantic and at other sites is balanced by contraction of the

Pacific.

4. Thanks to laser beams, it is now possible to measure directly the steady

widening of the Atlantic.

5. The idea of continental drift was stated by the German astronomer and

meteorologist Alfred Wegener.

6. The process of re-arrangement of the continents is responsible for building

mountain ranges, where continents collide.

7. New geological techniques supported the idea of continents moving through

the rocks of the sea floor.

8. Plate tectonics is the modern name for the concept of continental drift.

II. Find the sentences with ing-forms. Define their functions.

III. Translate the text.

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Text 5. OUR SOLAR FAMILY

Our solar family consists of the sun, nine known planets and their satellites,

asteroids, comets and meteors.

The most important body in this great family is the sun. There are few kinds of

energy on the earth that are not the gift of the sun.

The sun's mass is 750 times that of all the planets, put together. Like all the other

bodies in the iniverse, it is composed of the same sort of materials we find on the

earth. Of all the elements or building blocks of nature which we have discovered,

some 68 have been found on the sun, and none have been found in the sun which are

not now known on earth.

Our sun has a surface temperature of about 6,000°C. A star as hot as the sun

must radiate an enormous amount of heat.

Every square metre of the sun's surface radiates energy equal to 84,000 horse

power. Yet, the total amount the earth receives is only a very small fraction of it.

Here is a possible source of energy for the future. The age of the earth is about two

billions of years. The sun must have been in existence long before the earth was

formed. During all that time the sun has been radiating heat continuously, and still

continues to do so. To produce this great amount of heat would require the hourly

burning over its entire surface of a layer of highgrade anthracite coal sixteen feet

thick. If the heat of the sun were produced by burning coal, it would require an

inexhaustible supply to furnish such intense heat over this great period of time.

THE PLANETS

Planets, the most important bodies of the sun's family, are of greatest interest to

man, not simply because they are nearest to him, but because he lives, works, and

enjoys life on one of them. If somewhere life similar to ours exists, we must look for

it on planets, not on stars, comets, or meteors.

The sun has a family of nine planets moving around it in orbits that are ellipses,

and not circles. Their names in order from the sun are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars,

Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.

The ancients recognized that these bodies did not remain fixed, but were

constantly shifting their positions on the celestial sphere night after night and month

after month; so they named them planets, which means "wanderers."

Mercury is not only the nearest planet to the sun, but it is, with one possible

exception, the smallest of the planets. It is the swiftest in its movement about the sun,

and its year consists of eighty-eight days. Because of the difficulty of locating it in

the bright twilight, it has been called the "elusive planet. " Venus is the brightest star

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in the sky, next to the sun and the moon. When it appears as an evening or morning

star, it shines very brightly. It is certain that the planet has an atmosphere, since it is

constantly enveloped in clouds.

Of all the planets, the earth is the most important to us. It is literally beneath our

feet, and we can study it scientifically in greatest detail. Although we live only upon

its surface, it is possible to determine its shape, size, mass, motions, and their effects.

This knowledge has been gradually accumulated.

Jupiter is the giant among the family of planets. It has a diameter 11 times that of

the earth. Not only is Jupiter the largest planet, but it is whirling rather quickly,

completing a rotation every 9 hours and 58 minutes. In its movement around the sun,

however, it is rather slow, requiring almost 12 years to make a complete revolution.

Jupiter has a family of eleven satellites, and two of them are larger than

Mercury. Beyond Jupiter is Saturn, the second largest of the planets. It has a family

of nine satellites, one of which, Titan, is larger than our moon.

The most impressive thing about Saturn is its ring system. The rings lie like thin

sheets of silver around the planet's equator. There are three of them.

Little is known of the planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, they are so far away

that the most powerful telescope cannot reveal anything but small, illuminated

bodies. Uranus and Neptune are small when contrasted with the earth. Uranus has

four satellites and Neptune one; Pluto may not have any.

Because of the earth's rotation, we have day and night on the earth. Revolution is

the earth's yearly motion about the sun. The path that the earth pursues is called its

orbit. Although it is really an ellipse, it is so nearly round as to appear a true circle.

Mars aroused more interest than any of the other planets. When nearest the earth,

as it was in September 1956, it is an object of great beauty.

There are many ways in which this planet is similar to the earth. It rotates on an

axis in about the same time as does the earth. It has seasons similar to the seasons on

the earth, except that they are nearly twice as long.

Small bodies located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter are called asteroids.

Of these bodies, called "planetoids" or miniature planets, the largest is Ceres-

780 kilometres in diameter. Their origin is, as yet, not fully known. It is thought that

they represent small masses of matter that were not able to combine into larger ones

during the genesis of the solar family.

I. Read the text ‘Our Solar Family’ without a dictionary. Try to understand it.

II. Find the key sentence in each paragraph of the text.

III. Make up the plan of the text ‘Our Solar Family’.

IV. Speak about our solar system. Use the plan you’ve made up.

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Text 6. THE “OLD LADY” OF THE UNIVERSE

Japanese scientists discover the oldest of the known galaxies

Small wonder that the historic find is in the Coma Berenices (Berenice's Hair)

constellation, somewhere between the Hunting Dogs and the Virgin. That part of the

Universe contains the northern galaxy pole with a fantastic concentration of various

galaxies. This is the place to look for the astronomical superlatives: the biggest, the

oldest, the newest, the brightest, the most solid, etc. The galaxy owes its name to a

perfectly factual character, the wife of Pharaoh Ptolemy III (3d century B.C.), who

donated her luxuriant hair to the Temple of Venus in honor of her husband's victory.

When her gift disappeared, antique astronomers hastened to soothe the lady with tales

of Zeus taking her hair to heaven.

Modern scientists used state-of-the-art instruments and managed to figure out

that their find had been formed 900 million years later than the Universe itself.

This is a perfect confirmation of old astronomic theories that put the oldest

galaxies' age at 1/15 of the age of the Universe, which is currently believed to be 13.5

to 14.5 billion years.

The Japanese have been able to make their discovery thanks to the powerful

telescope named Subaru (The Pleiades), in the National Astronomical Observatory on

the top of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, which is the highest island mountain in the world

rising to over 4,000m above sea level. The telescope took eight years to build, from

1991 to 1999. Subaru has already provided Japanese astronomers with singularly

accurate pictures of Uranium, its ring system and main satellites, and allowed them to

watch anomalous phenomena involving protostars and the emergence of supernovas.

But why should scientists be so thrilled about these astronomical "old ladies,"

including their latest discovery? Especially since it does not seem to have much

longer to live: Before long this galaxy may be replaced by a black hole. Apparently, it

is precisely old galactic entities that provide the best opportunity for studying the way

of post-Big Bang galaxy clustering and the first such clusters emerging out of the gas

the Big Bang produced.

(Moscow News, April , 2003)

I. Read the text and outline its logical parts.

II. Give a headline to each part of the text.

III. Write the summary of the text in English.

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Text 7. WHAT SIZE COLLISION FORMED THE MOON?

The favourite theory to explain the origin of the Moon is that a large, rogue

planetoid about the size of Mars collided with Earth some 4.5 billion years ago. An

'oblique impact' or sideswipe by the intruder would have vaporised the upper regions

of Earth's crust and mantle, spraying the material out into space. From a gaseous disk,

the material slowly formed a series of hot moonlets which eventually came together

into the single, large Moon we see today.

The main problem with this theory seems to lie with the size of the original

impactor. New modelling work at the University of Colorado in Boulder suggests that

a Mars-size intruder would be too small to create the required volume of material.

Instead, the team suggest that the Earth collided with an object 2.5 to 3 times the

mass of Mars, leading to the formation of the Moon just 15,000 miles above our

planet.

There is, however, still a problem with this scenario. The larger impact results in

an Earth that is spinning too quickly. The new model produces a system with roughly

twice as much rotational spin as the Earth-Moon system exhibits today. The older

version provides the right amount of spin but not enough raw material. It seems that

our nearest neighbour is determined to hold onto its secrets for a while longer.

Peter Bond

ASTRONOMY NOW / SEP 1997

I. Read the text and note the important details.

II. Identify the sentences:

1. with the Subjunctive Mood;

2. with the Infinitive Construction.

III. Make a written translation of the text.

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Text 8. THE A TO Z OF ASTRONOMY

By Professor Chris Kitchin

Here are some simple difinitions of the more puzzling words commonly

encountered in astronomy.

Meteorite The fragment of a meteoroid which has survived passage through the

Earth's (or other planet's) atmosphere to reach the surface. Small meteorites impact at

their terminal velocity, but larger ones may retain some of their cosmic velocity and

hit at up to several tens of kilometres per second. In the latter cases an impact crater

will be produced and the meteorite will survive only as thousands of tiny fragments.

Most meteorites are found to be of rocky composition but about six percent are

almost pure nickel-iron. About two percent are formed from mixtures of rock and

iron.Two small but very significant sub-groups are the carbonaceous chondrites

which contain some simple organic molecules and are thought to pre-date the

formation of the Solar System, and the SNC meteorites which may have come from

Mars.

Meteoroid A small body independently orbiting the Sun. The meteoroids merge

into the asteroids at the larger end, and into the inter-planetary dust at the smaller end

of the scale.

Meteor shower A series of meteors lasting from a few hours to several days

which have parallel paths through space. Perspective means that the meteor tracks

appear to diverge from a point in the sky called the radiant. The position of the

radiant is often used to give the shower a name. Thus we have the Leonid (after the

constellation Leo) and the Geminid (after Gemini) meteor showers amongst many

others. The number of meteors in a shower can range from a few tens to hundreds of

thousands per hour. The particles producing the meteors are thought to be debris from

a comet which are continuing to follow the comet's orbit. The Leonids, for example,

originate from comet Temple-Tuttle.

Metonic cycle The period required for the Moon's phases to repeat themselves

on the same days of the month. Its value is 19 years.

Milky Way The faint irregular glowing band which circles the sky. It is a small

part of our own galaxy and comprises tens of millions of stars, each too faint to be

seen with the naked eye individually, but clearly to be seen in aggregate. It gives its

name to our galaxy; so that we are a part of the Milky Way Galaxy. Interstellar dust

restricts our view of the galaxy to within a few thousand parsecs of the Sun, and so

the Milky Way is just a small part of the whole galaxy.

Monopole An hypothetical magnetic equivalent to the electron. A monopole

would be a sub-atomic particle with a single magnetic (north or south) pole. They are

predicted to have been produced in huge numbers during the big bang but none has

yet been detected. This scarcity of monopoles is one of the arguments supporting an

inflationary period during the early stages of the formation of the Universe.

(ASTRONOMY NOW / SEP 1997)

I. Read the definitions and translate them into Russian.

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Text 9. VIEWS OF UNIVERSE

Ancient men wondered why the sun, the moon and the stars moved as they do.

For thousands of years men had watched the skies. They couldn't understand and

made up myths to explain the movements of the heavenly bodies. Greek astronomers

studied the heavens and finally most of them decided that the sun and stars travelled

around the Earth.

In the 3d century B.C. the Greek astronomer, Aristarchus had some very

different ideas. He wrote, "The Earth travels around the sun in a circle. This takes a

year. The moon alone circles round the Earth. The stars are very far away. The

Universe is very large." Other astronomers did not agree with him, and, of course,

people didn't accept his ideas. They couldn't agree that the Earth was moving. For

centuries, no one developed his ideas.

Nicolaus Copernicus was the Polish astronomer who began to study the Greek

writings of the ancient astronomers. He checked them and found mistakes.

Copernicus worked out formulas that seemed to prove that the Earth travelled around

the Sun. Finally he decided the idea was right. The Earth and the planets did indeed

circle the sun. Copernicus' formulas, however, still had the heavenly bodies travelling

in epicycles.

In 1513, Copernicus wrote a book about his ideas. He showed it to some friends

but never had it published. Year after year, he went on checking the orbits of the

planets. In his studies, he used homemade instruments. Often he checked the stars'

positions against those given in the ancient Greek astronomers' tables. He filled many

pages with his findings, but he did not always trust them. He did not publish them.

Copernicus knew that people were not ready to accept the idea of a moving

Earth. Copernicus did not want to go against his church's teaching, which declared

that other planets moved round the Earth. Once a friend came to visit him. He talked

with Copernicus and read many pages of his studies. He urged Copernicus to let him

put the pages into order and publish them. Finally, Copernicus agreed. Copernicus

did not live to read the printed copy of his book. It was placed in his hand as he lay

dying on May 14, 1543.

Today, we honor Nicolaus Copernicus because he helped people accept the idea

of the moving Earth. He dared to doubt the ideas held for centuries. He looked at the

heavens with his own eyes. Using math, he tried to show how the Earth circled the

sun. He was the first man to do this. Copernicus' book pointed the way to truth. Other

astronomers began to explore the idea of the moving Earth.

Read the text and complete the sentences:

1. The myths about stars and the Universe were made ______.

a) to describe them

b) to explain the movement of the sun and the stars

c) to help Greek astronomers study the skies

d) to show them in a poetic way.

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2. Aristarchus was the only astronomer who _______

a) never read myths

b) wrote a book that is recognised nowadays

c) declared that the Earth moved around the sun and the moon travelled

round the Earth

d) made other astronomers agree the Earth was moving

3. Nicholas Copernicus proved that

a) the sun travelled round the Earth

b) other ancient astronomers were right

c) his own formulas were wrong

d) that the Earth moved round the sun

4. Copernicus explored the Universe using ______

a) homemade instruments

b) a telescope

c) Greek astronomers' tables

d) a microscope

5. Copernicus didn't want to publish his ideas because _______

a) his friend was against them

b) Copernicus supported the church's view

c) people were not ready to understand them

d) Copernicus was going to die

6. We honour Copernicus because _______

a) he was an astronomer

b) his ideas encouraged other astronomers

c) he supported the ideas of the Greek astronomers

d) he always helped people

Text 10. LONDON BRIDGE

When the Roman Empire crumbled, most of the arts of civilization started to

disappear with it. They might have been lost altogether, had it not been for the monks

who preserved as much of the learning of the past as they could by writing it down.

The six centuries between 300 A.D. and 900 A.D. were grim and lawless times

for most people. Robbers, cutthroats, and highwaymen swarmed the roads, and they

were especially dangerous at river crossings. Travelers had all they could do to

manage their horses while crossing, and they found it hard to defend themselves

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