兩顆“超級地球”新行星

四川 仲開蓉

主題語境：太空探索 篇幅：304詞 建議用時：6分鐘

1An international team of scientists says it has discovered two new“super-Earth”type planets about 100 light years away,one of which may be suitable for life.Unlike any of the planets in our solar system,the nearly 1,600 known super-Earths are larger than Earth,but lighter than icy planets like Uranus and Neptune.

2Researchers at Belgium's University of Liège announced that they found another one while using Earth-based telescopes to confirm the existence of a different planet initially discovered by a NASA satellite in the same solar system.

3NASA's satellite found planet LP 890-9b,which is about 30%larger than Earth and orbits its sun in just 2.7 days.Researchers at the University of Liège used their telescopes in Chile and Spain to take a closer look at the planet with high-precision cameras.That's when the scientists discovered another planet, LP 890-9c (renamed SPECULOOS-2c by researchers at the University of Liège),which is 40% larger than Earth and takes 8.5 days to orbit its sun.

4Francisco Pozuelos, a researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia and one of the main co-authors of the paper, said in a news release that the planet could be suitable for life despite being a mere 3.7 million miles from its sun.Earth, by comparison,is located over 93 million miles away from our sun.“Although this planet orbits very close to its star,at a distance about 10 times shorter than that of Mercury around our Sun,the amount of stellar irradiation (恒星輻射量) it receives is still low, and could allow the presence of liquid water on the planet's surface,provided it has a sufficient atmosphere,”Pozuelos said.“This is because the star LP 890-9c is about 6.5 times smaller than the Sun and has a surface temperature half that of our star.”

5Scientists at the University of Liège then follow up NASA's findings with groundbased telescopes to confirm and characterize the planets.

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Ⅰ.Difficult sentence in the text

“Although this planet orbits very close to its star, at a distance about 10 times shorter than that of Mercury around our Sun,the amount of stellar irradiation it receives is still low,and could allow the presence of liquid water on the planet's surface,provided it has a sufficient atmosphere,”Pozuelos said.皮蘇埃洛斯說：“盡管這顆行星的軌道非常靠近它的恒星，且與其恒星的距離只有水星與太陽間距離的1/10左右，但它接收到的恒星輻射量仍然很低。如果它有足夠的大氣，其表面可能會出現(xiàn)液態(tài)水。”

【點石成金】本句是一個主從復合句。整個引號里面的部分都是直接引語，作said 的賓語；句中的連詞although 引導的是讓步狀語從句；at a distance about 10 times shorter than that of Mercury around our Sun 是同位語；it receives 是省略了關系代詞的定語從句；provided在此處為連詞，引導的是條件狀語從句，相當于連詞if。

Ⅱ.Text-centered chunks

take a closer look at 更仔細看；更近距離觀看

be suitable for 適于

by comparison 通過比較；對比起來

follow up 追查；將……深入下去