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The marvelous telephone and television network that has now enmeshed the whole world, making all men neighbors, cannot be extended into space. It will never be possible to converse with anyone on another planet. Even with today’s radio equipment, the messages will take minutes—sometimes hours—on their journey, because radio and light waves travel at the same limited speed of 186, 000 miles a second.Twenty years from now you will be able to listen to a friend on Mars, but the words you hear will have left his mouth at least three minutes earlier, and your reply will take a corresponding time to reach him. In such circumstances, an exchange of verbal messages is possible—but not a conversation.To a culture which has come to take instantaneous communication for granted, as part of the very structure of civilized life, this "time barrier" may have a profound psychological impact. It will be a perpetual reminder of universal laws and limitations against which not all our technology can ever prevail. For it seems as certain as anything can be that no signal--still less any material object—can ever travel faster than light.The velocity of light is the ultimate speed limit, being part of the very, structure of space and time. Within the narrow confines of the solar system, it will not handicap us too severely. At the worst, these will amount to twenty hours—the time it takes a radio signal to span the orbit of Pluto, the outer-most planet.It is when we move out beyond the confines of the solar system that we come face to face with an altogether new order of cosmic reality. Even today, many otherwise educated men—like those savages who can count to three but lump together all numbers beyond four—cannot grasp the profound distinction between solar and stellar space. The first is the space enclosing our neighboring worlds, the planets; the second is that which embraces those distant suns, the stars, and it is literally millions of times greater. There is no such abrupt change of scale in the terrestrial affairs.Many conservative scientists, appalled by these cosmic gulfs, have denied that they can ever be crossed. Some people never learn ; those who sixty years ago scoffed at the possibility of flight, and ten years ago laughed at the idea of travel to the planets, are now quite sure that the stars will always be beyond our reach. And again they are wrong, for they have failed to grasp the great lesson of our age— that if something is possible in theory, and no fundamental scientific laws oppose its realization, then sooner or later it will be achieved.One day we shall discover a really efficient means of propelling our space vehicles. Every technical device is always developed to its limit and the ultimate speed for spaceships is the velocity of light. They will never reach that goal, but they will get very near it. And then the nearest star will be less than five years voyaging from the earth. Conservative scientists who deny that cosmic gulfs can ever be crossed will()

A. laugh at the very idea of flight
B. learn a lesson as they did ten years ago
C. find space travel beyond their reach
D. oppose the fundamental scientific laws

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The nobler and more perfect a thing is, the later and slower it is becoming mature. A man reaches the mature (1) of his reasoning powers and mental faculties (2) before the age of twenty-eight; a woman at eighteen. And then, too, in the case of woman, it is the only reason of a sort--very mean in its (3) . That is why women remain children their whole life long; never seeing (4) but what is quite close to them, (5) fast to the present moment, taking appearance for (6) , and preferring (7) to matters of the first importance. For it is (8) his reasoning faculty that man does not live in the present only, (9) the brute, but looks about him and considers the past and the future; and this is the origin of (10) , as well as that of care and anxiety which so many people (11) Both the advantages and the disadvantages, which this (12) , are (13) in by the woman to a smaller extent because of her weaker power of reasoning. She may, in fact, be described as intellectually shortsighted, (14) , while she has an immediate understanding of what lies quite close to her, her field of (15) is narrow and does not reach to what is (16) ; so that things which are absent, or past, or to come, have much less effect upon women than upon men. This is the reason why women are inclined to be (17) and sometimes carry their desire to a (18) that borders upon madness. In their hearts, women think it is men’s business to earn money and theirs to spend it--if possible during their husband’s life, (19) , at any rate, after his death. The very fact that their husband hands them (20) his earnings for purposes of housekeeping strengthens them in this belief. 5()

A. fastening
B. sticking
C. taking
D. seeing

The marvelous telephone and television network that has now enmeshed the whole world, making all men neighbors, cannot be extended into space. It will never be possible to converse with anyone on another planet. Even with today’s radio equipment, the messages will take minutes—sometimes hours—on their journey, because radio and light waves travel at the same limited speed of 186, 000 miles a second.Twenty years from now you will be able to listen to a friend on Mars, but the words you hear will have left his mouth at least three minutes earlier, and your reply will take a corresponding time to reach him. In such circumstances, an exchange of verbal messages is possible—but not a conversation.To a culture which has come to take instantaneous communication for granted, as part of the very structure of civilized life, this "time barrier" may have a profound psychological impact. It will be a perpetual reminder of universal laws and limitations against which not all our technology can ever prevail. For it seems as certain as anything can be that no signal--still less any material object—can ever travel faster than light.The velocity of light is the ultimate speed limit, being part of the very, structure of space and time. Within the narrow confines of the solar system, it will not handicap us too severely. At the worst, these will amount to twenty hours—the time it takes a radio signal to span the orbit of Pluto, the outer-most planet.It is when we move out beyond the confines of the solar system that we come face to face with an altogether new order of cosmic reality. Even today, many otherwise educated men—like those savages who can count to three but lump together all numbers beyond four—cannot grasp the profound distinction between solar and stellar space. The first is the space enclosing our neighboring worlds, the planets; the second is that which embraces those distant suns, the stars, and it is literally millions of times greater. There is no such abrupt change of scale in the terrestrial affairs.Many conservative scientists, appalled by these cosmic gulfs, have denied that they can ever be crossed. Some people never learn ; those who sixty years ago scoffed at the possibility of flight, and ten years ago laughed at the idea of travel to the planets, are now quite sure that the stars will always be beyond our reach. And again they are wrong, for they have failed to grasp the great lesson of our age— that if something is possible in theory, and no fundamental scientific laws oppose its realization, then sooner or later it will be achieved.One day we shall discover a really efficient means of propelling our space vehicles. Every technical device is always developed to its limit and the ultimate speed for spaceships is the velocity of light. They will never reach that goal, but they will get very near it. And then the nearest star will be less than five years voyaging from the earth. The author of the passage intends to show()

A. the limitations of our technology
B. the vastness of the cosmic reality
C. the prospect of planetary travel
D. the psychological impact of time and space

The nobler and more perfect a thing is, the later and slower it is becoming mature. A man reaches the mature (1) of his reasoning powers and mental faculties (2) before the age of twenty-eight; a woman at eighteen. And then, too, in the case of woman, it is the only reason of a sort--very mean in its (3) . That is why women remain children their whole life long; never seeing (4) but what is quite close to them, (5) fast to the present moment, taking appearance for (6) , and preferring (7) to matters of the first importance. For it is (8) his reasoning faculty that man does not live in the present only, (9) the brute, but looks about him and considers the past and the future; and this is the origin of (10) , as well as that of care and anxiety which so many people (11) Both the advantages and the disadvantages, which this (12) , are (13) in by the woman to a smaller extent because of her weaker power of reasoning. She may, in fact, be described as intellectually shortsighted, (14) , while she has an immediate understanding of what lies quite close to her, her field of (15) is narrow and does not reach to what is (16) ; so that things which are absent, or past, or to come, have much less effect upon women than upon men. This is the reason why women are inclined to be (17) and sometimes carry their desire to a (18) that borders upon madness. In their hearts, women think it is men’s business to earn money and theirs to spend it--if possible during their husband’s life, (19) , at any rate, after his death. The very fact that their husband hands them (20) his earnings for purposes of housekeeping strengthens them in this belief. 19()

A. but
B. for
C. though
D. while

We might marvel at the process made in every field of study, but the method of testing a person’s knowledge and ability remain as primitive as ever they were. It really is extraordinary that after all these years educationists have still failed to devise anything more efficient and reliable than examinations. 41. ______ They may be a good means of testing memory, or the knack of working rapidly under extreme pressure, but they can tell you nothing about a person’s true ability and aptitude. 42. ______ Your whole future may be decided in one fateful day. It doesn’t matter that you weren’t feeling very well, or that your mother died. Little things like that don’t count: the exam goes on. no one can give of his best when he is in mortal terror, or after a sleepless night, yet this is precisely what the examination system expects him to do. The moment a child begins school, he enters a world of vicious competition where success and failure are clearly defined and measured. Can we wonder at the increasing number of "dropouts": young people who are written off as utter failures before they have even embarked on a career Can we be surprised at the suicide rate among students 43. ______ Examinations do not motivate a student to read widely, but to restrict his reading; they do not enable him to seek more and more knowledge, but induce cramming. They lower the standards of teaching, for they deprive the teacher of all freedom. Teachers themselves are often judged by examination results and instead of teaching their subjects, they are reduced to training their students in exam techniques which they despise. The most successful candidates are not always the best educated; they are best trained in the technique of working under duress. 44. ______ Examiners are only human. They get tried and hungry; they make mistakes. Yet they have to mark stacks of hastily scrawled scripts in a limited amount of time. They work under the same sort of pressure as the candidates. And their word carries weight. After a judge’s decision you have the right of appeal, but not after an examiner’s. 45. ______ Is it cynical to suggest that examinations are merely a profitable business for the institutions that run them This is what it boils down to in the last analysis. The best comment on the system is this illiterate message recently scrawled on a wall: "I were a teenage drop-out and now I am a teenage millionaire." [A] A good education should, among other things, train you to think for yourself. The examination system does anything but that. What has to be learnt is rigidly laid down by a syllabus, so the students are encouraged to memorize. [B] The results on which so much depends are often nothing more than a subjective assessment by some anonymous examiner. [C] Examinations can be taken as a test of a student’s knowledge about a particular subject which would tell the student where he stands among others, and how much he knows and how much he ought to know. [D] As anxiety-makers examinations are second to none. That is because so much depends on them. They are the mark of success or failure in our society. [E] The student appearing for the exam takes it under extreme tension and pressure because he knows that he has only one chance to prove his worth and if he fails, he will be left behind for the rest of his life. [F] For all the pious claim that examinations test what you know, it is common knowledge that they more often do the exact opposite. [G] There must surely be many simpler and more effective ways of assessing a person’s true abilities.

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