ИНОСТРАННЫЙ ЯЗЫК В ТЕХНИЧЕСКОМ УНИВЕРСИТЕТЕ (956018), страница 44

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Biological approaches to supplying food, water, and air could not only save power aboard the station, but could also reduce the number of resupply trips required.

May be some day astronauts will have fresh bread on the sta­tion. But even with today's frozen dinners, they already spend 4 hours a day on meals and hygiene. Exercise takes 2 hours more a day. That leaves them just an hour of free time for the simple plea­sures of life in space: The view of Earth through the window. A let­ter e-mailed from their family. Microwave popcorn with a movie. And the friendship of the crew members with whom they share this tiny world.

Text 12D

Прочитайте текст, выскажите свое мнение о его содержании.

Time Travel and New Universes

It is known that for a long time well before Albert Einstein scien­tists were studying the ideas that seemed strange. Consider a few of such ideas now accepted by the scientific community: clocks that tick slower when they are on rockets in outer space, black holes with the mass of a million stars compressed into a volume smaller than that of atom and subatomic particles whose behaviour de­pends on whether they are being watched.

But of all strange ideas in physics, perhaps, the strangest one is the hole in the structure of space and time, a tunnel to a distant

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part of the universe. American researchers have determined that it will apparently be possible in principle for mankind to create an entirely new universe by using the idea of wormhole (ход, проры­тый червем; червоточина) connection. Such a universe will auto­matically create its own wormhole, squeeze through it, and then close the hole after it.

Although to many people such an idea may seem useless and fantastic, it can help scientists to develop their imagination and ex­plore how flexible the laws of physics are. It is such an idea that could give answers to some of the fundamental questions of cos­mology: how the universe began, how it works and how it will end.

The idea of wormhole comes directly from the accepted con­cepts of general relativity. In that theory A.Einstein proved that very massive or dense objects distort space and time around them. One possible distortion is in the form of a tube that can lead any­where in the universe — even to a place billions of light years away. The name «wormhole» comes about by analogy: imagine a fly on an apple. The only way the fly can reach the apple's other side is the long way over the fruit's surface. But a worm could make a tunnel through the apple and thus shorten the way considerably. A worm-hole in space is the same kind of tunnel; it is a shortcut (кратчай­шее расстояние) from one part of the universe to another that reduces the travel time to about zero.

In fact, instantaneous travel leads to the idea of wormhole as time machine. If it were possible to move one end of a wormhole at nearly the speed of light, then, according to general relativity, time at that end would slow down and that part of the tunnel would be younger than the other end. Anything moving from the faster-aging end of the wormhole to the slower one would essentially go back­ward on time. The type of travel, however, could be nothing like the mechanical time machine described by H. Wells. It is difficult to imagine how a human being could move through a wormhole, since it would theoretically be narrower than an atom and it would tend to disappear the instant it formed.

ДОПОЛНИТЕЛЬНЫЕ ЗАДАНИЯ

Упражнение 1. А. Прочитайте словосочетания из текста 12А и постарай­тесь понять значения выделенных слов.

1. life expectancy 4. life-support module

2. risky process 5. the next great adventure

3. key module 6. merely

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В. Подберите к каждому выделенному в А слову соответствующее ему по значению.

a. essential to d. expected period during which

b. activity full of risk, danger smth. is active and useful
and excitement e. °ⁿly, simply

с full of risk f* equipment providing an envi-

ronment astronauts may live in.

Упражнение 2. Найдите в тексте 12А:

A. Прилагательные с суффиксами -я/, -ous и -ive, соответствующие
словосочетаниям:

1. between different countries

2. connected with one person or part of smth.

3. connected with one country

4. that supplies reliable information

5. of technology

6. of the state, government and politics

7. coming earlier in time

8. important because of possible danger

9. full of strong desire to be or to do smth.

10. broad, extending in various or all directions

11. high priced

B. Словосочетания с этими прилагательными и приведите свои примеры.

Упражнение 3. А. Прочитайте текст и найдите слова, означающие:

height, propelling force, wished, be greater than, pressing, what remains, force di­rected forward, remain in space at one place, spending or using, thrust without losses, braking, small (not serious or important).

Solar Sails

If we are going to open the solar system to rapid economic travel, we need to find advanced space propulsion systems. Solar sails may be among the keys to future interplanetary flights.

Solar sail propulsion uses large, lightweight reflectors attached to spacecraft that react to the light pressure from solar photons to obtain thrust. By tilting (наклонять) the sail to change the force direction, the light pressure can be used to increase the orbital speed of the spacecraft, sending it outward from the Sun, or de­crease its orbital speed, allowing it to fall inward.

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A new type of solar sail, called a solar photon thruster, has a large sail that always faces the Sun for maximum light collection. The collector sail has a slight curvature (кривизна) that focuses the sunlight down onto a much smaller sail, which redirects the sunlight to provide the net thrust vector desired. Besides being more efficient than a standard sail, a solar photon thruster can be launched at Shuttle altitudes. Standard sails can only operate above 1,000 km where the light pressure exceeds the atmospheric drag.

Were a solar sail made light enough, it could «hover» without orbiting, the light pressure from the solar photons balancing the gravity attraction of the Sun and/or Earth. Then it would be possi­ble to use solar sails first for communication, broadcast, and weather satellites, second for scientific stations hovering over the Sun and the rest of the solar system, and third for transporting cargo to and from Earth, the planets, and asteroid belt — without an expenditure of fuel.

B. Найдите к словам в колонке А антонимы из колонки В.

А В

1. long a. absence

2. forward b. permanent

3. increase с. rapid

4. heavy d. short

5. slow e. lightweight

6. invisible f. complexity

7. changing g. rearward

8. with h. inward

9. simplicity i. visible

10. rise j. without

11. presence k. decrease

12. outward 1. fall

C. Составьте словосочетания глаголов из колонки А и существительных
из колонки В.

А В

1. launch a. study, investigation, research, ех-

2. promote periment, test

3. conduct b. speed, thrust, pressure, cost, drag

4. increase/lower с satellite, spacecraft, space sta-

tion, rocket

d. cooperation, development, tech­nical progress

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Упражнение 4. Заполните пропуски словами.

aboard life-support key facilities assembly supply maintenance stays weightless tool

1 systems of the ISS are expected to be the most ad­
vanced, they can ... cleaner air, purer water, better food, and more
sanitary toilet ... than on the space shuttle. 2. Life ... the station
may not be easy, but it is significantly healthier and more pleasant
than in the past, allowing astronauts to focus more on the scientific
research and station ... that occupy them for about 9 hours a day.
3. Thanks to the long ... on Mir station researchers learned that
bone loss did not lessen over time as previously thought. 4. In the ...
environment of space, everyday activities present new challenges.
5. The Mobile Servicing System to be supplied by Canada is a
four-piece robotic ... that will play a ... role in ... and maintenance
of the ISS.

Упражнение 5. А. Назовите 15—20 ключевых слов и словосочетаний на тему «The International Space Station».

В. Speak about:

Solar sail propulsion systems.

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REVISION OF LESSONS 10-12

Упражнение 1. Повторите инфинитив, инфинитивные конструкции, со­слагательное наклонение и особенности пассивного залога. Переведите пред­ложения.

1. The Internet is a great place to find and hear hit songs, mov­ies and recorded interviews. 2. It is imperative that the experiment begin at once. 3. If I were you, I should stop the experiment. 4. He wished he were a cosmonaut. 5. A new car model was much spoken about. 6. Nobody saw the professor enter the laboratory. 7. It seems to be an interesting comparison. 8. His experience in the field of materials science can be relied upon. 9. This theory is hard to prove. 10. The new discovery was often referred to. 11. We expect this book to appear in bookshops very soon. 12. Scientists appear to know very little of this phenomenon yet. 13. The main problem is for the report to be published as soon as possible. 14. Materials to be brought back to Earth from space laboratories will have some stable properties. 15. It is unusual for a program to work correctly the first time it is tested. 16. Some experiments on the ISS could re­sult in the development of clocks a thousand times more accurate than today's atomic clocks. 17. There are all kinds of life-support­ing equipment aboard a spacecraft as it is essential that cosmonauts should feel themselves as comfortable as possible. 18. Lasers are supposed to be able to solve a number of very complicated prob­lems connected with medicine. 19. One of the most important re­quirements for hypersonic craft is a sophisticated cooling system lest extreme temperatures should destroy the craft. 20. Educational system suggested by William Rodgers, the founder of MIT, proved to be very effective and to give a sound command of the basic prin­ciples of science and technology. 21. People always wished that there were a device that could vaporize the hardest and the most heat-resistant material. 22. A number of important innovations such as reducing the weight of airplanes and spacecrafts would have been impossible unless composite materials had been developed. 23. Scientists discovered superconductors to possess thermal, elec­tric and magnetic properties quite different from the non-conduct­ing materials. 24. The cost of electricity generation has been influenced by the development of electromagnets made with super­conductors. 25. To produce the superconductive effect, a Dutch physicist cooled a mercury wire below a temperature of —269 °C. 26. We know optical disks to store much more information than a plastic disk of the same size. 27. Laser was dreamt of by mankind

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for centuries. 28. The applications of laser in industry and science are known to be numerous and varied. 29. The appearance of laser was followed by the fabrication of ultrathin silicon fibers capable of servicing as lightweight conductors. 30. Some metals and glasses to be cooled down to the point of solidification in space can be brought back to Earth.

Упражнение 2. Прочитайте и переведите текст, обращая внимание на ин­финитивные конструкции.

Programming Languages

The only language computers can understand directly is called machine code. It is known to consist of the Is and 0s (binary code) that are processed by the CPU. However, machine code as a means of communication is very difficult to write. That is why it is neces­sary to use symbolic languages that are easier to understand. Then, by using a special program, these languages can be translated into machine code.

Basic languages, in which the program is similar to the machine code version, are known as low-level languages. In these languages, each instruction is equivalent to a single machine code instruction, and the program is converted into machine code by a special pro­gram called an assembler. These languages are considered to be still quite complex and restricted to particular computers.

To make the program easier to write and to overcome the prob­lem of intercommunication between different types of machines, higher-level languages were developed such as BASIC, COBOL, FORTRAN, Pascal, Ada, С and others. A higher-level language is a problem oriented programming language, whereas a low-level language is machine oriented. This means that a high-level lan­guage is a convenient and simple means of describing the informa­tion structures and sequences of actions to be performed for a particular task.

A high-level language is independent of the architecture of the computer which supports it. This has two advantages. Firstly, the person writing the program does not have to know anything about the computer the program will be run on. Secondly, programs are portable, that is, the same program can (in theory) be run on differ­ent types of computer. Programs written in one of these languages should be converted by means of a compiler into a lower-level lan­guage or machine code so that the CPU could understand it.

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С, a high-level programming language, seems to be very popu­lar today because it is small, so it is not too hard to learn, it is very efficient and portable so one can use it with all kinds of computers. A lot of software engineers use С to write commercial applications programs for mini, micro and personal computers. There are also various versions of С — C⁺⁺ and Objective C, which represent a new style of programming.

At present there is a tendency towards an even higher level of programming languages, which might be called specification lan­guages, and an increasing use of software development tools.

Характеристики

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