If we can't prevent the greenhouse effect, we can prepare forit. Suggestions include breeding (выводить) plants that need less water, improving irrigation systems, and many others.
However not all experts are convinced that the heat is coming. Some think that the use of primary energy sources such as coal could decline 60 percent by 2050 and, perhaps, "the opposite of the EPA scenario is true. If the rate of fossil-fuel use is going down, the amount of C02 we add to the air is getting less every year".
• Try to guess the meaning of the words given in italics in the text.
• Translate the sentences marked with an asterisk.
• Answer the following questions.
I. Is there a 100 per cent agreement on our planet's future climatic conditions?
2. If the EPA's prediction comes true, what should the people living beside the sea do?
3. If the EPA's prediction comes true, what will the climatic conditions be in different regions of Russia?
HOMEWORK
{to be done in writing)
1. Translate into Russian.
1. People seem to realize the potential dangers of some scientific discoveries.
2. The majority of the people questioned in a public opinion poll do not doubt science to do more good than harm.
3. However, 70 per cent of those questioned accept that scientific discoveries can have dangerous effects.
4. Nuclear energy is considered to be a high-risk area by 70 per cent of the respondents (отвечающий), with biotechnology and genetic engineering the second most mentioned.
5. There seems to be really a serious gap (пробел) in communication between the public and scientists about the goings-on in modern biology.
6. In view of this concern, it is perhaps not surprising that most (84 per cent) of those questioned felt that scientists and technologists should pay more attention to the social implications of their work, with 76 per cent of respondents saying that politicians should know more about science.
2. Translate into English. Use the Complex Subject with the Infinitive.
Model: Конечно, все мы слишком хорошо знаем, что такое загрязнение окружающей среды.
АН of us are certain to know very well what environmental pollution is.
1. Он, говорят, работает в учреждении, связанном с охраной окружающей среды.
2. Ожидают, что он приедет в учреждение к 9 часам.
3. Вероятно, он ответит на ваши вопросы.
4. Мы, конечно, понимаем потенциальную угрозу вашему региону.
5. Полагаем, что ваша проблема будет решена.
Part II.
THE UNIVERSE PUZZLE
UNIT FOUR
GRAMMAR: FUNCTIONS OF THE INFINITIVE
Инфинитив в функции определения стоит после определяемого существительного и выражае i'действие еще не реализованное, возможное или необходимое, которое подлежит осуществлению в будущем. На русский язык обычно переводится придаточным предложением, сказуемое которого имеет значение долженствования, будущего времени или возможности
The experiments to be made will help us a lot.
Эксперименты, которые необходимо провести, очень помогут нам.
Примечание: Инфинитив в функции определения, стоящий после слон: the first, the last, the next (the first to invent..., the last to use...), может не иметь модального оттенка и переводится глаголом в личной форме и том времени, и котором стоит сказуемое английского предложения.
Не was the first to come. — Он пришел первым.
Но
It was the first problem to be solved.
Это была первая проблема, которую необходимо было решить.
• Translate into Russian.
1. The information to be given in the next journal is of interest.
2. The subject to be dealt with is rather unexpected.
3. The data to be presented in the paper is quite reliable.
4. The investigation to be carried on is of great importance.
5. The scientific group to do the job is well prepared.
6. The results to be obtained can explain much in particle physics.
WORD AND PHRASE STUDY
V+ -ance/-ence = N emerge + -ence = emergence
• Think of verbs corresponding to the following nouns and translate them into Russian.
existence, coalescence, conductance, reference, difference, resistance, correspondence
READING (4A)
• First survey the block-scheme of the problem discussed in the passage 4A below.
The Universe
i
y
Problems I
Emergence of the Universe
Distribution of matter
Chemical composition
Life in the Universe
matter/energy -I
Hypotheses **.
I
Y
±L Big Bang i
Age characteristics I
Structure of cosmic systems
Superclustcrs
!
Y
clusters i
galaxies i
stellar systems I
stars/planets/ satellites
time |
space
Investigation tools
— Telescopes i
X-ray astronomy i
Spectroscopy (red-shift law)
i
Radioastronomy
I
Y
Optical astronomy i
Sensitive detectors I
etc.
SUPERCLUSTERS AND VOIDS IN THE DISTRIBUTION OF GALAXIES
Rcd-shifl surveys of selected regions ofthe sky have established the existence of at least three enormous superclusters of galaxies. The surveys also reveal that huge volumes of space are quite empty.
Astronomers and cosmologists are much preoccupied these days with explaining the emergence and distribution of aggregates of matter in the universe. I low soon after the big bang, the presumed explosion of the primordial atom some 10 to 20 billion years ago, did matter begin to coalesce into the stars and galaxies we see today? Assuming that matter was more or less evenly dispersed before coalescence began, is the universe on the grand scale uniformly populated today by stellar aggregates of one kind or another? Recent observations by several groups of astronomers arc helping to answer these questions. Large-scale surveys have verified the existence of superclusters of galaxies: organized structures composed of multiple clusters of galaxies. Each cluster, in turn, may consist of hundreds or thousands of individual galaxies. Although the existence of superclusters has long been conjectured, their confirmation has been accompanied by at least one major surprise: equally large regions of space contain no galaxies at all.
Superclusters arc so vast that individual membergalaxies moving at random velocities cannot have crossed more than a fraction of a supercluster's diameter in the billions of years since the galaxies came into being. Evidently, superclusters offer an insight into evolutionary history that is simply not obtainable with smaller systems. At scales smaller than those of superclusters the original distribution of matter is smeared out by evolutionary "mixing". Astronomers hope that an understanding ofthe largest structures in the universe will clarify the processes that give rise to structures of all dimensions, ranging downward from galaxies to stars and planets.
It is impossible to determine who first conceived the idea that clusters of galaxies might be members of still larger aggregates, namely superclusters. As one reads old technical papers on extragalactic astronomy one is struck by the similarities between the speculations of 50 years ago and the better-understood concepts of today. What our immediate predecessors lacked were the observational tools that have finally provided the evidence to substantiate some of the early speculations. Although observations in the X-ray, ultraviolet, infrared and radio regions ofthe electromagnetic spectrum have opened exciting new windows on the universe, it is fair to say that the most important information for cosmology has been collected by telescopes that gather visible and near-visible light.
by Stephen A. Gregory and Laird A. Thompson
'1 1.. И. Ky|lHlllh,UH
» Find English equivalents for the following Russian phrases.
исконное (первоначальное) ядро; в грандиозном масштабе; широкомасштабные обзорные наблюдения; сверхскоплении (сверхсистемы) честно говоря;... позволяют понять историю эволюции; процессы, которые порождают...; "большой взрыв".
• Get ready to answer these questions.
1. What problem docs the text deal with?
2. What is "big bang"?
3. When did it take place?
4. What hypotheses do you know concerning the origin ofthe Universe?
5. Is there a 100% agreement between the scientists on the problem?
6. What do surveys ofthe stellar system structure show?
7. Why has the existence of super-clusters long been conjectured?
8. What investigation tools did scientists use in the past?
9. What investigation tools gave the most important information for cosmology?
10. What hypotheses concerning the voids in the Universe do you know?
• Match each word in column I with its 1
emergence, to presume, to verify, to conjecture, at random, to lack, to clarify, similarity, evidently, to conceive the idea
synonym in column II.
II
to make clear, to form in the mind, to confirm, to suppose, to guess, not to have, obviously, likeness, appearance, without reason or aim
• Choose a proper word and complete the sentences.
1. How soon after the Big Bang did matter begin to (cluster/coalesce/ coincide) into the stars and galaxies?
2. Large-scale surveys have (viewed/violated/verified) the existence of superclusters of galaxies.
3. The existence of superclusters has long been (converted/conjectured/ connected).
4. The original distribution of matter is (singled out/smeared out) by evolutionary "mixing".
5. An understanding of the largest structures in the universe will (clarify/ clean/coincide) the processes that give rise to structures of all dimensions.
6. Astronomers and cosmologists are much preoccupied these days with explaining the (convergence/emergence/exislence) and distribution of aggregates of matter in the Universe.
CLASSWORK
READING (4B)
» Skim the passage rapidly (3 min.) and answer the questions.
1. What hypotheses concerning the origin of the Universe were put forward?
2. Which of the hypotheses is supported by observations?
3. What assumption is made about the voids of the Universe?
It has become clear from the red-shift surveys that the present-day distribution of galaxies is highly inhomogencous out to a distance of several hundred million light-years. * // seems probable that the inhomogeneity extends out to billions of light-years and characterizes the entire universe. We must assume, however, that the universe may contain much matter that is nonluminous. The possible existence and volume of such matter is currently the subject of wide speculation.
There are two competing hypotheses. The more conventional model assumes that individual galaxies arose out of a nearly homogeneous primordial soup. *The main trouble with this model is explaining how the universe proceeded from its smooth state to the state in which matter was gathered into galaxies. The model assumes that once galaxies formed, small irregularities in their distribution would slowly be amplified by the operation of long-range gravitational forces. The end result of such amplification would be the superclusters seen today.
Л competing theoretical explanation was suggested in 1972 by two Russian astronomers, Yakov Zcl'dovich and Rashid Sunyaev. In their model the gas of the early universe did not condense into stars and galaxies immediately. Instead, slight but very-large-scale irregularities in the general distribution of the gas grew larger in response to gravitational attraction and became increasingly irregular. Eventually, the gas became dense enough to collect into vast sheets of material, which then fragmented into galaxies. *Accordingtothis hypothesis, clusters and superclusters form first as concentrations of gas, and only then do galaxies appear.
Do either ofthese models find support in the observations wc have made of superclusters? *Sincc the Zel'dovich-Sunyacv model requires all galaxies to have formed in clusters or superclusters, field galaxies, or random stragglers, should be rare. If the conventional model is correct and galaxies can arise almost anywhere at random, only later to be shepherded by gravity into groups or clusters, stragglers should be rather common. Actually, the only populations of isolated galaxies we have discovered in our red-shift surveys are galaxies scattered within the boundaries of superclusters. Moreover, the voids are genuinely empty. In sum, the observed distribution of galaxies within superclusters and the existence of huge voids between superclusters are entirely consistent with the Zel'dovich-Sunyaev model.
• Explain the way you understand the italicized words and phrases in the passage.
• Give an English-Russian translation of the sentences marked with an asterisk.
• Give a free translation of the text below.
ЗВЕЗДА В 2.500 СОЛНЦ
Астрономы Висконсинского университета (США), анализируя данные, полученные с помощью искусственного спутника Земли, подтвердили, что в газовой туманности Тарантул (Tarantula Nebula) в Большом Магеллановом облаке (Large Magellanic Cloud) существует сверхмассивная звезда. Ученые, наблюдавшие ее ранее с использованием оптических телескопов, высказывали предположение, что масса этого небесного тела больше массы Солнца в 200—1.000 раз, однако спутниковые наблюдения вносят поправку — в 2.500 раз!
Звезда расположена в центре самого яркого облака ионизированного водорода — газовой туманности Тарантул, светимость которой в сто миллионов раз выше светимости Солнца.
HOMEWORK
(to be done in writing)
1. Translate into Russian.
1. The most important information for cosmology must have been collected by telescopes that gather visible and near-visible light.
2. Clusters of galaxies may have been members of still larger aggregates, namely superclusters.
3. Matter must have been more or less evenly dispersed before coalescence began.
4. They can't have encountered serious difficulties in developing this theory.
5. You should have paid more attention to the problem of explaining the emergence and distribution of aggregates of matter in the Universe.
6. Individual member galaxies moving at random velocities cannot have crossed more than a fraction of a supercluster's diameter in the billions of years.
7. They ought to have accomplished large-scale surveys to verify the existence of superclusters of galaxies.
2. Translate into English using modal verbs.
1. Они, вероятно, столкнулись с трудностями при изучении этого явления.
2. Вам следовало бы знать, что Солнце и звезды относятся к макромиру.
3. Не может быть, чтобы он достиг таких успехов.
4. Возможно, им не хватало приборов наблюдения, чтобы подтвердить их предположения.
5. Вам надо было бы использовать десятичный логарифмический масштаб в этом случае.
UNIT FIVE
GRAMMAR: PARTICIPLE (FORMS AND FUNCTIONS)
FORMS OF PARTICIPLE
|
|
| Active | Passive |
icipli | 1 Indefinite | obtaining | being obtained | |
Part | 1 Perfect | having obtained | having been obtained | |
| — | obtained | ||
FUNCTIONS OF PARTICIPLE | ||||
|
| as an Attribute | as an Adverbial Modifier of Time | |
articiple ndefinit | Active | The object obtaining this energy... | Obtaining this energy the object... | |
BU | Passive | The energy being obtained was... | Being obtained, the energy... | |
:iple I feet | Active | — | Having obtained this energy the object... | |
Partic Per | Passive | — | Having been obtained, the energy... | |
Participle II | The energy thus obtained was... | When obtained, the energy... |
concerned I ___ данный, рассматриваемый,
involved j о котором идет речь
The problem concerned is of great significance.
I i k'uions ion",11;an; '■.'■,n arc 'ч motion. 2. Being heated the subsumcc began to glow.
3 Si a/ted Кы month. th.1 calculations will be soon completed.
4 Having considcied the pre'r>!cm :nvolved they arrived at a definite conclusion.
:> I ollow ing the inetuocl iuui'ved we "bund i*. to be effective.
6. Having been separated from a mixture the substance was investigated under the microscope.
"I When heated to a high temperature in a vacuum a metal gives off tree electrons.
8. flic results obtained agree with those oredicted by the theory.
WORD AND PHRASE STUDY
V! -able/'-We - Л to measure ^-ablc = measurable
• \'-'or rJjc'.'th>. * from Hie following verbs using -ahle/-ible and translate them into Kussian.
naslu disiiuuubh, suit, reduce, compare.approach, move, convert,achieve,
fission, attach
READING (5A)
• Read the passage and answer the question:
What scientific discoveries made scientists change their attitude to the problems concerned with the Universe origin?
THE UNIVERSE ORIGIN
The puzzle oft he birth and deaths of the Universe is one of the most exciting problems in science comparable in importance with the puzzle of the origin of life. According to the hot big bang theory which is widely accepted by astronomers today, the Universe was born at some time / = 0, about 15 billion years ago, in a state of infinitely high temperature and infinite energy density. I he fireball expanded and cooled, with its energy being converted into particles that gave rise to the material from which all the stars and planets were built.
Cosmologists have been able ш.sketch the broad outlines ofthe evolution of the Universe from the fireball slate to the present day. The resulting standard model of the Universe is only some twenty years old: in the mid 1960s, the discovery ofthe cosmic microwave background radiation finally convinced astronomers and physicists that there really was a big bang. It was in 1965 that Arno Pcnziasand Robert Wilson, at the Bell Research Laboratories, discovered this weak radio noise with a temperature of about 3K that seems to fill the entire Universe. It was soon explained as a relict ofthe fireball which the Universe was born out of. But although the outlines of the standard model seemed satisfactory, there were some remaining problems which bothered many cosmologists during the 1970s. The most important of these problems were:
The singularity problem. The state of infinite density and zero volume at time t = 0 is called a singularity. One may wonder what was there before the singularity? — or putting it another way, where did the singularity come from? What is the origin ofthe Universe? The standard model of cosmology in the 1960s and 1970s made no attempt to answer this question, but started out from a state of very high energy density a fraction of a second after the moment of creation.
The flatness problem. According to the general theory of relativity, developed by Albert Einstein, the geometry of our Universe may be different from the Euclidean geometry of flat space. The Universe may be open in which case parallel lines diverge from one another, or it may be closed in the way that the surface of a sphere is closed, so that parallel lines cross one another like the meridian lines on a globe ofthe Earth. All the observational evidence is that our Universe is very close to being flat. A question arises -- why is our Universe so flat?
The homogeneity problem and the problem of galaxies. Astronomical observations also show that our Universe is homogeneous on very large scales — matter is distributed evenly through the Universe. The Universe is also isotropic; on the large scale, it looks the same in all directions. The size ofthe observable Universe is about 10** cm. On this scale, the deviations of the density of matter from a perfectly smooth distribution amount to no more than one part in 10,000. However, on smaller scales, the Universe is not homogeneous. It contains galaxies made up of stars, clusters of galaxies, and supcrgalaxies. What small disturbances in the early history of the Universe could have produced these minor inhomogeneities in an otherwise very smooth Universe У
The problem of the dimensionality of spacetime. There is a great deal of interest among mathematicians today in the possibility that space may have more than three dimensions. *ln the most interesting of these models, space has ten dimensions (the 1 Ith is for time), all but three of which have been "compacted", shrunk into thin tubes. But why should the compactification have stopped with three effective space dimensions, not two, or five, or some other number?
All these problems (and some others which are not given here) seemed for a long time more metaphysical than physical puzzles for philosophers, not scientists to debate. *Most physicists did not take the problems seriously, accepting that science might never find ultimate answers to such questions, or, at least, not for a very longtime. If the standard model of cosmology could explain 15 billion years of cosmic evolution, there was no great concern that the theory couid not explain what happened during the first millisecond. But in recent years, the attitude of physicists toward these metaphysical problems has changed radically. This shift in attitude began when physicists studying the interactions ofthe elementary particles began to develop theories of the way particles interact under conditions of very high energy densities, like those in the big bang.
• Try to guess the meaning of the words given in italics in the text.
• Translate the sentences marked with an asterisk.
• Think and say a few words about each of the problems posed by the author and their importance for science.
CLASSWORK
READING (5B)
• Before reading the passage, read its headline and say what you know about the problem. Discuss the problem with your partners. Then read the passage and find the facts supporting your ideas.
HOW MANY DIMENSIONS EXIST?
It is usually taken for granted that there arc three dimensions of space and a single dimension of time. That is, any event that occurs anywhere in the universe can be assigned a location in space using three coordinates and a location in time using one. *But physicists and mathematicians have studied hypothetical worlds in which more or fewer dimensions exist, and so questions arise as to whether the usual belief about our world is strictly correct, and if so, whether we can find any reason for it being true. For example, we might consider the possibility that there are really four dimensions of space, but that for some reason, all ofthe phenomena that we usually observe have the same value for one of the space coordinates.
It has been known for a century that if the dimensionality of space were other than three, and if free motion were possible in all ofthe dimensions in (he same way, then some of the known laws of physics would not obtain. Newton's inverse square law for the force of gravity is one such. This argument gives additional evidence that space is in fact three-dimensional, but does not explain why this is so. *Furthermore, it does not rule out the possibility that our world has more than the expected number of dimensions, but that most phenomena are restricted in how they can vary in the extra dimension.
Our approach to the question is to consider how spaces and times with different numbers of dimensions might behave. For example, one might find that the dimensionality of space and lime can itself undergo evolution, and that the values familiar to us are the present result of that evolution. Such an approach woulc involve relations between the number of dimensions and other physical quantities such as the temperature of the universe Through these relations, the dimensionality would be detei mined by these other quantities. Since dimensionality is usually taken to be a whole number, it might not be possible for a dimension to disappear through evolution. *Instcad, what might happen through evolution is that some extra dimensions could become suppressed in comparisons with others. Our present picture of the expansion of the universe makes this idea much more plausible than it was once. Since everything was once much closer together than it is now, we can imagine that there arc indeed more dimensions than we think. The expansion of the universe may have taken place asymmetrically, so that in one of the dimensions there has been little or no expansion, and the scale of distances in that dimension would still be as small as it was at the beginning of the universe.
If this idea is correct, it would mean that there really are more than the familiar number of dimensions. *// is intriguing to think that it might be possible to find some technological means to find and study the usually inaccessible dimensions. Very likely ноте phenomena would be different in a universe with more than four dimensions, even if there were no symmetry between the different dimensions. It would be of great interest to identify such phenomena and to sec if they can be observed.
Theoretical investigations have shown that if the general theory of relativity is set up in a space-time of more than lour dimensions, and if the extents of the extra dimensions are made small and connected like a cylinder, then the resulting theory describes not only gravity, but also elect romagnetism and other fields that have been introduced to describe subatomic particles. The extra dimensions in this case arc associated not with space and time, but with the internal symmetries. Physicists arc actively trying to unite space-time symmetries and internal symmetries in this way.
If other dimensions do exist, we would still want to account for the precise number through some more basic principles. In the type of theory just described, the total number of dimensions would be related through an internal symmetry to the number of quantum fields that exist. But wc should still need to understand why precisely four dimensions have expanded while the others remained small. The question of the dimensionality of space-time is ripe for more serious investigation.
• Divide your English group into two parts. One half of the group reads the text to find the arguments in favour of the three-dimensional space, the other finds all the suppositions in favour of the more number of dimensions of space.
Facts
Suppositions
• Try to guess the meaning of the words given in italics in the text.
• Translate the sentences marked with an asterisk.
• Answer the following questions:
1. What scientific facts support the idea of the three-dimensionality of space we live in?
2. How do scientists check the truth of this idea?
3. if there were really more dimensions than three what discrepancies could there appear in our scientific knowledge of the world?
4. If there were really four dimensions of space, what should we assume about the extra dimension?
5. If we assume that the expansion of the universe in the Big Bang process had taken place asymmetrically what conclusion should we come to?
6. What did theoretical investigations concerning Einstein's general theory of relativity applied to a four-dimensional space show?
7. What is your attitude to the problem? Do you find it worth studying? Why? Give your reasons.
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