3.The summer before astronomer Sara Seager entered graduate school,she spent two months canoeing(乘獨(dú)木舟) to enjoy the wilderness of Canada's Nunavut Territory.Mike Wevrick,her future husband,journeyed with her.One morning,Seager spotted a fire in the distance.Her only thought was that forest fires appeared to be common here.Rut that evening,it burned right in their path.What's worse,by the afternoon of the next day,smoke darkened the sky.Panicked,the two made a camp in the forest.Fortunately,by morning,the fire had passed and they were safe.
But Seager would never forget the experience.Nor would it be the last time that the sky in a faraway place would leave a lasting impression on her.
Seager soon found herself studying the atmosphere(大氣層) even more remote than Nunavut Territory.She had just won admission to Harvard University's doctoral programme in astrophysics(天體物理學(xué)).There,she would be among the first to investigate the skies of other worlds—thousands of planets that have been turning up well beyond our solar system.
Today,21 years later,Seager is attempting to explore what makes up the atmosphere surrounding those distant worlds.Those gases can reveal a lot about a planet.including whether it's home to life.For example,the oxygen and methane(in the earth s atmosphere
are both signs of possible life.Life generates other gases too.Finding
them above a distant planet could lead to the discovery of the earth's twin another relatively small piece of rock that also supports life.
When Seager turned 40,she held a conference.She invited friends and colleagues to brainstorm how best to find the earth's twin.She told the audience that finding Earth 2.0 was not the certainty she had once assumed.But together with hard work emd imagination,she thought they could do it.
She imagines that,"Hundreds of or a thousand years from now people will be travelling to the other worlds.And they'll look back upon us as the generation that first find the earth-like worlds."
(1)Why did Seager and Mike go to Nunavut Territory?
A.To keep a record of forest fires there.
B.Fo make a study of the atmosphere of remote places.
C.To enjoy the beauty of wilderness by boat.
D.To explore the sky in a faraway place.
(2)We can infer Seager's experience was
.
A.thrilling and rewarding
B.a(chǎn)dventurous but frightening
C.pleasant and smooth
D.dangerous but impressive
(3)What does the underlined word "them" in Paragraph 4 refer to?
A.The gases made by life.
B.The signs of possible life.
C.The atmospheres.
D.The distant worlds.
(4)In the conference she held when she was 40,Seager
.
A.declared the finding of Earth 2.0 to the audience
B.expressed her belief in finding a second earth
C.showed doubt about the existence of another earth
D.imagined herself travelling in the other worlds