Advanced Listening - Science 高級聽力 - 科學﹝具挑戰性的聽力練習，適程度高的雅思及托福學生﹞

This is a very challenging short listening about water on the moon.
It is suitable for stronger IELTS and TOEFL students.

Before you listen ask yourself:

• Do you believe that there ever was water on the moon?
• How would scientists prove or disprove the existence of water on the moon?

Now listen and write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS in each space.

1. articles in the journal Science show the moon is damp.
40 years ago, the 2. that the astronauts brought back were completely dry.
Scientists used several kinds of equipment to 3. the water on the moon.
Scientists believe the water is formed when oxygen in 4. is hit with hydrogen from 5..

(In Internet Explorer, you must click play twice)



Listen again and try to check your answers.

Finally, listen and read the script at the same time. Can you hear the answers now? If you need to, listen several times until all the parts are clear.


Script 錄音稿

For all you space buffs who like to keep track of where the water is, it looks like you can add our very own moon to your list. Because according to a trio of papers appearing in the journal Science, the lunar surface is wetter than we realized.

Forty years ago, Apollo astronauts brought a bunch of moon rocks back home. For the most part those samples showed no traces of water whatsoever. Those that seemed even the slightest bit moist were thought to have been contaminated by water from Earth—because the containers they were stored in turned out to be leaky.

But now scientists say they’ve spotted water right on the moon’s surface. Using instruments on three different spacecraft, the scientists detected the chemical signature of good old H2O. And they think the water springs from the moon itself. The lunar soil is nearly 50 percent oxygen, and the scientists think that hydrogen comes from the solar wind that pounds the moon’s surface.

Put the two together and you get wet. Not too wet, of course. There’s probably only about a quart of water in every ton of lunar soil. That’s dryer than the Sahara. But wetter than we thought.

—Karen Hopkin

Answers 答案
1. A trio of
2. samples
3. detect
4. moon (itself)
5. solar wind

For more listenings like this (but without the questions!), please visit the Scientific American 60-second Science site.