Unit 4 Extraterrestrials

3. Unit 4 Extraterrestrials I. Cultural Knowledge II. Text Analysis 1) Text Organization 2) The Speech Style 3) Detailed Text Explanation III. Language Study

4. Text A The Watery Place • by Issac Asimov

5. I. Cultural Knowledge 1. Isaac Asimov（1920—1992） A Russian-born American writer and scientist, he was a distinguished biochemist, but is more widely known as the author of many works of science fiction，books on science for non-scientists, and essays on a wide variety of subjects. Among his best-known science fiction are I, Robot（1950）and the Foundation trilogy (1951－1953). Building on Karel Capek’s concept of the robot，in 1941 Asimov coined the term robotics. What Is Intelligence Anyway ?(Book II, Unit 9) The New Caves(Book IV , Unit 8) The Earth Is Room Enough (Active English)

6. A Graph of Asimov's Book Publications A Graph of Asimov's Book Publications

7. How do you pronounce "Isaac Asimov"? • "EYE'zik AA'zi-mov". • Asimov's own suggestion, however, as to how to remember his name was to say "Has Him Off" and leave out the H's.

8. When and where was he born? • Asimov was born (officially) January 2, 1920, in the town of Petrovichi (pronounced peh-TRUV-ih-chee), then in the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (czarist Russia no longer existed, while the USSR hadn't formed yet) and now in Russia.

9. When did Asimov die? What was the cause of his death? Where is he buried? • Asimov died on April 6, 1992. The revelation that AIDS was the cause of his death was not made until It's Been a Good Life was published in 2002. His body was cremated and his ashes were not interred.

10. Where did Asimov live, attend school, and work during his life? • The Asimov family lived in the East New York section of Brooklyn. • Asimov began his formal education in the New York Public School system in 1925. • He graduated from Columbia with a B.S. in Chemistry in 1939 where he also earned his M.A. in Chemistry in 1941 and his Ph.D. in Chemistry in May 1948.

11. In 1948 he obtained a postdoctoral position at Columbia, doing research there. In June of 1949 he took a job as instructor of biochemistry at the Boston University School of Medicine, and was promoted to assistant professor in December 1951. He was promoted to associate professor in July 1955. On July 1, 1958, he became a full-time writer. In 1979, the school promoted him to the rank of full professor.

12. What are the titles of Asimov's autobiographies? • In Memory Yet Green covers the period from 1920-1954. In Joy Still Felt spans the time from 1954-1978. These two volumes were published by Doubleday in 1979 and 1980, • I. Asimov: A Memoir was published by Doubleday in March 1994, and covers his entire life, written in 166 brief chapters arranged in roughly chronological order.

13. Yours, Isaac Asimov, a collection of excerpts from letters he had written over the years, edited by his brother Stan and published by Doubleday in October 1995, also provides a great insight into Asimov's personal and professional life. • It's Been a Good Life, a condensed version of his autobiographical volumes that also includes additional material, edited by Janet Jeppson Asimov and published by Prometheus Books in 2002.

15. What religious beliefs did Asimov have? • Asimov had no religious beliefs; he never believed in either God or an afterlife. He considered himself a Humanist, one who believes that it is humans who are responsible for all of the problems of society, as well as the great achievements throughout history. The Humanists believe that neither good nor evil are produced by supernatural beings, and that the solution to the problems of humankind can be found without the intervention of such beings. Asimov was a strong proponent of scientific reasoning who adamantly opposed creationists, religious zealots, pseudoscience, and mysticism.

18. Science fiction • form of fiction that developed in the 20th century and deals principally with the impact of actual or imagined science upon society or individuals. The term is more generally used to refer to any literary fantasy that includes a scientific factor as an essential orienting component. • Prominent figures: H.G. Welles and Jules Verne

19. 2．Venus It is the second major planet in order of distance from the Sun．Also known as Hesperus, the evening star, or Phosphorus, The morning star, Venus can be the brightest object in the sky after the Sun and Moon and follows a near-circularpath some 106 million kilometers from the Sun, taking 225 days to complete one orbit.

21. 3. extraterrestrial life This refers to the life-forms that may have evolved on other planets. There is no solid evidence at present that life exists other than on the Earth．Most UFOs have been satisfactorily explained as being natural or man-made, and the Viking missions to Mars were inconclusive in testing for the existence of life on that planet. Nevertheless，searches have been and are being made for signs that life has arisen in other parts of the universe. Certain knowledge either that life is confined to planet or has been found elsewhere would have the profoundest

22. philosophical implications for mankind. Factors contributing to any assessment of the probability that life exists elsewhere must includethe size, age, and structure of the universe, and the conditions under which life as we know it can originate and evolve. Other factors of relevance in the search for extraterrestrial life include an assessment of the probability that intelligenceleading to scientific and technological civilizations similar to our own may arise.

23. 4. Space exploration 1903, Russian physicist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, developing ideas for space rockets fuelled by liquefied gas; by 1926, USA Robert Goddard, successfully designed the first liquid fuelled rocket; 1944, German launched the V-2 rocket. 1957, the Soviet Union(SU) put the first artificial satellite, Sputnik I, in orbit; 1958, the US Explorer I; 1961, Yuri Gagarin(加加林）, the first man in space;

24. On April 12, 1961 the first earthling escaped the gravity well of planet earth. In the spaceshipVostok 1, Senior Lieutenant YuriAlexeyevich Gagarin orbited earth one time at an altitude of 187¾miles (302 kilometers) for 108 minutes at 18,000 miles an hour. He was the first man to see that the earth was indeed round, indeedmostly water, and indeed magnificent.

25. 1962, John Glenn followed Gagarin , was the second human being in space;

26. 1961~1970 the Apollo programme, proposed by President Kennedy in 1961, achieved a manned lunar landing by 1970, and Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin landed on the moonin 1969; while the SU concentrated on unmanned flights, Luna IX achieving a soft landing on the moon in 1966. early 1970s, space stations launched by both the USA and the Soviet Union,

27. 1975, an Apollo capsule linked up with a Soviet Soyuz capsule, unmanned flights, made to Venus and Mars, 1977~1989, the US probe(探测器）, Voyager 2, launched in 1977, reached Neptune in 1989. 1981, the USA launched a space shuttle, the first reusable space craft; 1986, the shuttle, Challenge, exploded on lift-off.

28. 1986 the giant Soviet modular space station, Mir, was launched, with astronauts being ferried to the station by Soyuz spacecraft, followed in 1987 by the placing in space of the powerful Energiya station. 1987, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Romanenko set a space endurance record of 326 days in orbit. 1990, the Hubble space telescope， was launched from a US shuttle, producing images of other solar systems;

30. An international space station, Freedom, conceived by the USA in 1984, became operational in the 1990s.

32. Space technology has resulted in numerous applications, telecommunication satellites, greatly improved globalcommunications; meteorological satellites, provide advance weatherinformation; reconnaissance (侦察)satellites, register the earth’s resources and military information.

33. News Broadcast • Apr 05, 2004: Spirit Achieves Mission Success • Spirit woke up on sol 91, which ended at 6:38 p.m. PDT on April 5, 2004, as if it were any other martian day, but this one was special. Finishing 90 sols of surface operations since landing day marked completion of the last of the official success criteria for Spirit's prime mission. The rover team at JPL had checked off the next-to-last box for mission success two days earlier, when a drive of 50.2 meters (165 feet) took Spirit's total travel distance over the 600-meter (1,969 feet) mark.

34. Opportunity Views Sunset on Mars

35. 5. How big the universe ? (Adapted from an interview with Hubert Reeves, an Astrophysicist) There are 100 billion stars in our galaxy, and over a billion yellow stars like our sun. We don’t know if they all have planets, but we have good reason to think that planetary systems are common. Suppose there were only one planet like the earth for every ten yellow stars; that alone makes 100 million worlds comparable to ours– just in our galaxy! And there are billions of galaxies.

36. 6．the Congress The Congress is one of the three branchesof the US federal government, the legislative branch. Congress has two houses，the Senate and the House of Representatives. The main job of Congress is making laws. Before a new law can be made, both houses have to pass it, and it must then have the approval of the President. In a system of government based on a series of checks and balances, the two houses of Congress act as a check on each other, as well as together forming a check on the powers of the executive branch, especially the President. ( +administration)

37. 7．the supreme Court The judicial branch is one of the three branches of US federal government and operates the system of law courts. The Supreme Court in Washington, D. C. is the highest court in the US, and is very powerful. It has nine Judges, called justices. Traditionally, they are called the nine old men, although there has been one woman justice. The head of the court has the title of Chief Justice of the United States. Justices are appointed by the President, although the Senate must give its approval to the choice. There has been only one African-American justice.

38. 8. income tax This is a tax paid according to a person’s level of income, with people on higher incomes paying higher rates of tax. It is used by the government to help pay for things like health care and education. It is collected in Britain by the Inland Revenue and in the US by the Internal Revenue Service. In the US, April 15 is the date when federal taxes are due.

39. II. Text Analysis 1. Text organization Part 1 Paras 1-3 The narrator makes a claim that no extraterrestrials will ever land on earth. Part 2 Paras 4-48 The narrator gives an account of his encounter with Venusians’ landing, making it clear why he makes that claim.

40. Progress of the story: four sections according to the time sequence. Section 1: Paras 4-5 (before the landing) Busy with his complicated tax form, Bart got quite irritable. Section 2: Paras 6-11 (the landing of flying sauce) The narrator was shocked at the sight of a flying saucer landing on Earth and two men getting out of it, while Bart did’t notice this at all.

41. Section 3 Paras 12-34 (the meeting with the E.T.) Unaware of the guests’ identity and caught up with his tax forms, Bart talked to the guests with an impatient and sarcastic tone and turned down their requests rudely. Their conversation ended with the extraterrestrial guests’ promise of never coming back.

42. Section 4 Paras 35-48 (after the E.T.’s departure) After the E.T. left, the narrator got mad at Bart because of his irrational attitude toward the guests. Bart didn’t realize his stupid error until it was too late.

43. 2．The speech style Language is full of holes，which people fill up with perceptions and assumptions. This saying is well illustrated by Sheriff Cameron. Because he judged the Venusians as Italians simply by their appearance, everything they said sounded Italian to him. He mistook Venus for Venice, a watery place on earth. When we learn another language，we must not learn it with the mindset of our mother tongue. Otherwise there will arise cultural misunderstandings, which may lead to conflict.

44. Sheriff Cameron usually spoke in a casual manner. Perhaps his town was so small that he knew all the townsfolk, therefore informal speech was proper. His sentences were short，colloquial，and sometimes incomplete. He preferred phrases to single, learned words．He liked shortened forms and abbreviations，with an occasional curse．

45. The Venusians spoke formally. Their sentences were long and involved, their word choice elaborate. They used passive voices and “if” structures. Perhaps it was because they believe in the utter importance of their mission，or they might not have learned to speak freely in a strange tongue.

46. III. Language Study 1.exhaust: (v.)1) to tire out 使精疲力竭 e.g. What an exhausting day! I’m completely exhausted. 2) to use up completely 用完，耗尽 e.g. exhaust the funds in a week exhaust one’s patience

47. 3) to describe or deal with (a subject) completely 详尽无遗地论述 e.g. We’ve exhausted this subject; let’s go on to the next. (n.) the escape or release of vaporous waste material as from an engine; the fumes or gases.

48. 2. privacy: (n.) 1) the quality or condition of being secluded from the presence or view of others; 个人空间 2) the state of being free from unsanctioned intrusion e.g. People should respect others’ right to privacy. 3) secrecy 隐私

49. 3. on account of: (fl .) because of e.g. The house isn’t really suitable for an old person on account of all those stairs. The president declined to deliver the speech himself on account of a sore throat.

50. 4. deputy: the second most important person in a particular organization e.g. A deputy was appointed in case the manager became ill. After several years’ hard work he was promoted to deputy manager.