本篇文章主要讲的是研究者在火星上发现了水的确凿证据。之前发现的有水的证据不可靠是因为技术不够先进，现在有了卫星，又有登陆火星的太空舱，可以进一步观测和检测火星是否有水。下面前程百利小编带大家一块看一下这篇托福听力背景材料中出现的生词，希望能给正在备考托福听力的同学带来帮助。
Long before the Space Age, humans looking at Mars thought they saw evidence for the presence of water, in the form of giant (巨大的)canals (运河)built by some very advanced, very thirsty(饥渴的) civilization. Those 19th-century notions(观念) proved to be the products of poor telescopes(望远镜) and wishful thinking(如意算盘): the canals were an optical illusion(错觉). But 20th and 21st century observers have definitely(清楚的) found water on Mars.
Telescopes spied(侦探) water in ice caps at the Red Planet’s poles, as well as signs of an ancient ocean covering the northern hemisphere(半球). The Viking landers saw water frost on rocks, the Phoenix lander found water ice buried centimeters (厘米)beneath the soil, and the Curiosity rover(漫游者) has rolled through an ancient riverbed(河床).
Most mysteriously(神秘的), orbiters(人造卫星) overhead(天花板) have glimpsed the outlines(轮廓) of what seem to be belts of buried glaciers girdling(围绕) the globe at high latitudes(维度). Some researchers thought the dust-covered glaciers(冰川) might be mostly made of mud, or of carbon dioxide ice. But a new study from researchers at the University of Copenhagen reinforces(加强) the consensus(一致) view that the glaciers are made of water ice—and a lot of it. The findings are in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
The researchers paired a decade’s worth of radar measurements (测量值)with models of how glacial ice flows on Earth to calculate (计算)the approximate(近似的) thickness and size of all the Martian glaciers.
Their conclusions? The glaciers contain nearly 150 billion cubic(立方米) meters of water ice—enough ice to cover Mars a meter deep, and more than enough to someday sustain(维持) human colonists. Though of course they’d need to find a way to melt (熔化)and move all that water around. Who knows—maybe they’d build canals(运河).
好了，以上就是前程百利小编为大家整理的“从托福听力背景材料中学单词—火星上的水”这篇托福听力背景材料中的疑难词汇，希望在备考的路上助大家一臂之力。最后，小编祝大家在托福考试中取得好成绩！
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