Dark Sky Parks around the World
Warrumbungle National Park
Situated in the central west slopes of New South Wales is Australia's only dark sky park, Warrumbungle. The park has served as a dark sky park since July, 2016. Its crystal-clear night skies and high altitude make it a natural, educational, and astronomical heritage site in the southern half of the earth. Tourists can use Australia's largest optical telescope within the park boundaries to view the auroras（极光）, the Milky Way, and taint shooting stars.
Sark
Sark is a Channel Island near the coast of Normandy under the protection of the UK. It was the World's First Dark Sky Island set up in January 2011. Its historical and cultural blend attracts over 40,000 tourists annually. With no motor vehicles and public lighting on the island, there is an exceptional view of the dark skies. A rich Milky Way is visible in the dark night skies from the shores of the island.
Pic du Midi de Bigorre
Pic du Midi de Bigorre in France was designated（指）as a dark sky park in December 2013 making it the second largest dark sky park in the world. The park covers 3,112 square kilometers spreading across the Pyrenees National Park and UNESCO's World Heritage site, Pyrenees-Mont Perdu. The park attracts over one hundred star watchers every year. The Observatory Midi-Pyrenees, which was built in 1870, is one of the world's highest museums at a height of 2,877 meters above sea level.
Ramon Crater/Makhtesh Ramon
Ramon Crater is a unique 1,100-square-kilometer nature reserve located in the Negev Desert in Israel. In 2017, the Ramon Crater became the first designated dark sky park in the Middle East. Its location, rough climate, and forbidding landscape that are characteristic of the Negev have largely defeated historical attempts for human settlement, making it a great place to view the night skies. Stargazers usually camp in the desert to have an uninterrupted view of the stars, planets, and the Milky Way.
A 15-year-old Colorado high school student and young scientist who has used artificial intelligence（AI）and created apps to address polluted drinking water, drug addiction and other social problems has been named Time Magazine's first-ever "Kid of the Year".
Rao told The Associated Press in an interview from her home that the prize is nothing that I could have ever imagined. And I'm so grateful and just so excited that we're really taking a look at the upcoming generation and our generation, since the future is in our hands.
Time said Rao stood out for creating a global community of young innovators and inspiring them to pursue their goals. Rao insisted that starting out small doesn't matter, as long as you're passionate about it.
She told Time contributing editor Angelina Jolie in an interview that her science pursuits started early as a way to improve social conditions. The drinking water crisis in Flint, Michigan, inspired her work to develop a way to detect pollutants and send those results to a mobile phone, she said.
"I was like 10 when I told my parents that I wanted to research carbon nanotube（纳米管技术）sensor technology at the Denver Water quality research lab, and my mum was like, A what?" Rao told Jolie. She said that work is going to be in our generation's hands pretty soon. "So if no one else is gonna do it, I'm gonna do it."
In a world where science is increasingly questioned or challenged, Rao insisted that its pursuit is an act of kindness, the best way that a younger generation can better the world.
"We have science in everything we're involved in, and I think that's the biggest thing to put out there, that science is cool, innovating is cool, and anybody can be an innovator." Rao said, "Anybody can do science."
A simple gesture can be formed into a child's memory so quickly that it will cause the child to give a false answer to a question accompanied by that gesture. A new finding suggests that parents, social workers, psychologists and lawyers should be careful with their hands as well as their words.
Gestures can be as informative as speech, but hand gestures are so common that we rarely notice we're using them.
While the recall of both adults and children are easy to react to suggestion, the memories of children are known to be particularly influenced, said lead researcher Sara Broaders of Northwestern University. Kids are used to looking to adults to tell events for them and can be misled even if not intentionally（故意地）.
Previous research, for example, has shown that detail-loaded questions often cause false answers; when asked, say "Did you drink juice at the picnic?", the child is likely to say "yes" even if no juice had been available. It is not that the child is consciously lying, but rather the detail is quickly formed into his or her memory.
To avoid this problem, social workers have long been advised to ask children only open-ended questions, such as "What did you have at the picnic?" But an open-ended question paired with a gesture, briefly meaning a juice box, is treated like a detailed question. That is, children become likely to answer falsely.
And it isn't just a few kids: 77% of children gave at least one piece of false information when a detail was suggested by an ordinary gesture. Gestures may also become more popular when talking with non-fluent language users, such as little kids, Broaders said as hand movements can impart meaning of unfamiliar words and phrases. "It certainly seems reasonable that adults would gesture more with children."
In general, Broaders advises parents and other adults to "Try to be aware of your hands when questioning a child about an event. Otherwise, you might be getting answers that don't reflect what actually happened."
Unusually bright light in the sky that appeared suddenly last June has got astronomers in great excitement, After months of study, they still aren't sure what the object — university referred to as the "Cow" — is, whatever it is, says astronomer Lilian Rivera Sandoval or Texas Tech University in Lubbock, "It's super strange and we are obsessed with its study."
The Cow first appeared in telescope observations on 16 June 2018, in what turned out to be small galaxy about 200 million light years away. "When we saw that we thought, let's get on this." says Daniel Perley, an astronomer at Liverpool John Moore University.
The early observations confirmed the Caw was truly strange. It didn't show the obvious changes in its light output that an exploding star would make. Sandoval ways as soon as she and colleagues Anew the Cow was truly distant, they requested time on NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory to see what the Cow was doing in X-rays. Although the X-ray brightness varied over the early weeks, "the spectrum（光谱）didn't change, which is very unusual," she notes. After 3 weeks, the X-ray signal began to vary more wildly while also dropping off in brightness.
Many astronomers agree that the long and steady duration of the event means that it was powered after an initial explosion by some form of central engine. But what that engine may be is also far from clear. Some argue that it could be a very unusual star whose central part has collapsed（坍塌）inward after it exploded. Others say it is a tidal disruption event — a star being torn apart by a black hole. But that usually requires the supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy, and the Cow is situated in its galaxy's arm. So, some say, il could be a tidal disruption event generated by an intermediate mass black hole, although evidence for the existence of such smaller black holes remains controversial. "All explanations have problems," Sandoval says, "I hope there are more Cows."
Fancy a holiday to the moon? Sounds crazy? Not really. A Japanese company has been working on how to organize holidays to the moon for several years now.
Trying to make the holiday possible will not be an easy task, and the Japanese company plans to make it in stages. A transport system, like the space shuttle（航天飞机）used by NASA at the moment is likely to be developed for this purpose.
The next stage is to build a big hotel orbiting 500 km above the earth. The hotel will orbit the earth once every four or five hours, which will offer visitors some fascinating views of the earth. While this may not seem very exciting at first, think about new sports that can be designed for people to play in zero gravity.
The final stage in the plan is the construction of a hotel on the surface of the moon itself. As solar energy would be used to provide power, it would be important to build the hotel near one of the poles of the moon in order to gather as much solar energy as possible. It is also important to find a part of the moon which is flat, as a long runway will need to be built for the space shuttle to land on. Meanwhile, the company has already developed ways to make cement（水泥）on the moon. The company plans to produce water from oxygen elements, which can be found in moon rocks and hydrogen, which will have to be imported from earth.
So perhaps in a few years you might be enjoying yourselves on the moon.
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A. Next, the hotel will have a wide range of sporting activities. B. Tourists who want to travel into space can stay at a big hotel. C. The first thing to do is to organize trips around the earth for a few hours. D. There would probably be holidays to a moon hotel within the next ten years. E. There is plenty of sand, but the big problem will come with producing water. F. This part of the development plan does not seem to be too difficult to carry out. G. This is because a lunar day, which is 14 earth days long, is followed by 14 days of darkness. |
One of my favorite family photographs was taken last year at Disneyland. We were at the1of a ride called "Splash Mountain" and the picture was taken just as we were starting to2down. Disneyland cleverly designed an automatic camera,3at the most frightening part of the ride to take photos of the riders. These4pictures are then displayed at the exit of Splash Mountain and are available to5. They are not expensive.
I love this photograph because it's so real. Usually, when you are going to take pictures, you tidy your hair and6a pretty smile, wanting to look best. This picture is natural, showing a perfect mixture of7and terror on our faces. My husband's mouth is open in a scream as he hangs on to me. My son is8his baseball cap backwards so it won't fly off.
Every time I look at that photograph, I feel9. Through this picture, I sense that life should be an adventure and that we should have courage and enjoy new 10all the time. However, most of the time we draw back11fear. Fear is a kind of sick feeling that can12us from experiencing new interesting things in life. In fact, just as Franklin D. Roosevelt13it, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
So, when you feel like you're at the top of a roller coaster with a huge, alarming drop, don't retreat（撤退）. That is the time to14. That's the time to put a big smile on your face, scream if you need to, hug those you15and move forward towards the new adventures ahead.
My name is Svetlana and I have worked as a guide at Lake Baikal（贝加尔湖）for more than 10 years. (lie) in a pretty location in Siberia, the deep and fascinating lake with more than 300 rivers flowing into it is one of the world's greatest natural wonders. Lake Baikal holds between 20% and 23% of the world's surface water. is the world's oldest, clearest and deepest lake. The climate there is much milder than that of the (surround) area. Plant and animal life in the lake is rich and (vary). There are between 1500 and 1800 animal species at different (deep), and hundreds of plant species live on or near (it) surface.
Every season, I accompany and guide tourists. Baikal is territory with unique wildlife, breathtaking beauty, and vast local culture. Ancient, inspiring, mysterious, and beautiful, Lake Baikal appeals visitors like no other place on the earth. I feel (bless) to have been born here, and I am looking forward to many more years of welcoming visitors to a (memory) experience at Baikal.
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on the move commit oneself to daily routine insist on upside down appeal to the instant |
