Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions.
The ocean bottom- a region nearly 2.5 times greater than total land area of the Earth- is a vast frontier that even today is largely unexplored and uncharted. Until about a century ago, the deep-ocean floor was completely inaccessible, hidden beneath waters averaging over 3,600 meters deep. Totally without light and subjected to intense pressures hundreds of times greater than at the Earth’s surface, deep-ocean bottom is a hostile environment to humans, in some ways as forbidding and remote as the void of outer space.
Although researchers have taken samples of deep-ocean rocks and sediments for over a century, the first detailed global investigation of the ocean bottom did not actually start until 1968, with the beginning of the National Science Foundation’s Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP). Using techniques first developed for the offshore oil gas industry, the Dad’s drill ship, the Glomar Challenger, was able to maintain a steady position on the ocean’s surface and drill in very deep waters, extracting samples of sediments and rock from the ocean floor.
The Glomar Challenger completed 96 voyages in a 15-year research program that ended in November 1983. During this time, the vessel logged 600,000 kilometers and took almost 20,000 core samples of seabed sediments and rocks at 624 drilling sites around the world. The Glomar Challenger’s core samples have allowed geologists to reconstruct what the planet looked like hundreds of millions of years ago and to calculate what it will look like millions of years in the future. Today, largely on the strength of evidence gathered during the Glomar Challenger’s voyages, nearly all earth scientists agree on the theories of plate tectonics and continental drift that explain many of the geological processes that shape the Earth.
The cores of sediment drilled by the Glomar Challenger have also yielded information critical to understanding the world’s past climates. Deep-ocean sediments provide a climatic record stretching back hundreds of millions of years, because they are largely isolated from the mechanical erosion and the intense chemical and biological activity that rapidly destroy much land-based evidence of past climates. This record has already provided insights into the patterns and causes of past climatic change-information that may be used to predict future climates
The DSDP can be said to be______in terms of geological exploration.
A. a total flop
B. a waste of time and effort
C. a great success
D. of crucial importance
Đáp án C.
Key words: DSDP, geological exploration
Clue: Today, largely on the strength of evidence gathered during the Glomar Challenger’s voyages, nearly all earth scientists agree on the theories of plate tectonics and continental drift that explain many of the geological processes that shape the Earth: Ngày nay, dựa vào đa số trên nền tảng của nhiều dẫn chứng được thu thập trong suốt hành trình đi biển của Glomar Challenger ,các nhà khoa học đồng ý về giả thiết mảng kiến tạo và lục địa trôi dạt mà điều đó giải thích cho nhiều quá trình địa lí hình thành nên Trái Đất.
A. a total flop: một sự thất bại hoàn toàn
B. a waste of time and effort: một sự lãng phí thời gian và công sức.
C. a great success: một sự thành công tuyệt vời
D. of crucial importance: một sự quan trọng thiết yếu
Ta thấy Dự án khoan đáy biển sâu của Quỹ khoa học quốc gia (DSDP) đã thành công vì nó đã giúp các nhà khoa học giải thích được nhiều quá trình địa chất trên thế giới.
Vậy đáp án chính xác là đáp án C.