Vocabulary

1. Read the following.

The brightest member galaxies of rich clusters have been detected at distances exceeding several thousand million light-years from the Earth. The branch of learning that deals with phenomena at the scale of many millions of light-years is called cosmology. Cosmology is, in effect, the study of the universe at large. A dramatic new feature, not present on small scales, emerges when the universe is viewed in the large - namely, the cosmological expansion.

On cosmological scales, galaxies appear to be racing away from one another with the apparent velocity of recession being linearly proportional to the distance of the object.

10

The Hubble law implies that roughly 10 years ago all of the matter in the Universe was closely packed together in an incredibly dense state and that everything then exploded in a “big bang”, the signature of the explosion being written eventually in the galaxies of stars that formed out of the expanding debris of matter.

2. Find Russian equivalents of the underlined words.

3. Compare.

а) Million vs. Millions:

4 million - a numeral (does not have the plural form),

millions of - a noun (has the plural form).

b) On small scales vs. at the scale of:

On small scales – в масштабе,

At the scale of – исчисляемые, в исчислении.

c) Аt large vs. in the large:

At large – в общем смысле,

In the large – в большом масштабе.

4. Translate the sentences.

1. At that time computers cost millions of dollars.

2. In the 1970s a new model of a computer could cost from 2 to 4 million dollars.

3. New research shows how the ion-trap method could be applied on a larger scale.

4. It has allowed us to extrapolate from what we see in our own cosmic neighborhood to the universe at large.

5. The quantum universe at large is well described by the classical geometry.

5. Find Russian equivalents of other parts of the text in bold.

Lesson 5

Comparison

Part I

Grammar

1. Read the text paying attention to the parts in bold.

Cosmic expansion provides the narrative for understanding how today's universe came to be. As cosmologists imagine rewinding the clock, the universe becomes denser, hotter, more extreme and simpler. In exploring the beginning, we also probe the inner workings of nature by taking advantage of an accelerator more powerful than any built on Earth — the big bang itself. By looking out into space with telescopes, astronomers peer back in time — and the larger the telescope, the farther back they peer. The light from distant galaxies reveals an earlier epoch, and the amount this light has redshifted indicates how much the universe has grown in the intervening years. The current record holder has a redshift of about eight, representing a time when the universe was one-ninth its present size and only a few hundred million years old.

2. Answer the questions.

1. How are Comparative and Superlative degrees of adjectives and adverbs formed (two models)?

2. Can we choose the model we like best in each particular case?

3. When is each of the models used?

Part two

Practice

1. Read the passages attentively.

A

The sixth planet from the sun, Saturn formed more than four billion years ago. With a diameter of 120,536 kilometers (almost 75,000 miles) it is the second largest planet in the solar system. While almost as big in size as Jupiter, Saturn's density is the lowest in the solar system and its mass only 30 percent that of Jupiter. Saturn's specific gravity (0.7) is less than that of water. In fact, Saturn's density is so low that it could float in an imaginary gigantic bathtub.

Like Jupiter, Saturn is made up mainly of hydrogen and helium gases. However, it is twice as far from Earth as Jupiter, and from Saturn the Sun appears about 10 times smaller than how we see it from Earth. On average, an area on Earth receives 90 times the amount of sunlight than the same area would on Saturn. Scientists believe Saturn's interior is similar to Jupiter's, consisting of a rocky core much like the size of Earth, a liquid metallic hydrogen layer and a molecular hydrogen layer. Traces of various ices are also present. Saturn's interior is hot. At the core, the temperature is about 12,000 degrees Kelvin (21,150 degrees Fahrenheit). Saturn radiates more energy into space than it receives from the Sun.

В

The discussed theory is far from perfect. Diego Bias, a quantum gravity researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne has found a "hidden sickness" in the theory when double-checking calculations for the solar system. Most physicists examined ideal cases, assuming, for instance, that Earth and the Sun are spheres, Bias explains: "We checked the more realistic case, where the sun is almost a sphere, but not quite." General relativity pretty much gives the same answer in both the scenarios. But in Hofava gravity, the realistic case gives a wildly different result.

C

The first is the extent to which the tube is emptied of air and gas. The fewer the molecules of gas remaining in the tube the less the electrons are interpreted by collisions. The second factor is the voltage, or electrical pressure applied to the tube. The higher the voltage, the greater the impulse given to the stream of electrons striking the target.

2. Find in the passages above the English equivalents for the following.

• Больше чем; меньше чем; вторая по величине; вдвое дальше; самая низкая; такая же большая; почти сопоставимое по размеру; составляет всего 30% от; далеко не совершенна; не вполне; совсем другой результат; чем…, тем больше; чем…, тем меньше; подобно Юпитеру; в среднем; аналогично; примерно; дает во многом схожий ответ; то, насколько.

2. Translate the following sentences.

1. Processors are now three times faster than had been predicted in the early 1980s.

2. Silicon wafers today are much larger but hold only about half as many chips as did those of the original microprocessor, the Intel.

3. The larger the redshift, the smaller the universe was when the supernova occurred and hence the more the universe has expanded between then and now.

4. The new material is remarkably strong and tight: it has three times the tensile strength of aluminum, yet it is 2.6 times lighter.

5. The supply of lithium is more limited than that of deuterium, but still large enough to supply the world’s energy demand for thousands of years.

6. The neutron flux expected on a commercial D-T fusion reactor is about 100 times that of current fusion power reactors.

7. The price to pay compared to D-T is that the energy confinement must be 30 times better and the power produced is 68 times less.

8. Magnetars have a magnitude field of about 100 gigateslas, roughly a thousand times stronger than the field of normal stars. This is strong enough to erase a credit card on Earth from half the distance of the Moon’s orbit.

9. Like other forms of high - energy radiation, X-rays can be hazardous, but they can also be very beneficial.

10. X-rays can also be used for inspecting the insides of articles as different as fountain pens and electrical appliances to make sure that they have been put together properly.

12. The fewer the molecules of gas remaining in the tube, the less electrons are interrupted by collisions.

13. The higher the voltage, the greater the impulse given to electrons striking the target.

14. The better your knew the state the better you could predict the behavior.

15. The form, design and implementation of CPUs changed dramatically since the earliest examples, but their fundamental operation has remained much the same.

16. Factoring in climate change will boost wheat prices by at least 170 percent and rice by a minimum of 113 percent.

17. Rather than labeling species as more or less fit, one can describe how many offspring they are likely to leave under given circumstances.

18. A holographic-technology company is marketing a disk that is similar in size to a standard CD but can store 200 gigabytes – a 200-fold improvement on optical CD technology.

19. Serious scientific publications disputing evolution are all but nonexistent.

20. Opening up the inside of a material for storage, rather than just using its surface, yields huge improvements in capacity.

21 The thermal chimney works like a regular fireplace chimney, except that it is use to push hot air out of the house.

22. Why do some innovations fall so far short of what is expected of them, whereas others succeed brilliantly?

23. The neutralino is thought to have a mass between 100 and 1,000 times that of the proton, just within the reach of experiments to be conducted by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN near Geneva.

24. A second candidate is the axion, a superlight-weight particle about a trillionth the mass of the electron.

25. Scientists in US have shown how networks of artificial neurons containing two Josephson Junctions would outpace traditional computer-simulated brains by many orders of magnitude.

26. The rechargeable lithium-ion batteries common in everything from iPods to cell phones to laptops can store twice the energy of similarly sized nickel-metal hydride batteries and up to six times as much as their lead-acid progenitors.

3. Study the sentences above.

Find all the examples where the compared entities are:

a) equal

b) n-times greater.

4. Make sentences.

a) Ex: The researchers are prepared enough to conduct such an experiment.

The … is large to V…

new enough not to V…

is not interesting to be + Ved…

challenging

b) Ex: The shorter is the distance, the sooner we’ll reach the destination.

The stronger………… the more powerful……...

The longer ………. the greater…….

The more challenging ….. the more attractive……

The fewer…… the less/more…….

5. Write down 5 sentences following the models a), b) in 4.

Part III