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老托福阅读100篇(1995.08真题)
Question 1-9
Investigation of the Deep-Ocean
Keywords: ocean, researchers, techniques, samples, rocks
The ocean bottom – a region nearly 2.5 times greater than the 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 3,6000 meters deep. Totally without light and subjected to intense pressures hundreds of times greater than at the Earth's surface, the 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 and gas industry, the DSDP'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......