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  3. When imaginative men turn their eyes towards space and wonder whether life exists in and any part of it, they may cheer themselv

When imaginative men turn their eyes towards space and wonder whether life exists in and any part of it, they may cheer themselv

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问题    When imaginative men turn their eyes towards space and wonder whether life exists in and any part of it, they may cheer themselves by remembering that life need not resemble closely the life that exists on Earth. Mars looks like the only planet where life like ours could exist, and even this is doubtful. But there may be other kinds of life based on other kinds of chemistry, and they may multiply on Venus or Jupiter. At least we cannot prove at present that they do not.
   Even more interesting is the possibility that life on their planets may be in a more advanced state of evolution. Present-day man is in a peculiar and probably temporary stage. His individual units retain a strong sense of personality. They are, in fact, still capable under favorable circumstances of leading individual lives. But man’s societies are already sufficiently developed to have enormously more power than the individuals have.
   It is not likely that this transitional situation will continue very long on the evolutionary time scale. Fifty thousand years from now man’s societies may have become so close-knit that the individuals retain no sense of separate personality. Then little distinction will remain between the organic parts of the multiple organisms and the inorganic parts (machines) that have been constructed by it. A million years further on man and his machines may have merged as closely as the muscles of the human body and the nerve cells that set them in motion.
   The exploration of space should be prepared for some such situation. If they arrive on a foreign planet that has reached an advanced stage (and this is by no means impossible), they may find it being inhabited by a single large organism composed of many closely cooperating units.
   The units may be "secondary"—machines created millions of years ago by a previous form of life and given the will and ability to survive and reproduce. They may be built entirely of metals and other durable materials. If this is the case, they may be much more tolerant of their environment, multiplying under conditions that would destroy immediately any organism made of carbon compounds and dependent on the familiar carbon cycle.
   Such creatures might be relics of a past age, many millions of years ago, when their planet was favorable to the origin of life, or they might be immigrants from a favored planet. (401 words)
According to this passage, some people believe that eventually ______.
选项 A、human societies will be much more cooperative
B、man will live in a highly organized world
C、machines will take control over man
D、living beings will disappear from Earth
答案D
解析 第三段指出，5000年以后，人类社会可能会变得如此严格一致，以至于个体不再有独立的个性感觉。到那时，众多物种的有机部分将与社会创造的无机部分(指机器)之间不再有什么区别。再过100万年，人和他创造的机器会融合为一体，正像人体肌肉与使肌肉活动的细胞一样密不可分。第五段指出，这些“单位”可能是“次一级的”(即：不是像人和其他生灵一样是自然中原来就存在的)——“他们”是以前存在着的一种生命几百万年前创造出来的机器，并给予了生存和繁衍的意志和能力。他们也许是金属或其他耐久材料制成的。如果是这样，他们对环境的耐力要强得多，他们能够在有碳水化合物构成并依靠为人熟知的碳循环来维系生命的生物(指包括人等的有机生物)根本无法生存的环境下不断繁衍。最后一段指出，这种“生物”也许是过去的几百万年前的某个时代的遗存物，那时，他们的星球还适应于生命的起源，也许是从某个其他适应生命居住的星球上迁移过去的“移民”。选择项中的 living当理解为与organic同义。
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