"The ancient Hawaiians are astronomers", wrote Queen Liliuokalani, Hawaii’s last reigning monarch, in 1897. Star watchers were a

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问题    "The ancient Hawaiians are astronomers", wrote Queen Liliuokalani, Hawaii’s last reigning monarch, in 1897. Star watchers were among the most esteemed members of Hawaiian society. Sadly, all is not well with astronomy in Hawaii today. Protesters have erupted of over construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope(TMT), a giant observatory that promises to revolutionize humanity’s view of cosmos.
   At issue is the TMT’s planned location on Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano worshiped by some Hawaiians as the piko, that connects the Hawaiian Islands to the heavens. But Mauna Kea is also home to some of the world’s most powerful telescopes. Rested in the Pacific Ocean, Mauna Kea’s peak rises above the bulk of our planet’s dense atmosphere, where conditions allow telescopes to obtain images of unsurpassed clarity.
   Oppositions to telescopes on Mauna Kea is nothing new. A small but vocal group of Hawaiians and environmentalists have long viewed their presence as disrespect for sacred land and a painful reminder of oc cupation of what was once a sovereign nation.
   Some blame for the current controversy belongs to astronomers. In their eagerness to build bigger telescopes, they forgot that science is not the only way of understanding the world. They did not always prioritize the protection of Mauna Kea’ s fragile ecosystems or its holiness to the islands’ inhabitants. Hawaiian culture is not a relic of the past; it is a living culture undergoing a renaissance today.
   Yet science has a cultural history, too, with roots going back to the dawn of civilization. The same curiosity to find what lies beyond the horizon that first brought early Polynesians to Hawaii’s shores inspires astronomers today to explore the heavens. Calls to disassemble all telescopes on Mauna Kea or to ban future development there ignore the reality that astronomy and Hawaiin culture both seek to answer big questions about who we are, where we come from and where we are going. Perhaps that is why we explore the starry skies, as if answering a primal calling to know ourselves and our true ancestral homes.
   The astronomy community is making compromises to change its use of Mauna Kea. The TMT site was chosen to minimize the telescope’s visibility around the island and to avoid archaeological and environmental impact. To limit the number of telescopes on Mauna Kea, old ones will be removed at the end of their lifetimes and their sites retuned to a natural state. There is no reason why everyone cannot be welcomed on Mauna Kea to embrace their cultural heritage and to study the stars.
It can be inferred from Paragraph 5 that progress in today’ s astronomy

选项 A、is fulfilling the dreams of ancient Hawaiians.
B、helps spread Hawaiian culture across the world.
C、may uncover the origin of Hawaiian culture.
D、will eventually soften Hawaiians’ history.

答案C

解析 推断题。根据题干关键词astronomy可以定位到第五段的第三句话。第三句话指出“天文 学和夏威夷文化都在寻找这几个终极问题的答案:我们是谁,我们从哪里来,又要到哪里去”。 所以答案是C项“可能揭示夏威夷文化的起源”。
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