新托福阅读练习材料：Ice Quake.pdfVIP

智 课 网 托 福 备 考 资 料 新托福阅读练习材料：Ice Quake 在过去十年中，有上百次地震发生在地球上。但是它们并非都发生 在靠近断层线的区域，我们的托福阅读考试材料就来说说发生在严寒的 冰原地区的冰震。   Over a hundred quakes have happened in the last decade. But they didnt occur near fault lines(断层线). What were they near? Find out on this Moment of Science.   We’re used to thinking of earthquakes as (1)tremors(震动，颤抖) that happen along fault lines when tectonic plates ((地球表面的)构造板块)shift. They’re dramatic(吸引人注目的) events: a good-sized(相当大的，大型的) earthquake can bring buildings and bridges (2)toppling down(推翻;倒塌).   Those destructive energy bursts are high frequency(高频) ground vibrations(震动), and that’s the range of vibrations seismologists(地震学家) most actively study. Just recently, though, a geophysicist(地球物理学者) at Harvard University named Göran Ekström studied low-frequency(低频的) vibrations instead, and discovered something interesting.   He found over a hundred quakes have happened in the last decade that aren’t along any fault line. What are they near instead? Ice.   A glacier(冰川) can be thought of as a very (3)slow-moving(动作缓慢的) stream. It’s made of solid ice, but over long periods of time it can flow gradually over the land, sometimes carving deep (4)trenches(沟，沟渠) and (5)bulldozing(推土) up rock and soil. Just because it takes centuries to rearrange(重新排列) things, though, doesn’t mean a glacier isn’t enormously powerful at any given moment.   By carefully measuring seismic(地震的) signals, Ekström was able to spot numerous low-frequency quakes in Greenland that hadn’t been identified. He also found that they mostly occurred during July, August, and September. Those warmer months melt lots of glacial ice.   Ekström suspects that liquid water is (6)pooling(淤积) underneath the glacial ice to the point where the thin (7)veneer(外表) of water at the base of the glacier allows the whole mass to slip(滑动) a little, the way your foot can