Text 20 b exploring our sun

(A. Clark. “Profiles of the Future”)

Give a summary of the text.

How close to the Sun could a man-carrying ship approach in safety? The answer to this question depends upon the skill of the refrigeration experts; my guess is that five million miles is an attainable distance even with a crew-carrying vehicle.

There is one useful trick we may employ to get quite close to the Sun in (almost) perfect safety. This is to use some asteroid or comet as a sunshade, and the best choice known at the moment is the little flying mountain named Icarus.

This minor planet travels on an orbit that every thirteen months brings it within a mere 17 million miles of the Sun.

Occasionally, it also passes quite close to Earth; it was within 4 million miles of us in 1968.

Though small in diameter (approximately one or two miles), Icarus casts a cone of shadow into space, and in the cold shelter of that shadow, a ship could travel safely around the Sun.

Small though it is, this minor planet must weigh about 10 billion tons.

There may be other asteroids that go even closer to the Sun, if there are not, we may undoubtedly one day make them do so by a nudge at the right point in the orbit.

It is interesting to consider how long the travel would take. Being a rather small star, the Sun is “only” three million miles in circumference. A satellite just outside its atmosphere would move about a million miles an hour, so would circle it every three hours.

Magneto-hydrodynamics is concerned with the handling of very hot gases in magnetic fields. Already it has enabled us to produce temperatures of tens of millions of degrees in the laboratory, and ultimately it may lead us to the limitless power from hydrogen fusion.

I suggest that, when we have acquired some real mastery of this infant science, it will also give us magnetic and electric shields that can provide far more effective protection against both temperature and pressure that can be obtained from any walls of metal.

NOTES

1. guess — припущення

2. cast a cone of shadow — відкидати тінь у вигляді конуса

3. nudge — поштовх

4. circumference — коло

Additional Reading text 1 Age of Thinking Machines

Which fields of modern science and technology might prove decisive for the future development of new forms of movement of matter? One of them is the electronic computer — the most remarkable achievement of the twentieth century, which marked the emergence of man into the era of the automation of mental work.

Firstly, an increase in the volume of the machine-memory. The memory system of the future machines will store the entire wealth of knowledge accumulated by man in all the sciences, in culture and in every aspect of human life. The potential in this field is endless.

Secondly, micro-miniaturization. This is associated with the progress of radioelectronics. In the designing of electronic computers we have passed from radio-valves to transistors, which are smaller in size, and to solid circuits, where various portions of a tiny piece of synthetic crystal are imparted the necessary electrophysical properties by appropriate treatment.

Micro-miniaturization makes it possible to construct extremely complex computers of small size and weight, but involving a tremendous number of elements.

The man-machine relationship is most important, too. In the comparatively near future, a global system of machines, a single automated system of communication, and a single system of scientific, technical and other data supply will be developed. All these systems will be correlated, will have intricate structures and specific properties. The development of such systems and of their theory is an essential trend of modern thought.

Finally, the electronic machines will affect radically the work of scientists. The machine will by itself accumulate, process and supply new data. By this method some new types of codes have been found. Their discovery necessitated the testing and comparisons of approximately one thousand million operations. Thanks to the high rate of processing, the computers found the new codes independently, while man only fed the demands and the algorithms, i. e. set the search pattern.

The machines which are already available possess prerequisites of new properties, and serious thought should be focussed on the development of these emerging properties along the channels most beneficial for man.

Computing machines will radically change the work of man. They will independently accumulate information, process it and draw conclusions. Also important will be such trends as making machines self-improving, self-programming, and self-managing. Thanks to these properties, the machine will possess the ability to modify its structure, its organization and the interaction of its elements to a certain extent.

A global system with global tasks may be developed in the comparatively near future. This will call for combining within a single system electronic computers, information and other machines, a system of communications, etc.