VII. Reading Comprehension 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 3,600 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. The Glomar Challenger completed 96 voyages in a 15-year research program
that ended in November 1983. During this time, the vessel logged 600,000 kilometers
and took almost 20,000 core samples of seabed sediments and rocks at 624 drilling
sites around the world. The Glomar Challenger's core samples have allowed
geologists to reconstruct what the planet looked like hundred of millions of years ago
and to calculate what it will probably look like millions of years in the future. Today,
largely on the strength of evidence gathered during the Glomar Challenger's voyages,
nearly all earth scientists agree on the theories of plate tectonics and continental drift
that explain many of the geological processes that shape the Earth. The cores of sediment drilled by the Glomar Challenger have also yielded
information critical to understanding the world's past climates. Deep-ocean sediments
provide a climatic record stretching back hundreds of millions of years, because they
are largely isolated from the mechanical erosion and the intense chemical and
biological activity that rapidly destroy much land-based evidence of past climates.
This record has already provided insights into the patterns and causes of past climatic
change --- information that may be used to predict future climates. 【題組】43.Which of the following is NOT mentioned in the passage as being a result of the
Deep Sea Drilling Project?
(A) Geologists observed forms of marine life never before seen.
(B) Two geological theories became more widely accepted.
(C) Information was revealed about the Earth's past climatic changes.
(D) Geologists were able to determine the Earth's appearance hundreds of millions
of years ago.