专题05 阅读理解之议论文10篇（第一期）-2023高考英语上海市名校模拟真题速递

2023高考英语上海市名校模拟真题速递 第一期 专题05 阅读理解之议论文10篇 （2023·上海·模拟预测）Everything we know suggests that the universe is unusual. It is flatter, smoother, larger and emptier than a “typical” universe predicted by the known laws of physics. If we reached into a hat filled with pieces of paper, each with the specifications of a possible universe written on it, it is unlikely that we would get a universe anything like ours in one pick—or even a billion. The challenge that cosmologists face is to make sense of this specialness. One approach to this question is inflation—the hypothesis (假设) that the early universe went through a stage of fast expansion. At first, inflation seemed to do the trick. A simple version of the idea gave correct predictions for the spectrum of fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background. But a closer look shows that we have just moved the problem further back in time. To make inflation happen at all requires us to fine-tune the initial conditions of the universe. And unless inflation is highly tuned, it leads to a runaway process of universe creation. As a result, some cosmologists (宇宙学家) suggest that there is not one universe, but an infinite number, with a huge variety of properties: the multiverse. There are an infinite number of universes in the collection that are like our universe and an infinite number that are not. But the proportion of infinity to infinity is undefined, and can be made into anything the theorist wants. Thus the multiverse theory has difficulty making any firm predictions and threatens to take us out of the area of science. These other universes are unobservable and because chance dictates the random distribution of properties across universes, suggesting the existence of a multiverse does not let us get to anything about our universe beyond what we already know. As attractive as the idea may seem, it is basically a sleight of hand, which turns an explanatory failure into an apparent explanatory success. The success is empty because