Question 155
MediumOriginal questionIt is easy to think of the Sun as something , but to an astronomer it is an ordinary star: a hot, glowing ball of gas like the stars we see at night. It only looks different because it is so much nearer. Even so, it is far away, about 150 million kilometres, which is roughly four hundred times the distance from the Earth to the Moon.
The Sun is about a hundred times wider than the Earth, yet it is only an average size for a star. Astronomers have found stars a hundred times bigger than the Sun, and others ten times smaller.
It is also . The Sun is about 4.5 billion years old and is at present a type of star called a yellow dwarf. In another five billion years or so it will into a big, cooler star called a red giant. A few billion years after that, it will shrink into a white dwarf: a star about the size of the Earth, but far heavier.
None of this makes the Sun any less important to us. Its holds the whole solar system together, and life on Earth depends on its light and heat. An ordinary star, it turns out, is enough to make a planet a home.
In the last paragraph, the writer's attitude towards the Sun is best described as
Show the answer and explanation
Correct answer: D
Explanation
The paragraph says that being ordinary does not make the Sun "any less important", and lists what it does: its gravity holds the solar system together, and life depends on its light and heat.
The closing line, that an ordinary star "is enough to make a planet a home", is warm and appreciative.
Worth noting
The writer calls the Sun ordinary, but not as a complaint. There is no disappointment in the passage.
- Concept
- Identifying the writer's attitude
- Typical timeTypical
- 45 s
- Your timeYours
- —
Ten questions from Factual passages, at your own pace.