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托福听力训练001——天文 · 金星


Well, one of the most interesting features on the surface are in fact the shield volcanoes. Shield volcanoes formed when magma comes out of the ground in the same spot over and over again. Remember, magma is hot molten rock that's underground, and it is called lava when it reaches the surface.

Uh, so the lava builds up, and hardens, and a volcano forms. Now, the lava on Venus is thin. It spreads out easily. So shield volcanoes have very gentle sloping sides. They are called shield volcanoes because viewed from above, they kind of resemble shields, you know, like a warrior's shield.

But what's particularly interesting about these volcanoes is that most of the volcanoes here on Earth are not shield volcanoes. Instead, they are other volcano types, like strata volcanoes Stratovolcano, for example, which are a result of tectonic plate movement.

RememberStratovolcano plates? Underneath the Earth's crust, there are a number of shifting slabs or plates that are slowly moving. And in the zones on the edges of the plates where different plates meet and interact, that's where we get most of Earth's volcanoes.

On Venus, however, volcanoes are not clustered in discrete zones like they are on Earth. Instead, they are more or less randomly scattered over Venus's surface. Well, that's significant. Venus has mostly shield volcanoes, and they are randomly scattered. That indicates that Venus does not have moving tectonic plates, and that's a big difference compared to Earth.






  • Venus 金星
  • molten 熔融的
  • harden 硬化
  • sloping 倾斜的
  • resemble 类似于
  • shield volcanoes 盾状火山
  • strata volcanoes 地层火山
  • Stratovolcano 复式火山，又称为成层火山
  • tectonic 地壳构造的
  • tectonic plate 地壳构造板块
  • tectonic plate movement 板块运动
  • Earth's crust 地壳
  • shifting slabs 移动板
  • interact 相互影响
  • cluster 聚集
  • discrete 离散的；互不相连的
  • scattered 撒；撒播；散开；散落


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This article was last edited at 2021-04-20 09:06:13

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