“I stepped out and was flabbergasted,” local journalist Bahram Baloch told the BBC. “I could see this gray, dome-shaped (圆顶形的) body in the distance, like a giant whale swimming near the surface. Hundreds of people had gathered to watch it in disbelief.”
This island has become a global curiosity. How was it formed in just a few minutes?
As you might already know, many islands in the sea are formed by volcanoes. There are numerous volcanoes under the sea. As the hot lava erupts and cools down, it piles up and forms the shape of a mountain. When the mountain “grows” to higher than the sea level, the part that’s above the water is what we call an “island”.
This is how the island was formed after the Pakistan earthquake, except that instead of a regular volcano, it was a “mud volcano” that brought about this island. Lava is not the only thing that’s locked under the Earth’s crust — there is also gas. When an earthquake happens and breaks part of the crust, the gas is released at an extremely high speed, pushing mud up to the surface, according to National Geographic.
But only earthquakes that are extremely powerful can cause mud volcanoes to push up enough mud to produce islands — and this 7.7-magnitude earthquake in Pakistan was strong enough. The island is about 20 meters high, up to about 90 meters wide and 30 meters long, nearly the size of a soccer field.
In fact, mud volcano islands aren’t new. This is the fourth island of this kind in the region since 1945. But those islands usually didn’t last long.
“It will probably be gone within a couple of months,” said Bill Barnhart, a researcher with the US Geological Survey. After all, “it’s just a big pile of mud that was on the seafloor that got pushed up”.
小题1:What is the article mainly about?
A．The disastrous effects of coastal earthquakes.
B．The difference between mud volcanoes and regular volcanoes.
C．How islands are formed by mud volcanoes.
D．The great natural wonders of Pakistan.小题2:The underlined word “flabbergasted” in Paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to __________.
A．surprised
B．disappointed
C．worried
D．curious小题3:We can infer from the article that __________.
A．the new island near the coast of Pakistan actually took a few months to form
B．scientists still know little about different types of volcanoes
C．another earthquake is likely to happen in Pakistan within a couple of months
D．not all volcanoes change the geological appearance of the Earth小题4:According to the article, islands formed by mud volcanoes __________.
A．are quite difficult to locate
B．usually disappear after a short period of time
C．are formed by hot lava from volcanoes
D．used to be part of the Earth’s crust