外研版选修三册第四单元听力练习

Unit 4 A glimpse of the future

Jen: Do you think time travel will ever become popular?

Will: No, it's much too dangerous. Just by going to the past, people might change history.

Jen: Let me get this straight. You mean that they could change the past even without trying to?

Will: Yes! Have you ever heard of the butterfly effect? That is the idea that even small changes in the past can result in big changes in the future that may be quite negative.

Jen: I don't get it.

Will: Well, this can be exemplified by a story written by Ray Bradbury called A Sound of Thunder, about a company that offered time-travel tours where you could hunt dinosaurs.

Jen: Amazing! That sounds really exciting. But if they killed a dinosaur, wouldn't that change the past?

Will: Well, they were careful to keep this from happening. Before the hunt began, the guide would go back and find a dinosaur who was going to die soon from an accident.

Jen: Oh, so what you're saying is that the hunter would kill the dinosaur right before it was going to die anyway?

Will: Exactly. Also, the company gave the hunters strict rules as to where they should stand and what they could do.

Jen: So what happened?

Will: Well, a guide took a hunter back to kill a dinosaur, but when the hunter saw the dinosaur he ran away in fear without looking where he was going. Then when they got back to the future, the future had been changed in a really bad way.

Jen: Are you serious? Why did that happen?

Will: Well, the hunter had stepped on a butterfly while he was running.

Jen: Wow. And what happened next?

Will: Well, you'll have to read the story to find out.

Jen: I can't wait!