介绍:
This is NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Here is the news.
China has sent into space the country's first space telescope in a fresh search for smoking-gun signals of dark matter, invisible material that scientists say makes up most of the universe's mass.
The Dark Matter Particle Explorer Satellite is nicknamed "Wukong", after the legendary figure Monkey King with penetrating eyes in the Chinese classical fiction Journey to the West.
The satellite will enter a sun-synchronous orbit at a height of 500 kilometers, to observe the direction, energy and electric charge of high-energy particles in space.
From there, scientists hope the almost 2-tonne desk-sized satellite will help lift the "invisible cloak" on the dark matter and shine more light on the hypothetical mass.
Dark matter does not emit or reflect enough electromagnetic radiation to be observed directly. It is one of the huge mysteries of modern science.
Theorized by scientists who could not understand missing mass and strangely bent light in faraway galaxies, dark matter has become widely accepted in the physics community even though its existence has never been concretely proven.
Scientists now believe only around five percent of the total mass-energy of the known universe is made up of ordinary matter, whereas dark matter and dark energy make up the rest.
This is NEWS Plus Special English.
China's production of new energy vehicles surged by 600 percent year on year in November thanks to government support.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said in a statement that the total production in November stood at 72,000 cars.
During the month, the output of pure electric passenger vehicles soared 700 percent from a year earlier to reach 30,000 cars; and that for plug-in hybrid passenger vehicles tripled to 7,500.
China rolled out a raft of measures to promote new energy vehicles in a bid to save energy and combat air pollution. The measures include tax exemptions, subsidies for car purchases and a requirement for government departments to buy more new energy cars.
Official data showed that 95 percent of new energy vehicles produced in November would benefit from the favorable taxation policies.
In the first 11 months, China produced 280,000 new energy vehicles, a fourfold increase from the same period in 2014.
You're listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
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