The new planet's size put it right on the edge between being rocky like Earth and being a fluffy gas ball like Neptune, according to according to studies of other such exoplanets. In an email, Jon Jenkins of NASA's Ames Research Center, home of the Kepler project, and lead author of a paper being published in The Astronomical Journal, said the likelihood of the planet's being rocky was 50 percent to 62 percent, depending on uncertainties in the size of its home star. Describing the planet during a news conference, Dr. Jenkins lapsed into lines from John Keats's poem On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer; " Then felt I like some watcher of the skies/ When a new planet swims into his ken.''

【正确答案】正确答案：根据对其他此类系外行星的研究推断，以这颗新行星的大小而论，它正好介于地球这样的岩石星球和海王星那样的气体星球之间。美国宇航局艾姆斯研究中心开普勒项目研究员，同时也是《天体物理学报》上即将刊发的一篇相关论文的第一作者乔恩.詹金斯在电子邮件中表示，该行星属于岩石构造的可能性为50％至62％，具体取决于其主星的大小。在新闻发布会上描述这颗行星时，詹金斯博士引用了约翰.济慈在《初读查普曼译荷马有感》中的诗句：“于是我有如夜观星象，忽见有新星游人眼底。”

【答案解析】解析：本文选自Dennis Overbye于《纽约时报》上发表的一篇名为NASA Says Data Reveals Kepler 452b，an Eaah-Like Planet(《NASA宣布发现与地球相似的新行星》)的文章。“开普勒452b”环绕类似太阳的恒星运动，周期为385天，只比地球上的一年略长，因此确定处在“宜居带”。本文涉及少量天文学知识，考生备考前需了解掌握。