A questão refere-se aos dois primeiros parágrafos de um artigo publicado pela revista TIME:

The Gentle Cosmic Rain

Hardly ........... took Louis Frank seriously when he first proposed, more tahn 10 years ago, that Earth was being bombarded by cosmic snowballs at the rate of as many as 30 a minute. Part of the problem was how preposterous his theory sounded: every day, he suggested, tens of thousands of icy comets, each the size of a small house and containing 36 metric tons of water, were vaporizing in the upper atmosphere and raining down on Earth. It didn't help that the University of lowa physicist happened to release his findings on April 1, 1986. "Newspapers, " he recalls, "phoned to ask if this was an April Fool's joke."

Frank is unlikely to hear that kind of question again. Last week, at the American Geophysical Union's annual convention in Baltimore, Md., he backed up his theory with fresh evidence: sattelite images that capture his cosmic hail in midfliht. Suddenly it seems entirely possible that the source of much of the water on Earth - and even of life itself - might be Frank's "gentle cosmic rains." (...)

Time, June 9, 1997

A questão refere-se ao texto, cujo vocabulário segue abaixo:

• hardly anybody = quase ninguém

• to take seriously = levar a sério

• Earth = Terra

• snowballs = bolas de neve

• rate = taxa, proporção, índice

• preposterous = ilógico

• to sound = parecer

• tens of thousands = dezenas de milhares

• icy = congelados

• each = cada

• size = tamanho

• small = pequeno

• to contain = conter

• tons = toneladas

• upper = superior

• It didn't help that = não adiantou nada

• to release = publicar

• findings = descobertas

• to recaIl = lembrar-se

• April Fool's joke = brincadeira de 1º de Abril

• to be unlikely to = ser improvável

• to hear = ouvir

• kind = tipo, espécie

• again = novamente

• last week = na semana passada

• to back up = sustentar

• fresh = nova, recente

• hail = granizo

• suddenly = de repente

• to seem = parecer

• entirely = inteiramente

• source = fonte

• even = até mesmo

• might be = poderia ser

A lacuna encontrada na 1º linha do texto deve ser preenchida por: