full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Gabriela González: How LIGO discovered gravitational waves -- and what might be next

Unscramble the Blue Letters

The interferometers have lasers that travel from the center through four kltiormees in-vacuum, are rleeeftcd in mirrros and then they return. We measure the difference in the distances between this arm and this arm. These detectors are very, very, very sensitive; they're the most precise instruments in the world. Why did we make two? It's because the signals that we want to meausre come from space, but the mirrors are moving all the time, so in order to distinguish the gravitational wave effects — which are astrophysical effects and should show up on the two detectors — we can distinguish them from the local effects, which appear sapleatery, either on one or the other.

Open Cloze

The interferometers have lasers that travel from the center through four __________ in-vacuum, are _________ in _______ and then they return. We measure the difference in the distances between this arm and this arm. These detectors are very, very, very sensitive; they're the most precise instruments in the world. Why did we make two? It's because the signals that we want to _______ come from space, but the mirrors are moving all the time, so in order to distinguish the gravitational wave effects — which are astrophysical effects and should show up on the two detectors — we can distinguish them from the local effects, which appear __________, either on one or the other.

Solution

  1. separately
  2. mirrors
  3. kilometers
  4. reflected
  5. measure

Original Text

The interferometers have lasers that travel from the center through four kilometers in-vacuum, are reflected in mirrors and then they return. We measure the difference in the distances between this arm and this arm. These detectors are very, very, very sensitive; they're the most precise instruments in the world. Why did we make two? It's because the signals that we want to measure come from space, but the mirrors are moving all the time, so in order to distinguish the gravitational wave effects — which are astrophysical effects and should show up on the two detectors — we can distinguish them from the local effects, which appear separately, either on one or the other.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
gravitational waves 9
black holes 6
gravitational wave 4
billion years 2
long time 2

Important Words

  1. arm
  2. astrophysical
  3. center
  4. detectors
  5. difference
  6. distances
  7. distinguish
  8. effects
  9. gravitational
  10. instruments
  11. interferometers
  12. kilometers
  13. lasers
  14. local
  15. measure
  16. mirrors
  17. moving
  18. order
  19. precise
  20. reflected
  21. return
  22. separately
  23. show
  24. signals
  25. space
  26. time
  27. travel
  28. wave
  29. world