full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Rene Laufer: How far would you have to go to escape gravity?

Unscramble the Blue Letters

But when it comes to escaping gravity, there’s a loophole. If all the mass around us is pulling on us all the time, how would Earth’s gviatry change if you tunneled deep below the surface, assuming you could do so without being cooked or crushed? If you holeowld out the center of a perfectly spherical Earth— which it isn’t, but let’s just say it were— you’d experience an identical pull from all sides. And you’d be suspended, wgehitsles, only encountering the tiny pulls from other ctesaelil bodies. So you could escape the Earth’s gravity in such a thought experiment— but only by heading srihgtat into it.

Open Cloze

But when it comes to escaping gravity, there’s a loophole. If all the mass around us is pulling on us all the time, how would Earth’s _______ change if you tunneled deep below the surface, assuming you could do so without being cooked or crushed? If you ________ out the center of a perfectly spherical Earth— which it isn’t, but let’s just say it were— you’d experience an identical pull from all sides. And you’d be suspended, __________, only encountering the tiny pulls from other _________ bodies. So you could escape the Earth’s gravity in such a thought experiment— but only by heading ________ into it.

Solution

  1. straight
  2. celestial
  3. weightless
  4. hollowed
  5. gravity

Original Text

But when it comes to escaping gravity, there’s a loophole. If all the mass around us is pulling on us all the time, how would Earth’s gravity change if you tunneled deep below the surface, assuming you could do so without being cooked or crushed? If you hollowed out the center of a perfectly spherical Earth— which it isn’t, but let’s just say it were— you’d experience an identical pull from all sides. And you’d be suspended, weightless, only encountering the tiny pulls from other celestial bodies. So you could escape the Earth’s gravity in such a thought experiment— but only by heading straight into it.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
gravitational force 4
gravitational pull 3
light years 2
space station 2
celestial bodies 2

Important Words

  1. assuming
  2. bodies
  3. celestial
  4. center
  5. change
  6. cooked
  7. crushed
  8. deep
  9. encountering
  10. escape
  11. escaping
  12. experience
  13. gravity
  14. heading
  15. hollowed
  16. identical
  17. loophole
  18. mass
  19. perfectly
  20. pull
  21. pulling
  22. pulls
  23. sides
  24. spherical
  25. straight
  26. surface
  27. suspended
  28. thought
  29. time
  30. tiny
  31. tunneled
  32. weightless