full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Aomawa Shields: How we'll find life on other planets

Unscramble the Blue Letters

We don't know what the ashretemops of these planets are like because the planets are so slaml and dim compared to their satrs and so far away from us. For example, one of the closest planets that could support surface water — it's called gselie 667 Cc — such a glamorous name, right, nice phone number for a name — it's 23 light yeras away. So that's more than 100 trillion miles. Trying to measure the atmospheric composition of an enlpaxoet passing in front of its host star is hard. It's like trying to see a fruit fly passing in front of a car's headlight. OK, now imagine that car is 100 tilrilon miles away, and you want to know the precise color of that fly.

Open Cloze

We don't know what the ___________ of these planets are like because the planets are so _____ and dim compared to their _____ and so far away from us. For example, one of the closest planets that could support surface water — it's called ______ 667 Cc — such a glamorous name, right, nice phone number for a name — it's 23 light _____ away. So that's more than 100 trillion miles. Trying to measure the atmospheric composition of an _________ passing in front of its host star is hard. It's like trying to see a fruit fly passing in front of a car's headlight. OK, now imagine that car is 100 ________ miles away, and you want to know the precise color of that fly.

Solution

  1. atmospheres
  2. stars
  3. years
  4. trillion
  5. exoplanet
  6. small
  7. gliese

Original Text

We don't know what the atmospheres of these planets are like because the planets are so small and dim compared to their stars and so far away from us. For example, one of the closest planets that could support surface water — it's called Gliese 667 Cc — such a glamorous name, right, nice phone number for a name — it's 23 light years away. So that's more than 100 trillion miles. Trying to measure the atmospheric composition of an exoplanet passing in front of its host star is hard. It's like trying to see a fruit fly passing in front of a car's headlight. OK, now imagine that car is 100 trillion miles away, and you want to know the precise color of that fly.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
life exists 2
light years 2
trillion miles 2
ice absorbs 2
planets orbiting 2

Important Words

  1. atmospheres
  2. atmospheric
  3. called
  4. car
  5. cc
  6. closest
  7. color
  8. compared
  9. composition
  10. dim
  11. exoplanet
  12. fly
  13. front
  14. fruit
  15. glamorous
  16. gliese
  17. hard
  18. headlight
  19. host
  20. imagine
  21. light
  22. measure
  23. miles
  24. nice
  25. number
  26. passing
  27. phone
  28. planets
  29. precise
  30. small
  31. star
  32. stars
  33. support
  34. surface
  35. trillion
  36. water
  37. years