full transcript
From the Ted Talk by Stephen Hawking: Questioning the universe
Unscramble the Blue Letters
This brings me to the last of the big questions: the future of the human race. If we are the only intelligent beings in the galaxy, we should make sure we survive and couinnte. But we are entering an increasingly deoruagns period of our history. Our population and our use of the finite resources of penlat Earth are grinwog exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill. But our genetic code still creiras the selfish and aggressive instincts that were of survival advantage in the past. It will be difficult enough to avoid dsisetar in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million.
Open Cloze
This brings me to the last of the big questions: the future of the human race. If we are the only intelligent beings in the galaxy, we should make sure we survive and ________. But we are entering an increasingly _________ period of our history. Our population and our use of the finite resources of ______ Earth are _______ exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill. But our genetic code still _______ the selfish and aggressive instincts that were of survival advantage in the past. It will be difficult enough to avoid ________ in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million.
Solution
- growing
- carries
- continue
- disaster
- dangerous
- planet
Original Text
This brings me to the last of the big questions: the future of the human race. If we are the only intelligent beings in the galaxy, we should make sure we survive and continue. But we are entering an increasingly dangerous period of our history. Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill. But our genetic code still carries the selfish and aggressive instincts that were of survival advantage in the past. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million.
Frequently Occurring Word Combinations
ngrams of length 2
collocation |
frequency |
billion years |
6 |
general relativity |
2 |
initial state |
2 |
good progress |
2 |
initial conditions |
2 |
life appearing |
2 |
Important Words
- ability
- advantage
- aggressive
- avoid
- beings
- big
- brings
- carries
- change
- code
- continue
- dangerous
- difficult
- disaster
- earth
- entering
- environment
- exponentially
- finite
- future
- galaxy
- genetic
- good
- growing
- history
- human
- ill
- increasingly
- instincts
- intelligent
- million
- period
- planet
- population
- race
- resources
- selfish
- survival
- survive
- technical
- thousand
- years