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

  1. growing
  2. carries
  3. continue
  4. disaster
  5. dangerous
  6. 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

  1. ability
  2. advantage
  3. aggressive
  4. avoid
  5. beings
  6. big
  7. brings
  8. carries
  9. change
  10. code
  11. continue
  12. dangerous
  13. difficult
  14. disaster
  15. earth
  16. entering
  17. environment
  18. exponentially
  19. finite
  20. future
  21. galaxy
  22. genetic
  23. good
  24. growing
  25. history
  26. human
  27. ill
  28. increasingly
  29. instincts
  30. intelligent
  31. million
  32. period
  33. planet
  34. population
  35. race
  36. resources
  37. selfish
  38. survival
  39. survive
  40. technical
  41. thousand
  42. years