full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Jessie Christiansen: What the discovery of exoplanets reveals about the universe

Unscramble the Blue Letters

When I srtetad grad school, there were about 100 known etanxpeols, all radically different from the Earth and from each other. I was determined to find more. I spent four years looking at nearly 87,000 stars, one by one. Now you might have this rminatoc idea that I was ginzag intently through a telescope, pondering some gorgeous view of the universe. I was not. I was looking at data like this, measuring the brightness of each star over time. If the brightness dppeid, just briefly, just a little bit, it could be because a planet had orbited in front of that star, blocking some of the light from rneaihcg my telescope.

Open Cloze

When I _______ grad school, there were about 100 known __________, all radically different from the Earth and from each other. I was determined to find more. I spent four years looking at nearly 87,000 stars, one by one. Now you might have this ________ idea that I was ______ intently through a telescope, pondering some gorgeous view of the universe. I was not. I was looking at data like this, measuring the brightness of each star over time. If the brightness ______, just briefly, just a little bit, it could be because a planet had orbited in front of that star, blocking some of the light from ________ my telescope.

Solution

  1. romantic
  2. dipped
  3. reaching
  4. exoplanets
  5. gazing
  6. started

Original Text

When I started grad school, there were about 100 known exoplanets, all radically different from the Earth and from each other. I was determined to find more. I spent four years looking at nearly 87,000 stars, one by one. Now you might have this romantic idea that I was gazing intently through a telescope, pondering some gorgeous view of the universe. I was not. I was looking at data like this, measuring the brightness of each star over time. If the brightness dipped, just briefly, just a little bit, it could be because a planet had orbited in front of that star, blocking some of the light from reaching my telescope.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
exoplanet archive 2
explore space 2

Important Words

  1. bit
  2. blocking
  3. briefly
  4. brightness
  5. data
  6. determined
  7. dipped
  8. earth
  9. exoplanets
  10. find
  11. front
  12. gazing
  13. gorgeous
  14. grad
  15. idea
  16. intently
  17. light
  18. measuring
  19. orbited
  20. planet
  21. pondering
  22. radically
  23. reaching
  24. romantic
  25. school
  26. spent
  27. star
  28. stars
  29. started
  30. telescope
  31. time
  32. universe
  33. view
  34. years