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
- romantic
- dipped
- reaching
- exoplanets
- gazing
- 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
- bit
- blocking
- briefly
- brightness
- data
- determined
- dipped
- earth
- exoplanets
- find
- front
- gazing
- gorgeous
- grad
- idea
- intently
- light
- measuring
- orbited
- planet
- pondering
- radically
- reaching
- romantic
- school
- spent
- star
- stars
- started
- telescope
- time
- universe
- view
- years