full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Christoph Adami: Finding life we can't imagine

Unscramble the Blue Letters

So that we actually, to test this idea, first took a look at amino aidcs and some other carboxylic acids. And here's the result. Here is, in fact, what you get if you, for example, look at the distribution of amino acids on a comet or in interstellar space or, in fact, in a lobaraotry, where you made very sure that in your pdrrioiaml soup, there is no living suftf in there. What you find is mostly glycine and then alanine and there's some trace elements of the other ones. That is also very rbosut — what you find in systems like Earth where there are amino acids, but there is no life.

Open Cloze

So that we actually, to test this idea, first took a look at amino _____ and some other carboxylic acids. And here's the result. Here is, in fact, what you get if you, for example, look at the distribution of amino acids on a comet or in interstellar space or, in fact, in a __________, where you made very sure that in your __________ soup, there is no living _____ in there. What you find is mostly glycine and then alanine and there's some trace elements of the other ones. That is also very ______ — what you find in systems like Earth where there are amino acids, but there is no life.

Solution

  1. stuff
  2. primordial
  3. robust
  4. acids
  5. laboratory

Original Text

So that we actually, to test this idea, first took a look at amino acids and some other carboxylic acids. And here's the result. Here is, in fact, what you get if you, for example, look at the distribution of amino acids on a comet or in interstellar space or, in fact, in a laboratory, where you made very sure that in your primordial soup, there is no living stuff in there. What you find is mostly glycine and then alanine and there's some trace elements of the other ones. That is also very robust — what you find in systems like Earth where there are amino acids, but there is no life.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
amino acids 4
mutation rate 4
viability threshold 4
nasa manager 2
discovering life 2
equal frequency 2
frequency distribution 2

Important Words

  1. acids
  2. alanine
  3. amino
  4. carboxylic
  5. comet
  6. distribution
  7. earth
  8. elements
  9. fact
  10. find
  11. glycine
  12. idea
  13. interstellar
  14. laboratory
  15. life
  16. living
  17. primordial
  18. result
  19. robust
  20. soup
  21. space
  22. stuff
  23. systems
  24. test
  25. trace