full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Risa Wechsler: The search for dark matter -- and what we've found so far

Unscramble the Blue Letters

But we have a lot of educated gsseeus, and a lot of ideas for how to find out more. So, most physicists think that dark matter is a particle, similar in many ways to the subatomic particles that we know of, like protons and neutrons and eenorclts. Whatever it is, it behaves very similarly with reespct to girvaty. But it doesn't emit or absorb lghit, and it goes right through normal matter, as if it wasn't even there. We'd like to know what particle it is. For example, how heavy is it? Or, does anything at all happen if it interacts with normal matter? Physicists have lots of great ideas for what it could be, they're very creative. But it's really hard, because those ideas span a huge range. It could be as small as the smallest subatomic paetcirls, or it could be as large as the mass of 100 Suns.

Open Cloze

But we have a lot of educated _______, and a lot of ideas for how to find out more. So, most physicists think that dark matter is a particle, similar in many ways to the subatomic particles that we know of, like protons and neutrons and _________. Whatever it is, it behaves very similarly with _______ to _______. But it doesn't emit or absorb _____, and it goes right through normal matter, as if it wasn't even there. We'd like to know what particle it is. For example, how heavy is it? Or, does anything at all happen if it interacts with normal matter? Physicists have lots of great ideas for what it could be, they're very creative. But it's really hard, because those ideas span a huge range. It could be as small as the smallest subatomic _________, or it could be as large as the mass of 100 Suns.

Solution

  1. guesses
  2. light
  3. particles
  4. gravity
  5. electrons
  6. respect

Original Text

But we have a lot of educated guesses, and a lot of ideas for how to find out more. So, most physicists think that dark matter is a particle, similar in many ways to the subatomic particles that we know of, like protons and neutrons and electrons. Whatever it is, it behaves very similarly with respect to gravity. But it doesn't emit or absorb light, and it goes right through normal matter, as if it wasn't even there. We'd like to know what particle it is. For example, how heavy is it? Or, does anything at all happen if it interacts with normal matter? Physicists have lots of great ideas for what it could be, they're very creative. But it's really hard, because those ideas span a huge range. It could be as small as the smallest subatomic particles, or it could be as large as the mass of 100 Suns.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
dark matter 23
billion years 3
small galaxies 3
small clumps 3
model universes 2
big bang 2
dark energy 2
million galaxies 2
light distorted 2
magellanic cloud 2

Important Words

  1. absorb
  2. behaves
  3. creative
  4. dark
  5. educated
  6. electrons
  7. emit
  8. find
  9. gravity
  10. great
  11. guesses
  12. happen
  13. hard
  14. heavy
  15. huge
  16. ideas
  17. interacts
  18. large
  19. light
  20. lot
  21. lots
  22. mass
  23. matter
  24. neutrons
  25. normal
  26. particle
  27. particles
  28. physicists
  29. protons
  30. range
  31. respect
  32. similar
  33. similarly
  34. small
  35. smallest
  36. span
  37. subatomic
  38. suns
  39. ways