full transcript
From the Ted Talk by Phil Plait: How to defend Earth from asteroids
Unscramble the Blue Letters
(leuhtgar)
you might think: Why don't we use a nuclear wpaeon? Well, you can try that, but the poerlbm is timing. Shoot a nuclear weapon at this thing, you have to blow it up within a few milliseconds of tenlrocae, or else you'll miss it. And there are a lot of other pberlmos with that; it's very hard to do. But just hitting something? That's pretty easy. I think even NASA can do that, and proved that they can.
(Laughter)
The problem is, if you hit this asteroid, you've changed the orbit, you measure the orbit, then you find out, oh yeah, we just pushed it into a keyhole, and now it's going to hit us in three years. Well, my opinion is: fine! It's not hitting us in six months — that's good.
Open Cloze
(________)
you might think: Why don't we use a nuclear ______? Well, you can try that, but the _______ is timing. Shoot a nuclear weapon at this thing, you have to blow it up within a few milliseconds of _________, or else you'll miss it. And there are a lot of other ________ with that; it's very hard to do. But just hitting something? That's pretty easy. I think even NASA can do that, and proved that they can.
(Laughter)
The problem is, if you hit this asteroid, you've changed the orbit, you measure the orbit, then you find out, oh yeah, we just pushed it into a keyhole, and now it's going to hit us in three years. Well, my opinion is: fine! It's not hitting us in six months — that's good.
Solution
- tolerance
- weapon
- problems
- laughter
- problem
Original Text
(Laughter)
you might think: Why don't we use a nuclear weapon? Well, you can try that, but the problem is timing. Shoot a nuclear weapon at this thing, you have to blow it up within a few milliseconds of tolerance, or else you'll miss it. And there are a lot of other problems with that; it's very hard to do. But just hitting something? That's pretty easy. I think even NASA can do that, and proved that they can.
(Laughter)
The problem is, if you hit this asteroid, you've changed the orbit, you measure the orbit, then you find out, oh yeah, we just pushed it into a keyhole, and now it's going to hit us in three years. Well, my opinion is: fine! It's not hitting us in six months — that's good.
Frequently Occurring Word Combinations
ngrams of length 2
| collocation |
frequency |
| million years |
3 |
| bad day |
2 |
| nuclear weapon |
2 |
| longs peak |
2 |
| global devastation |
2 |
| huge amount |
2 |
| dinosaur killer |
2 |
| global economic |
2 |
| good news |
2 |
| tiny bit |
2 |
| chemical rockets |
2 |
| ion drive |
2 |
Important Words
- asteroid
- blow
- changed
- easy
- find
- good
- hard
- hit
- hitting
- keyhole
- laughter
- lot
- measure
- milliseconds
- months
- nasa
- nuclear
- opinion
- orbit
- pretty
- problem
- problems
- proved
- pushed
- shoot
- timing
- tolerance
- weapon
- yeah
- years