full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Lucianne Walkowicz: Let's not use Mars as a backup planet


Unscramble the Blue Letters


We're at a tipping point in human history, a species poised between ganniig the stars and losing the planet we call home.

Even in just the past few yraes, we've gertlay expanded our knowledge of how etarh fits within the context of our universe. NASA's Kepler mission has discovered thousands of potential planets around other stars, indicating that Earth is but one of billions of pntlaes in our galaxy. Kepler is a space tecselpoe that measures the slbute dimming of stars as planets pass in front of them, blocking just a little bit of that light from rhicenag us. Kepler's data reveals planets' sizes as well as their distance from their parent star. Together, this hleps us unrdntased whether these planets are small and rocky, like the terrestrial planets in our own Solar System, and also how much lghit they receive from their parent sun. In turn, this provides clues as to whether these planets that we discover might be habitable or not.

Open Cloze


We're at a tipping point in human history, a species poised between _______ the stars and losing the planet we call home.

Even in just the past few _____, we've _______ expanded our knowledge of how _____ fits within the context of our universe. NASA's Kepler mission has discovered thousands of potential planets around other stars, indicating that Earth is but one of billions of _______ in our galaxy. Kepler is a space _________ that measures the ______ dimming of stars as planets pass in front of them, blocking just a little bit of that light from ________ us. Kepler's data reveals planets' sizes as well as their distance from their parent star. Together, this _____ us __________ whether these planets are small and rocky, like the terrestrial planets in our own Solar System, and also how much _____ they receive from their parent sun. In turn, this provides clues as to whether these planets that we discover might be habitable or not.

Solution


  1. helps
  2. subtle
  3. earth
  4. gaining
  5. understand
  6. years
  7. light
  8. reaching
  9. planets
  10. telescope
  11. greatly

Original Text


We're at a tipping point in human history, a species poised between gaining the stars and losing the planet we call home.

Even in just the past few years, we've greatly expanded our knowledge of how Earth fits within the context of our universe. NASA's Kepler mission has discovered thousands of potential planets around other stars, indicating that Earth is but one of billions of planets in our galaxy. Kepler is a space telescope that measures the subtle dimming of stars as planets pass in front of them, blocking just a little bit of that light from reaching us. Kepler's data reveals planets' sizes as well as their distance from their parent star. Together, this helps us understand whether these planets are small and rocky, like the terrestrial planets in our own Solar System, and also how much light they receive from their parent sun. In turn, this provides clues as to whether these planets that we discover might be habitable or not.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
potentially habitable 2
interplanetary exploration 2
planetary preservation 2



Important Words


  1. billions
  2. bit
  3. blocking
  4. call
  5. clues
  6. context
  7. data
  8. dimming
  9. discover
  10. discovered
  11. distance
  12. earth
  13. expanded
  14. fits
  15. front
  16. gaining
  17. galaxy
  18. greatly
  19. habitable
  20. helps
  21. history
  22. home
  23. human
  24. indicating
  25. kepler
  26. knowledge
  27. light
  28. losing
  29. measures
  30. mission
  31. parent
  32. pass
  33. planet
  34. planets
  35. point
  36. poised
  37. potential
  38. reaching
  39. receive
  40. reveals
  41. rocky
  42. sizes
  43. small
  44. solar
  45. space
  46. species
  47. star
  48. stars
  49. subtle
  50. sun
  51. system
  52. telescope
  53. terrestrial
  54. thousands
  55. tipping
  56. turn
  57. understand
  58. universe
  59. years