full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Jeremy Kasdin: The flower-shaped starshade that might help us detect Earth-like planets

Unscramble the Blue Letters


But Spitzer actually knew the answer. If we can feather the edges, soften those edges so we can control diofifactrn, well then we can see a planet, and in the last 10 years or so we've come up with optimal solutions for doing that. It looks something like that. We call that our flower petal stahdsrae. If we make the edges of those petals exactly right, if we control their shape, we can control diffraction, and now we have a great shadow. It's about 10 billion tiems dimmer than it was before, and we can see the planets beam out just like that. That, of course, has to be bieggr than my tmhub. That starshade is about the size of half a foblatol field and it has to fly 50,000 kilometers away from the telescope that has to be held right in its shadow, and then we can see those planets.

Open Cloze


But Spitzer actually knew the answer. If we can feather the edges, soften those edges so we can control ___________, well then we can see a planet, and in the last 10 years or so we've come up with optimal solutions for doing that. It looks something like that. We call that our flower petal _________. If we make the edges of those petals exactly right, if we control their shape, we can control diffraction, and now we have a great shadow. It's about 10 billion _____ dimmer than it was before, and we can see the planets beam out just like that. That, of course, has to be ______ than my _____. That starshade is about the size of half a ________ field and it has to fly 50,000 kilometers away from the telescope that has to be held right in its shadow, and then we can see those planets.

Solution


  1. bigger
  2. football
  3. diffraction
  4. times
  5. thumb
  6. starshade

Original Text


But Spitzer actually knew the answer. If we can feather the edges, soften those edges so we can control diffraction, well then we can see a planet, and in the last 10 years or so we've come up with optimal solutions for doing that. It looks something like that. We call that our flower petal starshade. If we make the edges of those petals exactly right, if we control their shape, we can control diffraction, and now we have a great shadow. It's about 10 billion times dimmer than it was before, and we can see the planets beam out just like that. That, of course, has to be bigger than my thumb. That starshade is about the size of half a football field and it has to fly 50,000 kilometers away from the telescope that has to be held right in its shadow, and then we can see those planets.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
space telescope 4
ten times 4
pale blue 3
blue dot 3
solar system 3
harbor life 2
hubble space 2
nearest neighbor 2
billion times 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
pale blue dot 3
hubble space telescope 2

Important Words


  1. answer
  2. beam
  3. bigger
  4. billion
  5. call
  6. control
  7. diffraction
  8. dimmer
  9. edges
  10. feather
  11. field
  12. flower
  13. fly
  14. football
  15. great
  16. held
  17. kilometers
  18. knew
  19. optimal
  20. petal
  21. petals
  22. planet
  23. planets
  24. shadow
  25. shape
  26. size
  27. soften
  28. solutions
  29. spitzer
  30. starshade
  31. telescope
  32. thumb
  33. times
  34. years