full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Sara Seager: The search for planets beyond our solar system

Unscramble the Blue Letters


gelise 1214b. This planet, we know the mass and the size and it has a fairly low density. It's somewhat warm. We actually don't know really anything about this planet, but one possibility is that it's a water world, like a scaled-up version of one of Jupiter's icy moons that might be 50 percent water by mass. And in this case, it would have a thick steam atmosphere overlaying an ocean, not of liquid water, but of an exotic form of water, a superfluid — not quite a gas, not quite a luiqid. And under that wouldn't be rock, but a form of high-pressure ice, like ice IX.

So out of all these planets out there, and the variety is just spmily astonishing, we mostly want to find the ptaelns that are Goldilocks planets, we call them. Not too big, not too slmal, not too hot, not too cold — but just right for life. But to do that, we'd have to be able to look at the planet's atmosphere, because the atmosphere acts like a bnaklet trapping heat — the greenhouse effect. We have to be able to assess the greenhouse gases on other planets. Well, science fiction got some things wrnog. The Star Trek Enterprise had to travel vast distances at incredible speeds to orbit other planets so that First ocfiefr Spock could anzyale the aetrpsmhoe to see if the planet was habitable or if there were lfimrefos there.

Open Cloze


______ 1214b. This planet, we know the mass and the size and it has a fairly low density. It's somewhat warm. We actually don't know really anything about this planet, but one possibility is that it's a water world, like a scaled-up version of one of Jupiter's icy moons that might be 50 percent water by mass. And in this case, it would have a thick steam atmosphere overlaying an ocean, not of liquid water, but of an exotic form of water, a superfluid — not quite a gas, not quite a ______. And under that wouldn't be rock, but a form of high-pressure ice, like ice IX.

So out of all these planets out there, and the variety is just ______ astonishing, we mostly want to find the _______ that are Goldilocks planets, we call them. Not too big, not too _____, not too hot, not too cold — but just right for life. But to do that, we'd have to be able to look at the planet's atmosphere, because the atmosphere acts like a _______ trapping heat — the greenhouse effect. We have to be able to assess the greenhouse gases on other planets. Well, science fiction got some things _____. The Star Trek Enterprise had to travel vast distances at incredible speeds to orbit other planets so that First _______ Spock could _______ the __________ to see if the planet was habitable or if there were _________ there.

Solution


  1. blanket
  2. lifeforms
  3. simply
  4. wrong
  5. officer
  6. planets
  7. atmosphere
  8. small
  9. gliese
  10. analyze
  11. liquid

Original Text


Gliese 1214b. This planet, we know the mass and the size and it has a fairly low density. It's somewhat warm. We actually don't know really anything about this planet, but one possibility is that it's a water world, like a scaled-up version of one of Jupiter's icy moons that might be 50 percent water by mass. And in this case, it would have a thick steam atmosphere overlaying an ocean, not of liquid water, but of an exotic form of water, a superfluid — not quite a gas, not quite a liquid. And under that wouldn't be rock, but a form of high-pressure ice, like ice IX.

So out of all these planets out there, and the variety is just simply astonishing, we mostly want to find the planets that are Goldilocks planets, we call them. Not too big, not too small, not too hot, not too cold — but just right for life. But to do that, we'd have to be able to look at the planet's atmosphere, because the atmosphere acts like a blanket trapping heat — the greenhouse effect. We have to be able to assess the greenhouse gases on other planets. Well, science fiction got some things wrong. The Star Trek Enterprise had to travel vast distances at incredible speeds to orbit other planets so that First Officer Spock could analyze the atmosphere to see if the planet was habitable or if there were lifeforms there.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
exoplanet atmospheres 5
small planets 3
crazy theory 3
planets orbiting 2
night sky 2
space telescope 2
favorite exoplanets 2
science fiction 2
greenhouse gases 2
study exoplanet 2
life produces 2
intelligent aliens 2
central truss 2
real photograph 2
complicated space 2
space telescopes 2
pale blue 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
study exoplanet atmospheres 2
complicated space telescopes 2

Important Words


  1. acts
  2. analyze
  3. assess
  4. astonishing
  5. atmosphere
  6. big
  7. blanket
  8. call
  9. case
  10. cold
  11. density
  12. distances
  13. effect
  14. enterprise
  15. exotic
  16. fiction
  17. find
  18. form
  19. gas
  20. gases
  21. gliese
  22. goldilocks
  23. greenhouse
  24. habitable
  25. heat
  26. hot
  27. ice
  28. icy
  29. incredible
  30. ix
  31. life
  32. lifeforms
  33. liquid
  34. mass
  35. moons
  36. ocean
  37. officer
  38. orbit
  39. overlaying
  40. percent
  41. planet
  42. planets
  43. possibility
  44. rock
  45. science
  46. simply
  47. size
  48. small
  49. speeds
  50. spock
  51. star
  52. steam
  53. superfluid
  54. thick
  55. trapping
  56. travel
  57. trek
  58. variety
  59. vast
  60. version
  61. warm
  62. water
  63. world
  64. wrong