full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Janna Levin: The sound the universe makes

Unscramble the Blue Letters


What Einstein did not realize was that, if you took our Sun and you crushed it down to six kilometers — so you took a million times the mass of the Earth and you crushed it to six kilometers across, you would make a black hole, an object so dense that if light veered too close, it would never epsace — a dark shdaow against the universe. It wasn't Einstein who rlezaied this, it was Karl Schwarzschild who was a German Jew in World War I — joined the German army already an accomplished scientist, wiknrog on the Russian fnrot. I like to imagine Schwarzschild in the war in the trenches calculating ballistic trajectories for cannon fire, and then, in between, calculating Einstein's equations — as you do in the thnerecs. And he was raneidg Einstein's recently published general theory of relativity, and he was thrilled by this theory. And he quickly sesmirud an exact mathematical soiolutn that described something very extraordinary: curves so strong that scape would rain down into them, space itself would cuvre like a waterfall flowing down the throat of a hole. And even lihgt could not escape this current. Light would be dragged down the hole as everything else would be, and all that would be left would be a shadow.

Open Cloze


What Einstein did not realize was that, if you took our Sun and you crushed it down to six kilometers — so you took a million times the mass of the Earth and you crushed it to six kilometers across, you would make a black hole, an object so dense that if light veered too close, it would never ______ — a dark ______ against the universe. It wasn't Einstein who ________ this, it was Karl Schwarzschild who was a German Jew in World War I — joined the German army already an accomplished scientist, _______ on the Russian _____. I like to imagine Schwarzschild in the war in the trenches calculating ballistic trajectories for cannon fire, and then, in between, calculating Einstein's equations — as you do in the ________. And he was _______ Einstein's recently published general theory of relativity, and he was thrilled by this theory. And he quickly ________ an exact mathematical ________ that described something very extraordinary: curves so strong that _____ would rain down into them, space itself would _____ like a waterfall flowing down the throat of a hole. And even _____ could not escape this current. Light would be dragged down the hole as everything else would be, and all that would be left would be a shadow.

Solution


  1. curve
  2. space
  3. trenches
  4. realized
  5. working
  6. light
  7. surmised
  8. escape
  9. reading
  10. solution
  11. front
  12. shadow

Original Text


What Einstein did not realize was that, if you took our Sun and you crushed it down to six kilometers — so you took a million times the mass of the Earth and you crushed it to six kilometers across, you would make a black hole, an object so dense that if light veered too close, it would never escape — a dark shadow against the universe. It wasn't Einstein who realized this, it was Karl Schwarzschild who was a German Jew in World War I — joined the German army already an accomplished scientist, working on the Russian front. I like to imagine Schwarzschild in the war in the trenches calculating ballistic trajectories for cannon fire, and then, in between, calculating Einstein's equations — as you do in the trenches. And he was reading Einstein's recently published general theory of relativity, and he was thrilled by this theory. And he quickly surmised an exact mathematical solution that described something very extraordinary: curves so strong that space would rain down into them, space itself would curve like a waterfall flowing down the throat of a hole. And even light could not escape this current. Light would be dragged down the hole as everything else would be, and all that would be left would be a shadow.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
black holes 26
black hole 17
big bang 8
silent movie 2
freely falling 2
natural curves 2
general theory 2
crushed black 2
advanced sensitivity 2
billion years 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
crushed black hole 2

Important Words


  1. accomplished
  2. army
  3. ballistic
  4. black
  5. calculating
  6. cannon
  7. close
  8. crushed
  9. current
  10. curve
  11. curves
  12. dark
  13. dense
  14. dragged
  15. earth
  16. einstein
  17. equations
  18. escape
  19. exact
  20. fire
  21. flowing
  22. front
  23. general
  24. german
  25. hole
  26. imagine
  27. jew
  28. joined
  29. karl
  30. kilometers
  31. left
  32. light
  33. mass
  34. mathematical
  35. million
  36. object
  37. published
  38. quickly
  39. rain
  40. reading
  41. realize
  42. realized
  43. relativity
  44. russian
  45. schwarzschild
  46. scientist
  47. shadow
  48. solution
  49. space
  50. strong
  51. sun
  52. surmised
  53. theory
  54. thrilled
  55. throat
  56. times
  57. trajectories
  58. trenches
  59. universe
  60. veered
  61. war
  62. waterfall
  63. working
  64. world