full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Karen Lloyd: This deep-sea mystery is changing our understanding of life

Unscramble the Blue Letters


So by combining measurements from many different places around the world, my colleagues at the University of Southern California, Doug LaRowe and Jan amned, were able to calculate that each one of these deep-sea maiocrbil cells requires only one zeptowatt of power, and before you get your phones out, a zepto is 10 to the minus 21, because I know I would want to look that up. hmnaus, on the other hand, rrqueie about 100 watts of power. So 100 watts is basically if you take a pineapple and drop it from about waist height to the ground 881,632 times a day. If you did that and then linked it up to a trbniue, that would create enough power to make me happen for a day. A zwepoattt, if you put it in similar trems, is if you take just one grain of salt and then you imagine a tiny, tiny, little ball that is one toshduntah of the mass of that one grain of salt and then you drop it one neomaentr, which is a hundred times smaller than the wavelength of visible lgiht, once per day. That's all it takes to make these microbes live. That's less energy than we ever thought would be capable of sponuirptg life, but somehow, amazingly, beautifully, it's enough.

Open Cloze


So by combining measurements from many different places around the world, my colleagues at the University of Southern California, Doug LaRowe and Jan _____, were able to calculate that each one of these deep-sea _________ cells requires only one zeptowatt of power, and before you get your phones out, a zepto is 10 to the minus 21, because I know I would want to look that up. ______, on the other hand, _______ about 100 watts of power. So 100 watts is basically if you take a pineapple and drop it from about waist height to the ground 881,632 times a day. If you did that and then linked it up to a _______, that would create enough power to make me happen for a day. A _________, if you put it in similar _____, is if you take just one grain of salt and then you imagine a tiny, tiny, little ball that is one __________ of the mass of that one grain of salt and then you drop it one _________, which is a hundred times smaller than the wavelength of visible _____, once per day. That's all it takes to make these microbes live. That's less energy than we ever thought would be capable of __________ life, but somehow, amazingly, beautifully, it's enough.

Solution


  1. turbine
  2. amend
  3. terms
  4. microbial
  5. light
  6. thousandth
  7. supporting
  8. nanometer
  9. require
  10. humans
  11. zeptowatt

Original Text


So by combining measurements from many different places around the world, my colleagues at the University of Southern California, Doug LaRowe and Jan Amend, were able to calculate that each one of these deep-sea microbial cells requires only one zeptowatt of power, and before you get your phones out, a zepto is 10 to the minus 21, because I know I would want to look that up. Humans, on the other hand, require about 100 watts of power. So 100 watts is basically if you take a pineapple and drop it from about waist height to the ground 881,632 times a day. If you did that and then linked it up to a turbine, that would create enough power to make me happen for a day. A zeptowatt, if you put it in similar terms, is if you take just one grain of salt and then you imagine a tiny, tiny, little ball that is one thousandth of the mass of that one grain of salt and then you drop it one nanometer, which is a hundred times smaller than the wavelength of visible light, once per day. That's all it takes to make these microbes live. That's less energy than we ever thought would be capable of supporting life, but somehow, amazingly, beautifully, it's enough.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
petri dishes 5
deep subsurface 4
pine trees 3
living microbial 2
petri dish 2
microbial cells 2
tiny energy 2
cell division 2
single cell 2


Important Words


  1. amazingly
  2. amend
  3. ball
  4. basically
  5. beautifully
  6. calculate
  7. california
  8. capable
  9. cells
  10. colleagues
  11. combining
  12. create
  13. day
  14. doug
  15. drop
  16. energy
  17. grain
  18. ground
  19. hand
  20. happen
  21. height
  22. humans
  23. imagine
  24. jan
  25. larowe
  26. life
  27. light
  28. linked
  29. live
  30. mass
  31. measurements
  32. microbes
  33. microbial
  34. nanometer
  35. phones
  36. pineapple
  37. places
  38. power
  39. put
  40. require
  41. requires
  42. salt
  43. similar
  44. smaller
  45. southern
  46. supporting
  47. takes
  48. terms
  49. thought
  50. thousandth
  51. times
  52. tiny
  53. turbine
  54. university
  55. visible
  56. waist
  57. watts
  58. wavelength
  59. world
  60. zepto
  61. zeptowatt