쉐도잉 연습: How to Move the Sun: Stellar Engines - 영상으로 영어 말하기 배우기

레슨 만드는 중...
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Nothing in the universe is static.
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In the Milky Way, billions of stars orbit the galactic center.
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Some, like our Sun, are pretty consistent, keeping a distance of around 30,000 light years from the galactic center,
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completing an orbit every 230 million years.
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This dance is not an orderly ballet, more like a skating rink filled with drunk toddlers.
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This chaos makes the galaxy dangerous.
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Our solar neighborhood is constantly changing, with stars moving hundreds of kilometers every second.
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Only the vast distances between objects protect us from the dangers out there.
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But we might get unlucky in the future.
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At some point we can encounter a star going supernova, or a massive object passing by and showering Earth with asteroids.
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If something like this were to happen, we would likely know thousands, if not millions of years in advance.
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But we still couldn't do much about it.
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Unless we move our whole solar system out of the way.
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To move the solar system, we need a stellar engine, a megastructure used to steer a star through the galaxy.
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It's the kind of thing
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that might be built by an advanced civilization with Dyson Sphere
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level technology that's thinking about their future millions of years ahead of time.
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But how do we possibly move the hundreds of thousands of objects in the solar system?
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The good news is we can ignore all of that.
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We only need to move the sun, or the other stuff is glued to it by gravity and will follow it wherever it decides to go.
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There are lots of ideas about what a stellar engine might look like and how it would work.
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We've picked two grounded in our current understanding of physics that could be built in theory.
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The simplest kind of stellar engine is the Shkadov thruster, a giant mirror.
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It works on the same principle as a rocket.
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Like rocket fuel, the photons released as solar radiation carry momentum.
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Not a lot, but a bit.
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For example, if an astronaut turned on a flashlight in space, it would push them backwards very, very slowly.
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A stellar engine will work a little better than a flashlight because the The sun produces a lot of photons.
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The basic idea of the Shkadov thruster is to reflect up to half of the solar radiation to create thrust
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and slowly push the sun where we want it to go.
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In order for the Shkadov thruster to work, it must be kept in the same place, not orbiting the sun.
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Although the sun's gravity will try to pull it in, it would be supported by radiation pressure which props the mirror up.
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This means the mirror would have to be very light, made of micron-thin reflecting foil from materials like aluminium alloys.
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The mirror's shape is important too.
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Enveloping the sun in a giant spherical shell wouldn't work because that would refocus light back to the sun, heating it up and creating all sorts of unpleasant problems.
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Instead, we use a parabola, which sends most of the photons around the sun and in the same direction, which maximizes thrust.
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To prevent accidentally burning or freezing Earth with too much or too little sunlight, the only safe place to build a Skadov thruster is over the Sun's poles.
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This means we can only move the Sun vertically in the plane of the solar system
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and one direction in the Milky Way, which limits our travel options a bit.
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But that is basically it.
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For a civilization capable of building a Dyson Sphere, this is a relatively simple endeavor.
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Not complicated, just very hard to build.
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At full throttle, the solar system could probably be moved by about 100 light years over 230 million years.
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Over a few billion years, it gives us near complete control over the sun's orbit in the galaxy.
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But in the short term, this might not be fast enough to dodge a deadly supernova.
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That's why we thought we could do better.
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So we asked our astrophysicist friend if he could design a faster stellar engine for this video.
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He did and wrote a paper about it that's been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
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You can find it in our sources document.
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We're going to call our new stellar engine the Kaplan thruster.
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It works a lot like a traditional rocket.
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Shoot exhaust one way to push yourself the other.
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It's a large space station platform powered by a Dyson sphere that gathers matter from the sun to power nuclear fusion.
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It shoots out a very fast jet of particles at nearly 1% the speed of light out of the solar system.
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A second jet pushes the sun along like a tugboat.
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The Kaplan thruster requires a lot of fuel, millions of tons per second.
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To gather this fuel, our thruster uses very large electromagnetic fields to funnel hydrogen
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and helium from the solar wind into the engine.
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The solar wind alone doesn't provide enough fuel though.
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And that's where the Dyson Sphere comes in.
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Using its power, sunlight can be refocused to the surface of the sun.
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This heats small regions to extreme temperatures, lifting billions of tons of mass off the sun.
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This mass can be collected and separated into hydrogen and helium.
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The helium is burned explosively in thermonuclear fusion reactors.
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A jet of radioactive oxygen at a temperature of nearly a billion degrees is expelled
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and becomes our primary source of propulsion from our stellar engine.
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To prevent the engine from just crashing into the sun, it needs to balance itself itself.
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To do this, we accelerate the collected hydrogen with electromagnetic fields using particle accelerators and shoot a jet back at the Sun.
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This balances the thruster and transfers the thrust of our engine back to the Sun.
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In as little as a million years, this engine can move the Sun by 50 light-years, more than enough to dodge a supernova.
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At full throttle, the solar system can be completely redirected in its galactic orbit in 10 million years.
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But wait, won't we use up the Sun this way?
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Fortunately, the Sun is so massive that even billions of tons of material will barely scratch the surface.
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In fact, this megastructure will actually extend our Sun's life since lower-mass stars burn slower,
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keeping the solar system inhabitable for many more billions of years.
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With a Kaplan thruster, we could turn the entire solar system into our spaceship.
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For example, by orbiting backwards in the galaxy and colonizing hundreds or thousands of stars as we pass by them.
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It may even be possible to escape the galaxy entirely and expand beyond the Milky Way.
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Stellar engines are the kind of machines built by civilizations thinking not in terms of years or decades, but eons.
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Since we know that our Sun will die one day, a stellar engine could allow the far future descendants of humans
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to travel to other stars without ever having to venture into the terrifying dark abyss of interstellar space.
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Until we build a stellar engine, we're adrift and subject to the whims of the galactic sea.
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We may not like where it leads us.
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Maybe our descendants will set sail and become an interstellar species for millions of years to come.
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This was our last video for the year 12,019 of the human era and what a year it was.
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So much stuff happened everywhere to so many different people.
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Calendars and holidays are just imaginary, but they help us to cut our lives into pieces pieces that our brains can handle.
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We're leaving 12019 behind with a weird mixture of disillusion and hope.
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The world is screwed up, but we can fix it.
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In a few days, this year will be over, and we'll get to try again.

이 레슨의 어휘와 말하기 포인트

이 영상에는 섀도잉할 문장 90개와 단어 1298개가 있습니다. 말하는 구간의 길이는 8:29입니다. 화자는 분당 약 153단어로, 일상 대화에 가까운 자연스러운 속도로 말합니다. 영어에서 가장 많이 쓰이는 3,000단어에 속하는 단어가 79%뿐이라 어휘가 어려운 편입니다.

이 영상의 핵심 어휘

영상에 나오는 익혀 둘 만한 단어 15개를 발음, 뜻과 함께 정리했습니다.

단어발음뜻
orbit 명사/ˈɔɹ.bɪt/궤도
galaxy 명사/ˈɡæl.ək.si/은하, 은하계
sphere 명사/sfɪɚ/구체
mirror 명사/ˈmiɹɚ/거울
rocket 명사/ˈɹɑk.ɪt/로켓, 로켓트
ton 명사/tʌn/톤
radiation 명사/ˌɹeɪ.diˈeɪ.ʃən/방사, 폭사
civilization 명사/ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/문명
hydrogen 명사/ˈhaɪdɹəd͡ʒ(ə)n/수소
thrust 동사/θɹʌst/돌격하다
reflect 동사/ɹɪˈflɛkt/반사(反射)하다
collect 동사/ˈkɑlɪkt/수집하다
fusion 명사/ˈfjuː.ʒən/핵융합
particle 명사/ˈpɑɹtək(ə)l/입자, 립자
sunlight 명사/ˈsʌnˌlaɪt/햇빛, 일광

이 영상의 문법

화자가 가장 많이 쓰는 문형을 영상 속 실제 표현과 함께 정리했습니다.

문형영상 속 표현
수동태 be + 과거분사 — 누가 하는지보다 무슨 일이 일어나는지에 초점might be built · is glued · could be built
현재완료 have/has + 과거분사 — 과거의 일이 지금도 관련이 있을 때We've picked · that's been published

주의할 발음

화자는 we're, couldn't, doesn't 같은 축약형과 약화된 형태를 9번 사용합니다. 들리는 대로 짧게 발음하세요.

  • “th” 소리: thrust /θɹʌst/, gather /ˈɡæðɚ/, thin /ˈθɪn/, thruster /ˈθɹʌ.stɚ/, throttle /ˈθɹɔ.tl̩/
  • “sh”와 “zh” 소리: radiation /ˌɹeɪ.diˈeɪ.ʃən/, civilization /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/, fusion /ˈfjuː.ʒən/, shell /ʃɛl/, flashlight /ˈflæʃˌlaɪt/
  • 긴 단어 — 강세 위치에 주의: radiation /ˌɹeɪ.diˈeɪ.ʃən/, civilization /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/, electromagnetic /ɪˌlɛk.tɹoʊ.mæɡˈnɛ.tɪk/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/, accidentally /ˌæk.sɪˈdɛnt(ə)li/

이 영상으로 연습하는 방법

  1. 먼저 말하지 않고 영상을 끝까지 듣고 모르는 단어를 적어 둡니다.
  2. 0.75배속으로 한 문장씩 섀도잉을 시작하고, 익숙해지면 보통 속도로 돌아갑니다.
  3. 자신의 목소리를 녹음해 원본과 비교하고, orbit, galaxy, sphere 같은 단어에 특히 주의합니다.

쉐도잉이란? 영어 실력을 빠르게 키우는 과학적 방법

쉐도잉(Shadowing)은 원래 전문 통역사 훈련을 위해 개발된 언어 학습 기법으로, 다언어 학자인 Dr. Alexander Arguelles에 의해 대중화된 방법입니다. 핵심 원리는 간단하지만 매우 강력합니다: 원어민의 영어를 들으면서 1~2초의 짧은 지연으로 즉시 소리 내어 따라 말하는 것——마치 '그림자(shadow)'처럼 화자를 따라가는 것입니다. 문법 공부나 수동적인 청취와 달리, 쉐도잉은 뇌와 입 근육이 동시에 실시간으로 영어를 처리하고 재현하도록 훈련합니다. 연구에 따르면 이 방법은 발음 정확도, 억양, 리듬, 연음, 청취력, 말하기 유창성을 크게 향상시킵니다. IELTS 스피킹 준비와 자연스러운 영어 소통을 원하는 분들에게 특히 효과적입니다.

섀도잉 방법: 단계별 전체 가이드 읽기 →