Shadowing Practice: Can Humanity Stop A Planet-Killing Asteroid? - Learn English Speaking with Video
Les maken...
1
Our first ever PC game, Starbirds, is out now in Early Access.
2
Find out more at the end of this video.
3
Imagine, a stadium-sized asteroid is going to hit Earth in two weeks.
4
Even at this moderate size, a fireball brighter than the sun tears through the atmosphere at 60 times the speed of sound,
5
and the disruptive power of 4,000 Hiroshima bombs flattens cities, killing millions.
6
This isn't science fiction.
7
Many killer asteroids were only spotted at the last moment.
8
In 2019, asteroid OK, as big as a 30-story building, was discovered just one day before it grazed Earth closer than some of our satellites.
9
Last year, the even larger asteroid MK was spotted 13 days before it passed as closer than the moon.
10
If they'd have hit Earth, they would have unleashed the destructive power of 3,000 and 9,000 Hiroshima bombs.
11
Stunningly enough, humanity doesn't really have a plan for this.
12
Scientists have devised all kinds of tricks to push dangerous asteroids away, painting it so sunlight will deflect it, landing thrusters to steer it,
13
scorching it with lasers, or even crashing spacecraft into it.
14
But they all have a big problem.
15
They're the equivalent of trying to deflect a cargo ship by throwing a bag of potatoes at it.
16
They do move the asteroid, but only by a tiny bit.
17
With these methods, you need to act years or even decades in advance to make an asteroid miss the Earth.
18
But very recently, scientists have developed a new, spectacular way to destroy killer asteroids that we could implement with today's technology.
19
Let's see how this works with our 100-meter asteroid heading for Earth.
20
The secret weakness of asteroids.
21
For a long time, people imagined asteroids as being gigantic stones made of broken metal.
22
But it turns out, most of them aren't like that.
23
They're more like bags of loosely packed gravel, Heaps of pebbles, precious minerals and dust barely held together.
24
Which means that instead of just nudging them, we can do something better.
25
Pulverize them.
26
And the obvious choice is, of course, a nuke.
27
So, let's go.
28
We load up a nuclear warhead, launch, aim at our deadly asteroid and… Oh,
29
the asteroid destroyed the nuke.
30
Asteroids can approach Earth at 70,000 kilometers an hour, enough to cross the Atlantic in five minutes.
31
No bomb we've ever made could survive such an impact.
32
So if we go for a head-on collision, the asteroid will wreck the nuke before it even has a chance to explode.
33
Okay, easy.
34
Let's explode the bomb before it touches the asteroid.
35
Scientists have estimated the optimal distance, which for our 100-meter killer friend would be a few tens of meters above the surface.
36
Launch, set the timer, and… The explosion has made a dramatic crater and nothing else.
37
Unfortunately, in space there's no air to carry a shockwave, so most of the explosion's energy is lost.
38
The rock will still hit us in two weeks, only a few kilometers to the left.
39
Striking such a behemoth with a nuke is like hitting our cargo ship with a washing machine instead of potatoes.
40
Better, but still useless.
41
Okay, let's go the movie route.
42
Land someone on the asteroid, drill a hole, and bury a nuke inside to avoid all of these problems.
43
And indeed, this is possible in theory, albeit suicidal in practice.
44
Landing on any space body is a nightmare, even on fairly big Mars, surface we know almost perfectly, roughly 70% of our attempts have failed.
45
So imagine the chances of landing a crew
46
and a nuclear bomb on a small and extremely fast asteroid discovered just two weeks in advance.
47
Even if we succeeded, drilling in microgravity is painfully slow since there's no downward pull to help you.
48
So we'd need an agonizing amount of time that we don't have.
49
So sadly, that's not the answer.
50
We have to think less like Hollywood and more like a lumberjack.
51
The smart way.
52
If you want to split a log, you don't hit it with a rock.
53
You use an axe, a dense and perfectly shaped tool designed to break things apart.
54
And just in the same way, scientists have found a new tool to destroy asteroids.
55
Super dense, ultra-fast cosmic bullets.
56
We won't even have to shoot them.
57
Our cosmic bullets are called penetrators.
58
A few meters long, slim and made of tungsten, a metal way denser and harder than rock.
59
They work in an extremely simple way.
60
You just put the penetrators in the way of the asteroid to float silently in space.
61
From the perspective of the asteroid, you wouldn't see a few tiny bullets sitting still.
62
You'd see them rushing at you at 70,000 kilometers an hour.
63
It doesn't matter who stands still and who's fast.
64
But this speed means that by far the longest part of this mission is to get to the asteroid in time.
65
We can't destroy it too close to Earth, because its fragments will slam into the atmosphere all at once with the power of thousands of nuclear bombs.
66
Our atmosphere can absorb isolated chunks, but if thousands of them strike together, their shockwaves will add up and kill millions.
67
So instead, we need to get it one day before impact, when the asteroid will be nearly 2 million kilometers away, more than four times further than the Moon.
68
A vast distance, but doable.
69
Our current rockets can cover this in about a week.
70
We'll just send one penetrator about two meters long and weighing two and a half tons.
71
Once our rocket arrives, it puts the penetrator in place to cause maximum damage, and then we wait.
72
A tiny speck of light appears in the vast distance, and then suddenly it's here, shooting at us faster than the speed of sound.
73
We'll slow down time to see exactly what happens.
74
The asteroid crashes into the penetrator so fast and with
75
so much violence that the power of 120 metric tons of TNT is released into the asteroid.
76
The rock vaporizes and the tungsten melts away, carving a wound that tunnels through the asteroid.
77
The damage is too much and with all of this energy looking for a place to go, the asteroid is blasted into thousands of pieces.
78
The debris spreads out into a diffuse cloud.
79
A day later, the fragments hit Earth,
80
dispersed over hundreds of thousands of square kilometers and turning an apocalypse into a mostly harmless show of cosmic fireworks.
81
So if we prepare and get everything ready, spotting a killer asteroid with two weeks' notice would be enough.
82
But this was just a small asteroid.
83
What if we face a cosmic mountain, a planet killer carrying the destructive power of tens of thousands of nuclear arsenals?
84
The non-avian dinosaurs would tell you about it, but they're dead.
85
What if it is a planet killer?
86
Planet killers are objects so vast and powerful that they would end most life on Earth in a single strike.
87
The most dangerous ones are comets from the outer fringes of the solar system, so distant and dark that tracking them is impossible.
88
Comets are dirty ice balls the size of mountains, more fragile than pure rock, but also much faster and violent,
89
traveling at around 140,000 km per hour.
90
In 2020, the comet Neowise, with the power of 6,000 times all the nuclear bombs on Earth, was discovered just four months before its closest approach to Earth.
91
What if we find such a beast six months before it's going to crash into us?
92
Do we have a chance of surviving this?
93
Unfortunately, this would be extremely hard for a bunch of reasons.
94
First of all, our planet-killer comet has
95
so much more mass than a tiny killer asteroid
96
that simply breaking it into millions of pieces would not help us that much.
97
The chunks that hit Earth would still be massive
98
and numerous enough to set the sky ablaze and kill most life on Earth.
99
So we need to make most, if not all, of its fragments completely miss Earth.
100
But to do that, we need to destroy it much further away, as far away as Mars.
101
And to destroy a mountain, we need way more penetrators.
102
Hundreds of thousands.
103
And this is, well, a huge problem.
104
To travel this far and to transport this much payload, we need at least 24,000 super heavy rockets.
105
As of today, humanity has two, and they're not really finished yet.
106
Even if all the industries in the world did nothing but switch to building rockets, we wouldn't finish in time.
107
If we actually discovered a planet killer today, there's literally nothing we could do about it.
108
Except, maybe if we combine penetrators with a bit of Hollywood and our old friend the nuclear bomb, there is still a way.
109
For this plan to work, we basically need to have all the parts ready beforehand.
110
A rocket like NASA's SLS, the one planned to take astronauts to the moon, loaded up with everything we need ready to launch.
111
As soon as the planet killer is spotted on its way to wipe us out, we launch a single rocket to meet it.
112
For five long months, it traveled through the nothingness of space as life on Earth nervously continues.
113
Finally, it reaches its destination a bit beyond the orbit of Mars.
114
Now, we deploy five massive penetrators in sequence, one perfectly lined up two kilometers after the other.
115
The engineering challenge of aligning and timing this correctly is horrendous, and we only have one attempt.
116
So, a few very brave astronauts go on this one-way trip to supervise the process with no way home.
117
Nervous hours pass as all of humanity watches the skies and screens.
118
And then the moment comes.
119
The icy mountain of death appears in full and then it's already here.
120
Slow down time again.
121
The comet smashes into the first penetrator at 140,000 km an hour, unleashing the power of 2,000 tons of TNT.
122
Ice, rock
123
and tungsten liquefy in an instant as the The energy of the impact eats itself dozens of meters deep into the mountain.
124
Here's the second one, perfectly hitting the same spot, punching directly into the crater, smashing, melting, drilling.
125
The third and fourth penetrators repeat the process again, now smashing a tunnel about 100 meters deep.
126
But this time, this is just a scratch on the surface of the monster, the comet is not really damaged yet.
127
And then comes the final penetrator and its toxic load.
128
300 megatons in nuclear warheads, 20,000 times more energy than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
129
It travels deep into the tunnel and just before it hits the end, it explodes.
130
This time the nuke works.
131
Instead of hitting nothing in the vacuum, the energy of the explosion smashes into rock and gravel and ice.
132
On top of vaporizing it from the inside, there's so much shock and push and punch that a frozen world billions of years old dies from within,
133
then turning into a cloud of millions of fragments spreading in all directions.
134
Humanity is saved.
135
To make this happen in reality would take unprecedented planning and precision, and yet it's possible.
136
Not in a century with sci-fi technology, just with the rockets, engineering and knowledge we already have today.
137
Want to drill some asteroids yourself?
138
Our first ever PC game, Starbirds, is out now in Early Access.
139
Join a brave flock of intergalactic birds as they venture into space to mine asteroids,
140
build production chains, and unlock new technologies that will help them thrive across the galaxy.
141
Scan and claim nearby asteroids, build up your production lines, and create a sprawling network of floating space factories.
142
Whether you're a seasoned strategy player or completely new to the genre, Starbirds welcomes you to explore, build and discover at your own pace.
143
We've been working on this game for over two years together with the amazing team at Tukana Interactive, the creators of Dorf Romantic.
144
And now we're incredibly excited to finally share it with you.
145
So grab your space helmet and head over to Steam to start your adventure.
146
You'll find the link in the description.
147
From all of us at Kurzgesagt and Tukana, thank you for being part of this journey.
148
We can't wait to hear what you think and to keep building starbirds together with your feedback.
149
See you in space.
📺 Zelfde Kanaal
C1119
Can Earth Run Out of Water?
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C1109
Could Humans Evolve Flight?
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C1548
What If You Never Slept?
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C16
Your Skeleton Is Electric
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B27
Would You Upload Your Mind?
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C17
3 Reasons Why Nuclear Energy Is Terrible! 2/3
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C115
Your Brain Peaked at Birth
University StudentsWorking Adults
C11
Your Brain on Magic Mushrooms
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C164
What the Flu Does to Your Body
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C13
What Is Life? Is Death Real?
University StudentsWorking Adults
C12
Is War Over? — A Paradox Explained
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C15
How ADHD Medication Works
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C11
The Most Complex Language in the World
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C1757
How Stress Changes Your Brain
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B25
Let’s Steal a New Moon
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C13
What Happens AFTER Nuclear War?
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C11
3 Reasons Why Nuclear Energy Is Awesome! 3/3
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C14
Why Ebola Keeps Coming Back
University StudentsWorking Adults
B252
Can We Stop the Extinction?
University StudentsWorking Adults
B26
YOU Own the Moon. And Mars. And Venus.
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
✨ Aanbevolen Video
C14
150 zinnen
How Often do Asteroids Hit the Earth?: Crash Course Geology #20
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C12
47 zinnen
We Found Galaxies Too Old for the Universe
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C13
37 zinnen
The Megatsunami That Struck the Entire Planet
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C13
22 zinnen
How The Universe Could Destroy Life On Earth
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B22
86 zinnen
The Most Ridiculous War Humans Ever Fought
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C15
207 zinnen
Starship Flight 14 Goes Orbital! SpaceX Reveals 10-Hour Mission | Starship Update
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C12
530 zinnen
Human Immortality 4K | Can Science Defeat Aging?
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B22
246 zinnen
You Are Alive to Watch the Space Station Fall From the Sky
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B27
343 zinnen
Humanity’s Real Plan to Stop This Asteroid (Feat. Mark Rober)
American AccentIELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C11
114 zinnen
There's a Giant Hole In Earth's History
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
Woordenschat en spreektips bij deze les
Deze spreekles op niveau C1 is gebaseerd op de video “Can Humanity Stop A Planet-Killing Asteroid?”. Deze woorden komen het vaakst terug: asteroid, Earth, penetrator, killer, bomb. Deze video bevat 149 zinnen en 2061 woorden om na te spreken. Het gesproken deel duurt 12:26. De spreker praat in een natuurlijk tempo van ongeveer 166 woorden per minuut, dicht bij een alledaags gesprek. Slechts 78% van de woorden hoort bij de 3.000 meest gebruikte Engelse woorden, dus de woordenschat is pittig.
Belangrijke woorden in deze video
De 15 moeilijkste woorden uit de video, met uitspraak en betekenis:
| Woord | Uitspraak | Betekenis |
|---|---|---|
| asteroid zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈæst(ə)ɹɔɪd/ | planetoïde, asteroïde |
| comet zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈkɒmɪt/ | komeet, staartster |
| meter zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈmitəɹ/ | meter, teller |
| fragment zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈfɹæɡmənt/ | fragment |
| cosmic bijvoeglijk naamwoord | /ˈkɑz.mɪk/ | kosmisch, ruim- |
| smash werkwoord | /smæʃ/ | verpletteren, kapotslaan |
| drill zelfstandig naamwoord | /dɹɪl/ | boor, boormachine |
| tungsten zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈtʌŋstən/ | wolfraam |
| explode werkwoord | /ɪkˈsploʊd/ | exploderen, ontploffen |
| dense bijvoeglijk naamwoord | /ˈdɛns/ | dicht |
| crater zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈkɹeɪ.tɚ/ | krater |
| astronaut zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈæstɹəˌnɔt/ | ruimtevaarder, astronaut |
| chunk zelfstandig naamwoord | /t͡ʃʌŋk/ | stuk, brok |
| gravel zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈɡɹævəl/ | grind |
| metre zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈmiːtəɹ/ | meter |
Phrasal verbs die je zult horen
| Woord | Betekenis |
|---|---|
| slow down werkwoord | afremmen |
| build up werkwoord | opstapelen |
| find out werkwoord | ontdekken, onderzoeken |
| turn out werkwoord | uitvallen, resulteren |
Zinnen om te herhalen
Korte, volledige zinnen uit de video die je in alledaagse gesprekken kunt gebruiken:
- Let's explode the bomb before it touches the asteroid.
- We won't even have to shoot them.
- We'll slow down time to see exactly what happens.
- Do we have a chance of surviving this?
- You'll find the link in the description.
Grammatica in deze video
De structuren die de spreker het meest gebruikt, met de exacte woorden uit de video:
| Structuur | In de video |
|---|---|
| Voorwaardelijke zinnen if + zin, will/would + werkwoord — een voorwaarde en het gevolg | If they'd have hit Earth, they would have |
| Lijdende vorm be + voltooid deelwoord — het gaat om wat er gebeurt, niet om wie het doet | were only spotted · was discovered · was spotted |
| Present perfect have/has + voltooid deelwoord — iets uit het verleden dat nu nog telt | have hit · have devised · have developed |
Uitspraak om op te letten
De spreker gebruikt 25 samentrekkingen en verkorte vormen, zoals they're, can't, doesn't. Spreek ze kort uit, zoals je ze hoort.
- De “th”-klanken: behemoth /bəˈhi(ː).məθ/, thrive /θɹajv/
- De klanken “sh” en “zh”: smash /smæʃ/, collision /kəˈlɪʒn̩/, precision /pɹɪˈsɪʒ.ən/
- Lange woorden — let op de klemtoon: agonizing /ˈæɡ.ə.naɪ.zɪŋ/, suicidal /ˌsu.əˈsaɪ.dəl/, apocalypse /əˈpɑkəlɪps/, unprecedented /ʌnˈpɹɛsɪdɛntɪd/, spectacular /spɛkˈtæk.jə.lɚ/
Klanken die Nederlandstaligen lastig vinden:
- Stemhebbende eindmedeklinker — /b/, /d/, /g/, /z/, /v/ niet verscherpen: asteroid /ˈæst(ə)ɹɔɪd/, explode /ɪkˈsploʊd/, destructive /dɪˈstɹʌktɪv/, ablaze /əˈbleɪz/, devise /dɪˈvaɪz/
- /æ/ — opener dan de Nederlandse “e”: asteroid /ˈæst(ə)ɹɔɪd/, fragment /ˈfɹæɡmənt/, smash /smæʃ/, astronaut /ˈæstɹəˌnɔt/, gravel /ˈɡɹævəl/
- /g/ — een harde plofklank, geen Nederlandse “g”: fragment /ˈfɹæɡmənt/, gravel /ˈɡɹævəl/, agonizing /ˈæɡ.ə.naɪ.zɪŋ/, gigantic /d͡ʒaɪˈɡæntɪk/
Zo oefen je met deze video
- Luister de hele video één keer zonder te spreken en noteer de woorden die je niet kent.
- Begin op 0,75× snelheid, spreek zin voor zin na en ga terug naar normale snelheid zodra het makkelijk gaat.
- Neem jezelf op en vergelijk met het origineel; let daarbij op woorden als asteroid, comet, meter.
Wat is de Shadowing-techniek?
Shadowing is een wetenschappelijk onderbouwde taalleermethode die oorspronkelijk is ontwikkeld voor professionele tolkentraining en gepopulariseerd door polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. De methode is eenvoudig maar krachtig: je luistert naar native Engelse audio en herhaalt het onmiddellijk hardop — als een schaduw die de spreker volgt met slechts 1–2 seconden vertraging. In tegenstelling tot passief luisteren of grammaticadrills, dwingt shadowing je hersenen en mondspieren om echte spraakpatronen tegelijkertijd te verwerken en te reproduceren. Onderzoek toont aan dat het de uitspraaknauwkeurigheid, intonatie, ritme, verbonden spraak, luisterbegrip en spreekvaardigheid aanzienlijk verbetert — waardoor het een van de meest effectieve methoden is voor IELTS Speaking-voorbereiding en echte Engelse communicatie.