Shadowing Practice: ESCKJyi3Xu8 - Learn English Speaking with Video

This incredible discovery of a decagon, a ten -sided shaped storm, raging around Saturn's South Pole.

It means there's enough fuel for 22 years of operations with Romans.

But on the other hand, this could become known as the first tentative evidence for a dark matter particle detection in the history books.

welcome back to night sky news for september 2026 with me

astrophysicist dr becky spethurst in this episode we're chatting about the

discovery of a decagon shaped storm at saturn's south pole plus

an update on the roman space telescope after its launch recently

and a claim of a potential dark matter detection by particle physicists

and of course that announcement of a potential solution to one of the most famous equations in maths and physics by AI.

There's chapter markers down here if you want to skip ahead to any of those specific news stories, plus any scientific research papers I mention are all going to be linked in the video description down below.

Now before we get to chatting about what's been happening in space news, as always let's kick things off with a quick look at

what you can see in the night sky in the next few weeks and start by looking up.

So we have now officially passed into autumn here in the

northern hemisphere with the equinox in the early hours of Wednesday the 23rd of September.

That means for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, we've officially reached the end of summer and the start of autumn where the nights will be longer than our days.

That's great news for stargazing though, albeit cold stargazing.

You know, usually either you have to stay up to the ridiculously wee hours of the morning to see anything in summer

or just get really cold in winter.

So this time of year I think is a nice happy medium.

So let's hope for great conditions for us all for stargazing this month.

Let's start with Saturn which is visible all night at the minute as it reaches opposition on the 4th of October.

That means it's in the direct opposite part of the sky from the sun with a straight line between the sun, earth and Saturn.

It just means that Saturn is like perfectly lit for us right now

which means it's going to be the brightest

that it gets in the night sky because it's the closest it gets to earth in our two respective orbits.

Now that doesn't mean that

if it's cloudy on the 4th of October you've missed your chance to see this

because Saturn will be visible right through autumn

and winter this year all through the night

so anytime this month is good to try and find saturn

because it'll be rising in the east just after sunset

or it'll be in the south around about midnight

and then setting in the west just before sunrise the full moon will be nearby on the 26th

and 27th of september so

that should act as a really nice signpost for where to look for saturn

but come back in the days or weeks afterwards to find saturn again just

when the moon isn't just glaringly bright and drowning out everything else around it

so you can appreciate saturn

and how bright it is in all of its glory maybe you can try

and find an event near you with an astronomy society to try

and see it through a telescope so

that you can see its rings as well saturn is also very close to the square of pegasus right now

so once you've found saturn

that then can act as a signpost for where to look

for this very iconic feature of the autumn night sky now

technically the square of pegasus is not fully in the constellation

of pegasus one of the stars in the square is actually in the andromeda constellation

so the square is technically known as an asterism because it spans multiple constellations, but to every stargazer looking up,

it's just a big iconic square of four bright stars.

Why is the square of Pegasus so iconic for the autumn sky though?

Well, it's just because at this time of year it rises high in the evening sky

when it's convenient for most of us to stargaze.

Unlike Mars and Jupiter, which are around in the sky right now, but only in the very early morning just before sunrise.

Although as sunrise does get later and later as we get further and further into autumn and winter.

It does make it slightly easier to get up and see them.

If you are an early bird, Mars is the fainter reddish one and Jupiter is the brighter of the two lower down at the minute.

The crescent moon is also going to swing past Mars on the 5th of October

and then Jupiter on the 6th and 7th, again acting as a nice signpost if you're not sure where to look.

But if you are an especially keen stargazer or astrophotographer, then I've got something really fun for you to look out for this month

because on the morning of the 11th and 12th of October, Mars is going to pass in front of a cluster of stars known as M44, or the Beehive Cluster.

This is one that you can find just on the left of Orion in the early morning sky at the minute.

Now, you can just about make this cluster out with your eyes alone as like a fuzzy patch on the sky,

but binoculars or a telescope reveal just how many stars are actually there.

And if you look on the morning of the 11th of October, you'll also see the red Mars photobombing the cluster too.

The one other thing of note this month is the Orionids meteor shower

which this year peaks so with the most shooting stars visible in one night on the 21st of October.

Although the peak of the Orionids is known to be pretty broad

so you should be able to see things for a few days either side of that date.

Now I just want to manage expectations when it comes to the Orionids, because yes, while individual shooting stars are known to be very spectacular in the Orionids,

with a lot of fireballs and trails that glow for a long time after, there's not as many shooting stars in this shower as there are for other ones,

with around about 15 or so per hour in the darkest of skies.

So that number of 15 includes the faint ones that you might not catch if your sky's not dark enough, and also those meteors that shoot below the horizon

because the radiant where the meteors all appear to be coming from doesn't rise until close to midnight.

So I often find that you're lucky with the Orionids if you see in one, maybe two an hour if you're lucky,

especially in like rural suburban skies.

Add to

that you've also got the moon that's just past full on

the night of the peak acting like a blaring bright light to drown out the fainter shooting stars

and then you're gonna have to be very patient

if you want to spot an Orionids shooting star

and I just wanted to point that out

because there is inevitably going to be a lot of hype in the media about the Orionids

because the shower is caused by rubble left behind by the

famous Halley's Comet that's now burning up in our atmosphere

and it always follows the spectacular Perseids meteor shower

that happens every year in August where you could see one shooting star every minute

or so and everyone raved about how cool that was

but the orionids won't give you that

so i wouldn't make like a special occasion of trying to go out

and see the orionids meteor shower but

if you are out stargazing between the 17th and the 24th of october

and you happen to catch a bright blazing fireball of a shooting star with a trail

that lasts ages then look at you you've just seen a

chunk of halley's comet burning up in the atmosphere it as an Orionid meteor.

Now stargazing is a really fun thing to do with kids as well, especially because shooting star spotting is so much fun,

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This month, I got to try out their Maze Arcade Kit, which is designed for ages 9 to 12 plus, and lets kids tinker with mechanical and electrical engineering concepts,

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I love how it teaches them about spatial reasoning and problem solving in a fun and digestible way.

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I can only imagine how fun this would be to do as a family.

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This big kid and her cat definitely loved it.

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Every time I try out one of their kits, I really wish I'd had this as a kid.

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And the best part is that KiwiCo offers monthly crates for every age and interest, whether you've got a budding scientist or a young inventor or a creative artist,

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there's something for every curious kid and kid at heart.

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So if you're looking for a way to fuel your kid's interest in science

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and give them hands -on learning experiences as you do so, then I highly recommend checking out KiwiCo.

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And if you want to support this channel while you do it, then you can click the link in the description or use my code AstroDrVeki for 50 % off your first monthly crate.

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So a big thanks to KiwiCo for supporting this channel and for making such amazing tools for young explorers.

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But now let's come back down to earth and chat about what's been happening in space news in the past month.

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All right, we have got so much to get through.

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So let's start with the news that we were all hoping for

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and expecting this month and that was the successful launch of NASA's Roman Space Telescope on the 30th of August, 2026.

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This is NASA's next big flagship observatory that is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope.

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I've made videos on this channel before about why you should believe the hype for Roman, who the telescope is named after and what science questions we hope it will answer.

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So if you want more info on Roman, I'll link those down below for you.

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But here, let's chat about what's happened since the launch.

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So the Roman team first confirmed that the solar panels successfully deployed about an hour and 23 minutes after launch, so that's great.

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We have power.

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The next day, the antenna successfully deployed, and then the day after that, the coronagraph was powered on okay.

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That's the instrument that it's going to use to take direct images of planets in orbit around other stars,

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by first blocking the bright light of the stars to see the faint light of the planets around them.

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Since then, the imaging camera has also switched on as well, Roman's wide -field instrument, and we've technically had first light detected by the instrument.

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Basically, just the first image the camera took, just to check everything's working okay.

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It's completely out of focus, which is why the stars kind of look like doughnuts.

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Every point of light is basically getting the shape of the structure of the telescope, or the struts holding up the mirror that's doing the detecting of the light

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but the big news that came about two weeks after the launch is

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that the launch was so precise

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that they didn't need any extra fuel to course correct to

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put it on the right path it means there's enough fuel

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for 22 years of operations with roman the original like pessimistic lifetime estimates for roman was like 10 years

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so we've got at least double the lifetime here the same thing happened with the James Webb Space Telescope launch, if you remember, the estimated lifetime was 5 to 10 years.

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And instead, we're going to have more than 20 years with JWST.

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Now, Roman is currently traveling to its final location of L2, Lagrange Point 2, 1 .5 million kilometers away,

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which is also where you'll find JWST and ESA's Euclid Telescope.

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This is what's known as a stable point in the Earth -Sun system, stable in terms of gravity.

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So if we think of gravity as heavy objects curving space, which is what Einstein's theory of general relativity tells us we can describe it as.

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And if we think about the Sun being very massive, having like a very spread out curvature, whereas the Earth not being as massive has much more of like a concentrated curvature to space,

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then these stable points are where those two curvatures add together to give little hills

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and saddles in the curvature compared to the space around them.

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But it's not like something will just sort of like stay there statically.

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Balancing something on one of these like hills or saddles is like trying to balance a marble on a moving melon.

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It's not as stable as just getting something to orbit around a Lagrange point instead,

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which is what Roman will eventually start doing around about the start of December when it reaches that final orbit around L2.

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Now, if you're looking at its current position since its launch, you might be wondering why it's going to take

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so long for it to reach L2 when it looks like it's already

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so close now but the spacecraft has to slow down so

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that it doesn't just fly past l2 sort of like engulf

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with a good put right it has to slow down so

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that it drops in the hole just at the right moment

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but in this analogy with the spacecraft what you're trying to

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do is set the golf ball on just like a constant

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loop around the golf hole instead in the meantime it's still in all of the commissioning

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and calibrations phase where it'll be actually focusing the telescope to eventually give us crisp views of the universe

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and we'll be getting regular updates from NASA on how that's going

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and whether the instruments are performing as expected so keep your fingers crossed

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that that's the news that we hear in the next few months.

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I was actually on holiday for the recent Roman launch

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and it feels now like every time I go on holiday

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I'm just asking for like big physics news to break

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which is exactly what happened this month with two very big claims that got announced, which we can get excited about,

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but we also have to be critically cautious as well.

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Let's start with the tentative possible dark matter detection from particle physicists at the Lux Zeppelin experiment,

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a large tank of liquid xenon buried underground in Arizona.

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Because dark matter doesn't interact with the electromagnetic force, essentially, you can't see it, it doesn't interact with light, absorb, reflect, emit light in any way,

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what we look for instead are the really unlikely collisions between a normal matter particle

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and a dark matter particle that just happens to come in and collide with it.

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Like if the cue ball on a pool table was invisible

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and you're just looking for the movement of the colourful balls to know that the cue ball was there.

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So you're looking for behaviour in the normal matter that you can't explain, which is why they bury everything underground.

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They're trying to shield the xenon from as much as they possibly can.

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From things like cosmic rays that come in

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and bounce around the normal matter and just add a load of noise

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but we can't shield for everything

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so you still have to model for like the expected noise

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that you're going to have like the expected interactions

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that you know the xenon will have

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that aren't dark matter interactions it's all the background noise we call this backgrounds

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but in june 2023 the lux zeppelin team recorded an event

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that fell outside of where you'd expect all of the background noise to be.

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It's this little black dot here in this figure, which falls below those red lines there.

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And that's the really important point.

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So the blue lines show the band where you'd roughly expect different known reactions with the xenon to be coming from.

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They come from the background of, say, cosmic radiation interacting with electrons in the xenon atoms that's

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why all the rest of the black points in this image roughly lie along those blue lines

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but the red lines then show the band where you'd expect

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anything interacting with the nucleus of the atom like a bigger particle for example

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that could be another neutron so another known normal matter particle

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and if so we would expect it to fall within those red lines on the plot.

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but it could also be another, unknown, heavier particle.

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So see how this detection just creeps under those red lines there?

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That means it's not far enough away from an expected background of a normal matter particle.

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That means there's still a 0 .5 % chance of this detection being just a fluke of the background noise, being something that is just normal matter like we'd expect.

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That's a 1 in 200 chance, which might sound low, but it's not as low as the threshold

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that we define in physics for saying if you get below that you can then claim you have evidence of something.

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That sits at 0 .25%.

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There's also a threshold that we define for saying

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if you drop below this you can then claim you actually have detected something

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and that's at 0 .0003 % or a 1 in 3 .5 million chance that it's just a fluke.

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So we're still a long way off claiming a detection of dark matter here.

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And notice how the abstract of the paper doesn't even mention dark matter.

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But the fact that we are close to possible evidence of a detection is encouraging to see.

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Especially because this is data collected back in 2023 and 2024.

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So you can tell the team have been really careful with their analysis here before they've published,

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before they've put anything out into the world that would make a false claim of evidence or a detection.

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Now, this could turn out to be absolutely nothing, just two normal known matter particles colliding.

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But on the other hand, this could become known as the first tentative evidence for a dark matter particle detection in the history books.

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If it's that, and that is a big if, then it does give us some constraints on the mass and properties of any potential dark matter particle,

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which I'm sure my particle physics colleagues will be investigating further and hoping for another detection like this, perhaps just creeping a little bit further below those red lines there.

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Who knows, maybe there's even one in the 2025

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or the 2026 data that's been taken that the team are already analysing now.

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We'll just have to wait and see.

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The other tentative physics maths discovery this month was a claim of a possible solution for the Navier -Stokes equations by,

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of all things, an AI model at OpenAI.

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That's the company behind ChatGPT.

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And this is obviously part of a much bigger conversation about AI as a tool

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and its usefulness and the ethics and so many other concerns, which I'll touch on, but let's just focus on the physics here since this is a physics communication channel.

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So the Navier -Stokes equations describe how fluids flow.

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Fluids being anything liquid or gas, anything that adapts its shape to fit the container that you've put in.

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So that could be air over planes' wings, or blood in your veins, or gas in stars, or accretion discs around black holes.

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And what the Navier -Stokes equations can tell you is that for any point in a fluid, this is what the properties of the fluid there are going to be.

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So what is its viscosity, and its pressure, and its acceleration, and if any one of those things changes,

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then this is what's going to happen in the future to this part of the fluid

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and to other parts of the fluid around it at its

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simplest form it's just really basic physics it's conservation of mass

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and conservation of momentum so us physicists have absolutely no problem with the navier stokes equations

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because they're based on really simple principles and they work

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if you plug in terms for all of these different parts of the equation here

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that are specific to the situation

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that you're trying to model for then we can actually get out solutions

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that make real world engineering predictions for things like aerodynamics

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and medicine and lava flow or the weather

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but the mathematicians have always been hung up on something and that is

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if the solutions we get to these equations in the you

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know to describe real world fluids are actually giving us something

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that is smooth or continuous so there's no wild spikes in any of the properties

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that you predict so like

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if something in the fluid changes over here like the pressure

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of the fluid changes over here it doesn't result in a

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wild spike in the pressure over here in the fluid

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and the big question has been if you start with a fluid

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that is smooth it doesn't then give you a wild spike

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that then just keeps going on until infinity blowing up the predictions blowing up the maths is the term

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that they use in something known as a singularity same as

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what happens with einstein's general relativity equations for black holes at the center of them,

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which Hawking and Penrose in the 60s proved the maths was right to predict that you got a singularity, because this would happen naturally in nature.

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Similarly, we don't know if that's true for Navier Stokes or not.

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Should the maths blow up to infinity, to a singularity, because that's what naturally should happen in reality, or does the blow -up fail to accurately represent reality?

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That is a very top level introduction to Navier Stokes.

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So if you want a little bit more info, there's a great Numberphile video with Tom Crawford on this.

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And also Jade Tan Holmes from Up and Atom did some great visualizations in her recent video on this.

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I'll link both below for you.

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Now what's happened this month is that OpenAI have claimed that they found a solution to the Navier Stokes equation,

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where the blow up to a singularity does happen naturally and the properties of the fluid do blow up to infinity,

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but then cancel each other out in a way to still give you a smooth force overall.

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It's a very specific case where you have fluid spiraling in a vortex.

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Now, they found this solution by running 10 ,000 AI agents for over three and a half days.

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Now, there's a whole lot of controversy about why OpenAI did this now.

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Now, were they trying to scoop a rival AI company or were they trying to scoop some academics working on a similar problem?

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Again, Up and Atom's video goes into all of the detail there.

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But let's just take a step back here.

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Is it cool that computers can do this?

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The optimist in me wants to say yes to that, but the academic in me with the,

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you know, cautious, critical hat on, is very curious to see if this solution holds up to peer review by humans.

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Because we use AI as a big umbrella term for a lot of different things here, right?

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And what this is, is not actual intelligence.

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It's an algorithm.

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It's a neural network, a large language model

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that has essentially learnt what's the most likely word that's going

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to follow this word based on everything that's been written by humans before just like predictive text

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when you're typing on your phone so

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when you prompt an llm like chat tpt

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or claude it's just outputting the most likely combination of words based on everything that's been written by humans before

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so when you're trying to use it to solve a problem like navier stokes what it's doing is essentially

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writing endless different variations of computer code of different models for different fluids using Navier Stokes

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and just trying every single different one of them to see if one of the solutions sticks.

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But by doing that there's a lot of different errors that can sneak in, whether that is coding errors or whether it is physics assumption errors as well.

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So I will take this announcement of a solution with a very large pinch of salt until like expert mathematicians, human mathematicians, have actually peer -reviewed all of this,

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has gone through the code and the solutions in the, you know, normal process that does occur in academia when you're trying to get something published.

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The mathematicians have been mobilised.

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All while the debate rages for who actually gets the credit for solving this, because I know OpenAI have said they're not going to claim the millennium project prize

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that was offered by one of the mass institutes for solving this problem

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but still people can't help but wonder okay well is it the person

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or the team that wrote the algorithm that gets to claim this prize

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or is it you know the people's work

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that this was most closely tied to that the algorithm was trained on

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but how do you actually pick that out

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or is it the ai algorithm itself

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that we have to give the credit to like you think

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academia would be actually ready to answer this question having used

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ai tools for a lot longer than you know any sort

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of like packages have been available to the general public for

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for example on our research team we've been using ai for classification of data

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and anomaly detection in big astronomical image data sets for nearly 10 years now

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but now of course we're seeing all of the widely available

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ai tools like llms working their way into like everyday research practices as well

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so you've got a lot of universities putting out AI usage policies for their academics too.

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And with that in mind, and because of recent conversations in the YouTube sphere, I've also put together an AI usage policy for this YouTube channel,

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the Dr. Becky channel, for myself and the people I work with who put these videos together for you to adhere to.

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Essentially what it boils down to is nothing that you see

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or hear directly in a video is ever going to be AI generated.

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I'll link my AI use policy down below

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and in the about section of my channel if you ever want to check it out.

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All right, and to finish, let's have a nice scientific palate cleanser, shall we, and talk about this incredible discovery of a decagon,

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a 10 -sided shaped storm raging around Saturn's south pole, which joins the other pointy shaped storm on Saturn,

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the hexagon at its north pole.

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Now, the hexagon was first spotted back in the 1980s when Voyager flew past Saturn, and it's been there in every observation we've took since and always while Cassini was in orbit around Saturn.

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And despite searching for a similar feature at Saturn's South Pole all of these years, we've never actually found anything.

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I made a video about Saturn's hexagon ages ago.

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It was very early on in my channel and it was one of the first to go properly viral, which I was so happy about because Saturn is my favourite anyway and I just absolutely love it.

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So you can imagine my absolute squeal of joy

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when I saw the news about the discovery of the Decagon at the South Pole.

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Hints of which were actually first spotted back in 2024 using the PVOL, the Planetary Virtual Observatory and Laboratory.

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It's a project that encourages anyone in the world, whether professional or amateur astronomers,

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to upload any images that they've taken of the solar system planet so that they can be used for scientific research.

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And it was using observations that have been first uploaded to PVOL

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that something at Saturn's South Pole was first spotted by Sanchez La Vega and collaborators.

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But if you're thinking, wait a minute, how do we see Saturn's South Pole?

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Because we just see it from the side and the South Pole is hidden down here.

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But Saturn also has seasons just like Earth does.

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Its axis that it spins around is tilted.

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So as it orbits the sun, sometimes its Northern hemisphere is pointed more towards the sun and vice versa.

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And in the past few Earth years, the seasons have switched on Saturn,

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with the South Pole now pointing towards the Sun and us here on Earth so we can observe it.

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Saturn also spins on its axis once every 10 hours, so if we observe it for long enough,

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we can wait for the entirety of the southern hemisphere of Saturn to rotate into view for us.

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And that's how Sanchez La Vega and collaborators managed to get this image with the Hubble Space Telescope,

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revealing the Decagon, this ten -sided shaped cloud pattern at Saturn's south pole.

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What's more, is there's a project with Hubble known as OPAL, the Outer Planet Atmosphere's legacy program,

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where each of the outer planets of the solar system is observed by Hubble once a year. So,

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Sanchez, La Vega and collaborators also managed to grab the data from the previous years in 2023

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and 2024 to see if they could see this cloud pattern forming in the atmosphere.

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The funny black shapes in the middle is just where there's data missing

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because the South Pole was still sort of pointing away from us so we couldn't see it in its entirety.

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But what you can see is

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that the edges of these clouds ringing the pole are going

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from more circular to decagon shapes as you go from 2023 to 2025.

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That's a lot easier to see in these residual images.

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This is where you work out the average brightness in rings of latitude around Saturn's southpaw

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and then you take off the average in the ring from all of the pixels in the ring.

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Then you're left with this pattern of dark

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and light spots where there are anomalies above and below the average

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and you can see the corners of the Decagon getting sharper year on year.

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And this is just so incredibly cool that we're alive to witness this thing forming on Saturn.

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that could now be a feature on it for over 50 years, just like the hexagon.

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Plus it helps us understand how these patterns form, because the fact that it has corners is weird.

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Nature doesn't like things with sharp pointy corners, it likes to round things.

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Think about, like, hurricanes on Earth, they're round, planets are round, galaxies are round sharp edges are not typically a feature

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that we see very often in the universe.

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So it actually took quite a long time for physicists to

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come up with an explanation for what is causing this hexagon on Saturn.

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With a study finally coming out in 2010

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that managed to recreate the hexagon shape in a lab by having an outer ring

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and an inner ring of fluid that were rotating in opposite directions.

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And at the boundary between those two fluids, you set up a standing or a stationary wave,

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producing the stationary pattern that's hexagonal in shape, just like on Saturn.

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Plus, the lab team were also able to create a triangle and an eight -sided shape, an octagon as well, showing that it's possible not just to create hexagons,

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but also other multi -sided shapes in this way.

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And guess what?

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You can explain all that using the Navier -Stokes equations too.

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so great we have an explanation for why we get these patterns

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but the big question

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that still remains about this decagon at least is why has

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it suddenly appeared now in saturn's atmosphere like what changed

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and will it last is it gonna stick around for 50 odd years like the hexagon

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or will it have disappeared this time next year?

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So Sanchez, La Vega and collaborators ran some simulations to try and get a similar ten -sided shape.

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And one idea they explored was whether another nearby storm, sort of like Jupiter's red spot but on Saturn,

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could disrupt the flow of the atmosphere to start producing the Decagon.

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But they didn't really find enough compelling evidence to support that idea, but nor did they find enough compelling evidence to dismiss the idea either.

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So more observations are going to be needed to understand this better, or Hubble observations definitely to see what happens over time and

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if this continues to evolve or settles into a long -lived decadon pattern

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but also observations with JWST as well observing with infrared light

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that lets you pierce further down into the atmosphere

378

so you can see how far does this pattern go

379

which will hopefully give us some more scientific clues for how this decadon shaped storm pattern at Saturn's south pole has formed.

380

Alright, that's it for night sky news for this month.

381

As always, if you snap any pictures of the night sky

382

or you see any space news stories that you'd like me to explain in a future night sky news video, then send them my way over on social media because I'd always love to see them.

383

But until next time, everybody, happy stargazing.

384

There's chapter markers down here.

385

I've got a runny nose.

386

Oh no, there's no tissues.

387

Nightmare.

388

Nightmare.

389

good job i have a second supply it's like

390

that bit of the cringe where they're like good job we

391

have a spare do you know i was also just thinking

392

that i just got my little satin light

393

and it's got the hexagon at the top of it i

394

can show you like it's got the little hexagon just whirring

395

away up here see it's got its little hexagon on the north pole

396

but it it doesn't it doesn't have the deck and going on the south pole on its butt.

397

So, gonna need to change that now, aren't we?

398

Sod's law, you go on holiday, Navier Stokes gets solved, and the Roman telescope gets launched, and there's a tentative dark matter detection.

399

You finally buy a Saturn lamp, and then they discover a new feature that the Saturn lamp doesn't have.

400

Apparently I just jinxed things.

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Woordenschat en spreektips bij deze les

Deze video bevat 400 zinnen en 5864 woorden om na te spreken. Het gesproken deel duurt 31:53. De spreker praat snel, ongeveer 184 woorden per minuut, dus reken op verbonden en ingeslikte klanken. 82% van de woorden hoort bij de 3.000 meest gebruikte Engelse woorden; de rest kun je beter vooraf bekijken.

Belangrijke woorden in deze video

De 15 moeilijkste woorden uit de video, met uitspraak en betekenis:

Woord	Uitspraak	Betekenis
telescope zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈtɛl.əˌskoʊp/	telescoop, kijker
particle zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈpɑɹtək(ə)l/	deeltje, partikel
stoke werkwoord	/stəʊk/	stoken
hexagon zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈhɛk.sə.ɡɑn/	zeshoek
equation zelfstandig naamwoord	/ɪˈkweɪ.ʒən/	vergelijking
decagon zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈdɛ.kə.ɡɑn/	tienhoek
meteor zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈmiːtiɚ/	meteoor, vallende ster
orbit zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈɔɹ.bɪt/	baan
xenon zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈzinɑn/	xenon
collaborator zelfstandig naamwoord	/kəˈlæbəɹeɪtɚ/	medewerker, medewerkster
mathematician zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˌmæθ.(ə.)məˈtɪʃ.ən/	wiskundige, mathematicus
physicist zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈfɪzɪsɪst/	natuurkundige, fysicus
singularity zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˌsɪŋɡjəˈlæɹətɪ/	bijzonderheid
hemisphere zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈhɛmɪsfɪə/	halfrond, hemisfeer
faint bijvoeglijk naamwoord	/feɪnt/	zwak

Phrasal verbs die je zult horen

Woord	Uitspraak	Betekenis
look up werkwoord	/ˌlʊk ˈʌp/	opkijken
slow down werkwoord		afremmen
try out werkwoord		uitproberen
check out werkwoord		onderzoeken
come back werkwoord		terugkomen
come up with werkwoord		bedenken, verzinnen
get up werkwoord		opstaan
go out werkwoord		naar buiten gaan

Zinnen om te herhalen

Korte, volledige zinnen uit de video die je in alledaagse gesprekken kunt gebruiken:

We'll just have to wait and see.
I'll link both below for you.
I've got a runny nose.
So, gonna need to change that now, aren't we?

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 so we would expect
Present perfect have/has + voltooid deelwoord — iets uit het verleden dat nu nog telt	you've missed · you've found · you've just seen
Lijdende vorm be + voltooid deelwoord — het gaat om wat er gebeurt, niet om wie het doet	be linked · is known · are known
Betrekkelijke bijzinnen who / which + zin — extra informatie over een persoon of ding	Saturn which is · Jupiter, which are · Kit, which is

Uitspraak om op te letten

De spreker gebruikt 95 samentrekkingen en verkorte vormen, zoals you're, doesn't, you've. Spreek ze kort uit, zoals je ze hoort.

De “th”-klanken: mathematician /ˌmæθ.(ə.)məˈtɪʃ.ən/, algorithm /ˈælɡəɹɪðm̩/, threshold /ˈθɹɛʃ(h)oʊld/
De klanken “sh” en “zh”: detection /dɪˈtɛk.ʃən/, equation /ɪˈkweɪ.ʒən/, mathematician /ˌmæθ.(ə.)məˈtɪʃ.ən/, constellation /ˌkɑn.stəˈleɪ.ʃən/, stationary /ˈsteɪʃəˌnɛɹi/
Lange woorden — let op de klemtoon: collaborator /kəˈlæbəɹeɪtɚ/, mathematician /ˌmæθ.(ə.)məˈtɪʃ.ən/, singularity /ˌsɪŋɡjəˈlæɹətɪ/, infinity /ɪnˈfɪnɪti/, constellation /ˌkɑn.stəˈleɪ.ʃən/

Klanken die Nederlandstaligen lastig vinden:

Stemhebbende eindmedeklinker — /b/, /d/, /g/, /z/, /v/ niet verscherpen: stargaze /ˈstɑɹɡeɪz/, tentative /ˈtɛntətɪv/, sunrise /ˈsʌnɹaɪz/, observe /əbˈzɜːv/, threshold /ˈθɹɛʃ(h)oʊld/
/æ/ — opener dan de Nederlandse “e”: collaborator /kəˈlæbəɹeɪtɚ/, mathematician /ˌmæθ.(ə.)məˈtɪʃ.ən/, singularity /ˌsɪŋɡjəˈlæɹətɪ/, algorithm /ˈælɡəɹɪðm̩/, interact /ɪn.təˈɹækt/
/g/ — een harde plofklank, geen Nederlandse “g”: hexagon /ˈhɛk.sə.ɡɑn/, decagon /ˈdɛ.kə.ɡɑn/, stargaze /ˈstɑɹɡeɪz/, singularity /ˌsɪŋɡjəˈlæɹətɪ/, algorithm /ˈælɡəɹɪðm̩/

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 telescope, particle, stoke.

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.

Shadowing-techniek: lees de volledige stap-voor-stap-gids →

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Woordenschat en spreektips bij deze les

Belangrijke woorden in deze video

Phrasal verbs die je zult horen

Zinnen om te herhalen

Grammatica in deze video

Uitspraak om op te letten

Zo oefen je met deze video

Wat is de Shadowing-techniek?