Shadowing Practice: Why We Can Reach Pluto But Can’t Fly Above the Sun - Learn English Speaking with Video
Kies een oefenmodus
Elke modus opent een volledig scherm oefenruimte.
242 zinnen
Als zinnen te kort of te lang zijn, klik op Bewerken om ze aan te passen.
1
So, what exactly is above the solar system?
2
It seems like it should be the easiest thing in the world to find out.
3
Just take a rocket, point it straight up relative to the planetary plane, launch it into space, and take a look.
4
But no, we can't.
5
Or at least it's really, really, really hard to do.
6
Which is weird, because we've sent probes all the way to Pluto billions of kilometers away.
7
Yet getting above our own sun by flying straight up is, like I said, nearly impossible.
8
It's the point where the laws of physics look at us like we're complete maroons.
9
So just why is flying up, so to speak, harder than reaching the edge of the solar system,
10
and what exactly would we run into if we actually tried to get out there?
11
This whole cosmic pickle starts with the fact that the Earth isn't standing still.
12
Right now, you're sitting in your chair
13
or on your bed in your socks watching this video thinking you're in a state of absolute rest.
14
Yeah, that's kinda true, but not really.
15
At this very second,
16
our planet is hurtling sideways along its orbit around the Sun at a terrifying speed of 30 kilometers per second.
17
Per second.
18
To put that into perspective, that's over 100,000 kilometers per hour.
19
And any rocket we launch from Earth instantly inherits this insane sideways speed.
20
If we're flying to Mars, or Jupiter, or even Pluto, all of which orbit roughly in the same plane as Earth, at least we're already moving in the right direction.
21
It's a breeze.
22
Smooth sailing.
23
Okay, I exaggerate, but the Earth has already done the lion's share of the sideways motion work for us.
24
Yeah, we still need a big ass monster rocket, obviously, but we're accelerating mostly in the direction that we were already going, and that's it, we're on our way.
25
But if we want to defy the system and fly strictly perpendicular, straight up, that's where this free speed becomes our worst enemy.
26
Look, we don't need to completely cancel out that 30 kilometers per second and then accelerate upwards from zero.
27
We need to pull a different trick, redirect the velocity vector itself.
28
But even a perfect 90 degree turn would require about 42 kilometers per second of additional speed.
29
That delta V is so absurdly high that no conventional chemical rocket ever built by humanity could possibly pull it off.
30
And diving towards the sun isn't a magic fix either.
31
It only solves part of the problem.
32
Yes, the Oberth effect, this is the trick of firing your engines while moving extremely fast,
33
so the same burn produces a much larger change in orbital energy, is great for speeding up or slowing down.
34
But changing your orbital inclination is far more efficient when the spacecraft is moving slowly.
35
So engineers have to cheat.
36
They use the gravity of another planet to sling the spacecraft onto a new trajectory. Which planet?
37
We'll get to that.
38
But let's imagine we pulled off this gravitational trick shot and broke out of the plane.
39
What's up there?
40
First we have to cross the heliopause, the outer edge of the heliosphere.
41
That's the giant protective bubble the Sun blows around the entire solar system with its solar wind,
42
shielding us from much of that nasty barrage of galactic cosmic rays.
43
You can almost kind of think of it like the solar system's own gigantic atmosphere,
44
a vast magnetized cocoon protecting us from the rest of the galaxy.
45
For decades, serious guys in glasses drew this bubble like a comet with a rounded nose
46
and one enormous tail trailing behind it.
47
Which makes sense, I guess.
48
We're moving through the galaxy, so naturally you'd expect something streaming out behind us.
49
But in 2020, researchers combined data from several different space probes with computer simulations and came up with a very different possibility.
50
In their model, there's no ginormous comet tail.
51
Instead, the heliosphere looks more like a deflated croissant.
52
That's right, according to this model, we're flying through the cold dark galaxy inside a giant invisible croissant.
53
But the croissant is nothing, because beyond it lies the next great frontier, the Oort Cloud.
54
It isn't a solid wall,
55
it's unimaginably sparse, but calculations suggest that it surrounds our system as a roughly spherical shell.
56
So out there, in the absolute scary pitch black darkness, trillions of icy bodies could drifting around,
57
some the size of Mount Everest.
58
Any sane person would ask, wait, how do you know it's there if you've never actually seen it?
59
It's not like it glows.
60
Well, simple.
61
In 1950, Dutch astronomer Jan Oort, what are the odds he was studying the Oort cloud, and his name was Jan Oort.
62
Okay, yeah, it was named after him, obviously.
63
Anyway, he was studying the orbits of long-period comets, and noticed something weird.
64
A lot of them were coming in from mind-boggling distances, and, and this is important, from all directions at once.
65
That meant that what lay far beyond the planets wasn't another flat disk,
66
but a nearly spherical reservoir of icy chunks.
67
Basically a gigantic cosmic deep freeze that we haven't yet observed directly.
68
So yeah, that's astronomy for you.
69
An entire cloud and not a single picture of it.
70
The sheer scale of these distances is best illustrated by the legendary Voyager 2.
71
This guy's been cruising through the void since 1977 at 56,000 kilometers per hour.
72
Respect.
73
But just to reach the inner edge of this vast cloud, it still has another 300 years to go.
74
And to pass all the way through it, 30,000 years.
75
30,000 years.
76
It makes you kind of want to tell the devs of this universe, or God if you will, to bump up the travel speed a little because this is painfully slow.
77
And it would be fine if the Oort cloud just hung out quietly in the dark, but about 80,000 years ago,
78
a wandering binary system known as Schultz's star just flew by and grazed its outer edge.
79
Sounds like the opening scene of a Hollywood comet apocalypse, But this cosmic duo was,
80
thankfully, too light and too fast to send a global barrage of icy objects our way.
81
It probably disturbed some objects, but they'd take millions of years to reach even the inner solar system.
82
Basically, they came over to borrow a cup of sugar and clipped the Oort Cloud on their way out.
83
Now, let's leave the frozen realm of the Oort cloud behind and zoom out even farther.
84
Do you imagine the space around our entire system is just quiet and empty and clean?
85
Not a chance.
86
It's foggy.
87
Right now, the solar system is hurtling at breakneck speed through the local interstellar cloud,
88
a region where gas and dust are slightly denser than in the surrounding space.
89
By our standards, it's still virtually a perfect vacuum, but compared to the emptiness nearby, it's a thick cosmic soup.
90
Zoom out even more, and this little cloud becomes just a speck of dust inside a much larger structure.
91
Welcome to the local bubble, a colossal cosmic void, a thousand light years wide where the density of matter is obscenely low.
92
Imagine an exclusive VIP section of the galaxy where someone has swept out almost all of the gas.
93
And who exactly is this almighty cosmic janitor?
94
Well, all the clues point to the most violent events in the universe, supernova explosions.
95
Starting around 14 million years ago, this neighborhood went absolutely nuts, with roughly 15 massive stars blowing up here,
96
one after another, over the next several million years.
97
These monstrous explosions pushed the gas out and away in all directions, leaving behind a rarefied cavity with dense walls,
98
which is exactly what we're flying through right now.
99
So yeah, nice neighborhood, 15 supernovae and almost no gas.
100
But the explosions happened millions of years ago, and the bubble is completely transparent.
101
You'd think there'd be zero evidence left, but the clues are sitting right under our noses, or rather, at the very bottom of our oceans.
102
Scientists sampled deep sea sediments and found something called Iron 60 in them,
103
a radioactive isotope primarily forged inside massive stars and then ejected into space during supernova explosions,
104
or carried by intense stellar winds.
105
Down on the seafloor, they discovered two major waves of this supernova fallout,
106
one from about 2 to 3 million years ago and another from around 6 to 9 million years ago.
107
It's not exactly a receipt with the home address of each dead star, but the evidence is rock solid.
108
Dust from dead stars actually made its way all the way to the Earth, rained down, and now there's still some left at the bottom of the oceans.
109
Pretty cool if you ask me.
110
Anyway, like I said, millions of years have passed, and some of the evidence is still exactly where it landed.
111
So, hold up, this is where our literal straight up journey ends.
112
Otherwise, I'd be lying to you.
113
From here on we stop flying and crank the galactic zoom to the max, pull the camera far beyond the local bubble,
114
and the entire Milky Way galaxy comes into view.
115
We've generally been sold on the idea that the Milky Way is some kind of beautiful, peaceful, glowing spiral like you see in the movies.
116
Yeah, no. As soon as you rise above the galactic disc,
117
that picture-perfect postcard instantly turns into a brutal crime scene.
118
In the outer halo, that's the massive, rarefied sphere surrounding our galaxy, stellar streams stretch out.
119
Take the Sagittarius stream, for example.
120
That, ladies and gents, is what's left of one particular dwarf galaxy
121
that the Milky Way has been methodically tearing to bits with its gravity for well nigh on billions of years now.
122
The Milky Way is, in fact, a ruthless beast of a cannibal.
123
It dragged its small neighbor into its orbit and is now smearing
124
and smushing its stars in long glowing ribbons above and below its own plane.
125
It looks beautiful in pictures, but in reality it's one galaxy digesting another for billions of years.
126
But stellar graveyards are just child's play.
127
Let's turn towards the very center of the galaxy and then look straight up.
128
Hovering there in the dark are the Fermi bubbles.
129
What Fermi bubbles?
130
What the heck are those?
131
Well they sound harmless, don't they?
132
But they're not.
133
These are two colossal regions of gamma ray emission, together with super duper heated gas and extremely high energy particles.
134
Each one stretches about 25,000 light years from the galactic center.
135
25,000 light years!
136
Well just where does all that energy come from?
137
I know you probably know.
138
The prime suspect is none other than the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, Sagittarius A-star.
139
Millions of years ago, this monster is said to have feasted on a massive cloud of gas
140
and then unleashed a gigantic burst of energy.
141
If so, the Fermi Bubbles are the aftermath of that very event, or meal if you want to look at it that way.
142
But the case isn't closed yet.
143
have a second suspect, a powerful burst of star formation at the galactic center.
144
Essentially, we have an enormous crime scene and two possible suspects.
145
Take your pick.
146
And amidst all this chaos, the entire galaxy somehow holds together the disk,
147
the stellar streams, the scorching gas, and the hundreds of billions of stars.
148
So why doesn't it all just fly apart and off into the void?
149
Well most of the heavy lifting here is done silently by the dark matter halo,
150
an invisible, roughly spherical structure surrounding the Milky Way.
151
It appears to contain more dark matter than all the galaxies, stars, planets and nebulae put together.
152
We've got no idea what it's made of, but its gravity holds the entire galaxy in an iron grip.
153
Look, I know, this whole dark matter thing all seems a bit convenient.
154
They looked at things and the math wasn't mathin', so they just added a big dollop of invisible matter.
155
But look, its effects keep showing up all over the place, in how galaxies rotate, how clusters move,
156
and in gravitational lensing where invisible mass bends light.
157
Something's there.
158
Yeah, we can't see it or detect it directly, so far, hence the name Dark,
159
but obviously we can't just toss it out of the equations either.
160
There is one awkward detail here.
161
We started by saying that flying directly out of the plane of the solar system is practically impossible.
162
It requires insane fuel reserves or extremely tricky gravity assists.
163
Except that humanity has already flown up.
164
A bit, anyway.
165
And we did it over 30 years ago.
166
In 1990, the Ulysses probe headed into deep space, and instead of trying to brute force its way straight up from the Earth,
167
burning through tank after tank of precious fuel, it first flew towards Jupiter.
168
Near Jupiter, Ulysses pulled off a brilliant gravity assist maneuver.
169
The giant planet redirected the probe onto a trajectory inclined almost 80 degrees to the planetary plane.
170
And Ulysses became the first probe in history to pass over the northern and southern polar regions of the sun,
171
not somewhere off to the side like the Earth and almost every other spacecraft, but almost directly above and below it.
172
physics actually let us out of our 2D prison here.
173
So why the hell don't we have that beautiful top-down photo of the solar system yet?
174
Because Lissy simply didn't have a camera.
175
It didn't fly out there for pretty desktop wallpaper.
176
It had a serious scientific job measuring the solar wind, the magnetic field, and and invisible streams of charged particles.
177
So, for almost 19 years, the probe just looped over the sun's poles,
178
gathering unique data, but never took that most desired family portrait of the planets.
179
But even if it had a camera, we still wouldn't have gotten one of those familiar textbook pictures.
180
There wouldn't be any glowing orbital lines, or large colorful spheres neatly arranged around the sun.
181
Almost the entire frame would be basically black.
182
In the center there would be a blindingly bright sun, and the planets would look like a few pathetic pixels,
183
some of which would be completely drowned out by the solar glare.
184
To see the whole system at once, the probe would have had to have flown much higher
185
and carried a telescope that wouldn't go blind from the sun
186
while also still being able to spot the faint specks of the planets. And
187
that beautiful solar system from above picture would have to be
188
stitched together from dozens of separate shots with drawn in orbits
189
and planets artificially enlarged thousands of times just so we could see them.
190
So in the end, we wouldn't get a photo, but just another diagram, only an incredibly expensive one.
191
Recently, though, humanity finally began to be able to see the sun from above its equatorial plane.
192
In 2025, a spacecraft called Solar Orbiter reached a vantage point almost 17 degrees south of the solar equator,
193
giving us our first direct view of the sun's south pole.
194
Yeah, that doesn't sound super impressive,
195
big deal, 17 degrees, but until then we'd image the Sun almost exclusively from the level of its equator.
196
It's like spending your whole life seeing someone only from the side, and then suddenly discovering the top of their head.
197
After further gravity assists at Venus,
198
Solar Orbiter's inclination should increase first to 24 degrees, then eventually to 33.
199
But even then it isn't going to take a picture of the entire solar system for us.
200
It's studying stuff like the sun's magnetic fields and the solar wind
201
and the fundamental mystery of how our star flips its magnetic poles every 11 years.
202
Another problem is that we haven't even agreed on what UP actually is.
203
The plane in which the planet's orbit is tilted about 60 degrees relative to the Milky Way's disk.
204
So if you fly strictly up from the solar system, you won't majestically rise above the galaxy.
205
You'll just plow diagonally through it, right through the stars and dust.
206
Earth has one up, the solar system has another, and the whole big Milky Way has a third.
207
We've been trying this whole time to find another floor above us.
208
First above the planets, then above the sun, then above the entire galaxy.
209
But the higher we climb, the more obvious it becomes.
210
The problem isn't the root, it's the question itself.
211
There is no universal up in the universe.
212
Now we can finally answer the question that started it all.
213
What is directly above the solar system?
214
If you just head straight up relative to the planetary plane, your route will look like this.
215
First, the edge of the heliosphere.
216
Then the interstellar medium with the Oort cloud extending through part of it.
217
That's it.
218
The Sagittarius stream and the Fermi bubbles are not the next floors right above us.
219
They are parts of a completely different, much more massive structure, the Milky Way.
220
And beyond that, it's just the rest of the universe.
221
And the solar system's plane itself isn't a cage.
222
In fact, it's really just a memory.
223
About 4.6 billion years ago, the sun and the planets formed from a colossal spinning cloud of gas and dust.
224
The cloud collapsed, its rotation sped up, particles smushed into each other,
225
and physics gradually flattened this giant cosmic soup into a disk.
226
The sun ignited in the center, and our worlds formed from the remaining material.
227
So Earth is flying sideways, not because someone maliciously locked it onto cosmic rails.
228
It's simply continuing a motion inherited from the material that formed it, one that began long before the Earth itself even existed.
229
For billions of years, all the planets have been racing in roughly the same direction around the sun,
230
like cars on a massive, endless roundabout.
231
You can take an exit.
232
Physics doesn't forbid it.
233
It's just that any sharp turn in space will cost you an absurd amount of energy.
234
That's why our probes don't blast straight up.
235
They haggle with gravity instead, catching rides from Jupiter and Venus, hopping between orbits for years,
236
and squeezing every last bit of performance out of each kilogram of fuel.
237
We aren't trapped in two dimensions, we're just passengers traveling through a giant 3D universe on a shoestring budget.
238
And even if one day we muster the resources
239
and send a probe far enough above the planetary plane
240
and point its camera back at the solar system and take that historic shot, it probably won't look anything like the picture in the textbook.
241
And of course, someone will inevitably look at that dark frame and ask, wait, what?
242
We spend several billion dollars on this crapola.
App downloaden
Alles wat je nodig hebt om vloeiend te spreken
AI UitspraakScoor elke zin
IPA OefeningBeheers elk geluid
WoordenschatBouw je woordenschat op
WoordenspelLeren terwijl je speelt
Zelfde Kanaal
FOR YOU
Aanbevolen Video
C119
183 zinnen
Why Humanity Will Never Leave The Solar System
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B22
330 zinnen
If You Can Understand This News Article, Your English is Excellent!
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepCambridge Exam Prep
B21
40 zinnen
I Jumped From Space (World Record Supersonic Freefall)
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B22
120 zinnen
PTE Retell Lecture July 2026 | Real Exam Questions With Answers | 4K Ultra HD Video
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B24
41 zinnen
PROOF ALIENS ACTUALLY EXIST
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B250
38 zinnen
Why Birds Migrate: A Chat with an Ornithologist
American AccentBritish AccentIELTS PrepUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C14
27 zinnen
Why Gravity Is A Lie, explained in Zero G
American AccentIELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C12
249 zinnen
The Speed of Light Isn't a Limit. It's a Converter
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B22
13 zinnen
36살의 일론 머스크, 미래를 내다본 남자
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B26
219 zinnen
Something’s Happening to the Ozone Hole
American AccentIELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B22
198 zinnen
NASA tested my chain theory in space
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B22
269 zinnen
What If Exoplanets Replaced Our Solar System?
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
Woordenschat en spreektips bij deze les
Deze spreekles op niveau B2 is gebaseerd op de video “Why We Can Reach Pluto But Can’t Fly Above the Sun”. Deze woorden komen het vaakst terug: solar, above, galaxy, sun, cloud. Deze video bevat 242 zinnen en 3131 woorden om na te spreken. Het gesproken deel duurt 22:41. De spreker praat in een gelijkmatig tempo van ongeveer 138 woorden per minuut, prettig om te shadowen. 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 |
|---|---|---|
| cosmic bijvoeglijk naamwoord | /ˈkɑz.mɪk/ | kosmisch, ruim- |
| bubble zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈbʌbəl/ | bel |
| orbit zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈɔɹ.bɪt/ | baan |
| galactic bijvoeglijk naamwoord | /ɡəˈlæktɪk/ | galactisch |
| disk zelfstandig naamwoord | /dɪsk/ | schijf |
| invisible bijvoeglijk naamwoord | /ɪnˈvɪzəb(ə)l/ | onzichtbaar |
| sideways bijwoord | /ˈsaɪdweɪz/ | zijwaarts |
| planetary bijvoeglijk naamwoord | /ˈplænɪˌtɛəri/ | planetair |
| stellar bijvoeglijk naamwoord | /ˈstɛl.əɹ/ | stellair, de sterren betreffend |
| colossal bijvoeglijk naamwoord | /kəˈlɑsəl/ | kolossaal |
| croissant zelfstandig naamwoord | /kɹəˈsɑnt/ | croissant |
| spherical bijvoeglijk naamwoord | /ˈsfɛɹɪkəl/ | bolvormig |
| supernova zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˌsuː.pə(ɹ)ˈnəʊ.və/ | supernova |
| orbital bijvoeglijk naamwoord | /ɔɹ.bət.l̩/ | orbitaal |
| gigantic bijvoeglijk naamwoord | /d͡ʒaɪˈɡæntɪk/ | gigantisch |
Phrasal verbs die je zult horen
| Woord | Betekenis |
|---|---|
| come up with werkwoord | bedenken, verzinnen |
| find out werkwoord | ontdekken, onderzoeken |
| leave behind werkwoord | achterlaten |
| show up werkwoord | tentoonstellen |
| slow down werkwoord | afremmen |
Grammatica in deze video
De structuren die de spreker het meest gebruikt, met de exacte woorden uit de video:
| Structuur | In de video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — iets dat eerder begon en nog bezig is | guy's been cruising · We've been trying · have been racing |
| Present perfect have/has + voltooid deelwoord — iets uit het verleden dat nu nog telt | we've sent · has already done · you've never actually seen |
| Lijdende vorm be + voltooid deelwoord — het gaat om wat er gebeurt, niet om wie het doet | was named · been sold · is said |
Uitspraak om op te letten
De spreker gebruikt 56 samentrekkingen en verkorte vormen, zoals we're, isn't, don't. Spreek ze kort uit, zoals je ze hoort.
- De “th”-klanken: pathetic /pəˈθɛtɪk/, mathematics /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/
- De klanken “sh” en “zh”: barrage /bəˈɹɑʒ/, gravitational /ˌɡɹævɪˈteɪʃənəl/, inclination /ˌɪn.klɪˈneɪ.ʃən/, sheer /ʃɪɚ/, dimension /daɪˈmɛn.ʃən/
- Lange woorden — let op de klemtoon: invisible /ɪnˈvɪzəb(ə)l/, planetary /ˈplænɪˌtɛəri/, supernova /ˌsuː.pə(ɹ)ˈnəʊ.və/, gravitational /ˌɡɹævɪˈteɪʃənəl/, inclination /ˌɪn.klɪˈneɪ.ʃən/
Klanken die Nederlandstaligen lastig vinden:
- Stemhebbende eindmedeklinker — /b/, /d/, /g/, /z/, /v/ niet verscherpen: probe /pɹoʊb/, sideways /ˈsaɪdweɪz/, surround /səˈɹaʊnd/, void /vɔɪd/, barrage /bəˈɹɑʒ/
- /æ/ — opener dan de Nederlandse “e”: galactic /ɡəˈlæktɪk/, planetary /ˈplænɪˌtɛəri/, spacecraft /ˈspeɪsˌkɹæft/, gigantic /d͡ʒaɪˈɡæntɪk/, magnetic /mæɡˈnɛtɪk/
- /g/ — een harde plofklank, geen Nederlandse “g”: galactic /ɡəˈlæktɪk/, gigantic /d͡ʒaɪˈɡæntɪk/, glow /ɡloʊ/, magnetic /mæɡˈnɛtɪk/, gravitational /ˌɡɹævɪˈteɪʃənəl/
Zo oefen je met deze video
- Luister de hele video één keer zonder te spreken en noteer de woorden die je niet kent.
- Spreek zin voor zin na op normale snelheid en herhaal elke zin tot je ritme gelijk is aan dat van de spreker.
- Neem jezelf op en vergelijk met het origineel; let daarbij op woorden als cosmic, bubble, orbit.
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.