Shadowing Practice: Is There Life In the Stars? | Ancient Aliens - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Cape Canaveral, Florida, April 18, 2018.
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At 6 .51 p .m., a Falcon 9 rocket blasts off on a mission to deploy NASA's newest space telescope into orbit,
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the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS.
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TESS is like a survey of the whole sky, a survey of the nearest hundred light years or so of planets that would be around these stars.
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Over the next decade, scientists expect that TESS will fulfill its primary mission, to discover thousands of so -called exoplanets.
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Exoplanets are planets that exist outside of our solar system.
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We're certainly in an exoplanet golden age of discovery.
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20 years ago, we didn't know if there were other Earth -like planets in the universe.
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And now we can't imagine how we could discover things at a higher rate and still try to make sense of it.
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It's such a struggle just to keep up with the discoveries that we're making right now.
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It is only recently, with the development of deep space satellites and high -powered telescopes, that a more accurate understanding of nearby planets,
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especially planets capable of supporting human life, has been possible.
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But it wasn't so long ago that the notion of Earth -like planets existing in our galaxy wasn't simply unknown.
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It was considered blasphemy.
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When the 16th century Italian philosopher
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and cosmologist Giordano Bruno expressed his belief in an infinity of worlds and raised the possibility that other planets could harbor life,
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He was charged with heresy and burned at the stake.
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It was heretical, revolutionary to believe that there could be alien life out there.
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Giordano Bruno was burned alive in the streets of Rome, and what was his crime?
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To say that they are aliens out there on other planets.
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They weren't allowed to think like that.
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It challenged all their predispositions and their power structure.
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No, there are no other worlds.
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There's nothing out there.
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But there is something out there.
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There's no question about it.
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As recently as the early 1990s, astronomers were still unable to detect these distant planets, even with high -powered telescopes.
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It's hard to see an exoplanet.
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Imagine trying to look at a firefly next to a spotlight.
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It's incredibly difficult because stars shine by their own light.
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They give off their own light, but planets reflect light.
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A typical star is about 10 billion times brighter than a planet.
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Thanks to remarkable advances in technology, astronomers made the very first discovery of an exoplanet in 1992 using an Earth -based telescope.
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But that search kicked into high gear in 2009 with the launch of Kepler, the first space telescope specially designed to find exoplanets.
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And in 2018, Kepler was replaced by the even more powerful TESS.
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So one of the really cool things about TESS, the new satellite that NASA's put up,
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is basically it was specifically designed to detect exoplanets We're used to find exoplanets by what's called the transit method,
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which is where when a planet goes in front of a star, it blocks the light briefly.
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And you really see the light blink on and off.
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That telltale dip is what tells you there might be something that's passing in front of it.
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The regularity tells you about the orbit, which is the easiest way to actually start looking for new planets.
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Although the initial objective in the search for exoplanets was simply
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to determine how many stars in our galaxy might have planets in orbit around them, the actual results were staggering.
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Our galaxy has around 400 billion stars.
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From what we've seen so far is, on average, every star has at least one planet.
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So that means that there are 400 billion, at least, planets in our galaxy.
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400 billion planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone?
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The discovery of such an extraordinary number of exoplanets represents a radical change in our understanding of the universe.
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But even more radical is the notion that millions of those planets might actually be capable of not just supporting life,
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but generating it.
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And to that end, astronomers and astrophysicists actively search for planets in a region they refer to as the Goldilocks Zone.
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The Goldilocks Zone is exactly
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that range for a given star of where water's going to be liquid on a given type of planet.
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We want a planet that is not too close, not too far from the mother star, but just right.
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Planets that may have oxygen and H2O,
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water, that may make possible an atmosphere and maybe even life.
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Based upon current observations, scientists are astounded by the number of potentially habitable planets that exist in the Goldilocks zone.
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With at least 400 billion planets in our galaxy, if you just look at 1 % of that,
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you're still talking about billions of planets that could potentially be habitable.
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This is exciting because we once thought
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that we were the only game in town that could only exists on the planet Earth.
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The discovery of exoplanets, I think it's really changed our view of the potential for life in the universe.
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Fundamentally, I think most scientists would now agree that there is some form of life elsewhere in the universe.
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But in spite of the abundance of habitable exoplanets, many scientists still cling to the notion
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that the only kind of life likely to exist outside of Earth is microbial or bacterial.
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They are resistant to what they claim are far -fetched notions, that these planets might not only contain more sophisticated or evolved life forms,
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but intelligent life forms, some much more evolved or technologically advanced than our own.
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Think about it.
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The universe is about 13 .8 billion years old.
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The Earth is 4 .6 billion years old.
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Civilizations over billions of years could have risen and fallen even before the Earth was formed.
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Although the realization that the galaxy is teeming with Earth -like planets has triggered a revolution in conventional scientific thinking,
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as far as ancient astronaut theorists are concerned, it merely confirms what they have believed all along.
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The discoveries of exoplanets over the past few years have been absolutely extraordinary.
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I remember that the first time they discovered this first exoplanet, and me and my colleagues were saying, okay, this will be the first of many.
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And now, apparently, as many as three exoplanets are being discovered on a daily basis.
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So what we've said all along, that Earth is not unique in this gigantic universe, turns out to be correct.
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This raises the question that we've been bringing up, that for thousands of years there's evidence of some type of visitation from other civilizations.
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Hopefully our sciences are able to now detect exoplanets will allow
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us to pinpoint some of these actual home worlds where aliens have been visiting us.
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I propose that most of those planets that are in this Goldilocks zone have life very similar to ours.
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The only question is, was it them who came here thousands of years ago?
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Cape Canaveral, Florida, August 20th, 1975.
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It's existed.
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The United States launches a Titan rocket carrying the Viking spacecraft.
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Viking is embarking on a 420 million mile journey to one of the most prominent sites in the night sky, Mars.
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If all goes well, in 11 months, the unmanned probe will touch down on the Martian surface and search for evidence of life.
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Mainstream scientists say Mars is most likely a dead planet because of its incredible temperature swings and high levels of solar radiation.
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So why is NASA spending a billion dollars to explore it?
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The night sky is an astounding thing.
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To the naked eye, the red planet could be seen with its special colors.
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After all, it's the biggest thing you see up there past the moon.
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So it's been a special object of fascination and reverence because religious systems often were associated with the planets and the stars, the sky in general.
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Speculations about what's there, is there intelligent life there, are the gods there?
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That's gone on for a long time.
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Our dream for life on Mars probably goes back.
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even to the ancient times when we were just doing naked eye observation.
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It's the planet that really stands out, that we now know is very close to Earth in terms of physical conditions.
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Even though Venus is much more like Earth in size and gravity, it's a hellhole in the solar system.
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But Mars, Mars is out there within our grasp.
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Among the first to record this fiery red ball in the night sky were ancient Egyptian astronomers.
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In 1534 BC, they placed Mars on humanity's first chart of the known cosmos, the sentiment star map.
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Two and a half centuries later, the Egyptians painted the planet Mars on the ceiling of the tomb of SETI I.
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But while the Egyptians honored Mars,
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many other ancient cultures feared it because they associated the red planet with death, destruction, and war.
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According to some This is because the planet glows red, like the color of blood spilled on the battlefield.
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The association of the red planet with the gods of war goes way back.
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In ancient Babylon, Mars was named after Nurgle, the god of fire, death and destruction,
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essentially a god of war.
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The Greeks named Mars after Ares, their god of war.
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The Romans, Mars, that is their god of war.
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Rome was a warrior culture.
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So this martial emphasis, all connected to the red planet, is accounting for the great armies that conquered the known world,
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a very successful story, and very much aligned with the planet Mars.
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Maui, Hawaii, October 19, 2017.
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Scientists at the University of Hawaii Haleakala Observatory detect a strange object traveling through our solar system.
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They initially catalog it as an asteroid.
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But after further examination, researchers observe that the object accelerated as it approached the sun, acting more like a comet,
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but without any other comet -like characteristics.
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The find forces astronomers to reclassify it as something entirely new, an interstellar object.
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We'd never seen anything like this in the solar system before.
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We get an estimate of its size at about 800 meters or half a kilometer in length.
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Roughly a cigar -like shape.
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It was moving very fast, a little more than 195 ,000 miles per hour.
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You get a chill sometimes when you understand something is very important
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or it's really exciting and that's what I felt with this object.
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Our Milky Way galaxy is estimated to consist of 100 ,000 million stars, each indicating the presence of a solar system.
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Because the distances between them are so vast, astronomers believed it was impossible for an object from another solar system to reach our own.
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Until now.
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It just came from outside our solar system, meaning it wasn't material from our star being created.
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It's from a different star system somewhere else.
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That's historic, that we've actually seen it.
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We now know objects can travel from one star system to another.
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Researchers dubbed the interstellar visitor Oumuamua, a Hawaiian term meaning a messenger from afar arriving first.
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Is it possible that the interstellar visitor was, in fact, a messenger?
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One sent on a mission to our solar system.
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Different scientists have analyzed the data and deduced that it's something very different to an asteroid or comet.
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So the scientific data does point to it actually being some artificial creation.
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We've had open speculation about how this thing might be an interstellar spacecraft.
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Talk from a Harvard professor.
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The chair of Harvard's astronomy department, Dr Avi Loeb, noted
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that the object seemed to follow the propulsion patterns of a new technology technology
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that is currently being tested for future space missions, known as solar sail propulsion.
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Large reflective sails capture sunlight to propel a craft through the vacuum of space.
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You can design essentially photon sails.
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So the idea has been to make a material that reflects photons, which is light, very efficiently.
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You deploy this and you basically accelerate under starlight.
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And then you just cruise.
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Was similar alien technology used to repel Oumuamua?
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It makes you wonder, you know, was that a targeted mission, some sort of probe that has been sent in to look for life?
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Before man actually went to the moon and walked on it, we sent a lot of probes around the moon to look at it.
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And it's quite likely that some version of NASA from some other star system could send a probe here to Earth.
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The trajectory of the interstellar object took it past the sun, where it made a turn and then ran parallel to Earth's orbit.
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It traveled between our planet and Mars before it began its journey out of our solar system.
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When Oumuamua arrived, nobody knew where it came from.
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Then in 2018, an astronomer at the University of Hertfordshire retraced its movements and discovered that it came from the Pleiades.
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We have to ask, is it possible that it was actually sent from the Pleiades?
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For ancient astronaut theorists, the revelation
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that Oumuamua traveled to our solar system from the area of the Pleiades star cluster is highly intriguing.
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The Pleiades figures into the creation stories of many ancient cultures from all around the world,
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where it was taught that divine beings came from these stars to seed life on Earth.
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If we look at the mythologies of the Pleiades around the world,
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there's some indication that this star cluster is in some way related to a visitation in ancient times.
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Located over 400 light years from Earth near the constellation of Taurus, the Pleiades is commonly recognized as seven bright stars.
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but actually consists of thousands.
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The Pleiades, everybody's heard of the Pleiades.
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They're also known as the Seven Sisters, because if you have really good eyesight, you can see seven stars in a very compact configuration in the winter sky.
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And, in fact, there are a lot more stars than seven.
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There are actually 3 ,000 stars in the Pleiades.
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So the Pleiades is a star cluster.
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They're not separated by huge distances, but they occur in a small area.
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That's different from a constellation, where the stars could be moving in all sorts of directions and are separated by huge distances.
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The importance of this massive star cluster to ancient peoples is revealed not only by their creation stories,
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but also in how they oriented their most important structures.
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All around the world we find ancient structures that have alignments that infer a relationship to the Pleiades.
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Now, these can be found in places like Chaco Canyon, in Mesoamerica, in various parts of the world.
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It's clear
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that the ancient people wanted to incorporate the rising of the Pleiades in some way with the building of these megastructures.
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Additionally, ancient artwork and artifacts pay homage to these same stars, with one depiction dating back an incredible 18 ,000 years.
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Perhaps the earliest reference to the Pleiades is in the Lascaux Caves in France.
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But these go back thousands of years into antiquity, even before the written language.
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The Pleiades constellation shows up in various artifacts, one of them even being a Sumerian tablet relief
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that shows what appears to be some type of a god coming out of the Pleiades constellation.
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An interesting artifact coming out of the 1600s is the Neber Sky Disk, depicting the constellation of Pleiades.
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Worldwide, we find hundreds of references having to do with the Pleiades not just on one continent,
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not just in one culture, but in multiple continents, in multiple cultures worldwide,
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that to me indicates that something happened here on Earth having to do with someone visiting from the Pleiades.
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Los Angeles, California, June 2019.
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The Trans Astronautic Corporation announces a partnership with NASA to develop a new venture in space, asteroid mining.
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We incorporated TransAster in 2015 when we saw that SpaceX and Elon Musk and Blue Origin,
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Jeff Bezos and other entrepreneurs were developing low -cost, really effective ways to get into orbit.
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Once we have rockets that can get into orbit inexpensively,
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then it makes sense to start building real industries in space and one of the first industries is asteroid mining.
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Precious metals that we really value on the Earth, things like gold and platinum, they're called precious metals because they're not around much.
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The question is, where are they?
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And the answer is asteroids.
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Metals like gold, copper and zinc have been mined on Earth for thousands of years and are vital to civilization.
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But their supply is finite, in part because they are not native to this planet.
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When the Earth was originally being formed, it was molten.
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And a lot of the precious metals were drawn towards the center of the Earth.
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And through this molten process, all the heavy elements went down to the core of the Earth where we can't get access to.
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Then the Earth started to cool and form a cool crust which was made of lighter materials.
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It is widely accepted that without access to metals, both technology and civilization would not have been possible.
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But luckily for mankind, some 3 .8 billion years ago, it is estimated that trillions of asteroids crashed into the Earth
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and deposited a layer of heavy metals into the planet's now hardened crust.
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These elements weren't actually from Earth originally.
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All of these elements came to Earth via comets and asteroids that impacted our planet long ago and early in its history.
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So all the precious metals that we mine on the Earth actually came from the asteroids.
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The bombardment of asteroids seeded Earth's crust with enough metals to make possible the Bronze Age,
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the Iron Age, and today's technological civilization.
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But many metals, including rare Earth elements needed for high technology, are in increasingly short supply.
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Because of this, many experts believe the asteroid belt may once again come to the rescue.
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You get a typical asteroid of 200 meters in diameter, it will have more of those rare Earth elements that have been mined on Earth in all of human history.
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Of the more than 6 ,000 asteroids in NASA's database,
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It is estimated that even just the 10 easiest to reach and mine would yield an astonishing $1 .5 trillion in resources.
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The asteroid belt could provide for the needs of our civilization for many centuries, maybe thousands of years into the future.
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The natural thing to do is to build spacecraft, to go out to the asteroids,
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mine them, make goods out of the asteroids.
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And we presume that other intelligences, if there are other intelligences, would think the same way we would.
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And so anything that seems to make sense to us could make sense to others.
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If other intelligent life forms exist on nearby exoplanets,
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might they too be aware of the vast resources that exist in the asteroid belt and also on planet Earth?
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Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and suggest that Earth is rich in another commodity
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that would be of great value to any advanced civilization looking to mine for precious metals.
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Liquid water.
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If aliens wanted to mine the asteroid belt, they'd need a base, somewhere to regroup and refuel.
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As it happens, there's one pretty close, and it's called Planet Earth.
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Why would aliens come here?
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Might well be because we're mostly water on Planet Earth.
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They stop here because they could break down water into hydrogen and oxygen as fuel.
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So if you have a craft that somehow uses hydrogen power, you have all the hydrogen you ever need.
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It well could be that this is a way station for extraterrestrials.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 232 sentences and 3231 words to shadow. The speech runs for 25:06. The speaker talks at a steady 129 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. Only 79% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 less common words from the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
- asteroid /ˈæst(ə)ɹɔɪd/ (noun) — A naturally occurring solid object, which is smaller than a planet and a dwarf planet, larger than a meteoroid and not a comet, that orbits a star and often…
- galaxy /ˈɡæl.ək.si/ (noun) — Any of the collections of many millions or billions of stars, galactic dust, black holes, etc. existing as independent and coherent systems, of which there are…
- discovery /dɪˈskʌv.ɹi/ (noun) — Something discovered.
- orbit /ˈɔɹ.bɪt/ (noun) — An elliptical movement of an object about a celestial object or Lagrange point, especially a periodic elliptical revolution.
- civilization /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/ (noun) — An organized culture encompassing many communities, often on the scale of a nation or a people; a stage or system of social, political, or technical…
- belt /ˈbɛlt/ (noun) — A band worn around the waist to hold clothing to one's body (usually pants), hold weapons (such as a gun or sword), or serve as a decorative piece of clothing.
- detect /dɪˈtɛkt/ (verb) — To discover or find by careful search, examination, or probing.
- cluster /ˈklʌstɚ/ (noun) — A bunch or group of several discrete items that are close to each other.
- rocket /ˈɹɑk.ɪt/ (noun) — A cylindrical projectile that can be fired to a great height through combustion, (specifically) a type of firework of this form, typically exploding with light…
- intelligent /ɪnˈtɛlɪd͡ʒənt/ (adjective) — Of high or especially quick cognitive capacity, bright.
- notion /ˈnoʊʃən/ (noun) — Mental apprehension of whatever may be known, thought, or imagined; idea, concept.
- sail /seɪl/ (noun) — A piece of fabric attached to a boat and arranged such that it causes the wind to drive the boat along. The sail may be attached to the boat via a combination…
- probe /pɹoʊb/ (noun) — Any of various medical instruments used to explore wounds, organs, etc.
- hydrogen /ˈhaɪdɹəd͡ʒ(ə)n/ (noun) — The lightest chemical element (symbol H), with an atomic number of 1 and atomic weight of 1.008.
- spacecraft /ˈspeɪsˌkɹæft/ (noun) — A vehicle that travels through space.
Phrasal verbs you will hear
- come from (verb) — To have as one's origin, birthplace or nationality.
- look at (verb) — To observe or watch.
- search for (verb) — Synonym of look for.
- do with (verb) — Only used in to do with
- get into (verb) — To move into (an object), such that one ends up inside it.
- go back (verb) — To return to a place or state after having been there at a previous time.
- look for (verb) — To seek.
- break down (verb) — To stop functioning.
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 24 contractions and reduced forms, such as we've, they're, we're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: civilization /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/, notion /ˈnoʊʃən/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, potentially /pəˈtɛnʃ(ə)li/, destruction /dɪsˈtɹʌkʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: civilization /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/, intelligent /ɪnˈtɛlɪd͡ʒənt/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, potentially /pəˈtɛnʃ(ə)li/, extraordinary /ɪksˈtɹɔːrdɪn(ə)ɹi/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like asteroid, galaxy, discovery.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | we've been bringing · have been visiting |
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | if there are other intelligences, would think |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has been · we've seen · has triggered |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | was considered · was charged · was burned |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.