Prática de Shadowing: Can Humanity Stop A Planet-Killing Asteroid? - Aprenda a falar inglês com o YouTube
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Our first ever PC game, Star Birds, is out now in Early Access!
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Find out more at the end of this video!
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Imagine: a stadium sized asteroid is going to hit Earth in two weeks.
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Even at this moderate size, a fireball brighter than the Sun tears through the atmosphere at 60 times the speed of sound and the destructive power of 4,000 Hiroshima bombs flattens cities, killing millions.
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This isn’t science fiction.
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Many killer asteroids were only spotted at the last moment.
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In 2019, asteroid OK, as big as a 30-story building, was discovered just one day before it grazed earth closer than some of our satellites.
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Last year, the even larger asteroid MK was spotted 13 days before it passed us closer than the Moon.
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If they had hit Earth, they would have unleashed the destructive power of 3,000 and 9,000 Hiroshima bombs.
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Stunningly enough, humanity doesn’t really have a plan for this.
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Scientists have devised all kinds of tricks to push dangerous asteroids away – painting it so sunlight will deflect it, landing thrusters to steer it, scorching it with lasers, or even crashing spacecraft into it.
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But they all have a big problem: They are the equivalent of trying to deflect a cargo ship by throwing a bag of potatoes at it – they do move the asteroid, but only by a tiny bit.
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With these methods, you need to act years or even decades in advance to make an asteroid miss the Earth.
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But very recently scientists have developed a new spectacular way to destroy killer asteroids that we could implement with today’s technology.
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Let’s see how this works with our 100 m asteroid heading for Earth!
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The Secret Weakness of Asteroids For a long time, people imagined asteroids as being gigantic stones.
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Made of rock and metal.
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But it turns out, most of them aren’t like that.
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They are more like bags of loosely packed gravel – heaps of pebbles, precious minerals and dust, barely held together.
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Which means that instead of just nudging them, we can do something better – pulverize them.
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And the obvious choice is, of course, a nuke!
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So, let’s go!
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We load up a nuclear warhead, launch, aim at our deadly asteroid and… Oh. The asteroid destroyed the nuke!
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Asteroids can approach Earth at 70,000 km/h – enough to cross the Atlantic in 5 minutes.
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No bomb we’ve ever made could survive such an impact.
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So if we go for a head-on collision, the asteroid will wreck the nuke before it even has a chance to explode.
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Ok easy, let’s explode the bomb before it touches the asteroid.
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Scientists have estimated the optimal distance, which for our 100 m killer friend would be a few tens of meters above the surface.
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Launch, set the timer and… Sad Boom!
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The explosion has made a dramatic crater and... nothing else.
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Unfortunately in space there is no air to carry a shockwave, so most of the explosion’s energy is lost.
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The rock will still hit us in two weeks, only a few kilometers to the left.
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Striking such a behemoth with a nuke is like hitting our cargo ship with a washing machine instead of potatoes – better, but still useless.
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Ok, let’s go the movie route – land someone on the asteroid, drill a hole and bury a nuke inside to avoid all of these problems!
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And indeed this is possible in theory, albeit suicidal in practice.
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Landing on any space body is a nightmare.
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Even on fairly big Mars, whose surface we know almost perfectly, roughly 70% of our attempts have failed.
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So imagine the chances of landing a crew and a nuclear bomb on a small and extremely fast asteroid discovered just two weeks in advance.
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Even if we succeeded, drilling in microgravity is painfully slow, since there is no downward pull to help you.
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So we’d need an agonizing amount of time that we don’t have.
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So sadly, that's not the answer.
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We have to think less like Hollywood and more like a lumberjack.
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The Smart Way If you want to split a log, you don’t hit it with a rock.
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You use an axe – a dense and perfectly shaped tool designed to break things apart.
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And just in the same way, scientists have found a new tool to destroy asteroids: super-dense, ultra-fast, cosmic bullets.
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We won’t even have to shoot them!
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Our cosmic bullets are called “penetrators”.
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A few meters long, slim and made of tungsten, a metal way denser and harder than rock.
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They work in an extremely simple way: You just put the penetrators in the way of the asteroid, to float silently in space.
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From the perspective of the asteroid, you wouldn’t see a few tiny bullets sitting still.
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You’d see them rushing at you at 70,000 km/h!
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It doesn’t matter who stands still and who is fast!
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But this speed means that by far the longest part of this mission is to get to the asteroid in time.
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We can’t destroy it too close to Earth because its fragments will slam into the atmosphere all at once with the power of thousands of nuclear bombs.
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Our atmosphere can absorb isolated chunks – but if thousands of them strike together, their shockwaves will add up and kill millions.
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So instead we need to get it one day before impact, when the asteroid will be nearly 2 million kilometers away, more than 4 times further than the Moon.
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A vast distance, but doable.
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Our current rockets can cover this in about a week.
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We’ll send just one penetrator, about 2 meters long and weighing 2.5 tonnes.
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Once our rocket arrives, it puts the penetrator in place to cause maximum damage … and then we wait.
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A tiny speck of light appears in the vast distance, and then suddenly it's here, shooting at us faster than the speed of sound.
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We’ll slow down time to see exactly what happens.
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The asteroid crashes into the penetrator so fast and with so much violence that the power of 120 metric tons of TNT is released into the asteroid.
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The rock vaporizes and the tungsten melts away, carving a wound that tunnels through the asteroid.
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The damage is too much, and with all of this energy looking for a place to go, the asteroid is blasted into thousands of pieces.
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The debris spreads out into a diffuse cloud.
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A day later the fragments hit Earth, dispersed over hundreds of thousands of square kilometers and turning an apocalypse into a mostly harmless show of cosmic fireworks.
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So if we prepare and get everything ready, spotting a killer asteroid with two-weeks notice would be enough.
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But this was just a small asteroid.
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What if we face a cosmic mountain, a planet killer, carrying the destructive power of tens of thousands of nuclear arsenals.
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The non avian dinosaurs would tell you about it but they’re dead.
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What If It Is a Planet Killer?
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Planet killers are objects so vast and powerful that they would end most life on earth in a single strike.
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The most dangerous ones are comets from the outer fringes of the solar system, so distant and dark that tracking them is impossible.
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Comets are dirty ice balls the size of mountains, more fragile than pure rock but also much faster and violent, traveling at around 140,000 km per hour.
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In 2020 the comet NEOWISE, with the power of 6,000 times all the nuclear bombs on Earth, was discovered just 4 months before its closest approach to Earth.
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What if we find such a beast six months before it’s going to crash into Earth?
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Do we have a chance of surviving this?
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Unfortunately this would be extremely hard for a bunch of reasons.
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First of all our planet killer comet has so much more mass than a tiny killer asteroid, that simply breaking it into millions of pieces would not help us that much.
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The chunks that hit Earth would still be massive and numerous enough to set the sky ablaze and kill most life on Earth.
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So we need to make most if not all of its fragments completely miss Earth – but to do that we need to destroy it much further away – as far away as Mars.
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And to destroy a mountain, we need way more penetrators – hundreds of thousands.
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And this is... well, a huge problem.
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To travel this far and to transport this much payload, we need at least 24,000 super heavy rockets.
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As of today, humanity has… two – and they’re not really finished yet.
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Even if all the industries in the world do nothing but switch to building rockets, we would not finish in time.
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If we actually discovered a planet killer today, there is literally nothing we could do about it.
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Except… Maybe if we combine penetrators with a bit of Hollywood and our old friend, the nuclear bomb, there is still a way.
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For this plan to work we basically need to have all the parts ready beforehand.
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A rocket like NASA’s SLS – the one planned to take astronauts to the Moon – loaded up with everything we need, ready to launch.
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As soon as the planet killer is spotted on its way to wipe us out we launch a single rocket to meet it.
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For 5 long months it travels through the nothingness of space as life on Earth nervously continues.
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Finally it reaches its destination a bit beyond the orbit of Mars.
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Now we deploy 5 massive penetrators in sequence, one perfectly lined up two kilometers after the other.
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The engineering challenge of aligning and timing this correctly is horrendous and we only have one attempt.
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So a few very brave astronauts go on this one way trip to supervise the process, with no way home.
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Nervous hours pass as all of humanity watches the skies and screens.
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And then the moment comes.
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The icy mountain of death appears in full and then it’s already here!
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Slow down time again!
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The comet smashes into the first penetrator at 140,000 km/h, unleashing the power of 2,000 tons of TNT.
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Ice, rock and tungsten liquify in an instant as the energy of the impact eats itself dozens of meters deep into the mountain.
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Here is the second one, perfectly hitting the same spot punching directly into the crater, smashing, melting, drilling.
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The third and fourth penetrators repeat the process again, now smashing a tunnel about 100 meters deep.
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But this time this is just a scratch on the surface of the monster, the comet is not really damaged yet.
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And then comes the final penetrator and its toxic load.
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300 megatons in nuclear warheads – 20,000 times more energy than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
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It travels deep into the tunnel and just before it hits the end, it explodes.
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This time the nuke works.
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Instead of hitting nothing in the vacuum the energy of the explosion smashes into rock and gravel and ice.
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On top of vaporizing it from the inside, there is so much shock and push and punch that a frozen world billions of years old dies from within.
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Turning into a cloud of millions of fragments spreading in all directions.
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Humanity is saved.
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To make this happen in reality would take unprecedented planning and precision.
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And yet, it’s possible.
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Not in a century with sci-fi technology.
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Just with the rockets, engineering, and knowledge we already have today.
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Want to drill some Asteroids yourself?
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Our first ever PC game, Star Birds, is out now in Early Access!
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Join a brave flock of intergalactic birds as they venture into space to mine asteroids, build production chains, and unlock new technologies that will help them thrive across the galaxy.
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Scan and claim nearby asteroids, build up your production lines, and create a sprawling network of floating space factories. Whether you're a seasoned strategy player or completely new to the genre, Star Birds welcomes you to explore, build, and discover at your own pace.
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We've been working on this game for over two years together with the amazing team at Toukana Interactive, the creators of Dorfromantik.
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And now, we’re incredibly excited to finally share it with you.
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So grab your space helmet and head over to Steam to start your adventure.
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You’ll find the link in the description.
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From all of us at kurzgesagt and Toukana: thank you for being part of this journey.
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We can’t wait to hear what you think and to keep building Star Birds together with your feedback.
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See you in space!
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Sobre Esta Aula
Nesta aula, você vai praticar o seu inglês ouvindo e repetindo um conteúdo fascinante sobre a possibilidade de a humanidade deter asteroides ameaçadores. Através dessa prática, você não só aprimorará sua pronúncia e entonação, mas também expandirá seu vocabulário relacionado a temas científicos e situações de emergência. A ideia é que você utilize a técnica de shadowing, onde você escuta uma frase e logo a repete, ajudando a melhorar sua fluência e compreensão auditiva.
Vocabulário e Frases-Chave
- asteroide - Asteroid
- destrutivo - Destructive
- tecnologia - Technology
- explosão - Explosion
- impacto - Impact
- nuclear - Nuclear
- planeta - Planet
- cientistas - Scientists
Dicas de Prática
Para maximizar sua eficiência na prática com a técnica de shadowing em inglês, siga estas dicas:
- Ajuste a velocidade: Comece ouvindo o vídeo em uma velocidade mais lenta, se necessário. A maioria das plataformas de vídeo permite desacelerar a reprodução. Isso ajudará você a captar melhor os sons das palavras.
- Repita em voz alta: Depois de ouvir cada frase, pause o vídeo e tente repetir o que você ouviu. Isso não apenas ajuda a sua pronúncia, mas também melhora sua confiança ao falar.
- Foque na entonação: Preste atenção à entonação e ritmo do falante. Tente replicar não apenas as palavras, mas também a emoção e a estatura da fala para soarem mais naturais.
- Use recursos de apoio: Se você estiver com dificuldades, tenha o transcript à mão para acompanhar visualmente o que está sendo dito.
- Grave-se: Uma ótima maneira de monitorar seu progresso é gravar suas repetições. Depois, ouça e compare com o original para identificar áreas de melhoria.
Experimente shadow speech e veja como sua fluência em inglês pode melhorar a cada prática. Boa sorte!
O que é a Técnica de Shadowing?
Shadowing é uma técnica de aprendizado de idiomas com base científica, originalmente desenvolvida para o treinamento de intérpretes profissionais. O método é simples, mas poderoso: você ouve áudio em inglês nativo e repete imediatamente em voz alta — como uma sombra seguindo o falante com 1-2 segundos de atraso. Pesquisas mostram melhora significativa na precisão da pronúncia, entonação, ritmo, sons conectados, compreensão auditiva e fluência na fala.
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