跟读练习: How to Move the Sun: Stellar Engines - 通过视频学习英语口语
正在创建课程...
1
Nothing in the universe is static.
2
In the Milky Way, billions of stars orbit the galactic center.
3
Some, like our Sun, are pretty consistent, keeping a distance of around 30,000 light years from the galactic center,
4
completing an orbit every 230 million years.
5
This dance is not an orderly ballet, more like a skating rink filled with drunk toddlers.
6
This chaos makes the galaxy dangerous.
7
Our solar neighborhood is constantly changing, with stars moving hundreds of kilometers every second.
8
Only the vast distances between objects protect us from the dangers out there.
9
But we might get unlucky in the future.
10
At some point we can encounter a star going supernova, or a massive object passing by and showering Earth with asteroids.
11
If something like this were to happen, we would likely know thousands, if not millions of years in advance.
12
But we still couldn't do much about it.
13
Unless we move our whole solar system out of the way.
14
To move the solar system, we need a stellar engine, a megastructure used to steer a star through the galaxy.
15
It's the kind of thing
16
that might be built by an advanced civilization with Dyson Sphere
17
level technology that's thinking about their future millions of years ahead of time.
18
But how do we possibly move the hundreds of thousands of objects in the solar system?
19
The good news is we can ignore all of that.
20
We only need to move the sun, or the other stuff is glued to it by gravity and will follow it wherever it decides to go.
21
There are lots of ideas about what a stellar engine might look like and how it would work.
22
We've picked two grounded in our current understanding of physics that could be built in theory.
23
The simplest kind of stellar engine is the Shkadov thruster, a giant mirror.
24
It works on the same principle as a rocket.
25
Like rocket fuel, the photons released as solar radiation carry momentum.
26
Not a lot, but a bit.
27
For example, if an astronaut turned on a flashlight in space, it would push them backwards very, very slowly.
28
A stellar engine will work a little better than a flashlight because the The sun produces a lot of photons.
29
The basic idea of the Shkadov thruster is to reflect up to half of the solar radiation to create thrust
30
and slowly push the sun where we want it to go.
31
In order for the Shkadov thruster to work, it must be kept in the same place, not orbiting the sun.
32
Although the sun's gravity will try to pull it in, it would be supported by radiation pressure which props the mirror up.
33
This means the mirror would have to be very light, made of micron-thin reflecting foil from materials like aluminium alloys.
34
The mirror's shape is important too.
35
Enveloping the sun in a giant spherical shell wouldn't work because that would refocus light back to the sun, heating it up and creating all sorts of unpleasant problems.
36
Instead, we use a parabola, which sends most of the photons around the sun and in the same direction, which maximizes thrust.
37
To prevent accidentally burning or freezing Earth with too much or too little sunlight, the only safe place to build a Skadov thruster is over the Sun's poles.
38
This means we can only move the Sun vertically in the plane of the solar system
39
and one direction in the Milky Way, which limits our travel options a bit.
40
But that is basically it.
41
For a civilization capable of building a Dyson Sphere, this is a relatively simple endeavor.
42
Not complicated, just very hard to build.
43
At full throttle, the solar system could probably be moved by about 100 light years over 230 million years.
44
Over a few billion years, it gives us near complete control over the sun's orbit in the galaxy.
45
But in the short term, this might not be fast enough to dodge a deadly supernova.
46
That's why we thought we could do better.
47
So we asked our astrophysicist friend if he could design a faster stellar engine for this video.
48
He did and wrote a paper about it that's been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
49
You can find it in our sources document.
50
We're going to call our new stellar engine the Kaplan thruster.
51
It works a lot like a traditional rocket.
52
Shoot exhaust one way to push yourself the other.
53
It's a large space station platform powered by a Dyson sphere that gathers matter from the sun to power nuclear fusion.
54
It shoots out a very fast jet of particles at nearly 1% the speed of light out of the solar system.
55
A second jet pushes the sun along like a tugboat.
56
The Kaplan thruster requires a lot of fuel, millions of tons per second.
57
To gather this fuel, our thruster uses very large electromagnetic fields to funnel hydrogen
58
and helium from the solar wind into the engine.
59
The solar wind alone doesn't provide enough fuel though.
60
And that's where the Dyson Sphere comes in.
61
Using its power, sunlight can be refocused to the surface of the sun.
62
This heats small regions to extreme temperatures, lifting billions of tons of mass off the sun.
63
This mass can be collected and separated into hydrogen and helium.
64
The helium is burned explosively in thermonuclear fusion reactors.
65
A jet of radioactive oxygen at a temperature of nearly a billion degrees is expelled
66
and becomes our primary source of propulsion from our stellar engine.
67
To prevent the engine from just crashing into the sun, it needs to balance itself itself.
68
To do this, we accelerate the collected hydrogen with electromagnetic fields using particle accelerators and shoot a jet back at the Sun.
69
This balances the thruster and transfers the thrust of our engine back to the Sun.
70
In as little as a million years, this engine can move the Sun by 50 light-years, more than enough to dodge a supernova.
71
At full throttle, the solar system can be completely redirected in its galactic orbit in 10 million years.
72
But wait, won't we use up the Sun this way?
73
Fortunately, the Sun is so massive that even billions of tons of material will barely scratch the surface.
74
In fact, this megastructure will actually extend our Sun's life since lower-mass stars burn slower,
75
keeping the solar system inhabitable for many more billions of years.
76
With a Kaplan thruster, we could turn the entire solar system into our spaceship.
77
For example, by orbiting backwards in the galaxy and colonizing hundreds or thousands of stars as we pass by them.
78
It may even be possible to escape the galaxy entirely and expand beyond the Milky Way.
79
Stellar engines are the kind of machines built by civilizations thinking not in terms of years or decades, but eons.
80
Since we know that our Sun will die one day, a stellar engine could allow the far future descendants of humans
81
to travel to other stars without ever having to venture into the terrifying dark abyss of interstellar space.
82
Until we build a stellar engine, we're adrift and subject to the whims of the galactic sea.
83
We may not like where it leads us.
84
Maybe our descendants will set sail and become an interstellar species for millions of years to come.
85
This was our last video for the year 12,019 of the human era and what a year it was.
86
So much stuff happened everywhere to so many different people.
87
Calendars and holidays are just imaginary, but they help us to cut our lives into pieces pieces that our brains can handle.
88
We're leaving 12019 behind with a weird mixture of disillusion and hope.
89
The world is screwed up, but we can fix it.
90
In a few days, this year will be over, and we'll get to try again.
📺 同频道
C1105
Can Earth Run Out of Water?
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C1536
What If You Never Slept?
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C11
Your Skeleton Is Electric
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C171
Could Humans Evolve Flight?
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B21
Would You Upload Your Mind?
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C164
What the Flu Does to Your Body
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C11
Your Brain on Magic Mushrooms
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C17
3 Reasons Why Nuclear Energy Is Terrible! 2/3
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B21
We Finally Know More About Humanity’s First Civilization
Cambridge Exam PrepUniversity Students
C13
What Is Life? Is Death Real?
University StudentsWorking Adults
C1148
How Antidepressants Work
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C12
Is War Over? — A Paradox Explained
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C1757
How Stress Changes Your Brain
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C15
How ADHD Medication Works
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C11
The Most Complex Language in the World
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C14
Your Brain Peaked at Birth
University StudentsWorking Adults
C170
We Won’t Explore the Galaxy...
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B25
Let’s Steal a New Moon
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C13
What Happens AFTER Nuclear War?
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C11
3 Reasons Why Nuclear Energy Is Awesome! 3/3
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
✨ 推荐视频
C16
113 句
What If Earth got Kicked Out of the Solar System? Rogue Earth
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C12
155 句
Let There Be Light: Maxwell's Equation EXPLAINED for BEGINNERS
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C11
277 句
SpaceX Is Ready to Send Starship Into Orbit | This Week in Spaceflight
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B22
224 句
20% Speed of Light!! NEW Light Engine is INSANE!
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B23
61 句
RE3 Unit 7A
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C12
47 句
We Found Galaxies Too Old for the Universe
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C16
73 句
Superfluid Dark Matter
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C14
104 句
Why Are You Alive – Life, Energy & ATP
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C12
143 句
You Live Inside a Cosmic Hole... And there's a problem
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B218
41 句
Unit 6: Living on Mars
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C11
270 句
The Most Misunderstood Concept in Physics
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C15
28 句
How to Blow Up the Earth - Nuclear Engineer Reacts to Zack D. Films
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
本课的词汇与口语要点
这段视频共有 90 个句子、1298 个单词可供跟读。 讲话部分时长为 8:29。 说话人语速自然，每分钟约 153 个词，接近日常对话。 只有 79% 的单词属于英语最常用的 3,000 词，词汇难度较高。
视频中的重点词汇
视频中 15 个值得学习的单词，附发音和释义：
| 单词 | 发音 | 释义 |
|---|---|---|
| stellar 形容词 | /ˈstɛl.əɹ/ | 优秀, 出色 |
| orbit 名词 | /ˈɔɹ.bɪt/ | 軌道 /轨道, 軌跡 /轨迹 |
| galaxy 名词 | /ˈɡæl.ək.si/ | 恆星系 /恒星系, 群星 |
| sphere 名词 | /sfɪɚ/ | 球體 /球体 |
| mirror 名词 | /ˈmiɹɚ/ | җинзы, 鏡 /镜 |
| rocket 名词 | /ˈɹɑk.ɪt/ | 火箭發動機 /火箭发动机, 火箭 |
| ton 名词 | /tʌn/ | 噸 /吨, 公噸 /公吨 |
| radiation 名词 | /ˌɹeɪ.diˈeɪ.ʃən/ | 放射, 輻射 /辐射 |
| civilization 名词 | /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/ | 文明 |
| hydrogen 名词 | /ˈhaɪdɹəd͡ʒ(ə)n/ | 氫 /氢 |
| thrust 动词 | /θɹʌst/ | 推力 |
| reflect 动词 | /ɹɪˈflɛkt/ | 反映, 反射 |
| collect 动词 | /ˈkɑlɪkt/ | 庋藏, 收藏 |
| fusion 名词 | /ˈfjuː.ʒən/ | 核聚變 /核聚变 |
| dodge 动词 | /dɑd͡ʒ/ | 躲避, 躲開 /躲开 |
需要注意的发音
说话人用了 9 次缩略和弱读形式，例如 we're, couldn't, doesn't。请按听到的简短形式来说。
- “th” 音: thrust /θɹʌst/, gather /ˈɡæðɚ/, thin /ˈθɪn/, thruster /ˈθɹʌ.stɚ/, throttle /ˈθɹɔ.tl̩/
- “sh” 和 “zh” 音: radiation /ˌɹeɪ.diˈeɪ.ʃən/, civilization /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/, fusion /ˈfjuː.ʒən/, shell /ʃɛl/, flashlight /ˈflæʃˌlaɪt/
- 长单词——注意重音位置: radiation /ˌɹeɪ.diˈeɪ.ʃən/, civilization /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/, electromagnetic /ɪˌlɛk.tɹoʊ.mæɡˈnɛ.tɪk/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/, accidentally /ˌæk.sɪˈdɛnt(ə)li/
如何用这段视频练习
- 先完整听一遍视频，不要开口，记下不认识的单词。
- 先用 0.75 倍速逐句跟读，熟练之后再回到正常速度。
- 录下自己的声音并与原声对比，特别注意 stellar, orbit, galaxy 这类单词。
什么是跟读法？
跟读法 (Shadowing) 是一种有科学依据的语言学习技巧，最初开发用于专业口译员的培训，并由多语言者Alexander Arguelles博士普及。这个方法简单而强大：您在听英语母语原声的同时立即大声重复——就像是一个延迟1-2秒紧跟说话者的影子。与被动听力或语法练习不同，跟读法强迫您的大脑和口腔肌肉同时处理并模仿真实的讲话模式。研究表明它能显着提高发音准确性，语调，节奏，连读，听力理解和口语流利度——使其成为雅思口语备考和真实英语交流最有效的方法之一。