Online Class Notes (Nick)

There is a problem with colonizing Mars: it may be too small! (0.1x the mass of Earth) Mars doesn’t have enough mass to hold an atmosphere. Venus, on the other hand, is 0.81x the mass of Earth, and has a very dense atmosphere. Apparently, it might be possible to have floating/flying cities on Venus that would have weather very similar to weather on Earth.

https://www.pbs.org/video/pbs-space-time-should-we-colonize-venus-instead-mars/
(The video is also on YouTube)
https://medium.com/@Jernfrost/why-colonize-venus-instead-of-mars-c490d14c0531

So, should we go to Venus or Mars?

Vocabulary

Samurai – Japanese knights, warriors with special swords

Text Message – sending short messages directly between phones

Carry – the verb for having money
e.g. Fewer and fewer people these days carry cash.

Get my mind around [something] – to understand; when there is an idea that is very difficult to understand, usually because it deals with very large, very small, or very strange things; a universe, subatomic particles, different laws of physics

Way vs. Method
e.g. They don’t have a way to get back (it is impossible to do this; there are no opportunities to make this happen)
e.g. They don’t have a method to get back (they don’t have a plan, or a specific technique that they will use to do it)

Dense – a lot of material in a small space 稠密

Grammar

She asked me to describe the time when I firstly used WeChat – first

I registered the website a long time ago – I registered with/on the website ; I registered an account on/with the website; I opened an account with/on the website
— The first sentence is focusing on the website as the object of “register,” so I think that you are registering a website that you control, not just opening an account on a website

A long way to go considering what we are now – where
— Since we are talking about “a long way to go” in our metaphor, it makes sense to use “where” because that’s a word related to moving and changing location, to traveling
— “What” seems to mean that we are going to change what we are, to become a different thing, not humans anymore

They have no enough power/energy/method to get back to Earth – they don’t have enough fuel / power to get back to Earth; they don’t have any way to get back to Earth