Breakdown of Частица едва ли может мгновенно перемещаться сквозь космос.
мочь
to be able to
космос
space, cosmos
сквозь
through (passing through something dense)
едва ли
scarcely / highly unlikely
Questions & Answers about Частица едва ли может мгновенно перемещаться сквозь космос.
Why does едва ли use the standard indicative verb может instead of a conditional form, since the action is so unlikely?
Even though едва ли (highly unlikely / hardly) expresses extreme doubt, it is always followed by a verb in the indicative mood (regular past, present, or future tenses). In Russian, you do not use the conditional particle бы with едва ли or вряд ли. You simply state the action as a normal fact and let the particle do the work of casting doubt on it.
Could we put едва ли at the very beginning of the sentence?
Yes. You could say Едва ли частица может... Placing it at the start emphasizes the unlikelihood of the entire situation right away ("It is highly unlikely that a particle..."). In the current sentence order, частица is established as the topic first, and we are doubting its specific ability to do this action. Both are perfectly natural and mean essentially the same thing.
Why use сквозь космос here instead of через космос?
Both take the accusative case and mean "through," but сквозь usually implies passing through a dense medium, a barrier, or three-dimensional space with some sense of penetration. Через is more general and often means crossing from one side to another (like a street). In a physics or sci-fi context, сквозь космос sounds much more precise, treating space as a medium to be penetrated.
Why use the verb перемещаться for "to travel" instead of a standard verb of motion like or ?