I'm Nikki strong and this is vaa one the hits welcome to learning English a daily 30 minute program from The Voice of America I'm Ashley Thompson and I'm Dan Novak this program is designed for English Learners so we speak a little slower and we use words and phrases especially written for people learning English [Music] today you will hear stories from Brian Lynn Dan friedell and Gregory stockle then Jill Robbins brings us a new everyday grammar lesson but first Brian Lynn tells us about a new s
tudy that took a closer look at the effects of a spacecraft crashing into an AST scientists say new research confirms results of an earlier study suggesting the crash of a spacecraft into an asteroid changed the shape of the targeted object the latest research follows another recent study examining the effects of the asteroid strike NASA crashed its Dart spacecraft into the asteroid demoro in 2022 in an area about 11 million kilom from Earth the experiment tested a method for changing the orbit
of some asteroids to prevent them from possibly crashing into our planet in the future NASA has said its studies of The Craft showed it was successful because the force of the strike changed the asteroids orbit around a larger asteroid called damos Data also showed the strike reduced the orbital period of demoro by 33 minutes the team that carried out the most recent research said that in addition to changing the asteroids orbit it appears the crash also changed the shape of demoro this confirms
results of the earlier study which concluded that the crash had likely completely reshaped demoro and turned into a relatively weak collection of rubble the team carrying out that study used a computer simulation system to study the changes to demoro the new research suggests that while demoro had a mostly round shape before the crash it was reshaped by the strike into an object that looks more like a watermelon the technical term for this kind of shape is triaxial ellipsoid the scientists said
Steve Chesley is a senior research scientist at NASA's jet propulsion laboratory JP in California he was the co-writer of a study describing the findings that recently appeared in the publication planetary science journal Chesley told reuter's news agency the data studied for the latest research shows demoral is currently a collection of nonsolid debris including dust rocks and other materials this state means the asteroids strength is quite low permitting demoro to reshape more easily than a m
ore solid object the new study's lead writer was shantanu Naidu he told Reuters the asteroid was able to completely reshape because the strike by the asteroid turned much of its material into Rubble the researchers based their findings on the shape and orbit of demoro on observations from groundbased telescopes they looked at how sunlight Reflections off the surface of the two asteroids changed over time they also used data from radio waves that hit the objects and images the dart spacecraft cap
tured researchers have said they expect to learn more about the two asteroids in the future the European space agency's Hara spacecraft plans to launch in October and reach the asteroids by late 2026 ASA says hara's cameras and instruments will carry out detailed studies of demoro and damos during the operation the spacecraft will aim to collect the most data yet on such an asteroid system we are anxiously awaiting the arrival of asa's Hera spacecraft when we will be able to compare our modeled
shape with that obtained from Hera imagery Chesley said he added we will also learn how much the orbit has changed since we last observed it in 2023 I'm Brian [Music] Lynn [Music] Barbara perasa Garcia is from Venezuela she lives in a single room apartment in Seattle Washington with her family the family includes her partner and there two small children they do not have much space only 17 square m but they are happy for now it's warm we can cook for ourselves we have a private bathroom it's quie
t she said we can be here as a family now Peraza Garcia and her family left Venezuela to escape crime and so she could receive medication for a kidney problem they can only pay for a small living space but it is less costly than most small living spaces in American cities it is $900 per month but that is about $500 less than traditional small apartments known as Studios which are slightly larger most single room apartments in the United States disappeared after the end of World War II when many
people left cities for new suburbs the Ferman Center is part of New York University it supports Research into real property and City policy It produced research that showed New York City lost 70 ,000 single room housing units between the first part of the 1900s and 2014 at the same time real estate companies built new city housing but the developers did not Center their work on small living spaces in recent years single people needed to find roommates and share two or three-bedroom apartments in
cities if they did not have much money now however many American cities are worried about increasing living costs and homelessness the small living spaces known as single room occupancy units once called sro's are becoming common again they are being called micro apartments New York Seattle and Portland Oregon are putting money into smaller living spaces New York's Governor Kathy hokel announced a 50 million plan to repair and renovate 500 SRO across the state in Portland a group called Central
City Concern supervises about 1,000 SRO and makes them available at a very low cost to people who might otherwise be homeless they are $550 per month cheyen wellborne moved into one of the units last year after years of living on the street the room is only big enough for a small bed a television a chair and a toilet and sink but it means wellborne as he said can have a nice home a decent home when he moved into the apartment all he had was one bag and he was glad he did not have to spend anoth
er winter outside I just want a home you know he said the small units are good for single people but some experts worry that not enough is being done for families Marissa Zapata is a land use professor at Portland State University zapanta said she worries that governments and planners will see the SRO as a solution and not do right by our community members by building the housing that people want but Vicky Bean a law professor and a director at the Ferman Center said she hopes the work being don
e in places like Portland and Seattle will help other cities understand there is still a need for simple housing the alternatives are people being in shelters people being on the street people being doubled tripled quadrupled up said Bean even if the parasa Garcia a family would like more space Barbara said she is happy her kids get to live near their relatives and they can be close to food stores and green spaces to play in she said the family will work to save some money and try to get better
jobs during the next year if that works they can move to a bigger place we're happy because we're here in a quiet place where we can be together as a family she said I'm Dan [Music] friedell a new study involving stars that formed together shows how lucky Earth is to be in a normal planetary system researchers studied 91 pairs of stars that formed together and were similar in size and substance their research showed that a surprising number showed signs of having absorbed a planet the Stars like
ly absorbed a planet after it was pushed out of a stable orbit this might have been caused by gravitational influences from other planets or even other stars the Stars invol D are being called twins because they formed together the researchers call them coatal stars and they had equal masses and ages these twins were moving in the same direction in the Milky Way galaxy but were not connected by gravity researchers chose the twin stars because a Stars chemistry likely changes when it absorbs a pl
anet the planet would introduce amounts of a few elements that are not present in a normal star the researchers looked for stars that were different from their twin they also tried to identify elements in the stars that would show that a planet had been absorbed those elements include iron nickel or titanium in at least seven of the twin stars one of the two stars showed signs of absorbing a planet F Leu of Manos University in Australia was the lead writer of the research that was released in th
e publication nature scientist Yuan sang of the Australian National University and the Ohio State University helped write the study he commented that the research really shows what a lucky position Earth is in he said the stability of a planetary system like the solar system is not a given the researchers used the European space agency's Gaia space Observatory to find the twin stars they also used telescopes in Chile and Hawaii to identify the chemical elements present in the stars the stars wer
e as close as 70 light years from Earth and as far as 900 60 light years away a lightyear is the distance light travels in a year or 9.5 trillion kilm the researchers said it is most likely that their observations showed that whole planets had been absorbed but they added it was possible they were identifying planetary building blocks being being absorbed during A System's period of Planet formation some stars like our sun expand towards the end of their life during this time they might absorb n
earby planets later the Stars collapse becoming very small dense Stars called White dwarves Ting said all stars like the sun become much larger Ting said Earth will be absorbed by the Sun the stars in the study were not nearing the end of their life instability in planetary systems might be more common than once thought about 8% of the twin stars studied had one star that likely absorbed a planet Ting said most planetary system systems like our solar system should be stable he said the reason is
that planets are mostly influenced by their main star not other planets in their system Ting added that for other planetary systems with different beginnings and conditions this might break down that might lead to instability Ting said the study shows that many planetary systems are unstable that means there are always planets thrown into or out of these systems since only a small percentage of these planets are absorbed there might be more planets than once thought traveling in Exile without a
star to orbit Ting said understanding which planet Ary systems are stable or not is a longtime goal of planetary Dynamics theorists I'm Gregory stle vaa learning English has launched a new program for children it is called let's learn English with Anna the new course aims to teach children American English through asking and answering questions and and experiencing fun situations for more information visit our website learning english. voay [Music] news.com [Music] spring has begun in the north
ern half of the Earth for Christians a major Springtime holiday is Easter this year Easter falls on March 3st in this week's everyday grammar we learn how to talk about holiday and the foods objects and activities connected to them on Easter Sunday families with children follow the tradition of coloring eggs and hiding them for an egg hunt some of the eggs are just one color but others are painted in great detail the Easter eggs symbolize new life and rebirth there is a mythical animal we talk a
bout at e Easter the Easter Bunny bunnies or rabbits stand for fertility In some cultures that is because rabbits reproduce easily and often in the days and weeks before Easter toy bunnies are found in stores so are plastic eggs that parents fill with candies to give their children on Easter morning the American president even hosts an Easter egg roll at the White House on the Monday after Easter the child who rolls their egg the farthest distance without breaking it is the winner lamb is often
served at Easter meals for Christians lamb represents Jesus Christ who Christians call the Lamb of God another food that is common at Easter is ham pigs symbolized good luck in Europe in the time before Christianity you might have noticed three ways we have talked about the connections people make between the foods and symbols of Easter they involve two transitive verbs and a phrasal verb first we used symbolize which means to be a representation or expression of something we said that eggs symb
olize New Life Next is stands for a phrasal verb we said that bunnies stand for fertility in this case stands for also means to be a representation of something finally we used represents to explain the importance and meaning of lamb let's look a bit more at how to use these words symbolize is the verb form of the noun symbol a symbol is an object action or event that expresses a quality or idea let's compare the verb and noun form we will start with an example using symbolize the lion symbolize
s Courage the sentence has this structure noun phrase plus symbolize plus noun now let's look at how to use symbol the lion is a symbol of Courage the sentence has this structure noun phrase plus b plus a symbol of plus noun please note that even though our two example sentences have different structures the meaning is the same of course you can create much more complex sentences and examples when using symbolize or symbol but for this lesson we will keep things simple now let's take a closer lo
ok at stand for this phrasal verb has a few different meanings but in our description of Easter we used stand for in the same way we use symbolize that is right it means to be a representation or symbol of something here is another example the color yellow of stands for happiness and joy finally we have represent this verb has many meetings in this lesson represent means to serve as a symbol or sign of something let's look at this word in another example sentence wedding rings represent a marrie
d couple's love today we have learned three verbs you can use to describe holiday celebrations symbolize stand for and represent let's quickly compare our three verbs all of them are transitive verbs meaning they take a direct object and they can all be used in a simple structure noun or noun phrase plus verb or a phrasal verb plus noun or noun phrase for example red symbolizes love red stands for love red represents love try to use all three verbs to tell us about a holiday that you celebrate w
hat do the foods or activities of the day symbolize stand for or represent you can email us at learning English voanews.com and that's everyday grammar I'm Jill [Music] Robbins Jill Robbins joins us now to talk more about the that everyday grammar lesson thanks for joining us Jill hi Ashley so what are you planning to do for Easter I help with a youth program at our church and every year we have a big Easter egg hunt we've been getting ready for it for the past month what do you do to get ready
we save the plastic eggs we used in the past and give them out to some volunteers at the church they take them home and refill fill them with little toys stickers or candies then on Easter morning we hide them all over the yard our church has a big green space with lots of good places to hide eggs and when do the children get to do the hunt after Sunday school they meet with their parents who have been in church we give each one a basket and they run around the yard looking for eggs we tell the
older kids to leave the easy ones the eggs that aren't really hidden well for the little kids the older kids can find the ones that are up in trees or behind bushes so the parents are with the little kids maybe they can help them find the eggs right and there was one huge golden egg that has a grand prize in it huh what's inside that one I think it's something like a gift card for a bookstore that sounds like a lot of fun do you have any advice for our listeners ERS who might want to try somethi
ng like this yes I did it in my own yard once and the kids didn't find all the things I hid the squirrels did though so it's a good idea to check around later to make sure there aren't any eggs left for the Wildlife that's a good point and good to know I am sure the little ones will have a lot of fun on Sunday thanks again for joining us and have a happy Easter thanks Ashley same to you now here is the question we will answer in tomorrow's ask a teacher be sure to listen to the program tomorrow
to hear the answer from vaa learning English teacher Gina Bennett dear teacher I am from Burma I read the following sentence from a book in Norway there's an art museum for children's art the book mentioned it is a complex sentence I am wondering if it's right or not please tell me thank you I wish you all the best your loyal reader Ken uu [Music] and that's our program for today join us again tomorrow to keep learning English through stories from around the world I'm Ashley Thompson and I'm Dan
[Music] Novak [Music]
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