 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. Coming up on the program, John Russell has a story on new evidence of Earth's crash with another planet early in the Earth's history. Gregory Stockle reports on extremely dry conditions in Syria, Iran, and Iraq. Next, Jill Robbins has this week's science report on a new space telescope designed to study the dark universe. Later, Jill and Andrew Smith present the lesson of the day, but first... Scientists have recognized since the 1970s that there are two large, mysterious blobs in the deepest part of Earth's mantle. One of the masses is under Africa, and the other under the South Pacific Ocean. Recent research suggests these masses, which are denser than the material surrounding them, might be from a huge crash early in our planet's history. Researchers recently said the crash between Earth and a Mars-sized object called Thea might have created the Moon. Recent research suggests the event happened more than 4.46 billion years ago. Pieces of Thea, however, might have remained inside Earth, sinking to an area just above our planet's hot core of iron and nickel. Researchers created computer simulations to study their theory of the event. Based on these simulations, they proposed that most of Thea was absorbed into Earth, forming the two masses, while the remaining pieces formed the Moon. Jian Yuan is a geophysicist at Caltech and the lead writer of the study that was published recently in Nature. The bottoms of these blobs are 2,900 kilometers below our feet. The two blobs are about 2% of Earth's mass. They were detected by seismology as seismic waves travel slower within these two regions compared to the surrounding mantle. Each of the blobs are twice the mass of the whole Moon, so the blobs are massive, Yuan said. If the theory is correct, these two masses would represent evidence of the possible Moon-forming crash. Caltech professor and study co-writer, Paul Assimo, said there has not been agreement on whether we can find evidence for this event, not just in the Moon, but also in some observable property of the modern Earth. The two masses, Assimo added, are the biggest difference in Earth's structure from a simple-layered planet. Study co-writer Hong Ping Deng of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Shanghai Astronomical Observatory said, It is incredible because we can uncover relics of another planet, Thea, if we dig deep enough in Earth's mantle. The increased density of the masses is believed to come from their high level of iron. Moon rocks also contain high iron levels, so the researchers think it would make sense if they came from the same place, Thea. The Moon, which orbits Earth at an average distance of about 385,000 km, has a diameter of about 3,475 km, a bit more than a quarter of our planet's diameter. Assimo said that, if the theory is correct, some volcanic rocks that reach Earth's surface might provide pieces of Thea. If our model is correct, the blobs should have isotopes, trace elements, that are similar to the lunar mantle rocks, which can be tested in future lunar missions, Yuan said. Gaining a greater understanding of the hypothesized giant impact could provide information concerning the evolution of Earth and other rocky planets in our solar system and beyond it. Earth is still the only confirmed habitable planet, and we do not know why, Yuan said. He added the crash set the early conditions for Earth's development and said, studying its consequences may help us to figure out why Earth is different than other rocky planets. I'm John Russell. A three-year drought has left millions of people in Syria, Iraq, and Iran with little water. A new study says it would not have happened without human-caused climate change. The West Asian drought started in July 2020. The new study found that it is mostly because hotter than normal temperatures are evaporating the little rainfall that fell. The study is by a team of international climate scientists at World Weather Attribution, a group that researches extreme weather events. Frederica Otto, an Imperial College of London climate scientist, is the lead writer of the study. She said that without the world warming 1.2 degrees Celsius since the mid-19th century, it would not be a drought at all. It is a case of climate change unnaturally intensifying naturally dry conditions into a humanitarian crisis that has left people without food, water, and housing, the study says. Other scientists have yet to confirm if the methods used in the study are correct in a process called peer review. But it follows scientifically correct methods to look for the signs of climate change. The team looked at temperature, rainfall, and moisture levels, and they compared what happened in the last three years to many different computer models of the conditions in a world without human-caused climate change. Human-caused global climate change is already making life considerably harder for tens of millions of people in West Asia, said study co-writer Muhammad Rahimi. He is a professor of climate studies at Simnan University in Iran. With every degree of warming, Syria, Iraq, and Iran will become even harder places to live. Computer models did not find any considerable signs of climate change in the reduced rainfall, which was low but not too rare, Otto said. But evaporation of water in lakes, rivers, wetlands, and soil was much higher than it would have been without climate change increased temperatures, she said. The study writers found that the drought conditions in Syria and Iraq are 25 times more likely because of climate change and in Iran 16 times more likely. Kelly Smith of the U.S. National Drought Mitigation Center in Nebraska, who was not part of the study, said the research made sense. Drought is not unusual to the Middle East area, and conflict, including Syria's Civil War, makes the area even more likely to have a drought because of weakened water systems, said study co-writer Rana El-Haj. She is with the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center in Lebanon. This is already touching the limits of what some people are able to adapt to, Otto said. She said as long as we keep burning fuels that affect climate change and give out new permits to explore new oil and gas fields, these kinds of events will only get worse. She added that this will continue to destroy lives and keep food prices high. She said, and this is not just a problem for some parts of the world, but really a problem for everyone. I'm Gregory Stockle. European astronomers released the first images from the new Euclid Space Telescope last week. The European Space Agency, ESA, and the US Space Agency, NASA, designed Euclid to study dark matter and dark energy. Scientists think those hidden forms of matter and energy make up 95% of the universe. ESA is leading the six-year mission with NASA as a partner. ESA said the images were the most detailed of their kind. They show the telescope's ability to observe billions of galaxies up to 10 billion light-years away. The images covered four areas of the sky. They include 1,000 galaxies belonging to the Perseus cluster of galaxies 240 million light-years away. In the background, the image shows more than 100,000 galaxies, ESA said. The cluster is called the Perseus cluster because it appears in the star group or constellation Perseus. Scientists believe such large structures like the Perseus cluster could only have formed if dark matter exists. ESA's science director Carol Mundell said, We think we understand only 5% of the universe. That's the matter that we can see. The rest of the universe we call dark, she continued, because it doesn't produce light. But we know its effect because we see the effect on visible matter. One sign of dark matter's hidden force is that galaxies rotate more quickly than scientists expect. Mundell said it seems to have the effect of pulling together some of the largest structures in the universe, like groups of galaxies. In the 1990s, scientists largely established the existence of dark matter after studying exploding stars called supernovas. That work resulted in a 2011 Nobel Prize shared between three US-born scientists. Looking at images from the earlier Hubble Space Telescope, scientists came to believe that the universe was not only expanding, but that it was expanding faster and faster. That surprising discovery relied on a new concept, dark energy. Euclid has been in a period of testing since its launch. Now it will start taking the images to make a 3D or three-dimensional map covering about a third of the sky. Scientists will use that map to look for small differences caused by the dark universe. Scientists hope the new understanding of dark energy and matter will help us learn about how galaxies formed and why they are found across the universe. Mundell said the purpose of the Euclid mission is really to start to probe that dark sector of the universe in ways that we've been unable to presently with current ground and space missions. She added that the Perseus cluster is a good example of this huge gathering of mass. We think there's lots of dark matter in that cluster and pulling these galaxies together. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched Euclid from Florida in July. The mission is expected to last six years. However, ESA hopes that Euclid will continue another six months if there is enough fuel to keep it in orbit around the Sun. Euclid is orbiting the Sun about 1.5 million kilometers away from Earth at Lagrange Point 2 or L2. That is a place where the gravity of the Sun, Moon and Earth are balanced. A spacecraft can stay there using less fuel. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is also at L2, but it is not in danger of crashing into Euclid. Other images released by ESA included an unusual galaxy with no exact form. Another was a spiral galaxy, sometimes called the Hidden Galaxy, which looks much like our home galaxy, the Milky Way. Speaking of the Perseus cluster, Mandel said, you'll also see lots of background galaxies there as well, which is phenomenal. I think I spotted a new one there last night. I'm Jill Robbins. Hey Jill, this was a cool story about the new images from the Euclid Space Telescope. What surprised you as you were reading it? To tell you the truth, Dan, I had heard of dark matter, but I had never heard this statistic before. That it's like 95% of the matter in the universe. That just blew me away. It just goes to show how little we know about the universe, doesn't it? You bet, these space telescopes like James Webb and now Euclid will really help add to our knowledge. There's one word that the original article used that I'd like to teach. Cosmic. Cosmic refers to things out in space, right? Exactly, as different from things on Earth. The image I take away from this story is that there is this big cosmic game of tug of war. Tug of war? Like where two teams pull on either end of a long rope? Yeah, when I read about how the universe is expanding, but this dark energy is pulling star clusters together, I thought it's like a gigantic tug of war game. I like that way of looking at it. I just hope our side wins. I kind of like the universe where it is now. Me too, Dan. Thanks for having me on the show today. Come back when you learn more about Dark Matter, Jill. My name is Anna Matteo. My name is Andrew Smith. And I'm Jill Robbins. You're listening to The Lesson of the Day on The Learning English Podcast. Welcome to the part of the show where we help you do more with our series Let's Learn English. The series shows Anna Matteo in her work and life in Washington, D.C. In Lesson 34 of the series, Anna has a decision to make. She is trying to decide what costume to wear for Halloween, a popular tradition in the United States. A costume is a special set of clothes very different from what a person normally wears. Halloween is celebrated on October 31st. People dress as monsters, ghosts, witches, or other scary creatures. They also dress as all kinds of other things such as American football players, animals, and even objects such as a bottle of beer. People can get very creative with their costumes. Let's listen and find out what costume Anna might decide to wear. Hello, Halloween is very popular in the United States. Children trick or treat. They ask people for candy. Children and adults wear costumes and go to parties. In fact, there is a Halloween party tonight. I need my friend Jeanie. Jeanie! Hi! Hi, Anna. What do you need? Tonight there is a Halloween party. I love Halloween. Are you going? I might go. I might not go. I don't have a costume. Can you help me? Dress as a Jeanie. Great idea! I can do a Jeanie trick like read minds. Anna, be careful. Things might go wrong. What could go wrong? You might guess that things will go wrong for Anna. A Jeanie is a magical person with special powers. A Jeanie can make people's wishes come true. In English, we ask a Jeanie to grant us our wish. To grant us our wish means to make our wishes come true. And in general, to grant something to someone means to give them something. Anna thinks her Jeanie costume might also give her the power to know what other people are thinking or read their minds. But then again, it might not. Anna sits outside with a sign. The sign has the words mind reader written on it. People see the sign and ask her about it. Let's listen. Are you really a mind reader? I might be. Okay. Tell me what I'm thinking. Sure. First, what do you do? I study. I'm a junior in college. What do you study? I study journalism. Okay. Wait. You are thinking you will graduate from college in about one year. Well, yeah, that's the plan. I told you I'm a junior in college. Right. Wait, there's more. You are thinking you might get a job writing the news. I might get a job writing the news. I might? That means I might not. And I'm studying really hard. No, no, no, no. You will. You will get a job writing the news. I will? You will. I will. I think. Anna changed her statement from might to will to make the person feel better and more certain about her future. Yes, but I'm not sure this person feels very certain she will get a job writing the news. It seems that Anna might not have the mind reading powers she thought. I think she will find out pretty quickly that her costume does not give her special powers. The modal will expresses certainty about the future. We use it when we are sure something is going to happen. And we use the expressions it could or it might when we are not sure something will happen. Something uncertain often depends on things we can't predict or know in advance. To predict is to say what will happen in the future. When we predict, we make a prediction. A prediction is what we think will happen. There are accurate and less than accurate predictions people make about the future. Meteorologists are scientists who study the weather. They also make predictions about the weather. These predictions are called forecasts. Thanks to computers, satellites, and other technology, weather forecasts these days are more accurate than they were in the past. We can say that weather patterns or kinds of weather that repeat are predictable. So we have the verb predict, the noun prediction, and the adjective predictable. And the adverb form is predictably. Like Anna is predictably silly in these lessons. That is a good example. Sports gambling is another area where people try to predict what will happen. When people gamble money or place bets on sporting events, they are also making predictions. If they make the correct prediction, they can win money. But sometimes a bad prediction can end up costing them a lot of money. Weather they make money depends on how the athletes play. And these expressions, it depends and it depends on, are very common and useful in English. Let's look more closely at these expressions. When we say it depends, we mean the results or predictions may be affected by other things or factors. For example, whether or not your garden produces a lot of vegetables depends on factors such as the amount of rain or water, sunshine, temperature, and the condition of the soil or ground. And notice that we use the preposition on after the verb depend. We often add a noun clause after the phrase, it depends on, like this example. It depends on what kind of phone you have. The noun clause is, what kind of phone you have. We can say it depends on this or it depends on that or it depends on plus a noun clause. Here's one more example with a noun clause. The noun clause in this example has four words. It depends on how much you study. Did you hear the noun clause? What are the four words? That's right. The noun clause is, How much you study. I think for people learning English, their success depends on how much they study and how well they study, like if they use good methods or ways to improve their English. That's right. And the free lesson plans that go with the Let's Learn English series give learners advice for ways to study. We call these learning strategies. I predict these strategies will help the learners improve their English. And I predict that you will make another prediction about Anna. My prediction is that Anna will change her costume to something else. Actually, that's not a prediction. I am certain she will change her costume because I've already seen lesson 34 of the Let's Learn English series. What costume does Anna change to? We hope you will watch lesson 34 to find out. And remember that each lesson has a pronunciation practice video and a lesson plan you can download for free. You can find that all on our website at learningenglish.voanews.com. Just go to the Beginner tab. Remember that you can find us on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. Thanks for listening to The Lesson of the Day on the Learning English Podcast. I'm Andrew Smith. And I'm Dr. Jill. 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 Novak.