Learning lessons from the Moon ⏲️ 6 Minute English

Hello. This is Six Minute.

English from BBC Learning English I'm Neil

and I'm Georgie.

"That's one small step for man,

one giant leap for mankind" - famous words, but do you know who said them?

Of course - that was Neil Armstrong.

the first person to land on the moon.

Right, the Apollo 11 spacecraft landed

Neil Armstrong on the moon on the 20th of July 1969.

But in decades after that famous event interest in returning

to the moon faded away... until now.

Summer 2023 saw the start of a new race

for the moon between Russia's Luna-25 spacecraft

and India's Chandrayaan-3. Russia's rocket crashed on landing,

but Chandrayaan-3 successfully touched down

on the 23rd August, making India

only the fourth country to successfully land on the Moon.

But why this sudden interest in going back to the Moon?

That's what we will be discussing in this programme

and, as usual,

we will be learning some useful new vocabulary too.

But before we blast off,

I have a question for you, Georgie.

Everyone knows that Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon

and was followed by a second astronaut, Buzz Aldrin.

But who was the third Apollo astronaut who flew the command module

while his crewmates walked on the moon? Was it

a) Yuri Gagarin b) Michael Collins or c) Alan Shepard?

Hmm. I think it was Michael Collins. OK, Georgie,

we'll find out the answer at the end of the programme. In some ways,

the current interest in the moon is really more about the origins of Earth.

One theory is that during the early days of the solar system,

around 4 billion years ago, another planet crashed into Earth,

breaking off a part which then formed the moon.

Unlike the Earth's surface, which is constantly moving, the moon

is completely still, frozen in time to create a perfectly preserved record

of what happened at the birth of the solar system.

Here's astronomer, Dr Becky Smethurst.

Explaining more to BBC

Radio 4 programme 'Inside Science'.

Whereas on the moon,

it's just this inert rock,

there's no atmosphere

so every single thing that's happened to the moon

in its four-and-a-half billion

years' worth of history is still recorded there on it.

And so, if anyone's ever seen an image of the far side of the moon,

the side of the moon that we cannot see from Earth is incredibly pockmarked.

There are craters all over that thing

and so this is a really big deal

when we're thinking about what happened to the early Earth as well,

because we think all of the Earth's water

came from impacts with comets and asteroids

in the very early days of the solar system.

The rock which makes up the moon is inert -

it doesn't move.

It's also full of craters,

large holes in the ground caused by something hitting it. The moon has

so many of these craters, it's described

as pockmarked - having a surface that's covered in small marks and scars,

These craters play an important part in the story.

Because the moon's surface does not change, finding water

there would explain a lot about how water,

and therefore life, started on Earth.

That is why Dr Smethhurst calls the moon mission

'a big deal', meaning important or significant.

That's right. Astronomers know that comets are full of ice,

and think comets brought water to earth when they crashed into it.

Evidence of those crashes

has been erased by the constantly moving surfaces on Earth,

but not on the Moon.

So, comparing water from the moon with water on Earth could provide scientists

with vital information as Dr Smethurst explained to BBC

Radio 4's 'Inside Science'.

Yeah, so they'll be looking essentially to see if it has the same characteristics

as water here on Earth and then we can sort of trace that back

from sort of the crater history as well to working out what actually happened.

How long has it been there for as well.

Also, various other minerals that might be there,

these very heavy minerals that we know, come from comets and asteroids. Again,

that would be this sort of smoking gun to be like,

yes that's where this water came from and it is likely

that Earth's water came from there as well.

Scientists can trace the existence of water

on the Moon back to find out what happened on Earth.

If 'you trace something back', you discover the causes of something

by investigating how it developed.

For this reason, Dr Smethurst says, finding water on the Moon would be finding

a 'smoking gun', a modern idiom meaning indisputable evidence or proof.

We've learned a lot about the Moon,

but we still don't know the answer to your question, Neil -

who was the third Apollo astronaut on that famous first landing

in 1969?

I said it was Michael Collins.

Which was the correct answer.

Michael Collins never set foot on the moon himself,

but afterwards said the experience of looking back at Earth

from the Apollo spacecraft changed his life forever.

OK, let's recap the vocabulary

we have learned from our trip to the Moon, starting with 'inert',

not moving or unable to move.

A 'crater' is a very large hole in the ground.

'Pockmarked' means marked by small holes and scars.

If you say something is a big deal,

it's important or significant in some way.

To 'trace something back' means to discover its causes

by examining how it developed.

And finally, the idiom 'a smoking gun' refers

to indisputable evidence or conclusive proof of something. Once again,

our six minutes are up.

Join us next time for more scintillating science

and useful vocabulary here at Six Minute English. Goodbye for now.

Goodbye!