Nasa smashes asteroid: BBC News Review

A new era for humankind.

Nasa smashes asteroid.

This is News Review from

BBC Learning English. I'm Neil. And I'm Beth.

Make sure you watch to the end to learn vocabulary to talk about today's story.

And don't forget to subscribe to a channel, like this video,

and try the quiz on our website.

Now it's time for the story.

Protecting our Earth from space rocks.

Nasa has successfully crashed a dart spacecraft into an asteroid

as part of a defence test. It's hoped scientists will learn more

about pushing dangerous asteroids off course.

Dr Lori Glaze, the director of planetary science at Nasa,

called it a new era for humankind.

You've been looking at the headlines.

Beth. What's the vocabulary.

We have 'bullseye', 'rams' and 'unprecedented'.

This is News Review from

BBC Learning English.

Let's have a look at our first headline.

This one is from the Irish Times.

And so the meaning of this headline is that Nasa have smashed a spacecraft

into an asteroid.

An asteroid is a really big rock floating in space,

and to smash something means to hit it really, really hard. But the word

we are concentrating on is

'bullseye', and it's a word from sport, isn't it?

Yes. Now, the spacecraft was called dart, and darts is a game

or a sport where you throw a small arrow called a dart

into the centre target, which is called a bullseye.

Now, if you hit that you, get a lot of points.

And when you hit it, you say: 'bullseye'.

And so the headline writer is saying that Nasa hit this asteroid exactly

in the right place. And they are using the word

'bullseye' because the spacecraft is called dart.

So it's a bit of a joke.

But can we use the word beyond sport? Well,

we often say it when we get the exact result that we wanted.

It's a bit similar to 'yes!', or 'I did it',

but it's only he really used

for sports and games normally.

Right, OK. So, if I take this piece of paper,

and I tried to hit the camera lens right in the middle. I can say:

'Bullseye!'. Let's have a look at that again.

Let's have a look at our next headline.

And this one comes from Bloomberg:

The headline is saying that Nasa did this experiment

as a test of defence. And defence

is an activity designed to stop something bad happening. In this case,

an asteroid hitting the Earth.

But the word we're looking at is 'ram'. Now, Beth.

A ram was a kind of animal, isn't it?

Yes, a ram is actually a male sheep,

and they smash into things really hard with their head.

OK. Tell us more.

So imagine this action as a verb: 'to ram'. It means to push

or hit something very violently.

Now, we know that the spacecraft hit the asteroid

and was actually destroyed when that happened,

so it really rammed it.

It hit it hard.

OK, 'ram' as a verb then means 'to hit something really hard'.

We're not talking about a little knock or a tap.

Imagine the police trying to open the door of a building

they want to go in. They will ram it.

If you're in a car accident,

a car can ram it into you.

There is another word connected to 'ram': 'rammed',

as an adjective - has a different meaning, doesn't it?

It means really busy, crowded.

Yeah. Exactly. So if you imagine almost that the people have been pushed

or rammed into a very tight space,

it's very busy. So, we can say 'it's rammed'.

Have you been anywhere that was rammed, recently, Neil?

Yes, my train into work this morning was absolutely rammed - it was full

of people. Now, that's quite informal way of describing it.

Yeah. So, if you want to use it in a situation that isn't informal,

you might say it's 'overcrowded' or 'busy'.

OK. Let's look at that again.

Our next headline, please. This one comes from CBC:

The headline says that Nasa slammed a spacecraft

into an asteroid. 'Slammed' as another word like 'smashed'

and 'rammed' that we've heard already, meaning hit very hard.

But we are looking at the word 'unprecedented'

We are, and unprecedented is an adjective.

It means something that hasn't happened before,

or something that we haven't known until now.

And, so, the headline describes the test as unprecedented.

They've never done this before. They haven't tried to push an asteroid

off its course ever before. Now, this word 'unprecedented'.

It's used a lot, isn't it?

Yeah, we see it all the time in the news.

I mean, the news is all about new events,

so recently we've heard about unprecedented levels of rainfall.

We have also heard about unprecedented rises in prices of gas, for example.

Yeah. And those are all very serious things.

And, so, unprecedented is often used for more kind of formal situations.

For example, my son.

If he did an exam at school,

he got a really high mark.

I wouldn't say: 'Ah Beth,

my son got an unprecedented mark in his exam.

No, you definitely wouldn't.

You'd just say, maybe, it's the best result, he has ever had.

OK, let's have a look at that again.

We've had 'bullseye':

I hit the target. 'Rams': crashes into something violently,

and 'unprecedented':

This has never happened before.

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And goodbye. Bye.