Asteroids – those millions of chunks of space rock, large and small, that drift and spin across our solar system – hold promise for space explorers even as they pose a threat to us on Earth. When NASA Administrator Charles Bolden discussed the U.S. space agency’s proposed 2014 budget with lawmakers in late April, he highlighted a new mission – a plan to capture an asteroid in deep space and bring it to the vicinity of the moon, where astronauts could later explore it.
“We are developing a process or technology that will come forward in the asteroid retrieval mission that will demonstrate that humans can, in fact, alter the path of an asteroid that’s headed toward Earth,” he said.
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The younger generation’s extensive use of abbreviations to communicate quickly in text messages – LOL (laugh out loud), IDK (I don’t know) or MBF (my best friend) – may be a sign of a major change in the English language, according to observations by the Rev. Wulfstan Clough, O.S.B., professor of English at Saint Vincent College and an expert in the field of philology and linguistics.