Speaker 1: Some of the jobs you might get a NASA have
Speaker 1: really awesome sounding titles. And I heard you can morganas
Speaker 1: and be called a spaceship commander. Yeah, or even better,
Speaker 1: you could be the head of planetary Defense. Are you serious?
Speaker 1: Is that like a real title? Absolutely? Wait, so what
Speaker 1: are we what do we need to defend against? Like
Speaker 1: rogue planets, evil planets. We're not expecting an attack from Mars,
Speaker 1: but we do need to be defended against killer asteroids
Speaker 1: from outer space. That would be an Armygeddon. That's right.
Speaker 1: That's why they have Bruce Willis on call at all times. Hey,
Speaker 1: I have an idea for a movie. What's your idea?
Speaker 1: Die hard in space? In space, no one can hear
Speaker 1: you shoot a gun. It's not hard to die in space. Soul. Hello,
Speaker 1: I'm Jorge and I'm Daniel, and this is Daniel, and
Speaker 1: Jorge explained the universe. Today. We're talking about a pretty
Speaker 1: big question when it comes to humanity, which is is
Speaker 1: an asteroid going to come and kill us? All? So um,
Speaker 1: grim stuff, grim stuff, but also important. I mean you
Speaker 1: might brush this off as irrelevant, but we know from
Speaker 1: some pretty recent scientific history sixty five million years ago,
Speaker 1: the dinosaur extinction was caused very likely by an asteroid
Speaker 1: impact just the other day, just the other day in
Speaker 1: geologic terms, So he could happen to us, that's right.
Speaker 1: And so since we're all concentrated on this one planet,
Speaker 1: you know, all of our humanities eggs are in one
Speaker 1: basket almost literally, it's a reasonable question to ask. So
Speaker 1: Daniel went out and asked people on the street, are
Speaker 1: they concerned about and asteroids killing us? All? Here's what
Speaker 1: they said, Well, maybe it's possibility, and I mean it's
Speaker 1: quite possible, but there has to be certain things happened
Speaker 1: for that to in order to that take place. You know,
Speaker 1: they've got to have holes in the ozone, you gotta
Speaker 1: have meteoroids coming. You've gotta be able to project it.
Speaker 1: You know, you gotta know. I mean, we have the
Speaker 1: technology so we can stop it. I think there's a chance. Yeah,
Speaker 1: are you worried about it? Um? I read that like
Speaker 1: it's a low probability, But every day that goes by,
Speaker 1: the probability like compounds, so that, Um, there's a high
Speaker 1: chance now. But honestly, like it's whatever, Like if it happens,
Speaker 1: it happens, you know, Um, it's all the question of probability,
Speaker 1: but it's uh, there's a finite possibility. So it seems
Speaker 1: like a lot of people were aware of the danger,
Speaker 1: but a lot of people also put it off. They're like, well,
Speaker 1: it's a possibility, but they don't think about it, right,
Speaker 1: It's like a fascinating dissonance thing. They don't seem that concerned. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like I got other stuff to worry about, gas in
Speaker 1: my car, or am I gonna, you know, as a
Speaker 1: self driving uber gonna run me over? They seem to
Speaker 1: be more worried about that. They seem to be very pregny, attic, like,
Speaker 1: I know the probability small, so I'm not going to
Speaker 1: worry about it as much as I'm going to worry about,
Speaker 1: you know, getting run over by Clark. Yeah, there's like
Speaker 1: hierarchies of worry, you know. It's like that's on the
Speaker 1: list of things I should worry about, but I don't
Speaker 1: actually have time to worry about and maybe if I
Speaker 1: just ignore it, it'll go away, right, So that list
Speaker 1: of problems, and then some people seem to have just
Speaker 1: like this super confidence in scientists and engineers, you know,
Speaker 1: they're like, yeah, I know it could kills all but
Speaker 1: you know, I think we probably have the technology and
Speaker 1: they're probably working on it. I love that slash. I'm
Speaker 1: terrified by it. I love it because I love that
Speaker 1: they're like, yeah, scientists are pretty capable. I mean, in
Speaker 1: the movies, all it takes to solve this problem is
Speaker 1: like a couple of pots of coffee and a musical montage,
Speaker 1: and the scientists have an answer. Right. I love that.
Speaker 1: Don't forget the chalkboard, you know, here's the solution. It's
Speaker 1: always at least one musical montage though, right. I'm terrified though,
Speaker 1: because it means that they're like, well, I don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about it, w't have to do anything, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure science has it covered in is you're gonna
Speaker 1: learn in today's episode. There certainly are some vulnerabilities there.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a possibility that an asteroid, if it comes,
Speaker 1: could wipe us out even if we do see it coming.
Speaker 1: It's non zero, the probability, it's non zero. Definitely on
Speaker 1: the list of things you should worry about but probably
Speaker 1: don't have time to do anything about anyway, right right, Okay,
Speaker 1: so what um, what is the probability then that we're
Speaker 1: going to get hit by an asteroid. Seven the probability,
Speaker 1: it's fascinating. It's sort of unknown, and you know, you
Speaker 1: have to think about, like, what is the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that's going to hit us? Right, So we're talking
Speaker 1: about rocks, right, And when you look out in the space,
Speaker 1: you see the bright stuff, You see the stars, you
Speaker 1: see the moon, you see things that give off light.
Speaker 1: There's other stuff out there that's dark that you don't
Speaker 1: see unless it happens to reflect light, you know, like
Speaker 1: shining from moonlight or sunlight or something. So there's a
Speaker 1: huge member of rocks that are still out there in
Speaker 1: the in the Solar System and in the universe. And
Speaker 1: that's what we're talking about, like a big rock slimming
Speaker 1: into the Earth. Yeah, and I thought that was super
Speaker 1: interesting to find out that. You know, when we people
Speaker 1: are seeing movies like, oh, we're going to get him
Speaker 1: by an asteroid, it's usually like this thing that comes
Speaker 1: from the void of space that's going to hit us
Speaker 1: out of the blue. Um. But the truth is apparently
Speaker 1: that we were like surrounded by asteroids. There's like gazillions
Speaker 1: asteroids that were like hanging around us, right. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: absolutely there's rocks everywhere in our solar system, and you
Speaker 1: have to understand like how our solar system came to be.
Speaker 1: You know, our solar system is like gravity slowly over
Speaker 1: billions of years, pulling together rocks and rubble and dust
Speaker 1: into larger pieces. Right, Like how do you form a star?
Speaker 1: You got a big ball of gas and you wait
Speaker 1: a billion years and gravity eventually pulls it together and
Speaker 1: compresses it and compresses it so much that it turned
Speaker 1: to like a fusion bomb. Right. That's how powerful gravity
Speaker 1: is over long times. Right, you've given enough time you
Speaker 1: can pull anything together, but it doesn't get everything. So
Speaker 1: there's still you know, enough rocks slept over to make
Speaker 1: Earth and enough bits left over to make Jupiter, and
Speaker 1: not all those bits get pulled into a planet. And
Speaker 1: that's why you have things like the asteroid belt, which
Speaker 1: has a huge number of rocks in it. They're like
Speaker 1: the crumbs from for making the planets. Right, that's right.
Speaker 1: Somebody ate a cake and the asteroid belt are their
Speaker 1: crumbs left over and they didn't sweep up yea or
Speaker 1: like you know, when you're making like meatballs or bread
Speaker 1: or something and you're like you're like you grab some
Speaker 1: and you like you pat it down, you make something,
Speaker 1: but there's always all these little bits land around, that's right,
Speaker 1: And I usually wipe down my counter. But whoever, maybe
Speaker 1: feel Solar system didn't And for scale, Like I looked
Speaker 1: this up and um, if you added up like all
Speaker 1: of the rocks in the asteroid belt, it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: one twenty five of the of the size of the Moon.
Speaker 1: So most of the stuff in the Solar System. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's four percent of the moon. If you add up
Speaker 1: all the stuff in the asteroid belt, all that stuff,
Speaker 1: I thought it was like thicker and more massive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and fascinating. Least some of them. It's mostly a
Speaker 1: few big rocks. Like half of the stuff in the
Speaker 1: in the asteroid belt is just four really big rocks.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of rocks out there. How many
Speaker 1: rocks are there? How many rocks are there? These are
Speaker 1: an estimate, like, well, there's we don't know, um, the
Speaker 1: number of rocks in total, because you can't count the
Speaker 1: really tiny ones. Were the big one. And as they
Speaker 1: get smaller and smaller, there are more and more, and
Speaker 1: as they get really small, they get really numerous, and
Speaker 1: then they're basically impossible to see an impossible to count.
Speaker 1: And the thing to understand there is that obviously the
Speaker 1: biggest rocks are the more dangerous and the smallest ones
Speaker 1: are less dangerous, and so we're mostly worried about the
Speaker 1: biggest rocks, Like some of those rocks are pretty big,
Speaker 1: Like we need to worry about the rocks in our
Speaker 1: solar system that we're like hanging out with. Like I
Speaker 1: was thinking, like an analogy is that, Like we're like,
Speaker 1: we're in the toilet, right, and this toilet is is
Speaker 1: swirling around and we're like this little pebble at it?
Speaker 1: Is this your personal toilet model of the solar system? Yes?
Speaker 1: I think Copernic has rejected that, didn't he's splicitly um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think we had toilets back then. You're right,
Speaker 1: you're right, all right, go ahead. So yeah, So it's
Speaker 1: like we're swirling around and we're this little ball, but
Speaker 1: there's all these other little balls swirling around around us,
Speaker 1: and we're just hoping that in this swirling around none
Speaker 1: of them are going to hit us. It's like this
Speaker 1: chaotis giant thing, right, isn't it. That's right? And I
Speaker 1: want to talk a little bit more about that. But first,
Speaker 1: a quick break, Right, so let's think of the Solar
Speaker 1: system as this big swirling mass. I think that's fair analogy.
Speaker 1: I mean a toilet bowl makes it sound like everything
Speaker 1: is cycling towards the center, which we're hopefully not going
Speaker 1: to get flushed into the Sun. But but you're right,
Speaker 1: everything's been swirling around and in the beginning, I think
Speaker 1: there was a lot of bumping. Right, there's there's a
Speaker 1: big disorganized mess and it's swirled together, and the bumping
Speaker 1: is how we got planets and stars and all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. But now, billions of years later, right,
Speaker 1: the Earth is at least four billion years old, billions
Speaker 1: of years later, things have been swirling around for a
Speaker 1: long time, and things that we're going to bump together
Speaker 1: and form together mostly have things have settled down. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We're sort of in the you know, happy middle ages
Speaker 1: of the solar systems. We're waiting for the big flesh.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, so um. The interesting thing is that there
Speaker 1: are rocks in our Solar system which if they hit
Speaker 1: the Earth could do serious damage. Like the biggest rock
Speaker 1: in the asteroid belt is nine and fifty kilometers across,
Speaker 1: which is huge. It's enormous that's like what like Florida.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but the one that killed the dinosaurs
Speaker 1: was about ten kilometers across, so nine nine across. It's
Speaker 1: like a planet buster. So there's definitely stuff in our
Speaker 1: solar system which if it hit us, could do serious damage.
Speaker 1: So maybe you're right that's a surprise to people. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like we're living with him. It's like a roommate
Speaker 1: could kill you at any time, more like your neighbor.
Speaker 1: But you know, that's sort of something we um were
Speaker 1: accustomed to. You know, you just try not to look
Speaker 1: in their windows too much and get too worried about it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you never know when your neighbor is going
Speaker 1: to smash into you and cause an explosion the size
Speaker 1: of a nuclear warhead. Yeah, let's talk about the the
Speaker 1: spectacular grip stuff, like what's the probability of surviving an
Speaker 1: asteroid hitting us? Right? Yeah, and that again depends entirely
Speaker 1: on the size. For example, there are asteroids hitting the
Speaker 1: Earth all the time, like things that are you know,
Speaker 1: less than a meter in size. These rocks are hitting
Speaker 1: the Earth all the time. Um, but the Earth is
Speaker 1: big and these asteroids are small, and every time you
Speaker 1: look up. It's in the night sky and you see
Speaker 1: a shooting star that is a rock hitting the Earth.
Speaker 1: Remember we have something like a windshield, right, we have
Speaker 1: this this atmosphere which protects the Earth and it protects
Speaker 1: us from various cosmic rays, but also from space rocks,
Speaker 1: because what pens when a rock hits the atmosphere. It's
Speaker 1: sort of like um, I don't know, like an elephant
Speaker 1: hitting a water bed or something. Right, it's um it.
Speaker 1: It impacts and it gets and it pushes the air
Speaker 1: out of the way, but it gets heated up by
Speaker 1: all that air. It's so fast that the air feels
Speaker 1: like this, like this giant jet that trips it away, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly like in all those movies when spaceships are re
Speaker 1: entering atmosphere. That's because of all the friction from the
Speaker 1: air on the spaceship. And spaceships usually have like nice
Speaker 1: protection and fancy tiles or something that protect the astronauts
Speaker 1: from from being burnt to a crisp. But a space
Speaker 1: rock is just a rock and sometimes made of ice
Speaker 1: or rubble or or whatever. It doesn't have that, and
Speaker 1: so usually they've burned up in the atmosphere and that's
Speaker 1: what shooting stars are. So we're constantly being hit by
Speaker 1: very small ones which we couldn't have seen in advance
Speaker 1: because they were too small. But they don't do any damage.
Speaker 1: So air is good. Air is good. Um yeah. But
Speaker 1: then about one every five years or so, you get
Speaker 1: a rock that's like five meters in size. And the
Speaker 1: rock five meters in size has a lot of kinetic
Speaker 1: energy to it, right, it's been traveling through space for
Speaker 1: a long time. By the time it hits the Earth,
Speaker 1: that's been pulled them by a gravitational field. It has
Speaker 1: about as much energy as the nuclear bomb that exploded
Speaker 1: over Hiroshima. It's a lot of energy to a five
Speaker 1: meter asteroid is about like the size of a mini
Speaker 1: van or school bus. Yeah, yeah, it's about a school
Speaker 1: bus and it blows up. And about once every five
Speaker 1: years one of those hits the Earth and makes a
Speaker 1: pretty spectacular explosion. Now, most of the Earth, of course,
Speaker 1: is covered in water, and we're not like imaging all
Speaker 1: the atmosphere simultaneously, and these things can happen in the
Speaker 1: upper atmosphere. Because you might be thinking, hmmm, I think
Speaker 1: i'd noticed if somebody blew up a nuclear bomb. Every
Speaker 1: five years Um, but these kind of things can happen
Speaker 1: and we don't necessarily notice them. Really, So five years
Speaker 1: ago we had an Hiroshima style asteroid hit us. The
Speaker 1: odds are that sometime in the last five years, Um,
Speaker 1: there's a good chance that a pretty big hit the
Speaker 1: atmosphere and burned up upon entry, leaving as much energy
Speaker 1: as a Horrissima explosion. Yeah, and the energy isn't quite
Speaker 1: as concentrated. It's not as as focused in one spot
Speaker 1: as the Horosiam explosion. But yeah, I can leave a
Speaker 1: substantial amount of energy, Like by the time it reaches
Speaker 1: the ground or the ocean, it has that much energy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think in order to reach the ground, it's that's
Speaker 1: about the threshold, about five ms. And remember there was
Speaker 1: a pretty big explosion over Russia in two thousand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've seen the videos on YouTube. Yeah, everybody saw the videos.
Speaker 1: It just happened like one morning, huge explosion in the sky,
Speaker 1: like like an enormous bomb, and everybody was shocked and
Speaker 1: like a thousand people, I think we're hurt. Um when
Speaker 1: that happened, and nobody's eyes coming right like, Um, there
Speaker 1: was no warning. The warning was when it appeared in
Speaker 1: the atmosphere and it just blew up. And that's exactly
Speaker 1: what happened. And I think a little bits of it
Speaker 1: might have reached the ground, but mostly it exploded in
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. Wow. So if it had been like twice
Speaker 1: the size, somebody could have been hit by an asteroid. Yeah. Absolutely. Um.
Speaker 1: And the bigger they get, the more dangerous they get.
Speaker 1: You know, if it gets big enough, then it's you know,
Speaker 1: it can it can explode the atmosphere and leave huge
Speaker 1: clouds of dust and rubble and all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 1: And it can when it hits the ground, it can
Speaker 1: throw up enormous clouds of dust and rubble. And that's
Speaker 1: where the danger really lies. Like not necessarily, even are
Speaker 1: you actually hit by a rock, Like being actually physically
Speaker 1: hit by the rock from space is a tiny fraction
Speaker 1: of the danger. One of the real dangers is just
Speaker 1: that it like covers the sun and causes you know,
Speaker 1: I guess you. We call it like a environmental catastrophe,
Speaker 1: an environmental catastrophe I was looking for, like asteroidal winter,
Speaker 1: steroid winter after roidal winter. Yeah, we are coining new
Speaker 1: science term. We have the toilet bowl universe and the
Speaker 1: asteroidal winter you almost want to be hit by an
Speaker 1: asteroid bargein know, so that you die instantly and you
Speaker 1: don't die from this like agonizing post apocalyptic environmental disaster. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess you can choose how you go. I mean,
Speaker 1: if the asteroid hits the Earth and you get vaporized immediately,
Speaker 1: like it just hits your city, huge explosions, you know,
Speaker 1: the entire city is destroyed. Um you know, you can
Speaker 1: make like a crater like a tho hundred kilometers wide
Speaker 1: or something. You could die instantly, and you might prefer
Speaker 1: that because what comes next is like a cold, long winter,
Speaker 1: you know, where all the crops die and the only
Speaker 1: people who stockpile a lot of lentils in their basements
Speaker 1: or can survive. But also if it hits the water,
Speaker 1: you have a whole other problem, which is like massive
Speaker 1: tsunamis right, I mean, imagine go back to like our
Speaker 1: space cow hitting in a water bed or I guess
Speaker 1: we were talking an elephant or something like if a
Speaker 1: big rock hits the ocean, you might think, oh great,
Speaker 1: that's gonna absorb the impact. Well yeah, it's going to
Speaker 1: absorb the impact, and it's gonna absorb in form of
Speaker 1: a huge wave, right, Like, you know, a wave called
Speaker 1: kilometer high could wash over the planet. It's crazy, but
Speaker 1: it's sort of the ads on the size, right, So
Speaker 1: we're getting pelted all the time by little ones. As
Speaker 1: they get bigger, they get more and more dangerous, and
Speaker 1: at some point it's like end of the world, that's right,
Speaker 1: I think, Um, if they get big enough, then we're
Speaker 1: talking planet killers. You know, something that starts off supervolcanoes,
Speaker 1: you know, like rips open the Earth's crust and releases
Speaker 1: you know, the magma and the lava that's underneath. And
Speaker 1: we're talking about not just tsunamis and not just earthquakes,
Speaker 1: and not just the sky full of dust, but also
Speaker 1: massive oceans of lava covering the ground. And so that's
Speaker 1: that's pretty serious stuff. But you know that's unlikely that
Speaker 1: that requires a really really big rock, you know, And
Speaker 1: I looked up some numbers here also in like a
Speaker 1: five kilometer wide rock carries a hundred zetta jewels. That's
Speaker 1: ten to the twenty three jewels, all right, And so
Speaker 1: for comparison, is that a lot. That's a lot Like
Speaker 1: an average American uses about ten to the eleven jewels
Speaker 1: in a year. And all of humanity uses like ten
Speaker 1: to the twenty jewels in one year, so that one
Speaker 1: collision carries like a thousand years worth of energy for humanity.
Speaker 1: So it's a huge amount of energy in a big
Speaker 1: collision like that. But again, remember the really big ones
Speaker 1: are rare, like they estimate, for example, that a rock
Speaker 1: five thousand meters, why that's what we're talking about here,
Speaker 1: is like every twenty million years or so, but we
Speaker 1: could be at the end of that lifespan. So so
Speaker 1: that's the thing. It's like, there's rocks of all kinds
Speaker 1: of sizes out there, from little ones, big ones, and
Speaker 1: the bigger they are, the less likely we are to
Speaker 1: get the less common they are, but the more destructive
Speaker 1: they are. That's exactly right. So it's kind of like
Speaker 1: this this they this kind of this kind of opposing curves,
Speaker 1: you know, like bigger but less likely, but more dangerous.
Speaker 1: That's right. Bigger is less common, but more dangerous. It's
Speaker 1: absolutely true. And there's another piece of good news, which
Speaker 1: is the bigger they are, the more likely we are
Speaker 1: to see them right and to spot them, which means
Speaker 1: we might have some idea about whether whether they're coming
Speaker 1: or not. Well, Yeah, let's talk about that, like how
Speaker 1: do we see them? And like what's NASA doing about it?
Speaker 1: People seem to have all these great confidence in scientists
Speaker 1: and I'm going to lay it all on NASA. I
Speaker 1: have a lot of friends in NASA, So, um, you
Speaker 1: guys are awesome. So we like, what are they doing
Speaker 1: about it? How do they see them? Yeah? They have
Speaker 1: a dedicated team that's talk that they're called like the
Speaker 1: Planetary Defense Force or something. And are they really call that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think so, the Near Earth Objects Planetary Defense Team.
Speaker 1: Are they called the Near Earth Objects Group? Yeah? Near
Speaker 1: Near Earth Onjens is what they study. And they basically
Speaker 1: just use telescopes and they scan the sky um and
Speaker 1: they look for rocks. And you have to spot these
Speaker 1: things at the right time when the sun is reflecting
Speaker 1: off of them so that we can see them on Earth,
Speaker 1: because they don't glow right there dark rocks, and and
Speaker 1: the rocks respond differently lights. Some of them respond um
Speaker 1: in this kind of lighting condition that kind of in
Speaker 1: conditions different brightness. So you basically just have to pay
Speaker 1: attention all the time and notice one. And if you
Speaker 1: get a few pictures of it, the more pictures of
Speaker 1: it you can get. The more you can, you can
Speaker 1: know its size and its direction. And if you know
Speaker 1: it's size and its direction, then you can plot its
Speaker 1: course into the future. You can say, oh, I think
Speaker 1: I know where this rock is in, which direction it's going,
Speaker 1: and like which orbit it's in. Right. Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: use my model of the Solar system and understand where
Speaker 1: it's going to be and where we're going to be,
Speaker 1: and then they can project forward. And the more measurements
Speaker 1: they have, the tighter that band of uncertainty is, like,
Speaker 1: the tighter their projection is for where that rock is
Speaker 1: going to be over the next year or decade or
Speaker 1: or century, And they can plot Earth's movements and they
Speaker 1: can say whether or not we're in the clear or not.
Speaker 1: So it all comes down to NASA sky scanning the
Speaker 1: sky with their telescopes looking for these rocks and hoping
Speaker 1: to spot one. So they see like a bright thought
Speaker 1: moving in the sky, and they can maybe if you
Speaker 1: take several measurements, you can see a curving or a
Speaker 1: going to certain speed, so you can tell sort of
Speaker 1: from from that you can tell kind of what the
Speaker 1: trajectory around the Sun is. Yeah, and they've been doing
Speaker 1: this for a few decades, and so they've seen these
Speaker 1: rocks go around the Sun a few times, and they
Speaker 1: get better and better measurements, and so they can make
Speaker 1: better and better predictions. And that's why it's it's easier
Speaker 1: to see the big ones, right, because they reflect more
Speaker 1: light and they're just easier to spot. So it's good
Speaker 1: that the big ones, the more dangerous ones, are the
Speaker 1: easiest ones to see. It'd be it'd be scary if
Speaker 1: the smaller ones were dangerous because they're basically invisible. Right.
Speaker 1: So that's like the planetary defense strategy, right, it's just
Speaker 1: like look out, try to spot them before they hit us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Step number one is figure out is one going to
Speaker 1: hit us? And at this point they've looked out in
Speaker 1: the Solar system. They've been watching for a while, and
Speaker 1: they're pretty confident that they've seen all the ones that
Speaker 1: pose really any danger, all the ones that could do
Speaker 1: really any danger to the planet or to a significant
Speaker 1: civilian population, all the ones above kilometer in size, for example.
Speaker 1: They think they know all of the all of our
Speaker 1: neighbors that could kill is we think we sort of
Speaker 1: have a check on that. Yeah, they think they've seen
Speaker 1: like a registry of it. Yeah, but you know, there
Speaker 1: could always be one hiding. Like they've only seen what
Speaker 1: they've seen. They by definition haven't seen what they haven't seen.
Speaker 1: They can say, well, we've been looking at and so
Speaker 1: if it had been there, we probably would have seen it.
Speaker 1: But you know that could it only takes one, right,
Speaker 1: it only takes one to break their their model of
Speaker 1: how they should be seeing these things and be hiding somehow. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, they've seen all those big ones and they've
Speaker 1: plotted those trajectories and they're pretty confident that in the
Speaker 1: next hundred years at least none of those big neighbors
Speaker 1: are going to hit us. Yeah, I've seen those plots
Speaker 1: that they're crazy. They're like a picture of the Solar system,
Speaker 1: and so we're we're on this orbit around the Sun.
Speaker 1: But then there's like hundreds of rocks right there. They
Speaker 1: have to keep track of their orbits, so it's like
Speaker 1: a it's like a huge mess this model. Right, it's
Speaker 1: like our orbit, but then like the orbits of like
Speaker 1: a hundred things going in all kinds of elliptical shapes
Speaker 1: and hopefully none we don't intersect one of those ellipses, right,
Speaker 1: that's right. Yeah. And the thing to understand also is
Speaker 1: that the system is a little chaotic. Right. As we said,
Speaker 1: we've been driving around this toilet bowl for billions of
Speaker 1: years and things were mostly stable. But if some rock
Speaker 1: comes from outer space, you know, from deepen, away from
Speaker 1: the Solar system, and gives just a little nudge to
Speaker 1: what to some other rock, that rock could bump into
Speaker 1: gravitation don't even have to bump, just like affect the
Speaker 1: orbits of one thing, that could affect the orit of
Speaker 1: another thing, which affects the ord of another thing. And
Speaker 1: this could you know, cascade and cause like a pilot basically,
Speaker 1: which could knock one of these things out of orbit,
Speaker 1: and you know, then you could change its trajectory. So
Speaker 1: it's it's a difficult problem from a sort of chaos
Speaker 1: theory point of view that a little perturbation could totally
Speaker 1: change the answer. Yeah, let's talk about that a little
Speaker 1: bit more. But first quick break. So you have to
Speaker 1: keep looking and keep updating your model. That's right. You
Speaker 1: have to keep looking at YEP, updating your model, and
Speaker 1: you have to be aware that there are definitely things
Speaker 1: that are not in your model, right, There are things
Speaker 1: that you haven't seen, And so you're right that, like
Speaker 1: there's a lot of stuff in the asteroid belt and
Speaker 1: we've seen most of it. And I think that they
Speaker 1: the guys and gals that NASA are pretty confident that
Speaker 1: they've seen those things. But then you have to worry
Speaker 1: about things like comets, right comments that's something different. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's something different, and it's part of our solar system.
Speaker 1: But some of these things have really long periods, like
Speaker 1: really long orbits, like a hundred years or two hundred years,
Speaker 1: which means they could be on a trajectory to hit
Speaker 1: the Earth in fifty years. But we just wouldn't see
Speaker 1: them right now because they're so far out there and
Speaker 1: they've never come by the Earth while we've had astronomy,
Speaker 1: I mean, we've only been looking at the sky for
Speaker 1: you know, a few hundred years. We've only had modern
Speaker 1: telescopes for decades. So if there's a planet killer out
Speaker 1: there that's headed towards Earth and just hasn't come by
Speaker 1: in the last you know, said seven decades or so,
Speaker 1: we might not have seen it. So we'll only see
Speaker 1: it when it's closer to us. Yeah, and you might think,
Speaker 1: well that seems improbable, Like I just invented that story, right,
Speaker 1: but it actually happened once, and it happened only like
Speaker 1: was it twenty five years ago? It happened that. Then
Speaker 1: the comet came into our solar system out of the blue, yes,
Speaker 1: and smashed into a planet out of the black, out
Speaker 1: of the black. That's where I oh, I like that.
Speaker 1: That's an awesome title for a book. Out of the Black. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: comet Shoemaker Levy came out of the black and whizzed
Speaker 1: and whizzed into the Solar system very high speed. And
Speaker 1: the other thing is these comets are moving really fast.
Speaker 1: By the time they come close to the Sun, they're
Speaker 1: going much much faster than any asteroid. And it came in,
Speaker 1: it whizzed around the Sun, and it actually got broken
Speaker 1: up by title forces into a bunch of like twenty
Speaker 1: three pieces. And this is really awesome because we could
Speaker 1: see that it was going to hit Jupiter, you know,
Speaker 1: months and weeks before it happened. Like they saw coming
Speaker 1: into the Solar system, they recognized it, they plotted trajectory.
Speaker 1: They're like, wow, it's going to hit Jupiter. Awesome. So
Speaker 1: nobody thought like, hey, maybe we should warn potential people
Speaker 1: in Jupiter instead of like, hey, let's make some popcorn
Speaker 1: and less is awesome exposure. What are we gonna do?
Speaker 1: What are gonna sending a message like watch out duck
Speaker 1: for The amazing thing was that it broke into twenty
Speaker 1: three pieces because and which means that we got to
Speaker 1: see twenty three different impacts comment onto Jupiter. And the
Speaker 1: thing is, it's like space is big, right, So, like
Speaker 1: you think it was impossibly improbable that this thing would
Speaker 1: come out of the blue and hit a moving planet
Speaker 1: that's moving pretty fast around the Sun, but it actually happened.
Speaker 1: It actually happened. Yeah, And Jupiter is not a small target, right,
Speaker 1: and it has a lot of gravity and so you
Speaker 1: don't have to get that close before Jupiter like sucks
Speaker 1: you in. And uh, and that's how it got so big, right,
Speaker 1: accumulated stuff by pulling it in. But there's something I
Speaker 1: love about the Shoemaker Levee story. First of all this
Speaker 1: amazing stuff, like each of the impacts when it hit
Speaker 1: created a fireball bigger than the Earth, like wow, and
Speaker 1: we could see it from here, Like I remember watching
Speaker 1: this through telescopes. You could see the impact in these
Speaker 1: enormous fireballs. Really, you were like paying attention because I
Speaker 1: don't remember this happening. What um, but you were you
Speaker 1: were near a telescope watching like a feed. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was a nerd in high school and h telescope? Are
Speaker 1: you really? Absolutely? I know, I'm so cool now, right.
Speaker 1: That's why it's so difficult for you to imagine. I
Speaker 1: was totally a nerd in high school and we had
Speaker 1: these telescopes and everybody around the world was watching. It
Speaker 1: was a fascinating like I thought the whole earth was transfixed.
Speaker 1: You know, apparently everybody but Jorge was paying attention I had.
Speaker 1: I was interested in other things in high school. Well,
Speaker 1: they the guys and girls in NASA named the bits
Speaker 1: of the common They named at the A E the
Speaker 1: C pieces right there, and then they started a hit
Speaker 1: and you know, the first one hit Jupiter and they
Speaker 1: called it the A spot like where the A hit,
Speaker 1: and then the B B spot right, and they got
Speaker 1: all the way up to you know, the F spot,
Speaker 1: and then they were like, uh oops. And so they
Speaker 1: had the F spot and then the G impact site right,
Speaker 1: and then the H spot. And it's funny because that
Speaker 1: that the G spot is kind of it probably sort
Speaker 1: it only came about not that long before the eighties, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that was a cultural thing, and as so
Speaker 1: it's sort of cosmically cultural space based and also human based.
Speaker 1: But the lesson there is not that you know, Jupiter
Speaker 1: has a g spot that we should all search out.
Speaker 1: But the lesson is that these things happen, and if
Speaker 1: it happened in the last thirty years, that means it's
Speaker 1: not that unlikely it could happen again. Right, So we
Speaker 1: should be on the lookout for comments. It's good the
Speaker 1: NASA has been looking at asteroids, but comments are a
Speaker 1: real danger to keep fun NASA, keep funding NASA. Right,
Speaker 1: So the question it should really be is not is
Speaker 1: an answeryd going to kill us? All? It's like, is
Speaker 1: a comment going to kill Saul? Yeah? Yeah, absolutely, is
Speaker 1: a common going to kill us? Aul? Is a fair
Speaker 1: question that we don't know the answer too, because we
Speaker 1: can't possibly see all the comments because some of them
Speaker 1: are so far away and uh okay, and we haven't
Speaker 1: seen them in a while. Yeah. Well, so now that
Speaker 1: I'm concerned, um, what can we do? You know, people
Speaker 1: seem very confident about scientists. We've all seen um Urmageddon,
Speaker 1: and we've seen Bruce willis deflect an as steroid for us.
Speaker 1: What can we actually do is like is that for real?
Speaker 1: Will you just sit back, drink your coffee and watch
Speaker 1: the people and ask it go to work? Right? You know,
Speaker 1: just wait for that musical montage and then you get
Speaker 1: your solution. Um. Yeah, the short answer to the duct
Speaker 1: tape and duct tape and like, uh, spare parts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta push up your glasses, up your nose a
Speaker 1: few times, and you know, then you get to the answer. Um.
Speaker 1: The short version of the answer is the earlier you
Speaker 1: see it, the better. Like you're much better off seeing
Speaker 1: some thing which is going to hit the earth in
Speaker 1: six months or a year then something that's going to
Speaker 1: hit the earth next week. Um. And the reason is
Speaker 1: that you have two options. Really, one is deflect and
Speaker 1: the other is destroy. Deflect or destroy deflectors are the
Speaker 1: two options if we know something's coming at is we
Speaker 1: can deflect the destroy right. We're coming up with great
Speaker 1: titles for science fiction novels. We have into the black,
Speaker 1: deflect or destroy right. The idea behind deflect is these
Speaker 1: things are traveling really fast and the Earth is also
Speaker 1: moving really fast, So if you could just nudge it
Speaker 1: a tiny bit, like a year in advance, it would
Speaker 1: totally change its trajectory and you can miss the Earth
Speaker 1: by a few minutes. And that's all it takes, right,
Speaker 1: just has to fly by instead of smacking into us.
Speaker 1: Earth is not that easy a target to hit. It's
Speaker 1: like threading a putting a thread through a needle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it's such a small thing so that if
Speaker 1: you can make it go off a little bit, it
Speaker 1: will totally miss the eye of the needle. Yeah. It's
Speaker 1: like a sniper shooting a thread through a needle from
Speaker 1: a mile away. Um, and if somebody pushes him very
Speaker 1: slightly or nudges the tip of his rifle, then he's
Speaker 1: gonna miss. And so if you can spot this thing
Speaker 1: a long time in advance and somehow deflect it, then
Speaker 1: you could be safe. But you know, how are you
Speaker 1: going to do that? So how would you do that? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you'd have to build a rocket to go up there
Speaker 1: and visit it somehow. One thing you could do is,
Speaker 1: you know, just bump into it, like send something which
Speaker 1: literally bumps into it and deflects it. Another thing you
Speaker 1: could do, it's called a gravity tractor, which is an awesome.
Speaker 1: Name is you just send something up there which hangs
Speaker 1: out next to it, and it's gravity gently pulls on
Speaker 1: it over a long period of time, a few weeks
Speaker 1: or months. It changes its trajectory. Yeah, like like hey,
Speaker 1: what's up standing next to you? Give me cam? Yeah
Speaker 1: that's yeah. So those who deflect, you know, sometimes you
Speaker 1: could change its trajectory a little bit. You could save
Speaker 1: are all of our lives, Okay, but you have to
Speaker 1: know way in advance, like you have to see it coming, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you have to be able to get there. And
Speaker 1: we don't have great technology there. I mean, we have
Speaker 1: pretty slow rockets. It would take a long time to
Speaker 1: get something to Mars, for example, and so to get
Speaker 1: something to like Jupiter, even if you see it coming,
Speaker 1: we need much much faster rockets, and so people have
Speaker 1: ideas for you know, like plasma based rockets. It could
Speaker 1: be much faster to deflect this stuff. But we don't
Speaker 1: have the technology. Like if we saw tomorrow a comment
Speaker 1: that was going to hit the Earth in a year,
Speaker 1: we're not like ready to launch with some awesome rocket
Speaker 1: that could do this. It would take us years to
Speaker 1: develop that Rocket's just not a priority right now. That's option.
Speaker 1: A deflected option is destroyed destroy it right. So you think,
Speaker 1: I'll just send up a nuke, right, Um, But what
Speaker 1: happens if you're if the asteroid of the comment is
Speaker 1: like about to hit the Earth like tomorrow, and you
Speaker 1: send up a nuke to blow it up, Well, you're
Speaker 1: just going to create like a thousand tiny bombs instead
Speaker 1: of one huge bomb, right, And that's how a thousand
Speaker 1: radioactive tiny babs. It doesn't really help you because it
Speaker 1: still delivers all that enter onto the Earth. So you
Speaker 1: have to blow it up far enough in advance that
Speaker 1: then the pieces are going to miss the Earth. And
Speaker 1: also it depends on like what is it made out of.
Speaker 1: Is it a loosely held ball of rubble, in which
Speaker 1: case blowing it up doesn't really change very much, or
Speaker 1: is it a tightly bound rock, in which case blowing
Speaker 1: it up could fracture it. And then you get two rocks,
Speaker 1: each of which passed just on the side of the Earth. Like,
Speaker 1: it depends a lot of those details. Do you have
Speaker 1: to be lucky? You have to be lucky, and you
Speaker 1: have to you have to get it early enough so
Speaker 1: you can't just sit here and say, oh, we'll blow
Speaker 1: it up when it gets here, right, that's not a
Speaker 1: good idea. That might as well just blow yourself up,
Speaker 1: all right, So let's recap. Let's see, is an asteroid
Speaker 1: going to kill us? All? And first we learned that
Speaker 1: we're surrounded by our asteroids, and there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: them in our own solar system, and we're gonna get
Speaker 1: hit by one. It's going to come from our own
Speaker 1: solar system most likely, that's right. And there's even other
Speaker 1: stuff we didn't talk about, Like there's the stuff outside
Speaker 1: beyond Neptune and this stuff further out there that we
Speaker 1: didn't even touch on. We just talked about this stuff
Speaker 1: in the asteroid belt, which is the closest. Those are
Speaker 1: the ones we've seen. Yeah, okay, um, But the bigger
Speaker 1: they are, the more likely there are two kill us.
Speaker 1: But also the bigger they are, the more likely regard
Speaker 1: that we have seen them and we know they're they're
Speaker 1: we're tracking it, that's right. And all the big ones
Speaker 1: in the solar system that are potentially planet killers or
Speaker 1: human extinction makers, we've seen those guys, and we're pretty
Speaker 1: sure that the next hundred years is clear. That's, you know,
Speaker 1: according to the good work done by our pals at NASA,
Speaker 1: But even more dangerous could be a comment more than
Speaker 1: an asterary because those could come out of the blue
Speaker 1: and out of the black. Won't see him coming out
Speaker 1: of the out of the void. Let's go generic term,
Speaker 1: they're uh, and so it's a comment which may be
Speaker 1: more worried about yeah and comments and what we'res some
Speaker 1: because they're potentially going faster and they're harder to spot.
Speaker 1: We wouldn't necessarily have seen them, and we have an
Speaker 1: example of one hitting a planet just in the last
Speaker 1: few decades, so it's not just a crazy science fiction idea.
Speaker 1: And so the strategy is lookout and make sure that
Speaker 1: we see them early enough so we can do things
Speaker 1: like deflected or destroyed. That's right. So we should definitely
Speaker 1: keep funding NASA because it's only because of NASA and
Speaker 1: their worldwide partners that we have any idea of what's
Speaker 1: out there. But we also desperately need to get cracking
Speaker 1: on some defense systems, you know, um, building things that
Speaker 1: can go out there and protect us in case this
Speaker 1: happens or you know. Another strategy is like let's spread
Speaker 1: the human eggs out of just this basket onto some others,
Speaker 1: because it's very unlikely that like Earth and Mars are
Speaker 1: both going to be hit by an asteroid simultaneously. So
Speaker 1: if we could like get humans the planet, Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean that's the kind of stuff we should be
Speaker 1: working on. Well, cool, I feel great now. I think
Speaker 1: it's I think it's fascinating that most people go through
Speaker 1: their lives and don't worry about these existential threats, right
Speaker 1: because you can't. There's nothing that you can do about.
Speaker 1: It's not like if you spent five minutes of your
Speaker 1: day working on this problem, it's going to help humanity
Speaker 1: or something, right, But it is important that we all
Speaker 1: think about this when it comes to time like funding
Speaker 1: science and basic research and NASA, because that's that's when
Speaker 1: we can do something about it. When we support candidates
Speaker 1: that support basic research, that's when you're helping the planetary
Speaker 1: defense system. Right. Well, technically everything is an existential crisis
Speaker 1: to you, right, Like getting hit by a truck. That's
Speaker 1: a pretty existential crisis for you. You wouldn't um, yeah,
Speaker 1: every night worried about you. I'm sorry. Please be careful
Speaker 1: when you cross the street. Please, I'll look up from
Speaker 1: my phone, I promise all right, well, thank you for
Speaker 1: joining us. Thank you very much for listening to us.
Speaker 1: Worry about the end of the world and keep your
Speaker 1: eyes on the sky. Yeah, look out for the void,
Speaker 1: Watch out for the void. Do you have a question
Speaker 1: you wish we would cover, Send it to us. We'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter,
Speaker 1: and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge One Word, or email
Speaker 1: us to feedback at Daniel an or a dot com.
Speaker 1: H