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