Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to text Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works in a love all things tech. And
Speaker 1: it's a Friday. You know what that means. It's time
Speaker 1: for another tech stuff classic. And what fun topic do
Speaker 1: we have today? Kids, Well, it's can we stop an
Speaker 1: asteroid from hitting Earth? Yikes? Yeah, when you talk about
Speaker 1: existential threats and asteroid hitting Earth is way up there.
Speaker 1: We know that it will happen. The question is just
Speaker 1: when will it happen, not if when and what can
Speaker 1: we do to avoid that? Well, this episode, which we
Speaker 1: originally published on July eleven, two eleven, gets to the
Speaker 1: bottom of that. Chris Pallette and I take a look
Speaker 1: at some proposed solutions to this problem. Listen and enjoy.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be talking about asteroids and preventing a collision
Speaker 1: with Earth and what sort of tech would be involved
Speaker 1: with that. And this comes courtesy of some Facebook requests
Speaker 1: and email requests. I can't believe that we had people
Speaker 1: send us Multiple people sent us this request which seems
Speaker 1: really specific for more than one person. But hey, we're
Speaker 1: gonna do it, okay, And um, you know, if you
Speaker 1: have seen the documentary Armageddon, you remember that we shot
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis up into space um with Ben Affleck and
Speaker 1: some other folks like Steve bus Simmy to scare an
Speaker 1: asteroid out of the way, because Steve Busummy is a
Speaker 1: scary guy. Uh wait, I think I might be. I
Speaker 1: think I might be a little off track. Oh well, anyway,
Speaker 1: the premise of the movie was that there was this
Speaker 1: enormous asteroid the size of Texas, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: not that guy, you do. Yeah, that that's that's a
Speaker 1: reference that goes over everyone's head because no one, none
Speaker 1: of our listeners have ever played the game Asteroids. What
Speaker 1: some of you have played Asteroids? And maybe so maybe
Speaker 1: maybe our our buddy Floyd the truck driver, he might
Speaker 1: have hopefully not while driving, well I hope not. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we're getting off track already. So the whole, the whole
Speaker 1: premise of the movie is that there's this giant asteroid
Speaker 1: the size of Texas that's going to be flying at Earth,
Speaker 1: and so they come up with this idea where they
Speaker 1: scramble a bunch of uh minors essentially to shoot up
Speaker 1: into space, land on the asteroid, and plant a nuclear
Speaker 1: device on the asteroid that will blow it up to
Speaker 1: tiny little bits and save the Earth. And so we
Speaker 1: want to address this, um this first, So let's let's
Speaker 1: get this all of the way. That would not work,
Speaker 1: That would that would be a bad thing. First of all,
Speaker 1: the power of such a device is hard to imagine.
Speaker 1: How would you create a nuclear device powerful enough to
Speaker 1: explode texas into tiny bits the equivalent of texas flying
Speaker 1: at you. Also, by the way, an asteroid that size
Speaker 1: would pretty much wipe out everybody. Um. You know, when
Speaker 1: we talk about asteroids that are are dangerous enough to
Speaker 1: wipe out a city fifty yards that's big enough. A
Speaker 1: fifty yard asteroid, like an asteroid fifty yards across, we
Speaker 1: have enough power, enough enough force to destroy a city
Speaker 1: if it impacted the city. Um. Now, NASA classifies earth
Speaker 1: threatening asteroids as being a hundred and forty meters or larger.
Speaker 1: But then that conveniently is about the size that we
Speaker 1: can detect them. Well, it's uh. It's important to note
Speaker 1: too that it's happened before. We have been hit with
Speaker 1: with many space objects in the past, and I assume
Speaker 1: to some small degree continue to do. So, Ye's something
Speaker 1: that we hear about in the news every day. But
Speaker 1: every single day the Earth is hit by by tiny
Speaker 1: little object. Granted we haven't been hit by a massive
Speaker 1: asteroid in a really long time, but meteorites hit the
Speaker 1: Earth every day. Sometimes they're so small that you know,
Speaker 1: they're almost undetectable, but it does happen the But yeah,
Speaker 1: they've happen in the past. I mean, that's what wiped
Speaker 1: out the dinosaurs was an asteroid impact were possibly common impact,
Speaker 1: but it was a massive impact that that altered the
Speaker 1: Earth's climate, and dinosaurs did not have air conditioning, so
Speaker 1: they were pretty much doomed. Doomed. I figured it was
Speaker 1: their debaucherous lifestyle and it was unsustainable. Now you're thinking
Speaker 1: of Rome, right, you know, I get this confused a lot. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know, if you've ever seen a t rex in
Speaker 1: a toga never mind. So, so why would this plan
Speaker 1: not work with destroying an asteroid with a nuclear device.
Speaker 1: Let's assume that, for for argument's sake, that somehow you
Speaker 1: managed to find a nuclear device capable of breaking up
Speaker 1: a Texas size asteroid while it was hurtling towards Earth.
Speaker 1: And keep in mind this was this this asteroid was
Speaker 1: close to Earth by the time it blows up, Otherwise
Speaker 1: it's not nearly as dramatic an ending. Right, of course,
Speaker 1: you've gotta have it close enough to the Earth where
Speaker 1: people are starting to really freak out. Oh and how
Speaker 1: long exactly did they have to prepare for this? It
Speaker 1: was like a couple of days or something like that.
Speaker 1: It was crazy short time period. We would know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: anything that's anything that that size, we would be able
Speaker 1: to spot between Mars and Jupiter, giving us years, literally
Speaker 1: years to prepare. It would not be a last minute thing.
Speaker 1: And um, that's one of the myths that movies perpetuate
Speaker 1: is that you know, you have some uh, some some
Speaker 1: amateur astronomer out in the middle of nowhere just looking
Speaker 1: up and saying, that's weird that star wasn't there yesterday.
Speaker 1: And then and then that information slowly filters its way
Speaker 1: to some official source which immediately clamps down and keeps
Speaker 1: it all secret so that nobody knows that doom is
Speaker 1: on the way until it leaks to the media causing
Speaker 1: a panic. Yeah that we don't want to cause a panic.
Speaker 1: It's definitely Hollywood related. So why would blowing up the
Speaker 1: asteroid not be a good idea. Well, that asteroids moving
Speaker 1: at a really fast speed and the nuclear warhead is
Speaker 1: not going to slow it down. Okay, so you've still
Speaker 1: got this this material moving at an incredible speed and
Speaker 1: the mass isn't gone. You haven't destroyed the mass. You've
Speaker 1: just spread it out some So instead of it being
Speaker 1: a one massive asteroid hitting the Earth, it's a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of them hitting the Earth. And it's like the
Speaker 1: difference between getting hit by a slug and getting hit
Speaker 1: by um shotgun shot. You know, we just spread out
Speaker 1: the area of impact, is what you've done. This is
Speaker 1: mission control. We just wanted to say, oops, yeah, are
Speaker 1: bad so um so yeah, here's here's why this stuff
Speaker 1: would really work in the real world. All Right, We've
Speaker 1: got lots of powerful telescopes pointing in all sorts of directions. Now,
Speaker 1: so the the the myths of the amateur astronomer who
Speaker 1: detects uh something the size the size that's in depicted
Speaker 1: an armageddon is really that's that's busted because it would
Speaker 1: be detected by much more powerful telescopes much earlier, and
Speaker 1: um that information would go to uh, it's kind of
Speaker 1: a clearing house for near Earth objects that could potentially
Speaker 1: cause harm. It's called the Minor Planet Center. It's in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Now,
Speaker 1: the Minor Planet Center would then take the information that
Speaker 1: was sent to it, which usually would involve the size
Speaker 1: of the asteroid and it's it's shape of orbit around
Speaker 1: the Sun and whether that orbit could potentially uh collide
Speaker 1: with the Earth, send that information out to observatories all
Speaker 1: across the planet. Now, these observatories would then train their
Speaker 1: telescopes onto the object to try and make their own
Speaker 1: calculations based upon their own their own perspective, to see
Speaker 1: if perhaps this would be a quote unquote interesting object. Now,
Speaker 1: in astronomical terms, interesting means holy crap, we're all going
Speaker 1: to die. That's the That's what they mean by interesting
Speaker 1: as in potentially impact the Earth. Interesting. And that information
Speaker 1: would then be shared amongst those observatories, and the likelihood
Speaker 1: of a clamp down is really low, just because you
Speaker 1: have so many people who would be involved in this
Speaker 1: and have the information, and lots of them were gonna talk.
Speaker 1: A lot of them we're gonna talk and say we
Speaker 1: got to prepare now, because if we don't, we're all
Speaker 1: going to die or a significant number of people are
Speaker 1: going to die, because if this asteroid hits a land mass,
Speaker 1: then it's gonna be like, depending on the size of
Speaker 1: the asteroid, it could be like the entire world's nuclear
Speaker 1: arsenal exploding in a single point. Um. If it hits
Speaker 1: the ocean, then it could generate a tsunami of unprecedented
Speaker 1: uh force that could wipe out an entire coast of
Speaker 1: a of a continent. Um. So I mean this is
Speaker 1: serious business. Uh. Fortunately, we haven't discovered anything so far
Speaker 1: that would cause that much of a problem. But again,
Speaker 1: our ability to detect these objects is limited. Most of
Speaker 1: the objects that NASA concentrates on is anything that's the
Speaker 1: higher and forty meters or across or larger. And uh.
Speaker 1: The problem is that smaller objects could cause significant harm.
Speaker 1: But finding those objects there is a lot trickier because
Speaker 1: space is big, really Yeah, and in relation to space,
Speaker 1: fifty yard across asteroid or is nothing. It's it's you know,
Speaker 1: you you it's it's impossible to exaggerate how tiny that is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like a it's like a germ on a bug.
Speaker 1: And and and you happened to be like a blue
Speaker 1: whale that's kind of and even then that's not even close. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't get my mind around it. That's that's how
Speaker 1: it is. We'd like to take a quick break from
Speaker 1: this existential crisis filled with anxiety and fear, to reflect
Speaker 1: for a moment on how lucky we are to have
Speaker 1: this sponsor. So all right, So nuking a an asteroid directly,
Speaker 1: as in trying to blow it up, is not a
Speaker 1: feasible option. So let's let's assume for the moment that
Speaker 1: we have developed technology that helps us, that's improved our
Speaker 1: ability to detect asteroids to the point where any asteroid
Speaker 1: that could potentially cause significant harm to people on Earth,
Speaker 1: to life on Earth, that we have somehow managed to
Speaker 1: to create the technology to detect it. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: and it's and it's important to do so because it
Speaker 1: is probable that we will be hit by something largish
Speaker 1: again at some point, Essentially, like it's worthwhile to develop
Speaker 1: this technology exactly. So, yeah, the the risk might be low,
Speaker 1: but the impact would be huge. So you know, even
Speaker 1: taking a low risk perspective of it, the actual impact
Speaker 1: would be so enormous that it is a good argument,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people have made this argument to
Speaker 1: um to invest in technology to help prevent it from happening.
Speaker 1: So let's assume that we have improved technology so we
Speaker 1: can actually detect these asteroids from a pretty good distance.
Speaker 1: Like I said, it might be years before they get here,
Speaker 1: or we're gonna need that time because we're gonna need
Speaker 1: that time to develop the actual vehicles that the tools
Speaker 1: that we're going to use in order to intercept that asteroid.
Speaker 1: So by intercepting it, what could we do to to
Speaker 1: avoid a collision. Well, the real key is deflecting the asteroid.
Speaker 1: You just have to move it a tiny bit, especially
Speaker 1: the for there out you go. The further out you go,
Speaker 1: the tinier that that adjustment needs to be, because by
Speaker 1: the time it gets to the Earth it's going to
Speaker 1: be the distance is going to be much more enormous.
Speaker 1: You know. Just think about like you're walking to have
Speaker 1: a friend standing across from you across the football field,
Speaker 1: and you're both facing each other exactly. Now imagine that
Speaker 1: your friend just turns slightly a little bit to the
Speaker 1: left and starts walking forward. Well, from a distance, it
Speaker 1: looks like there that your friend may actually meet up
Speaker 1: with you once they get all the way across the
Speaker 1: football field. But as they continue, you see that they're
Speaker 1: getting further and further away until they reach essentially a
Speaker 1: point parallel to you, and they are a good distance
Speaker 1: from you right there, further down the field, like further
Speaker 1: to the right or to the left, whichever way the
Speaker 1: person turned. Um. That's kind of the idea here is
Speaker 1: that if you can catch an asteroid early enough and
Speaker 1: deflected just a couple of degrees, then you've solved the
Speaker 1: problem because it's going to miss the Earth by millions
Speaker 1: of miles. Else But how do you deflect it? Well,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different options. Yeah, I read uh
Speaker 1: too specifically that seemed to be the options people are
Speaker 1: thinking of most like what's that? Um. One of them,
Speaker 1: ironically enough, was to use nuclear devices, Yes, but not
Speaker 1: to destroy, but to nudge. Right. Yeah, The idea is
Speaker 1: being that you would you would detonate the device over
Speaker 1: the asteroid. This would actually, um cause a couple of
Speaker 1: things to happen, And it's you know, it's interesting that
Speaker 1: again that we're talking about something. You know, you might say, hey,
Speaker 1: you just said nuking is bad. Well, in this case,
Speaker 1: what would happen is that you would uh create an
Speaker 1: uh A nuclear radiation would create this uh, this vaporizing
Speaker 1: energy and vaporize the surface or a section of the
Speaker 1: surface of the asteroid. Now that's going to cause that
Speaker 1: part of the surface to eject material into space. And
Speaker 1: you know, for a reaction action, there's an equal and
Speaker 1: opposite reaction, So that ejection from space is actually gonna
Speaker 1: as a pushing force on the asteroid. And it's tiny,
Speaker 1: but that's all you need necessary. You know, that might
Speaker 1: be all you need to move that asteroid out of
Speaker 1: the pathway of the Earth. So yeah, um, you're just
Speaker 1: using it again to to give the asteroid a little push. Um. Actually,
Speaker 1: most of the the options I've seen are some variation
Speaker 1: on pushing the asteroid. It's just lots of different potential
Speaker 1: ways we could do that. Well, that's true. I did
Speaker 1: read uh Yeah, to be fair, I did read of
Speaker 1: the possibility of using an inert uh device, nothing that explodes,
Speaker 1: but basically a bullet if you will, to shove. Yeah,
Speaker 1: using using kinetic force to push the asteroid out of
Speaker 1: the way. Yeah, that is another potential um solution, although
Speaker 1: it's it's again one of those that that has its
Speaker 1: own set of difficulties. But Yeah, that's that is what
Speaker 1: I've also heard where you're just using a kinetic force
Speaker 1: to to hap the asteroid out of the way. And
Speaker 1: it's it's important to note that, UM. What we really
Speaker 1: can't stress how much detection and identifying the the object
Speaker 1: path how important that is because UM, there there's an
Speaker 1: effect called the Yarkowsky effect. Did you read about this, um,
Speaker 1: As the object gets close to the sun, closer to
Speaker 1: the Sun, UM. And I'm not talking about directly on
Speaker 1: a path too, but you know, as it gets closer
Speaker 1: and closer to the Sun in the center of our
Speaker 1: solar system, it's going to heat up. UM. And for
Speaker 1: a larger object it doesn't matter so much. UM. But
Speaker 1: according uh to an article that I um than an
Speaker 1: article I read, the the Yarkovsky effect basically means that
Speaker 1: once the the object starts to heat up, the heat
Speaker 1: can affect its path. It can basically started to move
Speaker 1: in a slightly different direction. So you need to be
Speaker 1: able to we would need to be able to know
Speaker 1: exactly where the or as least as close enough to
Speaker 1: uh where the object is going to be, so that
Speaker 1: we can accurately hit it with something. If we're going
Speaker 1: to try to use a brute force method of moving
Speaker 1: the the asteroid out of the way, and a lot
Speaker 1: of the attempts to move asteroids may depend upon sun,
Speaker 1: the sunlight and the Sun's power. Because um there are
Speaker 1: a lot of different options that would harness the power
Speaker 1: of the Sun in order to create a pulling effect
Speaker 1: or pushing effect on the the asteroid. For example, there's
Speaker 1: one UM one possible technique where we would coat the
Speaker 1: asteroid with white and dark coating like paint or dust
Speaker 1: or whatever, and that would uh cause it to move
Speaker 1: because the Sun's energy would actually push against the asteroid.
Speaker 1: And if we coded the rights the correct side, not
Speaker 1: the right side, I mean there's no real right or left,
Speaker 1: but the correct side of the asteroid, it could push
Speaker 1: the asteroid those couple of degrees. By the time it
Speaker 1: gets to where the Earth is, it's millions of miles away,
Speaker 1: and it's it's millions of miles off course from hitting
Speaker 1: the Earth. UM Similarly, there were suggestions that maybe we
Speaker 1: could create a solar sale that would attach we we
Speaker 1: would use a like a probe to attach a solar
Speaker 1: sale to an asteroid, and the solar sale would catch
Speaker 1: the Sun's energy and be propelled by the solar wind,
Speaker 1: essentially to pull the asteroid again outside of its pathway. Um.
Speaker 1: That that's kind of a far fetched one, really. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's definitely a lot more challenging than say, coading an
Speaker 1: asteroid with a light colored material. Um. But then there's
Speaker 1: also the idea of using a net, an enormous net
Speaker 1: to encapsulate the the the asteroid, and the net would
Speaker 1: again act as almost like a solar sale. It would
Speaker 1: it would react again, you know, the sun. The Sun's
Speaker 1: energy would push against the net, which again would alter
Speaker 1: the course of the asteroid. Um. Mirrors are another potential
Speaker 1: UH solution, where you you launch a device that is
Speaker 1: going to deploy mirrors around the asteroid to direct sunlight
Speaker 1: to specific points on the asteroid to again push it
Speaker 1: out of the way. Um. Well, everyone knows that asteroids
Speaker 1: are vain, so if you, you know, put the mirrors
Speaker 1: on the far side of the Earth, they'll go toward
Speaker 1: the mirrors and go, oh, my best side, I look good. Um.
Speaker 1: But then there are a couple of other elements. There
Speaker 1: are a couple other ways of nudging an asteroid all
Speaker 1: the way that don't involve sunlight at all. UH. And
Speaker 1: one of them, and one of them's strapping a rocket
Speaker 1: to it. So essentially you have a UM, do we
Speaker 1: have to land somebody on the asteroid. No, not necessarily,
Speaker 1: you'd have to have some sort of of remotely operated
Speaker 1: probe that could embed into the asteroid itself and then
Speaker 1: use um have enough fuel in it to be able
Speaker 1: to push as a rocket to push the asteroid out
Speaker 1: of the way of the pathway of collision. Now it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to push very hard, it doesn't have to
Speaker 1: push for very long. Again, as long as you catch
Speaker 1: the asteroid early enough that we have to keep stressing
Speaker 1: that this is This is assuming that we capture, that
Speaker 1: we detect the asteroid and years and years and years
Speaker 1: in advance, and that we're able to react quickly enough
Speaker 1: so that by the time the probe reaches the asteroid,
Speaker 1: because you remember, this isn't gonna be overnight. It's gonna
Speaker 1: take time for the for whatever solution we deploy to
Speaker 1: get to the asteroid. Like it maybe you know, we
Speaker 1: launched something and we don't know if it's gonna work
Speaker 1: for another two years or three years. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: kind of scary to think about, but that's true. So
Speaker 1: UM Yeah, you have to figure out a way where
Speaker 1: you have this this device, and it has to be
Speaker 1: able to carry enough fuel so that it can actually
Speaker 1: deploy properly. A lot of people suggest that this kind
Speaker 1: of approach would be best if it were already space born.
Speaker 1: So in other words, we already had some sort of
Speaker 1: launching platform in space so that the uh, the individual
Speaker 1: probes would not need so much fuel to both escape
Speaker 1: the arts gravity and land on an asteroid and then
Speaker 1: propel it away. Um. That that does prose a problem.
Speaker 1: But then another one is the gravity tractor. Ah. Yes,
Speaker 1: and I when I looked up the gravity tractor, I
Speaker 1: had to check just a moment ago, and yes, someone
Speaker 1: has named their band gravity Tractor. Good for them, Yeah,
Speaker 1: lead singer John Dear, nice, thank you. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: the gravity tractor is fascinating, um, because this is essentially
Speaker 1: using a different body and the gravity of another body
Speaker 1: and body that we would launch into space to pull
Speaker 1: the asteroid away without even I mean there's not the
Speaker 1: point here is not even a touch the asteroid. It's
Speaker 1: to get something near enough to it to affect um
Speaker 1: the asteroids path with another gravitational field. Right, Because you
Speaker 1: gotta remember everything in the universe exerts a gravitational pull
Speaker 1: on everything else. It's just that that poll is dependent
Speaker 1: upon distance and mass and lots of other stuff. But
Speaker 1: they you know, so if you are able to put
Speaker 1: a massive enough object close enough to the asteroid, you
Speaker 1: could alter its pathway. There is there are some problems
Speaker 1: with the gravity tractor, really yeah. One of them is
Speaker 1: that you have to figure out are a Well, you
Speaker 1: want the gravity tractor to pull the asteroid away from
Speaker 1: the path of collision. You don't want the asteroid to
Speaker 1: pull the gravity tractor into the path of collision. So
Speaker 1: so that means that you would have to have some
Speaker 1: sort of propulsion system aboard the gravity tractor to make
Speaker 1: little course corrections and continue to gently pull the asteroid
Speaker 1: out of its pathway. Well, if you have propulsion, then
Speaker 1: there's the possibility that propulsion that you're going to when
Speaker 1: you fire your rockets to to give it a boost,
Speaker 1: that force may push against the asteroid, thus negating the
Speaker 1: gravity pull that you are exerting upon it. So essentially
Speaker 1: you're getting a net zero result because that you're you're
Speaker 1: pulling it out with gravity, but you're pushing on it
Speaker 1: with your propulsion. System. So finding a way where you
Speaker 1: could create some sort of gravity tractor where the propulsion
Speaker 1: system would not actually push against the asteroid itself is
Speaker 1: would be part of the solution. Plus this would be
Speaker 1: really really expensive. It's a much more costly approach and
Speaker 1: not necessarily uh the most easy to implement compared to
Speaker 1: other approaches. So I don't know that this is necessarily
Speaker 1: likely to happen. I mean, if if enough research goes
Speaker 1: into it where it proves that this is the most
Speaker 1: effective way, then sure I can see it happening, just
Speaker 1: because people would finally say, all right, well, you know,
Speaker 1: we have to invest in it, because we can't. We
Speaker 1: can't just play roulette all our existence. We have to
Speaker 1: prepare for this. UM. But I would imagine that we'd
Speaker 1: probably go with some other route before we tried this one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: An article I read suggested that the the gravity tractor
Speaker 1: would have to be at least uh twenty tons in
Speaker 1: order to safely toe you know, effectively to I should say,
Speaker 1: not safely effectively to and an asteroid away from the Earth. UM.
Speaker 1: And I can't you know, I just imagine that's going
Speaker 1: to be very hard to get out of the Earth's orbit.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, our gravity. I'm sorry to leave
Speaker 1: the gravitational field of the Earth to launch something that
Speaker 1: big into space. But you know, I'm not a rocket scientist,
Speaker 1: so nor are you a brain surgeon. Now I'm not
Speaker 1: a rocket surgeon either, so um, well that's good. I
Speaker 1: can just imagine that going wrong. I hope you guys
Speaker 1: are enjoying this classic episode of tech stuff. I personally
Speaker 1: find it really inspirational to think about solutions to big problems,
Speaker 1: almost as inspiring as I find this next sponsor to be.
Speaker 1: Another potential, although it's far fetched, possibility of getting rid
Speaker 1: of an asteroid that um that's coming at you you
Speaker 1: let robots eat it. Really Yeah, that's Robert Lamb actually
Speaker 1: wrote about this. He has a great article on the
Speaker 1: Our Our Discovery news site called top ten ways to
Speaker 1: stop an asteroid, and one of them is talking about
Speaker 1: using them robots that would actually essentially kind of chew
Speaker 1: up the asteroid and then shoot out the tiny bits
Speaker 1: of asteroid uh into space electromagnetically um and essentially disperse
Speaker 1: the asteroid while it's still really really really far away
Speaker 1: from the Earth. Because keep in mind, if it's really
Speaker 1: far away on the Earth, then not all of that
Speaker 1: mass is going to hit the Earth the way it
Speaker 1: would in the beginning of UM the or or at
Speaker 1: the end of ARM again rather so, Yeah, these these robots,
Speaker 1: uh eating poop. They eat asteroids and they poop asteroid dust.
Speaker 1: I am. I wanted to go there, and I said, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say it. You're not gonna say they
Speaker 1: eating poop. Nope, But you did it for me. So
Speaker 1: I could see the look on your face and I
Speaker 1: knew that you were thinking that. So I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to do it. UM, well, I wanted to recommend. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is this is definitely something that we need
Speaker 1: to think about. I mean, it's it's true that we
Speaker 1: need to think about invest in it. There are some
Speaker 1: talks about private companies actually investing in this UM sort
Speaker 1: of technology, this sort of approach UM, which is kind
Speaker 1: of cool that you know, it's not just not just
Speaker 1: depending upon governmental agencies that have lots of different you know,
Speaker 1: things pulling on them. UM. I did read that UM
Speaker 1: scientists don't seem to believe that there's any thing likely
Speaker 1: to hit us in the next hundred years or so
Speaker 1: right at the earliest, well at least nothing that we
Speaker 1: can see, Yeah, exactly. So there's still the possibility that
Speaker 1: something smaller could hit and still cause massive damage. It's
Speaker 1: just not gonna necessarily cause global damage, but it could
Speaker 1: cause catastrophic local damage, you know. Um. Yeah, there's some
Speaker 1: interesting organizations out there that are dedicated to trying to
Speaker 1: fix this problem. There's one called the B six one
Speaker 1: to Foundation, uh, and they their goal is to have
Speaker 1: a workable solution by So that's coming up pretty pretty soon. UM.
Speaker 1: If you guys want to learn more about the topic, well,
Speaker 1: I can recommend a couple of things and how stuff works.
Speaker 1: We actually have two articles that you go into more
Speaker 1: detail about the stuff we've talked about. One is called
Speaker 1: could we really blow up an incoming asteroid with a
Speaker 1: nuclear bomb? And one is called could we stop an
Speaker 1: asteroid on a collision course towards the Earth? And also uh,
Speaker 1: there's a great program that aired on Discovery UM called
Speaker 1: Bad Universe, and it was it's hosted by Phil Plate,
Speaker 1: the Bad Astronomer. Phil Plate, by the way, one of
Speaker 1: my favorite bloggers and scientists out there, because he's one
Speaker 1: of those scientists who really dedicates his work to explaining
Speaker 1: science to the layman. In terms that are easy, easy
Speaker 1: to understand. It makes science fun and exciting, and he
Speaker 1: does not shy away from topics like this, where you know,
Speaker 1: he's like, yeah, it'll kill you, so that's why I
Speaker 1: gotta fix it. So he's very matter of fact about it. Um,
Speaker 1: really intelligent guy, very entertaining guy. So if you have
Speaker 1: not read his stuff or watched his show, I do
Speaker 1: recommend trying to catch that because it's he's a great guy.
Speaker 1: And he also has a really amusing Twitter feed, and
Speaker 1: he interacts with a lot of other uh Twitter Wisenheimer's
Speaker 1: out there, like Jonathan Colton, Paul and Storm, you know, um,
Speaker 1: Will Wheaton. There's there's this kind of Twitter rottie that
Speaker 1: have have formed up and uh and so um he
Speaker 1: often will chat with those folks in interesting and entertaining ways.
Speaker 1: And he's and he shares a lot of really cool
Speaker 1: science news through his Twitter feed as well. I showed
Speaker 1: you that that amazing photo of the Space Shuttle Endeavor
Speaker 1: across the Sun. Yeah, yeah, that was that was courtesy
Speaker 1: of of Mr Phil Plate. So yeah, he's written extensively
Speaker 1: about this, and he's he's talked about it in his
Speaker 1: blogs and on on on the show Bad Universe. Um,
Speaker 1: so I recommend that as well. And uh, well, I
Speaker 1: don't have any other potential solutions off the top of
Speaker 1: my head. Do you have anything else you want to
Speaker 1: add before we conclude? Not in particular? Now, well, then, um,
Speaker 1: I would suggest we all just take a moment to
Speaker 1: uh to to ridicule the documentary armagedon uh for its
Speaker 1: portrayal of how we would uh alter the course of
Speaker 1: a of an asteroid by blowing it up real good,
Speaker 1: uh Texas style. But you have to land a space
Speaker 1: shuttle on it first. Yeah, and you have to sing
Speaker 1: the song I quoted at the beginning at some point,
Speaker 1: and uh, and Bruce Willis has to die. Oh spoiler alert. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: I was interested in though, that scientists are also talking
Speaker 1: about the possibility of of mining asteroids in a in
Speaker 1: an attempt to understand them better. Um yeah, I did
Speaker 1: read that. Uh you know, although we may not necessarily
Speaker 1: be ready to to destroy one just yet, that scientists
Speaker 1: even alter its path, right right, Um, But scientists are
Speaker 1: considering the possibility if uh, you know, since they are
Speaker 1: tracking some asteroids that are coming near to Earth and
Speaker 1: near and again space is big, so near as a
Speaker 1: relative term. Um that they're talking about the idea of
Speaker 1: visiting some near Earth asteroids with the possibility of mining,
Speaker 1: you know, taking some samples of the rocks that are
Speaker 1: there on the asteroid to get a better understanding of
Speaker 1: elements in the universe and bringing and back to Earth, which, uh,
Speaker 1: is a really cool idea. I don't I don't imagine
Speaker 1: they would send people to do that. Um. So the
Speaker 1: idea of doing the complex calculation necessary to hit a
Speaker 1: moving object you know that's coming around, um, take samples
Speaker 1: and then return to Earth. That's that's really fascinating stuff.
Speaker 1: And that's not exactly the same topic, but I think
Speaker 1: it's a really cool application of science and hope that
Speaker 1: if they can do that that it will be fruitful
Speaker 1: and we'll learn a lot from it. Yeah, and asteroid
Speaker 1: mining may actually lead to other things as well, like,
Speaker 1: for example, if we find an asteroid that has ice
Speaker 1: deposits on it, that could be a way of finding
Speaker 1: not just water, but actually generating oxygen for other space missions. Alright, guys,
Speaker 1: that wraps up this classic episode of tech stuff. I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed that terrifying walk down memory Lane. It's
Speaker 1: not all scary We've got a lot of very smart
Speaker 1: people working on this problem, and there are a lot
Speaker 1: of potential solutions that could really be effective, just not
Speaker 1: in that Armageddon kind of way. But hey, if you
Speaker 1: guys want to join an arousing chorus of leaving on
Speaker 1: a jet plane, I'm right there with you, because I
Speaker 1: love my John Denver. If you guys have suggestions for
Speaker 1: future episodes of tech Stuff, send me a message. You
Speaker 1: can email me at tech Stuff at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com, or drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle of both of those is text Stuff hs W.
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