Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking, either everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, sir of
Speaker 1: the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid kills is approximately
Speaker 1: there's thou swy to one. I'm Jonathan Trick and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. Today we're going to talk about what happens
Speaker 1: when an asteroid has decided to set its stony eye
Speaker 1: on Earth in come and say hello, or in other words,
Speaker 1: what happens if an asteroid collides with us? Y'all? Is
Speaker 1: that a good thing? Asteroid danger? Probably the planet killer? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we have to talk about planet killers. But really, I mean,
Speaker 1: in order for us to have this conversation, I've got
Speaker 1: some basic, basic terms I want to define. So an
Speaker 1: asteroid it's technically a raw key object in space that's
Speaker 1: smaller than a planet. Boy, is that helpful? It's like
Speaker 1: a hill. A hill is smaller than a mountain. What's
Speaker 1: a mountain? It's taller than a hill. Though there's there's
Speaker 1: some blurry parts right there. Dwarf planets are basically big asteroids.
Speaker 1: Well that's the problem, right, I mean, when do you
Speaker 1: get to the point where you I mean, clearly there
Speaker 1: are scientists at NASA who do determine these things where
Speaker 1: they've decided arbitrarily. Some would argue that a body of
Speaker 1: a certain size means a planet, and anything below that
Speaker 1: is a dwarf planet or asteroid. But yes, there are
Speaker 1: dwarf planets out there that you could also argue our asteroids, um,
Speaker 1: quite a few of them actually, uh. And then you
Speaker 1: know these can range in size from relatively small to ginormous.
Speaker 1: So that's that's the technical term until you hit planet size,
Speaker 1: in which case then you're talking about an actual planet
Speaker 1: or you know, uh, arguably some would say a moon,
Speaker 1: though some dwarf planets and moons are also asteroids. Uh,
Speaker 1: you have meteor and meteorite. By the way, whether you
Speaker 1: call something an asteroid, a meteor or a meteorite really
Speaker 1: depends on two things. Where it is and what what
Speaker 1: it's doing. So an asteroid is out in space, okay.
Speaker 1: A meteor is burning up in our atmosphere, burning up
Speaker 1: through compression and friction and some chemical processes that go on.
Speaker 1: But these are shooting stars. When you look up into
Speaker 1: the sky and you see a shooting star, that's a
Speaker 1: meteor Uh. Typically they just completely vaporized. If they happen
Speaker 1: to not completely vaporize, if some part of that hits
Speaker 1: the ground, that's a meteorite. So again the definition depends
Speaker 1: upon where it is and what it's doing. It's technically
Speaker 1: all the same stuff. And then you have a comet,
Speaker 1: which is not the same stuff. Commet is an icy
Speaker 1: body that releases gas or dust. Uh. They can contain
Speaker 1: things like carbon dioxide, ammonia, methane, and other chemicals, and
Speaker 1: they have their own orbits, as do asteroids. And these
Speaker 1: are the basic tools that we'll be talking about, the
Speaker 1: basic elements things we'll be talking about this podcast. So
Speaker 1: a comment or an asteroid on a collision course with
Speaker 1: Earth could be bad news. Mostly depends on the size
Speaker 1: and the composition of said asteroid or comet, because some
Speaker 1: stuff will not necessarily cause a planet killing issue. If it's,
Speaker 1: for example, more ice then I don't know, plutonium, then
Speaker 1: well all right, let's let's let's let's put it this way.
Speaker 1: If the meteor or asteroid, I should say I just
Speaker 1: defined the terms and then I screwed up. If the
Speaker 1: asteroid has made more out of metal, than rock, it
Speaker 1: is more likely to actually survive the pathway going through
Speaker 1: the your atmosphere and actually end up creating an impact
Speaker 1: on the surface of the Earth. If it's more rock
Speaker 1: the meteor, it could burn up, but depending upon the size,
Speaker 1: it may burn up and it's still coming in with
Speaker 1: tremendous kinetic energy. I mean, these things are moving so
Speaker 1: fast and then they hit the air's atmosphere. If they
Speaker 1: break apart in the air atmosphere, that's still releasing that energy.
Speaker 1: So you can have what amounts to a nuclear explosion
Speaker 1: over the surface of the Earth if it's rocky versus
Speaker 1: if it's metal. So depending upon the size, that could
Speaker 1: be catastrophic. Right, even if it doesn't impact the ground
Speaker 1: and cause a crater, it can still cause huge amounts
Speaker 1: of damage. And in fact, when we get all further
Speaker 1: than the podcast, I'll talk about some examples of both. Now, typically,
Speaker 1: you know, the Earth gets hit by about a hundred
Speaker 1: tons of material every day most yeah, most of that's
Speaker 1: about the size of a grain of sand. So it's
Speaker 1: not like we're not like we're having you know, uh,
Speaker 1: children's sized rocks fall from the sky on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: It's usually stuff that's pretty small. And thus, yes, you know,
Speaker 1: I wait till I talked about how big the Tunguska
Speaker 1: meteorite was based upon how many children wide? UM volume
Speaker 1: gets really fun when I talk about, you know, using
Speaker 1: children as a unit of measurement. Uh. It used to be,
Speaker 1: by the way, that my standard unit of measurement was
Speaker 1: the Conquistador. That's a true story. UM. Anyway, about a
Speaker 1: hundred tons of materials hits the Earth every day. But
Speaker 1: when we're talking about big impacts, stuff that is causing
Speaker 1: massive amounts of damage or has the potential to do so,
Speaker 1: that is much more rare. Right, we don't see big
Speaker 1: events happen frequently. A large impact might happen every hundred
Speaker 1: years or so. And by large impact, i'm talking about
Speaker 1: meteoroids that are about fifty feet across or larger. That's
Speaker 1: maybe once every hundred years. Then you're talking about huge impacts,
Speaker 1: I mean the stuff that could and and you know,
Speaker 1: wipe out an enormous amount of life, possibly all life
Speaker 1: as we know it. Those things happen incredibly rarely. I
Speaker 1: mean the last one that was uh, that impacted a
Speaker 1: huge amount of life on Earth happened sixty five million
Speaker 1: years ago, So it's not frequent, but it can happen,
Speaker 1: and it has happened, sure, and there's hypothetically a lot
Speaker 1: of them out there. Deep space Industries estimates that there's
Speaker 1: some ten thousand or more potentially hazardous asteroids that that
Speaker 1: are three or more in diameter, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: by far enough to wipe out the whole country, let alone.
Speaker 1: It's certainly depending upon what's made out of and where
Speaker 1: it hits, it certainly could wipe out a huge amount
Speaker 1: of life. Yeah, you know, but remember space is really
Speaker 1: big and we are really small, and so the chances
Speaker 1: of this actually happening, like we said, yeah, like like
Speaker 1: once every few hundred million years. What Lauren is trying
Speaker 1: to do is make you feel more comfortable. But people,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to tell right now, it's just a matter
Speaker 1: of time, just a matter of time. Now that matter
Speaker 1: of time might be millions of years. So you know,
Speaker 1: it's not something It really isn't something to lie awake
Speaker 1: at night dreading that the skies are going to fall,
Speaker 1: unless you believe in the singularity and you're planning on
Speaker 1: living another few hundred million years, which in which case worry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: then you've got to like a couple of million years
Speaker 1: from now, it's going to be a real, real problem. Uh.
Speaker 1: When we're talking about asteroid impact, keyhole really refers to
Speaker 1: a gravitational window. Now, a lot of asteroids, you know,
Speaker 1: are well, they're all orbiting the Sun in our solar system, right.
Speaker 1: The asteroids orbit the Sun similar to the way that
Speaker 1: the planets orbit the Sun. That's the thing a lot
Speaker 1: of people might not recognize from the movies. You just
Speaker 1: see asteroids just kind of zoom vector just yeah, of
Speaker 1: course that wouldn't happen. They might be in some kind
Speaker 1: of irregular orbit. They're going to be orbiting the Sun.
Speaker 1: So in general, we can say that, you know, a
Speaker 1: particular asteroid might have of an orbit which means that
Speaker 1: it comes close to the Earth every say, seven years.
Speaker 1: The Apotheis asteroid is one of those. So there's this, uh,
Speaker 1: gravitational window and and it's it's called a keyhole. And
Speaker 1: the gravitational window is usually the small area that if
Speaker 1: the asteroid were to go through that area at the
Speaker 1: right time, the Earth's gravitational pull would alter the asteroid's path,
Speaker 1: thus making it more likely or possibly more likely, that
Speaker 1: the next time the asteroid passes through when it completes orbit, Yes,
Speaker 1: it hits us. So for the Apotheis asteroid that I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, Uh, there was worry that perhaps if it
Speaker 1: hit this keyhole back when it passed by Earth, uh,
Speaker 1: that it would then end up impacting the Earth further
Speaker 1: down the line. Uh. I didn't do that. I didn't.
Speaker 1: It didn't hit the keyhole. But then there's the question
Speaker 1: of what happens in mine? What if it hits the
Speaker 1: key hole then? And the key hole tends to be
Speaker 1: a pretty small window. And when I say pretty small,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about like eight D, which on the solar
Speaker 1: scale is nothing. Right, that's just the tiniest of tiny
Speaker 1: little windows. So scientists usually say there's like a one
Speaker 1: in a million, or less than a one in a
Speaker 1: million chance that this will ever happen, but it's something
Speaker 1: that can happen, and thus it's something to think about. Now,
Speaker 1: if if the if the asteroid had passed through that
Speaker 1: key hole, we would still have several years to figure
Speaker 1: out what to do. And if you I, I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's just a number you tossed out there,
Speaker 1: but a one in a million chance, well, I mean,
Speaker 1: if it hits our path every twenty nine years. It's
Speaker 1: actually it's actually I think but yeah, sorry, Yeah, they
Speaker 1: projected it out twice before us. So what so it
Speaker 1: could hit the key hole in seven million years? I
Speaker 1: mean sure, sure, I mean if you go, if you
Speaker 1: go long enough. That's why I said if you if
Speaker 1: you extend out the timeline long enough. It's not a
Speaker 1: question of will the Earth get hit by an asteroid,
Speaker 1: it's the question of when is that going to happen?
Speaker 1: I would say, yeah, look at the surface of the Moon. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean the Moon. The Moon doesn't have the capability
Speaker 1: like the Earth does of of covering up the old
Speaker 1: asteroid impacts. I mean, you see all the places. There's
Speaker 1: also no atmosphere for the asteroid to slow down, yeah,
Speaker 1: or break apart in um. Yeah. So it's over long
Speaker 1: periods of time. There's a lot of risk out there, right,
Speaker 1: So let's let's talk about the different factors that go
Speaker 1: into these collisions, like the idea of what what makes
Speaker 1: a collision so bad? And I've kind of talked about
Speaker 1: it already. What's what the asteroids made out of? It's
Speaker 1: how fast it's traveling, and it's it's mass, right, those
Speaker 1: are the three things. So if it's made out of
Speaker 1: metal and it's huge and it's going really fast, that's catastrophic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if an asteroid hits the Earth, basically if I get
Speaker 1: out from under it, am I gonna be? Okay? No,
Speaker 1: it depends on the size. Uh Yeah. What I want
Speaker 1: to know is what are what are the effects and
Speaker 1: asteroid impacts you could have apart from just you getting smashed? Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, that's fair. Alright, So let's let's say that
Speaker 1: you're talking about an asteroid that's oh the size of Epaphus.
Speaker 1: Since we talked about that before, Um, that would be
Speaker 1: about equivalent if apophis actually collided with the Earth, about
Speaker 1: equivalent to a seven fifty megaton explosion. So seven or
Speaker 1: fifty megaton explosion, even if you are not exactly where
Speaker 1: the little X is whether the meteoroid is going to
Speaker 1: hit the Earth, and that little X would be actually
Speaker 1: about like fifty yard diameters. Who you know? You Let's
Speaker 1: say you're a couple of football fields away with it's
Speaker 1: a seven fifty megaton explosion, that doesn't matter so much. Um,
Speaker 1: you're talking about massive impacts. Uh, And and they're two
Speaker 1: like I said two different types as well. Wait a minute,
Speaker 1: how big was the biggest nuclear weapon we've ever or
Speaker 1: wouldn't that's our bomb? Megatons? Was that so a seven
Speaker 1: fifty megaton explosion? Yeah, fifty seven is the largest nuclear
Speaker 1: bomb we've ever times, the biggest nuclear bomb we've ever made.
Speaker 1: Now to be fair, uh, you know, you should ask
Speaker 1: me really how big the eruption at Krakatoa was? How
Speaker 1: big was the eruption of Krakatoa? Two hundred megatons? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's still affected the weather all over the world, didn't
Speaker 1: Uh huh yep? And uh and a seven or fifty
Speaker 1: megaton collision would probably affect the weather as well. Now,
Speaker 1: if you were to compare that to say, the massive
Speaker 1: asteroid that hit Earth sixty five million years ago, Apophis
Speaker 1: has nothing on that because you're talking a hundred terra tons,
Speaker 1: which is a hundred million megaton explosion and uh for
Speaker 1: for sixty five million years ago. Uh, and that wiped
Speaker 1: out sevent of life on Earth, so to in order
Speaker 1: for you to get to an extinction level event we're talking. Uh, Well,
Speaker 1: let's see, the the asteroid that hit our years ago
Speaker 1: was probably about six miles in diameter, you're talking about
Speaker 1: something larger than that that is going to require you know,
Speaker 1: you need something bigger than that to actually wipe out
Speaker 1: all life on Earth definitively. But um, you don't need
Speaker 1: anything that large to at least do some massive, massive damage.
Speaker 1: And even if it's a smaller one that doesn't cause
Speaker 1: global environmental damage by knocking dust up into the air
Speaker 1: or that all nuclear winter thing that we talked about, Right,
Speaker 1: even if it's not that level, if it hits an
Speaker 1: area that is really important to us in other factors,
Speaker 1: like let's say it hits New York City, or it
Speaker 1: hits Tokyo, it hits some major financial center, then you're
Speaker 1: talking about a global crisis that's an economic crisis, not
Speaker 1: necessarily an environment mental one. It doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: an enormous asteroid to do enormous amounts of damage. It
Speaker 1: just depends upon what kind of damage you're talking about, right, Um.
Speaker 1: And like I said, the one that hit million years
Speaker 1: ago that was mostly metal had made this enormous crater
Speaker 1: off the Yucatan Peninsula and which is estimated between a
Speaker 1: d eight kilometers and three kilometers in diameter, depending upon
Speaker 1: whom you asked but a hundred eighty seems to be
Speaker 1: the general consensus, uh that that's actually not the largest
Speaker 1: crater on Earth that was ever created by an asteroid impact.
Speaker 1: That goes to um the Rita Hort or Rita fort
Speaker 1: Rather crater, which is in South Africa, and I'm probably
Speaker 1: terribly mispronouncing it, but it happened two point two billion
Speaker 1: years ago, and that was an asteroid that was probably
Speaker 1: about ten kilometers in diameter, so close to that six
Speaker 1: mile mark, that same one word thing about sixty five
Speaker 1: million years ago, but it ended up creating a crater
Speaker 1: that was three kilometer Why it actually the impact melted
Speaker 1: rock when it hit the Earth. That's how how much
Speaker 1: heat and energy was in that collision. And most of
Speaker 1: the time, I want to put in, meteorites don't actually
Speaker 1: heat up the Earth when they hit. They are, you know,
Speaker 1: at absolute zero when they're flying through space, and a
Speaker 1: short jaunt through the atmosphere is not going to heat
Speaker 1: them up that much. No, but the collision, the kinetic
Speaker 1: energy releases such a huge and when they break apart,
Speaker 1: they certainly can if you look at the Tanduska uh
Speaker 1: meteorite or meteor I should say, because it actually exploded
Speaker 1: over the Earth. That was back in nineteen o eight.
Speaker 1: This is the one that explode over Russia. So you're
Speaker 1: seeing those creepy pictures of just somewhere out in Siberia,
Speaker 1: there's all these flattened trees. Yeah, that's exactly the longest
Speaker 1: time people were like what happened? Yeah, that was an
Speaker 1: asteroid that that came close to the Earth, became a
Speaker 1: meteor and exploded, um broke apart. However you want to say,
Speaker 1: uh above tangusca over in in Russia. Uh, the heat
Speaker 1: from the explosions set fire to the forest, and then
Speaker 1: the shockwave from the uh, the explosion and the asteroid
Speaker 1: entering the atmosphere ended up flattening trees for hundreds of
Speaker 1: square miles. So that's a lot of energy right there.
Speaker 1: And clearly if they'd hit over a more populated area
Speaker 1: would have done massive devastation to that population. So these
Speaker 1: are you know, these are actual historical events. There are
Speaker 1: some that are uh you know, there's there's the one
Speaker 1: from fifty thousand years ago that uh that collided in Winslow, Arizona.
Speaker 1: That's meteor crater. Have you ever heard of meteor crater?
Speaker 1: It's it's pretty famous. It's not a national landmark. But
Speaker 1: there is a crater out in Arizona called meteor Crater.
Speaker 1: It's about uh six feet deep. It's the object was
Speaker 1: probably about thirty to fifty yards across. Now that one
Speaker 1: had about the energy of a twenty mega ton bomb,
Speaker 1: and that one was probably pretty much just made out
Speaker 1: of medal. And then you have one from October, so
Speaker 1: fairly recent. It was a It was spotted by quite
Speaker 1: a few people because that was when video camera technology
Speaker 1: was really starting to become a thing. And it happened
Speaker 1: on a Friday. Why is that important Because if it's
Speaker 1: a Friday afternoon in and video cameras are becoming a thing,
Speaker 1: a lot of parents are out at sporting events watching
Speaker 1: their kids play sports. And in fact, that's exactly what happened,
Speaker 1: was that there were all these people who were videotaping
Speaker 1: kids playing sports and then they see this fire in
Speaker 1: the sky and it was this meteorite coming in and uh,
Speaker 1: it entered, it became visible somewhere over Virginia. Moving northeast,
Speaker 1: a meteor rite landed and dented the heck out of
Speaker 1: this lady's car in New York. It hit hit hit
Speaker 1: the trunk of her car um uh or actually yeah,
Speaker 1: the trunk of her all right, hit right on the
Speaker 1: back bumper area. There's this huge dent and then you
Speaker 1: see like this football sized piece of rock right there. Um.
Speaker 1: So even that, like, obviously if you had been under that,
Speaker 1: that would have been bad news. That would have killed
Speaker 1: you most likely or at least hurt you really really badly,
Speaker 1: depending on how it hit you. But that's obviously not
Speaker 1: the kind of size that would precipitate like a even
Speaker 1: a localized catastrophe beyond the catastrophe of man. I don't
Speaker 1: know if my insurance covers meteorite impact. Um. I think
Speaker 1: that falls under act of God. It may very well.
Speaker 1: And then of course in in this year we had
Speaker 1: the meteor that fell across uh the sky and in
Speaker 1: Russia again where the dash cams picked it up and
Speaker 1: a lot of people with cell phones picked it up,
Speaker 1: and the shock way from that ended up causing lots
Speaker 1: of damage, a lot of broken windows in the area
Speaker 1: where the the media started to break up over the sky.
Speaker 1: And did that actually touch ground anywhere or was it
Speaker 1: just I didn't see anything about it touching ground And
Speaker 1: there may have been pieces that survived. They're planning of
Speaker 1: people who claim that they have a piece of what
Speaker 1: it was. But then there are a lot of pieces
Speaker 1: of the Berlin Wall on eBay too that looks just
Speaker 1: like cinder blocks to me. But you know, your mileage
Speaker 1: may vary, but at any rate, it's certainly was spectacular
Speaker 1: and was caught on a lot of people's cameras. Now,
Speaker 1: the interesting thing I think here is this idea that
Speaker 1: it doesn't really matter. Again, it does matter, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't You can still suffer damage on the surface of
Speaker 1: the Earth even if the meteor, even as a meteor
Speaker 1: not a meteorite, right, if it explodes over the surface
Speaker 1: of the earth, then it explodes with enough force, then
Speaker 1: that can cause lots of damage all on its own.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be this big impact. Um. So,
Speaker 1: so this is scary enough that that actually couple of films,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, have been made along the premises.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about some of these documentaries that were made.
Speaker 1: Jelliver jell Eversy Deep Impact. I did not I did.
Speaker 1: I think I think I might have seen that in theaters.
Speaker 1: I saw it in the theater. Yeah, what wait, what
Speaker 1: year did that come up? Oh, what year was? I
Speaker 1: think that was also the year that Armageddon came out.
Speaker 1: Beat beat it to the box office by like by
Speaker 1: a few weeks. NBC beat both with their made for
Speaker 1: TV film called Asteroid In It's almost like people in
Speaker 1: Hollywood who have a project in development don't keep their
Speaker 1: trap shut, and then other people steal that idea and
Speaker 1: make the same movie. So a deep impact, what exactly
Speaker 1: is heading towards the earth? So Elijah Wood looks through
Speaker 1: Little Elijah Wood looks through a telescope and he sees
Speaker 1: a comment and they name it after him. It's really
Speaker 1: cute and and they're like, oh, it's gonna kill us all.
Speaker 1: And it's got President Morgan Freeman I remember, And he's
Speaker 1: just incredibly is that the character name? Basically, you know,
Speaker 1: let's see what's his name. I've got the the plots
Speaker 1: and officers here, President Tom Beckman ever, anyone who's not
Speaker 1: He's just well, I mean it's funny because I think
Speaker 1: the movie is kind of silly, as I remember, um though,
Speaker 1: it's I think it's going for like a kind of
Speaker 1: deep emotional gravitas um And they thought they could get
Speaker 1: it with Morgan Freeman. It's like we just put Morgan
Speaker 1: Freeman in the movie. Yeah, and I'm sure in every
Speaker 1: scene he was in, I was just like, oh, tell
Speaker 1: me about things, but uh, in all the scenes he wasn't.
Speaker 1: There was ridiculous science going on. So so what was
Speaker 1: their plan? Did they have a plan? Yeah, destroying That's
Speaker 1: what we should We should examine these movies through the
Speaker 1: feasibility of their plans, I think. So, imagine a planet
Speaker 1: killer asteroid is headed for the Earth. Which movie should
Speaker 1: we use as the script for how to save ourselves? Now?
Speaker 1: Should we use deep impact? I'm not sure because basically
Speaker 1: what they do is there is a spaceship up in
Speaker 1: the uh space called the Messiah. Yeah subtle imagery, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And so what they do is they they landed on
Speaker 1: the comet and some crew members they drill down a
Speaker 1: hundred meters beneath the surface and they plant nuclear bombs.
Speaker 1: Well this sounds really familiar. Yeah, well we'll get to
Speaker 1: you're just saying we're gonna be comparing plans. They're the
Speaker 1: same plan on the second exactly the same. Um. So
Speaker 1: they go back up and then they detonate the bombs
Speaker 1: and its like it hurts their uh their spacecraft and
Speaker 1: it breaks up the comment. But now you've just basically
Speaker 1: got two comic fragments heading for the Earth. Um. So
Speaker 1: the plan doesn't really go as planned. So then one
Speaker 1: one comet fragment spoiler uh hits the ocean and causes
Speaker 1: a tidal wave that kills everybody on you know, on
Speaker 1: either side of the Atlantic on the coast basically um.
Speaker 1: And then the other comet is going to hit in
Speaker 1: Canada and create dusk clouds that will block out the
Speaker 1: sun for years and destroy everything on Earth. Um. But
Speaker 1: at the last minute, the people from the spaceship are like, no,
Speaker 1: let's use the bombs we have left. I don't know
Speaker 1: why they didn't use them earlier, but let's use is
Speaker 1: only so deep joke exactly, Let's use the bombs we
Speaker 1: have left to blow up this other piece. Good idea.
Speaker 1: So they blow it up again and that breaks it
Speaker 1: up into pieces that are so small they burn up
Speaker 1: in the atmosphere, and they save the world. And I'm
Speaker 1: sure I'm gets re elected after that. Probably probably depends
Speaker 1: on where his where his voter base was, if it
Speaker 1: was all eastern seaboard, he's kind of screw you. Um. Okay,
Speaker 1: So first of all all right, well we got to
Speaker 1: talk about the other one too. So was their plan
Speaker 1: the whole time to use the bombs to actually blow
Speaker 1: up the comment was that plan? Alright, so all right
Speaker 1: we've got that. Let's talk about the other one, of course, Armageddon. Armageddon, right,
Speaker 1: the moral classic. Yes, this this, this one was was
Speaker 1: directed by Michael Bay. It had J. J. Abrams has
Speaker 1: a writing credit on it, along with five other script writers.
Speaker 1: That's always a good sign. Um Rumors are that at
Speaker 1: least fourteen worked on it. But anyway, yeah, so so
Speaker 1: so the premises that they're sending this uh, this this
Speaker 1: blue collar drill team out to uh to drill eight
Speaker 1: hundred feet into the surface of this asteroid um that's
Speaker 1: deeper than and it's it's actually supposed to be apparently
Speaker 1: a rogue comment. Again, well in in Armageddon's case, it
Speaker 1: was actually a rogue comment. Hit the asteroid belt knocked
Speaker 1: a a asteroid the size of Texas um out towards
Speaker 1: her like a pool ball. Just just cute if you're
Speaker 1: looking at Texas, Uh, first of all, Haldy. Second, h
Speaker 1: it's that's about two If Texas is about one thousand
Speaker 1: four kilometers across UM the largest asteroid in the Main
Speaker 1: Belt series is only nine kilometers just f y. I
Speaker 1: also at a thousand kilometers across you're talking, you're talking
Speaker 1: such massive amounts of damage. I mean, this really would
Speaker 1: be a planet killer. I mean, this is this is
Speaker 1: so much bigger diff Texas. Texas also is a territory.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have depth. I wouldn't right when you think
Speaker 1: of when you think about the three dimensions here, when
Speaker 1: you think about the mass this thing would have, it
Speaker 1: would be beyond catastrophic. According according to Billy Bob Thornton
Speaker 1: in the film, nothing would survive, not even bacteria. Uh
Speaker 1: all right, yeah, well I intensity, um, but but so
Speaker 1: but so, but so. The the idea is to drill
Speaker 1: eight hundred feet, which is like one five thousand of
Speaker 1: the way into the into the asteroids. So I'm not
Speaker 1: sure how eight feet was the decided upon drilling depth,
Speaker 1: aside from the fact that there's a fissure in the
Speaker 1: asteroid that apparently they can just drop drop the nuclear
Speaker 1: bombs directly into this fissure and the plan is to
Speaker 1: split it into like in like in deep impact and
Speaker 1: have purpose and have both have missed the planet entirely. Um.
Speaker 1: Easily so and and and it works. It totally works,
Speaker 1: aside from the part where you know, tragic things have
Speaker 1: to happen to someone, so that lives on spoiler alert. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't spoil that movie. Uh you of course heard
Speaker 1: that sounds so exciting. I don't even want to close
Speaker 1: my eyes. Of course, you've, of course heard the story
Speaker 1: about how NASA uses this movie, right um and their
Speaker 1: management training program. NASA screams, screams, screens this film. I'm
Speaker 1: sure they're screaming as well. NASA screens this film for
Speaker 1: prospective managers in their various departments and asks them to
Speaker 1: name things that are wrong scientifically with the movie. According
Speaker 1: to an article written in two thousand seven in The
Speaker 1: New Scientist. At that time, one sixty eight things were
Speaker 1: identified as being impossible in that hundred sixty eight. I'm
Speaker 1: sure it's about one per minute. But Astronomy has a
Speaker 1: really good right up on exactly what is wrong. He's got.
Speaker 1: He's got a really great presentation too, he does. He
Speaker 1: does a live presentation with power point and everything. When
Speaker 1: it's on Roger Ebert's list of most hated movies, he said,
Speaker 1: he said, it's an assault on the eyes, the ears,
Speaker 1: of the brain, common sense of the human desire to
Speaker 1: be entertained. I've got one other. He also said, I
Speaker 1: think it was like the first two hour trailer you'd
Speaker 1: ever seen. So here's here's another issue. So we talked
Speaker 1: about all right. First of all, the size of this
Speaker 1: thing is so huge as to absolutely be able to
Speaker 1: kill everything on Earth. I mean, it's so much larger
Speaker 1: than even the biggest of the asteroids that we've talked
Speaker 1: about already. I really do suspect the bacteria would survive.
Speaker 1: But that's because I think that life has an interesting
Speaker 1: way of that happened. Maybe I don't know. But the
Speaker 1: the other thing I want to talk about was that,
Speaker 1: so you know that damage is not just the mass
Speaker 1: of the object, but how quick fast it's moving. I
Speaker 1: did some math because according to the plot of arm again,
Speaker 1: they have eighteen days to figure out what they're going
Speaker 1: to do and do it before this asteroid impacts the
Speaker 1: Earth eighteen days. So from the asteroid belt where this
Speaker 1: asteroid came from, to get to Earth in eighteen days,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a trip of about two hundred thirty
Speaker 1: two million, four hundred thousand miles or three seventy four
Speaker 1: million kilometers to get there in eighteen days, you've gotta
Speaker 1: the average speed, if you average it all out, needs
Speaker 1: to be about twelve million, nine hundred thousand miles per day,
Speaker 1: or about five hundred thirty seven thousand, nine and sixty
Speaker 1: three miles per hour, or about eight thousand, nine sixty
Speaker 1: six miles for a minute, or about a hundred and
Speaker 1: forty nine miles per second, which is about two or
Speaker 1: forty kilometers per second. The reason why I bring that
Speaker 1: up is that's the average speed it would be. UM.
Speaker 1: Generally speaking, even a comet traveling would not go nearly
Speaker 1: that fast. Uh. Common speeds depend upon how close they
Speaker 1: are to the sun. The closer they get to the sun,
Speaker 1: the more they speed up. When they start moving away
Speaker 1: from the Sun, they start to slow down. Until they
Speaker 1: come back around and start going towards the Sun again,
Speaker 1: their speed picks up. But for example, UM Hayley's common
Speaker 1: or Halley's common, if you prefer when it's closest to
Speaker 1: the Sun, it's moving at about a hundred kilometers per second.
Speaker 1: Now this asteroids moving at a mean speed of two
Speaker 1: KOs per second. It's moving wicked fast, is what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: so the speed at which this is moving, in the
Speaker 1: mass at which it the the enormous mass means that
Speaker 1: I just can't imagine anything really a surviving for any
Speaker 1: length of time with that kind of impact. It's beyond
Speaker 1: my comprehension um. And also the idea of being able
Speaker 1: to use our explosives, like if you were to gather
Speaker 1: up all the nuclear explosives that were ever made in
Speaker 1: the history of ever and blow them up on this thing,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't destroy it. I guess maybe the fissure was
Speaker 1: there explanation of how this would work, but not very
Speaker 1: likely it was. It was phil Play pointed out very
Speaker 1: lucky that the fissure was was directly aligned with Earth,
Speaker 1: so that so that the two halves would split off it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's lucky that it didn't just send one
Speaker 1: half hurdling even faster towards because that would have sucked. Yeah. Also,
Speaker 1: interesting interesting research that came out of the University of
Speaker 1: California and Las Almost National Laboratory has said that even
Speaker 1: if we did explode an asteroid, it would probably reform
Speaker 1: due to gravity gravity in two to eighteen hours. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's one of those reasons why whenever you see a
Speaker 1: science fiction film with you know, you look up into
Speaker 1: the sky and you see a moon, but the moon
Speaker 1: is in pieces. That's not realistic at all. The moon's
Speaker 1: gravity would end up whatever moon you're talking about, the
Speaker 1: gravity would be strong enough together it would end up
Speaker 1: coalescing back into one body, which is, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: one of those things that it looks cool in science fiction,
Speaker 1: which is why I suspect it happens a lot in
Speaker 1: those films, but it just is not very realistic. So
Speaker 1: it sounds like you're telling me that the science from
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifty eight Italian sci fi film The Day
Speaker 1: the Sky Exploded is not accurate. I don't know, Joe.
Speaker 1: Why don't you give me the synopsis of this movie
Speaker 1: and pray make it the one that was translated poorly.
Speaker 1: I'm going to hear this all right, Well, no I
Speaker 1: have to. In fact, what I'm gonna do, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna summarize myself. I'm just going to read directly from
Speaker 1: the Wikipedia entry for this film. Uh So, the plot
Speaker 1: is an atomic rocket is launched on a manned Moon mission,
Speaker 1: but one of the engine's malfunctions, the rocket steering is broken.
Speaker 1: The pilot disengages the capsule and returns to Earth. The
Speaker 1: atomic ooster, however, continues on, eventually crashing into and exploding
Speaker 1: in an asteroid belt. I assume the asteroid belt. The
Speaker 1: explosion dislodges many asteroids from their orbits. They coalesced into
Speaker 1: one giant cluster and are heading for Earth. As the
Speaker 1: cluster approaches Earth, it causes global scale disasters so before
Speaker 1: it gets here I guess tidal waves, wind, fire storms,
Speaker 1: and earthquakes. One scientist loses his sanity in the crisis
Speaker 1: and disables the great computer needed to calculate all the
Speaker 1: firing data. I'm not sure what that refers to. Is
Speaker 1: poorly written. Uh entry here never never. First of all,
Speaker 1: I don't know who the editor of this number one.
Speaker 1: Never let a crazy scientist have access to your computer, Okay,
Speaker 1: but then fortunately, here we go. He is stopped and
Speaker 1: the data provided when no reasonable but when no reasonable
Speaker 1: hope can be on the possibility that humans could eventually
Speaker 1: avoid the crash, scientists finds that Moon will pass in
Speaker 1: front of the cluster so that most of it will
Speaker 1: be shielded. However, a small part of the cluster is
Speaker 1: not shielded and goes towards Earth. At this point, mankind's
Speaker 1: only hope is to arm every missile on Earth with
Speaker 1: a nuclear warhead and fire them all at the cluster.
Speaker 1: The nations of the world band together and fire the volley.
Speaker 1: The cluster is destroyed. Gosh, it's amazing to think that
Speaker 1: even nations facing the wrong way because of the rotation
Speaker 1: of the Earth could participate in such a global endeavor. Beautiful.
Speaker 1: I've not seen this film, but I've seen a trailer
Speaker 1: for it, and the trailer is I recommend everyone go
Speaker 1: go on YouTube and look up the trailer for The
Speaker 1: Day the Sky Exploded because it talks about how, uh,
Speaker 1: it's not fiction, this is science fact. It could happen tomorrow.
Speaker 1: I think what's funny is that apparently the asteroids have
Speaker 1: a vendetta against Earth, like we hit it with a rocket,
Speaker 1: and now we want to punish's coming to us. Like,
Speaker 1: out of all the vectors that those pieces could take
Speaker 1: in all of the Solar System, it aims right back
Speaker 1: at our planet. What are the odds? Well, it's probably
Speaker 1: because that scientists lost his sanity and disabled the great
Speaker 1: computer that was. That was such an unfortunate choice. I
Speaker 1: kind of I kind of prefer the melancholy of view
Speaker 1: of of that a rogue planet will probably head towards
Speaker 1: us and be eclipsed by the Sun right right until
Speaker 1: it's it's all up in our Earth. Fries. Well, I
Speaker 1: do want to ask a question in case one of
Speaker 1: you knows the answer, Um, what do scientists say about
Speaker 1: if an asteroid was on a collision course for Earth?
Speaker 1: How soon would we know or how far in advance
Speaker 1: would we know? It all depends upon the size of
Speaker 1: the asteroid it does, um, I It's not the kind
Speaker 1: of thing like in Armageddon they were like only fifteen
Speaker 1: telescopes can even see it. If something that big we're
Speaker 1: coming towards us that fast, we would see it with
Speaker 1: the naked eye pretty quickly fifteen days out. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where like like something that
Speaker 1: size would not be a surprise to us. Something on
Speaker 1: the size of a thirty yard wide asteroid that could
Speaker 1: easily escape detection. I mean, these things tend to be
Speaker 1: very faint, they're very small, um, and sky is big,
Speaker 1: so you've got a lot of different potential places you
Speaker 1: could be looking, and you could miss a relatively small
Speaker 1: asteroid until it was pretty close um. In fact, that's
Speaker 1: one of the things that scientists say we need to
Speaker 1: improve upon. We need to build better telescopes, and we
Speaker 1: need to have programs in place where we actually are
Speaker 1: looking for things like this while also gathering other scientific
Speaker 1: data so that we won't be taken by surprise when
Speaker 1: something of that size enters, you know, close to the Earth,
Speaker 1: so that we have a chance to react to it
Speaker 1: before it becomes you know, just a catastrophe. Right well,
Speaker 1: you know not. NASA has the Near Earth Object Program
Speaker 1: UM and it's it's a century collision monitoring stem that
Speaker 1: are keeping an eye on anything that has the potential
Speaker 1: to be hazardous to Earth within the next hundred years.
Speaker 1: There's also the Basis twelve Foundation. Have you heard about that?
Speaker 1: I have not, so Basics twelve Foundation is a group
Speaker 1: of scientists and engineers who who really want to develop
Speaker 1: programs they're really meant to to detect and in the
Speaker 1: future deflect asteroids. Um. In fact, their motto is defending
Speaker 1: Earth against asteroids UM, which I think is great And
Speaker 1: um uh. You know the they take their name from
Speaker 1: the Little Prince. That's that's the reference there. In case
Speaker 1: you were wondering, UM. And there are a lot of
Speaker 1: different ways that we could look into moving asteroids all
Speaker 1: the way, Uh, the way that NASA has identified as
Speaker 1: being the the most likely source, as in, it is
Speaker 1: the thing that could create the most kinetic energy to
Speaker 1: move an asteroid out of its pathway towards Earth is
Speaker 1: do you guys know? Yes it really is, Yes it
Speaker 1: really is. But but see here's the difference. In Deep
Speaker 1: Impact and in Armageddon. The idea was to use a
Speaker 1: nuclear bomb to blow apart these objects, to to either
Speaker 1: destroy them or to break them into smaller pieces just smash. Yeah, right.
Speaker 1: In general, In general, breaking into smaller pieces doesn't work because,
Speaker 1: like you said, Lauren, gravity can make them reform into
Speaker 1: one big solid piece. Even if it's closer to Earth.
Speaker 1: You've really just changed it from a giant slug into
Speaker 1: shotgun pellets towards the Earth. That's not great either. But
Speaker 1: if you were to use a nuclear bomb to deflect it,
Speaker 1: to move the pathway so that it no longer is
Speaker 1: on an intercept course with Earth right exploding it not
Speaker 1: even on the surface of the asteroid, but a little
Speaker 1: bit out in space in front of it or near
Speaker 1: whatever side that's right where, Because I mean the further
Speaker 1: and the further out you go, the better your chances are,
Speaker 1: right because you only have to move it a little
Speaker 1: bit when it's further out from the Earth for that
Speaker 1: pathway to have a big difference once it gets closer
Speaker 1: to the Earth or you know, once it moves further
Speaker 1: toward our orbit. Um. But that's just one method, now
Speaker 1: that they did do a full NASA to a full
Speaker 1: report on this in two thousand and seven and really
Speaker 1: looked at a lot of different possibilities. There are other ones,
Speaker 1: like using heat to heat up one side of an
Speaker 1: asteroid so that it almost becomes like its own propulsion system.
Speaker 1: That heat actually changes the nature of its pathway. So
Speaker 1: if you again do that far enough out and you're
Speaker 1: doing in a very precise way, you can guide the
Speaker 1: asteroid into a new path that is no longer an
Speaker 1: intercept course. Um. There another was the idea of using
Speaker 1: a gravity toe or a gravity tractor, which is essentially
Speaker 1: some sort of massive object that you send up out
Speaker 1: into space that will go very close to where the
Speaker 1: asteroid is and it's gravitational pull will affect the asteroids
Speaker 1: flight path, so you can just very slowly and gradually
Speaker 1: move it so it's pathway, this's out of the way. Um,
Speaker 1: that's not really NASA has looked into it. They they
Speaker 1: have essentially come to the conclusion that that's not terribly feasible,
Speaker 1: at least not in the near term. Uh. I mean
Speaker 1: it would be if you could get far enough out
Speaker 1: where this process, you know, could take over the course
Speaker 1: of a year or whatever, uh, to to actually move
Speaker 1: it enough so that it's not going to affect you
Speaker 1: can I ask quick questions. Do you know in that case,
Speaker 1: if you're trying to deflect the path of an asteroid,
Speaker 1: which would be better? Would you want to deflect it
Speaker 1: towards the Sun or away from the Sun? Well, I
Speaker 1: mean it would take you a lot more energy to
Speaker 1: move it away from the Sun. The gravitation all the
Speaker 1: Sun is going to continue to move that asteroid into
Speaker 1: its orbit. Really, what you're looking at is, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to say without without having a full
Speaker 1: three dimensional model of the Solar system, so you can
Speaker 1: start talking about different vectors. Really, you're just wanting to
Speaker 1: make sure that whatever the orbital pathway is, it no
Speaker 1: longer intercepts with the Earth. Uh. Keeping in mind, these
Speaker 1: are orbital pathways in some cases, it may mean that
Speaker 1: you're able to deflect the asteroid, but you've really just
Speaker 1: bought yourself some time until the next time around when
Speaker 1: it comes back again and there's a possibility for another impact.
Speaker 1: But if you're if you're able to develop the technique
Speaker 1: for doing this, you could in theory do it over
Speaker 1: and over again. UM. There are other suggestions of doing
Speaker 1: things like landing thrusters on an asteroid and using the
Speaker 1: thrusters to actually kind of turn the asteroid into a spacecraft,
Speaker 1: move it out of the pathway so that doesn't impact
Speaker 1: the Earth. Um, and then harvest it for supplies. That's
Speaker 1: also a possibility. It's certainly, I mean, and in fact,
Speaker 1: a lot of the we talked in our last podcast
Speaker 1: about the asteroid mining companies. One of the other things
Speaker 1: they talked about is that their technology could be used
Speaker 1: to help detect asteroids and to project. How are you
Speaker 1: going to make money on that? Well, let me put
Speaker 1: it to you this way. People have to pay asteroid insurance.
Speaker 1: I think you won't help them if they haven't been
Speaker 1: paying their feed I think the way you make money
Speaker 1: on that is you guarantee you still have a customer
Speaker 1: base because they don't old die and that's right glided
Speaker 1: with Earth. Turns out that a massive die off of
Speaker 1: your customers is a bad way to keep in business,
Speaker 1: So I suspect that as some motivating factor to it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, you know, we've also even managed
Speaker 1: to already change the pathway of a a space object.
Speaker 1: In this case, it was a comet, and in fact,
Speaker 1: the spacecraft that that changed the comets pathway was called
Speaker 1: Deep Impact five two thousand five spacecraft called Deep Impact,
Speaker 1: it was actually a method to study the commet. The
Speaker 1: purpose so just just forehead planted right into the moment.
Speaker 1: The purpose was to study the comment, not to change
Speaker 1: the pathway. That just it happened anyway, but that wasn't
Speaker 1: the purpose of the mission. The mission goal was to
Speaker 1: create a crater in the comet so it could study
Speaker 1: the composition of the comment. That was the real purpose
Speaker 1: parts So the spacecraft actually kind of fired off part
Speaker 1: of itself that impacted with this comment, But it did
Speaker 1: change the commets pathway just a little bit, not you know,
Speaker 1: appreciable unless you're looking in the grand scheme of things,
Speaker 1: but it shows that we have already done this, and
Speaker 1: it's so it's something that in theory we could do
Speaker 1: again purposefully, like that is the main goal of whatever
Speaker 1: the mission would be. Uh. Well, I mean, obviously the
Speaker 1: mission would be to move this out into a new pathway,
Speaker 1: so we we know that we could do it. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's a complicated issue because of course you have to
Speaker 1: plot out all the trajectories and everything in order to
Speaker 1: hit the asteroid exactly when and where you want to
Speaker 1: in order to move its path uh the right amount.
Speaker 1: But it's something that is possible. When I sit there
Speaker 1: and I think about it, and I look at all
Speaker 1: the math that goes into this sort of stuff, it
Speaker 1: boggles my mind to think of how complex this is.
Speaker 1: You've got so many different bodies moving around in space,
Speaker 1: and you have to take into account so many different
Speaker 1: things over timespans that can be years in length. It's
Speaker 1: it's tough astrophysics, not for beginners, not for me. Why
Speaker 1: do we say boggles the mind instead of like scrabbles
Speaker 1: the mind or pictionaries the mind and actually yacht sis
Speaker 1: my mind. Yeah, I've got all five alright, So do
Speaker 1: you guys have anything else you want to talk about
Speaker 1: with asteroid impact? Any other crazy ideas? What's your gut
Speaker 1: feeling if there is a Texas sized asteroid? What what
Speaker 1: if we've got a year a year, We're totally boned.
Speaker 1: We are so doomed. A year. Yeah, now you tell
Speaker 1: him a Texas size that's you know, just no, okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's let's assume we've got a big asteroid headed for us.
Speaker 1: It's planet killer size, um, and we can't deflect it.
Speaker 1: It's gonna hit. What what What are the best ways
Speaker 1: for humans to survive on Earth? Wow? Uh, if you're
Speaker 1: talking planet Killer, then survivals, I mean you're just talking
Speaker 1: You might be able to survive the initial impact and
Speaker 1: then the initial fallout. But if you're talking about planet Killer,
Speaker 1: we're talking about the die off of the entire support system,
Speaker 1: so you lose all the vegetation. Could either be a
Speaker 1: matter of moving to space, being like screw you guys,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm heading off planet. Yeah okay, or some kind
Speaker 1: of underground bunker with I mean, I mean you could
Speaker 1: hypothetically support a small community of people and in a
Speaker 1: sealed environment for a very long period of time. Okay, so,
Speaker 1: but but just imagine maybe so there's some bacteria that
Speaker 1: survived the impact because they're in like vo stock in Antarctica,
Speaker 1: you know, or you know you've got that, you've got
Speaker 1: the life forms that it can survive via chemicals underneath
Speaker 1: the surface, and exactly, and then you just you need
Speaker 1: to get in a bunker long enough to wait for
Speaker 1: those single cell organism organisms to sort of like re
Speaker 1: evolve into edible plants and animals. Um. So it was
Speaker 1: probably only take about four billion years actually, And if
Speaker 1: you could just weigh out those four billion years in
Speaker 1: your bunker, I'm pretty sure you don't have that many
Speaker 1: granola bars personally, and I don't. I don't have that
Speaker 1: many songs in my iPod. I would go crazy and
Speaker 1: I'd be like, ah, this is the four million time
Speaker 1: I've listened to this track. I can't stand it anymore.
Speaker 1: That sees my mind, It does, it does? All right, Well,
Speaker 1: you know this has gotten loopy. We're ending this so
Speaker 1: that we can have a serious discussion, like about ice
Speaker 1: cream or something. Alright, So guys, if you have any
Speaker 1: suggestions for topics, why don't you go on over to
Speaker 1: our website. It's for Thinking dot com fw Thinking dot
Speaker 1: com and check out our blogs, our podcasts. We've got
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