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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on

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Speaker 1: iHeart Radio and welcome back to Coast to Coast Gordon

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Speaker 1: Dellow with us. Fire in the sky, Gordon. There is

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Speaker 1: a danger too if you blow up in asteroid like

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Speaker 1: Bruce Willis did an armageddon, couldn't you possibly spread the

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Speaker 1: pieces of asteroids and you'd have more of a bigger problem.

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Speaker 1: That's certainly a concern. If you did it when it

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Speaker 1: was too close to Earth, it would you know, take

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Speaker 1: one big problem and turn it into maybe a thousand

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Speaker 1: smaller problems, but still serious problems. So that's something that

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Speaker 1: you know, scientists who are involved in this discuss all

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Speaker 1: the time. Since you've been looking into this. What are

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Speaker 1: scientists telling you privately about this? Are they concerned about anything? Well,

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Speaker 1: they're they're scientists, so that you know they don't. They

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Speaker 1: don't want to be you know, a chicken little uh

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Speaker 1: kind of things. But basically what they say is by

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Speaker 1: looking for asteroids, now it's sort of like mariners in

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Speaker 1: the eighteenth century who are charging the reefs and shoals

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Speaker 1: around the world so that you know, other ships could

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Speaker 1: avoid him. By charting these tracking these things and identifying them, now,

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Speaker 1: we're kind of planning for the future. So if if something,

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Speaker 1: you know, looks like it's gonna hit us in two

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Speaker 1: hundred years, we'll we'll have an idea and we can prepare.

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Speaker 1: So they're they're pretty uh, you know, not not overly

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Speaker 1: alarming about it, but they do understand that there is

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Speaker 1: a hazard. Gordon, tell us, what is an asteroid war game?

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Speaker 1: And what's been going on in DC? What these things? Well,

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Speaker 1: last month they had a Planetary Defense conference. They have

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Speaker 1: these every couple of years, and it brings in a

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Speaker 1: couple hundred astronomers and astrophysicists and other scientists and disaster

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Speaker 1: management people from around the world to discuss, well, what

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Speaker 1: what what would we do if indeed we detected an

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Speaker 1: asteroid that was coming towards Earth. And in each one

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Speaker 1: day they set up an imaginary scenario. Okay, if if

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Speaker 1: this happens, then we do this, and if if that happens,

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Speaker 1: we do that. And for the one in the past month,

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Speaker 1: the initial scenario was that an asteroid was detected while

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Speaker 1: it was still about thirty five million miles away from Earth,

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Speaker 1: about eight hundred feet in diameter, big enough to take

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Speaker 1: out a city. Excuse me and there the idea was that,

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Speaker 1: you know, what are we going to do? Well, Initially

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Speaker 1: they calculated that this asteroid was going to hit Denver,

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Speaker 1: and if it hit Denver, it would wipe out the

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Speaker 1: entire city and miles around. So there was some argument

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Speaker 1: about what do we do about it. Do we send

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Speaker 1: up a nuclear device explosive device and try to nudget

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Speaker 1: out of its orbit. That's controversial because there's international treatise

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Speaker 1: about militarizing space and putting nuclear weapons in space. So

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Speaker 1: finally they decided to use what's called a kinetic impactor,

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Speaker 1: and that's basically just cannonball technology. You send up an

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Speaker 1: unmanned spacecraft with a big chunk of metal in it

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Speaker 1: and you run the thing head on into the asteroid

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Speaker 1: it and the idea is not to destroy the asteroid.

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Speaker 1: It's simply just slow it down by the tiniest fraction

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Speaker 1: so that by the time the asteroid reaches its intended

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Speaker 1: rendezvous point with Earth, Earth is already sailed by as

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Speaker 1: it's orbiting the Sun and the asteroid misses us. So

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Speaker 1: that's what they tried to do, and it was very technical.

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Speaker 1: It's almost like putting a retro rocket on the asteroid

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Speaker 1: sort of sort of yeah, yeah, you're just changing the speed.

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Speaker 1: So they you know, they they calculated all this, you know,

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Speaker 1: throw weights and payloads and all this sort of stuff,

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Speaker 1: and in the scenario, they sent up this kinetic impact

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Speaker 1: or actually sterbil kinetic impact or space vehicles, and it

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Speaker 1: was successful. They managed to slow down the main body

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Speaker 1: the asteroid. The problem was that one of the kinetic

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Speaker 1: impactors knocked off a chunk of the asteroid, about a

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Speaker 1: foot wide chunk. So they saved Denver, but the two

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Speaker 1: hundred pound chunk chunks traveled on and destroyed New York City.

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Speaker 1: That's light miscalculation exactly. And that's very conceivable. It's scientifically possible. Sure,

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Speaker 1: I mean it's unlikely, it's unlikely, but it is absolutely

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Speaker 1: scientifically possible. I had heard that laser lights could also

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Speaker 1: possibly push the asteroid out of the way. Is that true. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of different techniques, you know. One that

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Speaker 1: the student of MIT came up with was to bombard

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Speaker 1: an asteroid with white paintballs. The idea being that if

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Speaker 1: you paint the asteroid white, it's going to change the

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Speaker 1: way it absorbed light and that'll help push it. That

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Speaker 1: would push it. The problem is that you would have

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Speaker 1: to do that maybe twenty thirty years before the expected

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Speaker 1: impact because it only pushes it just a tiny little bit.

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Speaker 1: So you know, that's a long term solution, you know

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Speaker 1: what you were talking about. Lasers kind of the same principle.

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Speaker 1: You heat up the surface and that causes it to

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Speaker 1: just slightly shift out of its out of its orbit.

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Speaker 1: So there's a lot of things theoretically they can do.

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Speaker 1: Go ahead. The Japanese landed on an asteroid, didn't they. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: they've got a mission up there, and we've got a

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Speaker 1: mission too to uh it's called a serious REX and

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Speaker 1: it's it's designed to right now, it's a spacecraft unmanned

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Speaker 1: of course, that's orbiting an asteroid called Benu. It's a

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Speaker 1: relatively small asteroid, and within the next I think it's

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Speaker 1: within the next year or so, the spacecraft is going

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Speaker 1: to swoop down and scoop up some surface samples from

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Speaker 1: Benu's surface and bring them back to Earth so they

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Speaker 1: can analyze the camp composition and they'll give them a

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Speaker 1: lot of information as to what they're made out of

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Speaker 1: and what's the best way to deflect them and that

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Speaker 1: sort of thing. What do you think of the privatization

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Speaker 1: of companies that think they're going to go to asteroids

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Speaker 1: and mind them and then bring the stuff back. Well,

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Speaker 1: I think it's a great idea, George. I mean I

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Speaker 1: haven't put any stock in them yet, but um, I

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Speaker 1: think within the next ten or fifteen years this could

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Speaker 1: actually be possible. Really Yeah, yeah, it's been. I mean

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Speaker 1: they're they're they're conducting. These are serious people and they're conducting,

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Speaker 1: you know, tests of the technology right now, and it

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Speaker 1: could be enormously lucrative because a lot of these asteroids

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Speaker 1: have iron and you know other metals, plus precious metals

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Speaker 1: like platinum. What the machinery, how do you get the

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Speaker 1: machinery out there and the work. I mean, Amazons are

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Speaker 1: just experimenting with sending drones are ways or with little packages.

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Speaker 1: I heard you talking about that, and I can see

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Speaker 1: a drone, you know, getting caught up in the clothesline

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Speaker 1: out back exactly. Ideally, this wouldn't happen with these guys,

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Speaker 1: and it's going to take a lot of experimentation, but

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Speaker 1: ultimately I think it's going to happen. How often do

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Speaker 1: we get hit by asteroids, Gordon, even if they're really

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Speaker 1: small every day. That's what I think. Really small ones.

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Speaker 1: You've seen meteors in the sky and then and that's

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Speaker 1: just a grains, it's a speck of sand or something.

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Speaker 1: It's it's extremely tiny, uh, you know, And those are

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Speaker 1: pieces of comets or asteroids that have hit the atmosphere.

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Speaker 1: The thing is they're traveling so fast, you know, we're

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Speaker 1: talking fifty sixty thousand miles an hour that as they're

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Speaker 1: coming through the atmosphere, it generates heat and that's what

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Speaker 1: makes them light up. Now, bigger ones, um you know,

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Speaker 1: up to about I don't know, thirty feet something like that,

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Speaker 1: and that's good size. Yeah, that's good size. They almost

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Speaker 1: always burn up in the atmosphere. What about like a

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Speaker 1: baseball size asteroid would that burn up to that would

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Speaker 1: burn up, but it would it would probably make a

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Speaker 1: pretty pretty bright flash in this guy, I would think,

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Speaker 1: so yeah, you would think it was like a nuke

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Speaker 1: detonated in the atmosphere. Yeah. And those happened somewhere on

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Speaker 1: Earth every day. A lot of times they aren't seen.

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Speaker 1: But back in December, over the Bearing Sea, there was

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Speaker 1: an asteroid about twenty feet twenty feet diameter or something

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Speaker 1: like that. It exploded over the Bearing Sea with I

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Speaker 1: think it was the equivalent of about twelve Hiroshima atomic bombs,

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Speaker 1: and nobody saw it. It was picked up by some

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Speaker 1: Earth monitoring satellites and some sensor systems, but it's such

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Speaker 1: a remote area and they would even saw the thing.

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Speaker 1: An asteroid the size of a football field three hundred

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Speaker 1: feet long. If it plowed into a city in Bombay

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Speaker 1: or someplace like that, would it take out that entire town? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: total destruction on some Oh my god. And the crater

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Speaker 1: itself would be how deep? Well, you know, there's the

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Speaker 1: best crater that we have is a crater called meteor

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Speaker 1: Crater Um in northern Arizona. Yeah, it's near you, right,

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Speaker 1: it's near me. Yeah. Then there many times, and it

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Speaker 1: happened about fifty thousand years ago, and it was about

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Speaker 1: half the size of a city block, maybe one hundred

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Speaker 1: and eighty two hundred feet something like that, and it

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Speaker 1: left a crater that's almost a mile wide and several

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Speaker 1: hundred feet deep. It gives you an idea. You can imagine,

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Speaker 1: you know, a metropolitan area that had suddenly had a

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Speaker 1: crater a mile wide and several hundred feet deep. Can

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Speaker 1: you get close enough to stand on the rim of

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Speaker 1: that crater. Oh sure, sure, could you fall into it? Well,

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Speaker 1: you could fall down. It's pretty steep. But it's not

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Speaker 1: roped off or anything, is it. No, No, No, it's

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Speaker 1: it's run as a national kind of a national landmark. Interestingly,

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Speaker 1: it's privately owned. It's not part of the park Service

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Speaker 1: or anything. Really. There's a yeah, but there's a very

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Speaker 1: nice visitor center and uh, you know, you can go

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Speaker 1: and take a tour and stand on the rim and

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Speaker 1: look through telescopes down to the to the bottom of

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Speaker 1: the crater. It's um, it's really exciting. Is it like

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Speaker 1: a gradual down to the bottom or you know, is

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Speaker 1: it like cut off like you're standing on top of

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Speaker 1: a building in New York and you look down and

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Speaker 1: you know, if you fall, you're gone. It's it's more

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Speaker 1: like an amphitheater. Oh. So it's got kind of like

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Speaker 1: a curve to it, Yeah, kind of kind of sloping

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Speaker 1: sloping walls. So if you fell into it, you really

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Speaker 1: wouldn't slide all the way down. Well ideally not George,

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Speaker 1: I might. Yeah. Well, that's that's pretty fascinating. Now, if

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Speaker 1: if one of these were to hit I mean, when

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Speaker 1: you're talking about one hundred and eighty feet wide, that's

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Speaker 1: not big for an asteroid. It's not that big. But

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Speaker 1: fortunately space is a pretty big, big place. I mean,

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Speaker 1: that's what they call it space. So these these things

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Speaker 1: that they don't hit us that often, um As I said,

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Speaker 1: the one that created me Year Crater happened about fifty

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Speaker 1: thousand years ago. There have been many since, but meteor

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Speaker 1: Crater was sort of well preserved. It was like it's

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Speaker 1: you know, it's in the Arizona High Desert, so it's

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Speaker 1: sort of like it had handling instructions, you know, store

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Speaker 1: in a cool, dry place, so that one is almost

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Speaker 1: perfect looking. But when that big happens, maybe every two

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Speaker 1: thousand years something like that. Gordon, what do you think

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Speaker 1: happened to the Solar system four and a half billion

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Speaker 1: years ago when it was formed? When you look at

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Speaker 1: the Moon, it is pocketed with craters? I mean all

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Speaker 1: over the place. What happened to it? And so would

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Speaker 1: we be if if we didn't have an atmosphere? That's true,

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Speaker 1: and I bet if we drained the oceans, you'd see

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Speaker 1: craters all over the place. You might they might be

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Speaker 1: filled in, but you know, there's there's hundreds of craters

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Speaker 1: that have been found, a lot of them you can't

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Speaker 1: really see, um, you know, they've kind of filled in

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Speaker 1: by glaciation, or they've been you know, flat, or they're

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Speaker 1: underneath the ocean. But yeah, you know, if you look

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Speaker 1: up in the Moon, and almost all of the craters

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Speaker 1: up there that you can see either through a telescope

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Speaker 1: or binoculars or whatever, have been caused by impacts. And

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Speaker 1: those are just the ones you can see from here.

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Speaker 1: And they must have been thousands of impacts, thousands of them,

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Speaker 1: other than millions. Where'd they come from? Well, they you know,

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Speaker 1: they're flying around in space and just kind of happened

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Speaker 1: to collide with the Moon or with Earth. Are the

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Speaker 1: other moons out there in the Solar System, Jupiter's fifty

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Speaker 1: and Mars's couple and stuff? Are they all pocketed this

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Speaker 1: way too? Oh yeah, all all the planets are well

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Speaker 1: that the gaseous planets like Jupiter, um, you know, and

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Speaker 1: asteroid hits one of those and it's just kind of absorbed. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: But but what it tells you is this Solar System

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Speaker 1: when it was forming was very very chaotic. Oh yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it remains so it's a chaotic place out there, George,

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Speaker 1: might there have been a planet that was close again

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Speaker 1: between Earth and Mars. The Moon's out there, and it

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Speaker 1: blew up and all these pieces went flying. Well, they

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Speaker 1: don't think that a planet actually blew up. They can't

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Speaker 1: come up with a physical process that we cause that

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Speaker 1: to happen. What they think is that protoplanets these kind

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Speaker 1: of you know, early in the Solar System formation, that

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Speaker 1: these protoplanets were running into each other. And in fact,

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Speaker 1: there's one theory that that's the reason we're tilted on

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Speaker 1: our axis, is that an extremely large protoplanet ran into

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Speaker 1: Earth billions of years ago and with such power that

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Speaker 1: it kind of kicked us off our axis. Are you

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Speaker 1: convinced that governments are on top of this potential problem, Well,

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Speaker 1: I think I think people in all the different countries

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Speaker 1: are the problem is that for a long time, there's

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Speaker 1: been what's known as the giggle factor. You know, people

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Speaker 1: scientists say, oh, you know, we need to study asteroids,

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Speaker 1: we need to look for asteroids, we need to find out,

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Speaker 1: you know, what to do if an asteroid is coming.

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Speaker 1: And people kind of at least especially thirty years ago,

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Speaker 1: so they kind of giggle a little bit. Well, you know,

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Speaker 1: that's not really serious, but I think there's an increasing

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Speaker 1: realization that, yeah, it is serious. You know. I think

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Speaker 1: what it could take too is god forbid, but an

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Speaker 1: asteroid hitting the planet. Hopefully it hits someplace where there

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Speaker 1: aren't fatalities, but it demonstrates the possibility of what could happen.

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Speaker 1: And maybe there's a tsunami that you know, hits a

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Speaker 1: few shorelines but nobody gets hurt. Do you think that

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Speaker 1: would make people wake up? Well, you know, we spoke

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Speaker 1: earlier about the one that hit Chili against Russia in

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Speaker 1: twenty thirteen and fifteen hundred people, and that was an

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Speaker 1: eye opener. And I've had people in Nassas say jokingly,

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Speaker 1: of course, boy, we could use one of those every

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Speaker 1: five years, just to keep people, you know, on their

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Speaker 1: toes and keep the funding coming. Yeah. But I bet

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Speaker 1: if you went out and pulled Americans about that, ninety

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Speaker 1: percent of them wouldn't even know about it. Probably not,

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Speaker 1: probably not. But that's what we're trying to do here.

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Speaker 1: George is, well, I know, enlighten them, I know, but

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Speaker 1: but you're convinced governments are on top of this though.

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Speaker 1: I mean you're secure enough to say that. I think

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Speaker 1: they're on top of it to the to the to

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Speaker 1: the extent that they are funding programs. You know, you've

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Speaker 1: got the European Space Agency, You've got the Japan Space Agency,

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Speaker 1: You've got Russia and China, and they all have their

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Speaker 1: their AEO programs, Nearer's object programs. The United States is

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Speaker 1: still the leader in that, however, Um the amount that

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Speaker 1: we spend on what they call planetary defense, which is

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Speaker 1: asteroid tracking and all that sort of stuff, it's it's

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Speaker 1: really minuscule. I think it was one hundred and fifty

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Speaker 1: million for fiscal twenty nineteen. But that's less than one

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Speaker 1: percent of NASA's budget. And if any compared the one

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Speaker 1: hundred and fifty million we spend on planetary defense to

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Speaker 1: the what almost seven hundred billion we spend on conventional

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Speaker 1: defense programs, less than a drop in the bucket. If

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Speaker 1: that six mile asteroid was coming this way? Would governments

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Speaker 1: tell us about it? I don't think they could help,

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Speaker 1: but tell us about it. I mean that's always been

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Speaker 1: a question. Well, would they keep it secret like they

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Speaker 1: did in the moveroom again? Yeah? Too much panic? Yeah, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I don't think they could, because when you detect an

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Speaker 1: asteroid that looks like it might be headed towards Earth,

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Speaker 1: you have to have a lot of follow up observations

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Speaker 1: to really hone it's in its orbit, you know, to

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Speaker 1: really determine you know, where this thing is going. And

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Speaker 1: that involves people around the world, some amateur astronomers, some professionals,

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Speaker 1: it involves other governments. I'm just not sure you could

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Speaker 1: keep that secret. Well, that's a very strong possibility indeed,

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Speaker 1: But my gosh, it is frightening. I mean, what would

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Speaker 1: you do if you were told a six smile wide

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Speaker 1: asteroid Gordon's coming this way, they'll hit us in two weeks.

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Speaker 1: What would you do? Well, if it was coming straight

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Speaker 1: for Phoenix, I guess I would kiss my asteroid goodbye.

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