Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and I love all things tech. And
Speaker 1: as you listen to this, I will be returning to Atlanta,
Speaker 1: which likely will be under a storm cloud of rain again,
Speaker 1: having spent a week in Hawaii. So because it's gonna
Speaker 1: take me a little bit of time to get back
Speaker 1: into the swing of things, we're gonna listen to a
Speaker 1: classic episode. But don't worry, brand new material will be
Speaker 1: coming out very soon. For today, however, we're going to
Speaker 1: listen to a classic episode titled Can We Stop and
Speaker 1: Asteroid From Hitting Earth? And the reason I picked this
Speaker 1: rerun is because I've been getting a lot of notifications
Speaker 1: from a particular news sign outlet that seems to have
Speaker 1: an update on potential disaster about asteroids on a daily basis.
Speaker 1: I have a feeling that they're being a bit alarmist.
Speaker 1: It is something to be concerned about, because we're talking
Speaker 1: about a contingency that would be truly disastrous, but maybe
Speaker 1: not something that we need a daily update of. Maybe
Speaker 1: it will happen tomorrow. Levels So Chris Palette and I
Speaker 1: sit down to talk about what we would do in
Speaker 1: the event of an asteroid heading towards Earth and what
Speaker 1: what are our various plans might be in order to
Speaker 1: prevent that from becoming a worldwide catastrophe. Let's sit back
Speaker 1: and listen. Asteroids and preventing a collision with Earth, and
Speaker 1: what sort of tech would be involved with that. And
Speaker 1: this comes courtesy of some Facebook requests and email requests.
Speaker 1: I can't believe that we had people send us multiple
Speaker 1: people sent us this request, which seems really specific for
Speaker 1: more than one person. But hey, we're going to do it, okay.
Speaker 1: And um you know, if you have seen the documentary Armageddon,
Speaker 1: you remember that we shot Bruce Willis up into space
Speaker 1: um with Ben Affleck and some other folks like Steve
Speaker 1: Bussemmy to scare an asteroid out of the way, because
Speaker 1: Steve Busumy is a scary guy. Uh wait, I think
Speaker 1: I might be. I think I might be a little
Speaker 1: off track. Oh well, anyway, the premise of the movie
Speaker 1: was that there was this enormous asteroid the Signs of Texas, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, not that guy. You yeah, that that's
Speaker 1: that's a reference that goes over everyone's head because no one,
Speaker 1: none of our listeners have ever played the game Asteroid.
Speaker 1: What any really some of you have played Asteroids, and
Speaker 1: maybe maybe maybe our our buddy Floyd the truck driver,
Speaker 1: he might 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 of uh minors essentially to shoot
Speaker 1: up into space, land on the asteroid and plant a
Speaker 1: nuclear device on the asteroid that will blow it up
Speaker 1: to tiny little bits and save the Earth. And so
Speaker 1: we want to address this um this first. So let's
Speaker 1: let's get this out 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 is 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. It'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 happened 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 mass of impact that that altered
Speaker 1: the Earth's climate, and dinosaurs did not have air conditioning,
Speaker 1: so they were pretty much doomed. Doomed. I figured it
Speaker 1: was their debaucherous lifestyle and it was unsustainable. Now you're
Speaker 1: thinking of Rome, right, you know, I get this confused
Speaker 1: a lot. Yeah, well, you know, if you've ever seen
Speaker 1: a t rex in a toga never mind, So so
Speaker 1: why would this plan not work with destroying an asteroid
Speaker 1: with a nuclear device. Let's assume that, for for argument's sake,
Speaker 1: that somehow you managed to find a nuclear device capable
Speaker 1: of breaking up a Texas size asteroid while it was
Speaker 1: hurtling towards Earth. And keep in mind this was this
Speaker 1: this asteroid was close to Earth by the time it
Speaker 1: blows up. Otherwise it's not nearly as dramatic an ending. Right,
Speaker 1: of course, you've gotta have it close enough to the
Speaker 1: Earth where people are starting to really freak out. Oh
Speaker 1: and how long exactly did they have to prepare for this?
Speaker 1: It was like a couple of days or something like that.
Speaker 1: It was crazy short time period. We would yeah, anything
Speaker 1: that's anything that that size we would be able to
Speaker 1: spot between Mars and Jupiter, giving us years, literally years
Speaker 1: to prepare it would not be a last minute thing.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the myths that movies perpetuate is
Speaker 1: that you know, you have some uh some some amateur
Speaker 1: astronomer out in the middle of nowhere just looking up
Speaker 1: and saying, that's weird that star wasn't there yesterday. And
Speaker 1: then and then that information slowly filters its way to
Speaker 1: some official source which immediately clamps down and keeps it
Speaker 1: all secret so that nobody knows that doom is on
Speaker 1: the way until it leaks to the media causing a panic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that we don't want to cause a panic. That's definitely
Speaker 1: Hollywood related. So why would blowing up the asteroid not
Speaker 1: be a good idea? Well, that asteroids moving at a
Speaker 1: really fast speed and the nuclear warhead is not going
Speaker 1: to slow it down. Okay, so you've still got this
Speaker 1: this material moving at an incredible speed, and the mass
Speaker 1: isn't gone. You haven't destroyed the mass, You've just spread
Speaker 1: it out some. So instead of it being a one
Speaker 1: massive asteroid hitting the Earth, it's a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: them hitting the Earth. And it's like the difference between
Speaker 1: getting hit by a slug and getting hit by um
Speaker 1: shotgun shot. We've just spread out the area of impact
Speaker 1: is what you've done. This is mission control. We just
Speaker 1: wanted to say, oops, yeah are bad? So um so yeah,
Speaker 1: here's here's why all this stuff would really work in
Speaker 1: the real world. All Right, We've got lots of powerful
Speaker 1: telescopes pointing in all sorts of directions. Now, so the
Speaker 1: the the myths of the amateur astronomer who detects uh
Speaker 1: something the size the size that's in depicted an armageddon
Speaker 1: is really that's that's busted because it would be detected
Speaker 1: by much more powerful telescopes much earlier. And um that
Speaker 1: information would go to uh it's kind of a clearing
Speaker 1: house for near Earth objects that could potentially cause harm.
Speaker 1: 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 a
Speaker 1: higher forty meters or across or larger. And uh, the
Speaker 1: problem is that smaller objects could cause significant harm. But
Speaker 1: finding those objects is a lot trickier because space is big. Really, yeah,
Speaker 1: and in relation to space, fifty yard across asteroid or
Speaker 1: is nothing. Yeah, it's it's you know, you you it's
Speaker 1: it's impossible to exaggerate how tiny that is. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like a it's like a germ on a bug. And
Speaker 1: and and you happen to be like a blue whale.
Speaker 1: That's kind of and even then that's not even close that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't get my mind around it. That's that's how
Speaker 1: it is. So so all right, So nuking a an
Speaker 1: asteroid directly, as in trying to blow it up, is
Speaker 1: not a feasible option. So let's let's assume for the
Speaker 1: moment that we have developed technology that helps us that's
Speaker 1: improved our ability to detect asteroids to the point where
Speaker 1: any asteroid that could potentially cause significant harm to people
Speaker 1: on Earth, to life on Earth, that you have somehow
Speaker 1: managed to to create the technology to detect it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, and it's and it's important to do so
Speaker 1: because it is probable that we will be hit by
Speaker 1: something largish again, yeah, at some point. Essentially, like it's
Speaker 1: worthwhile to to develop this technology exactly. So, yeah, the
Speaker 1: the risk might be low, but the impact would be huge.
Speaker 1: So you know, even taking a low risk perspective of it,
Speaker 1: the actual impact would be so enormous that it is
Speaker 1: a good argument and a lot of people have made
Speaker 1: this argument to um to invest in technology to help
Speaker 1: prevent it from happening. I'd like to interrupt this particular
Speaker 1: podcast about potential disaster in order to take a moment
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsors. Let's assume that we have improved
Speaker 1: technology so we can actually detect these asteroids from a
Speaker 1: pretty good distance. Like I said, it might be years
Speaker 1: before they get here, or we're gonna need that time
Speaker 1: because we're gonna need that time to develop the actual
Speaker 1: vehicles that the tools that we're going to use in
Speaker 1: order to intercept that asteroid. So by intercepting it, what
Speaker 1: could we do to to avoid a collision. Well, the
Speaker 1: real key is deflecting the asteroid. You just have to
Speaker 1: move it a tiny bit, especially the further out you go,
Speaker 1: the further out you go, the tinier that that adjustment
Speaker 1: needs to be, because by the time it gets to
Speaker 1: the Earth, it's going to be the distance is going
Speaker 1: to be much more enormous. You know. Just think about
Speaker 1: like you're walking to have a friend standing across from
Speaker 1: you across the football field, and you're both facing each
Speaker 1: other exactly. Now, imagine that your friend just turns slightly
Speaker 1: a little bit to the left and starts walking forward. Well,
Speaker 1: from a distance, it looks like there that your friend
Speaker 1: may actually meet up with you once they get all
Speaker 1: the way across the football field. But as they continue,
Speaker 1: you see that they're getting further and further away until
Speaker 1: they reach essentially a point parallel to you, and they
Speaker 1: are a good distance from you right there, further down
Speaker 1: the field, like further to the right or to the left,
Speaker 1: whichever way that the person turned. Um, that's kind of
Speaker 1: the idea here, is that if you can catch an
Speaker 1: asteroid early enough and deflect it just a couple of degrees,
Speaker 1: then you've solved the problem because it's going to miss
Speaker 1: the Earth by millions of miles. But how do you
Speaker 1: deflect it. Well, there's a lot of different options. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I read uh too. Specifically that seemed to be the
Speaker 1: options people are thinking of most like what's that um.
Speaker 1: One of them, ironically enough, was to use nuclear devices, Yes,
Speaker 1: but not to destroy, but to nudge. Right. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: idea is being that you would you would detonate the
Speaker 1: device over the asteroid. This would actually um cause a
Speaker 1: couple of things to happen, and it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: interesting that again that we're talking about something. You know,
Speaker 1: you might say, hey, you just said nuking is bad. Well,
Speaker 1: in this case, what would happen is that you would
Speaker 1: uh create an uh a nuclear radiation would create this
Speaker 1: uh this vaporizing energy and vaporize the surface or a
Speaker 1: section of the surface of the asteroid. Now that's going
Speaker 1: to cause that part of the surface to eject material
Speaker 1: into space. And you know, for a react action, there's
Speaker 1: an equal and opposite reaction, so that ejection from space
Speaker 1: is actually going to act as a pushing force on
Speaker 1: the asteroid. And it's tiny, but that's all you need necessary.
Speaker 1: You know, that might be all you need to move
Speaker 1: that asteroid out of the pathway of the Earth. So yeah, um,
Speaker 1: you're just using it again to to give the asteroid
Speaker 1: a little push. Actually, most of the the options I've
Speaker 1: seen are some variation on pushing the asteroid. It's just
Speaker 1: lots of different potential ways we could do that. Well,
Speaker 1: that's true. I did read UH yet. To be fair,
Speaker 1: I did read of the possibility of using an inert
Speaker 1: UH device nothing that explodes, but basically a bullet if
Speaker 1: you will, to shove, using us kinetic force to push
Speaker 1: the asteroid out of the way. Yeah, that is another
Speaker 1: potential UM solution, although it's it's again one of those
Speaker 1: that that has its own set of difficulties. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that is what I've also heard, where you're just
Speaker 1: using a kinetic force to to tap the asteroid out
Speaker 1: of the way. And it's it's important to note that. Um.
Speaker 1: What we really can't stress how much detection and identifying
Speaker 1: the the objects path, how important that is because um,
Speaker 1: there there's an effect called the Yarkovsky effect. Did you
Speaker 1: read about this, um, As the object gets close to
Speaker 1: the Sun, closer to the Sun. Um, And I'm not
Speaker 1: talking about directly on a path too, but you know,
Speaker 1: as it gets closer and closer to the Sun in
Speaker 1: the center of our solar system, it's going to heat
Speaker 1: up UM and for larger object it doesn't matter so
Speaker 1: much UM. But according UH to an article that I
Speaker 1: um than an article I read, the Arkovsky effect basically
Speaker 1: means that once the the object starts to heat up,
Speaker 1: the heat can affect its path. It can basically started
Speaker 1: to move in a slightly different direction. So you need
Speaker 1: to be able to We would need to be able
Speaker 1: to know exactly where the or as least as close
Speaker 1: enough to UH where the object is going to be
Speaker 1: so that we can accurately hit it with something if
Speaker 1: we're going to try to use a brute force method
Speaker 1: of moving the the asteroid out of the way, And
Speaker 1: a lot of the attempts to move asteroids may depend
Speaker 1: upon sun, the sunlight and the Sun's power because UM,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of different options that would harness
Speaker 1: the power of the Sun in order to create a
Speaker 1: pulling effect or pushing effect on the the asteroid. For example,
Speaker 1: there's one UM one possible technique where we would coat
Speaker 1: the asteroid with white and dark coating like paint or
Speaker 1: dust or whatever, and that would cause it to move
Speaker 1: because the Sun's energy would actually push against the asteroid.
Speaker 1: And if we've 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: It's it's millions of miles off course from hitting the Earth. Um. Similarly,
Speaker 1: there were suggestions that maybe we could create a solar
Speaker 1: sail that would attach We would use a like a
Speaker 1: probe to attach a solar sail to an asteroid, and
Speaker 1: the solar sale would catch the Sun's energy and be
Speaker 1: propelled by the solar wind, essentially to pull the asteroid
Speaker 1: again outside of its pathway. UM. That that's kind of
Speaker 1: a far fetched one, really. I mean, it's definitely a
Speaker 1: lot more challenging than say, coading and asteroid with a
Speaker 1: light colored material. Um. But then there's also the idea
Speaker 1: of using a net, an enormous net to encapsulate the
Speaker 1: the the asteroid, and the net would again act as
Speaker 1: almost like a solar sale. It would it would react
Speaker 1: against you know, the Sun. The Sun's energy would push
Speaker 1: against the net, which again would alter the course of
Speaker 1: the asteroid. UM. Mirrors are another potential UH solution where
Speaker 1: you you launch a device that is going to deploy
Speaker 1: mirrors around the asteroid to direct sunlight to specific points
Speaker 1: in the asteroid to again push it out of the way. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: everyone knows that asteroids are vein, so if you, you know,
Speaker 1: put the mirrors on the far side of the Earth,
Speaker 1: they'll go toward the mirrors and gold my best side.
Speaker 1: I look good. Um. But then a couple of other elements.
Speaker 1: There are a couple other ways of nudging an asteroid
Speaker 1: all the way that don't involve sunlight at all. Uh.
Speaker 1: And one of them, 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 going to
Speaker 1: work for another two years or three years. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's kind of scary to think about, but that's true. So, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: you have to figure away where you have this this device,
Speaker 1: and it has to be able to carry enough fuel
Speaker 1: so that it can actually deploy properly. A lot of
Speaker 1: people suggest that this kind of approach would be best
Speaker 1: if it were already space born. So in other words,
Speaker 1: we already had some sort of launching platform in space
Speaker 1: so that the the individual probes would not need so
Speaker 1: much fuel to both escape the arts gravity and land
Speaker 1: on an asteroid and then propel it away. Um that
Speaker 1: that does prose a problem. But then another one is
Speaker 1: the gravity tractor. Ah. Yes, and I when I looked
Speaker 1: up the gravity tractor, I had to check just a
Speaker 1: moment ago and yes, someone has named their band gravity Tractor.
Speaker 1: Good for them, Yeah, lead singer John Dear nice, thank you. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the gravity tractor is fascinating, um because this
Speaker 1: is essentially using a different body and the gravity of
Speaker 1: another body and body that we would launch into space
Speaker 1: to pull the asteroid away without even I mean there's
Speaker 1: not the point here is not even to touch the asteroid.
Speaker 1: It's to get something near enough to it to affect
Speaker 1: um the asteroids path with another gravitational field, right, because
Speaker 1: you getta remember everything in the universe exerts a gravitational
Speaker 1: pull on everything else. It's just that that pull is
Speaker 1: dependent upon distance and mass and lots of other stuff.
Speaker 1: But they you know, so if you were able to
Speaker 1: put a massive enough object close enough to the asteroid,
Speaker 1: you could alter its pathway. There is there are some
Speaker 1: problems with the gravity tractor, really. Yeah. One of them
Speaker 1: is that you have to figure out are a well,
Speaker 1: you want the gravity tractor to pull the asteroid away
Speaker 1: from the path of collision. You don't want the asteroid
Speaker 1: to pull the gravity tractor into the path of collision.
Speaker 1: So so that means that you would have to have
Speaker 1: some sort of propulsion system aboard the gravity tractor to
Speaker 1: make little course corrections and continue to gently pull the
Speaker 1: asteroid out of its pathway. Well, if you have propulsion,
Speaker 1: then there's the possibility of that propulsion that you're going
Speaker 1: to when you fire your rockets to to give it
Speaker 1: a boost that forced me push against the asteroid, thus
Speaker 1: negating the gravity pull that you are exerting upon it.
Speaker 1: So essentially you're getting a net zero result because that
Speaker 1: you're you're pulling it out with gravity, but you're pushing
Speaker 1: on it with your propulsion system. So finding a way
Speaker 1: where you could create some sort of gravity tractor where
Speaker 1: the propulsion system would not actually push against the asteroid
Speaker 1: itself is would be part of the solution. Plus this
Speaker 1: would be really really expensive. It's a much more costly
Speaker 1: approach and not necessarily uh the most easy to implement
Speaker 1: compared to other approaches. So I don't know that this
Speaker 1: is necessarily likely to happen. I mean, if if enough
Speaker 1: research goes into it where it proves that this is
Speaker 1: the most effective way, then sure I can see it happening,
Speaker 1: just because people would finally say all right, well you
Speaker 1: know we have to invest in it, because we can't
Speaker 1: we can't just play roulette all our existence. We have
Speaker 1: to prepare for this, 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 twenty tons in order
Speaker 1: to safely to you know, effectively to I should say,
Speaker 1: not safely effectively to 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. They launched 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. So I've got another
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 kind of cool.
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb actually wrote about this. He has a great
Speaker 1: article on the Our Our Discovery news site called top
Speaker 1: ten ways to stop an asteroid, and one of them
Speaker 1: is talking about using them robots that would actually essentially
Speaker 1: kind of chew up the asteroid and then shoot out
Speaker 1: the tiny bits of asteroid uh into space electromagnetically UM
Speaker 1: and essentially disperse the asteroid while it still really really
Speaker 1: really far away from the Earth, because keep in mind,
Speaker 1: if it's really far away from the Earth, then not
Speaker 1: all of that mass is going to hit the Earth
Speaker 1: the way it would in the beginning of UM the
Speaker 1: or or at the end of ARM again rather. So, Yeah,
Speaker 1: these these robots eating poop. They eat asteroids and they
Speaker 1: poop asteroid dust. I am. I wanted to go there,
Speaker 1: and I said, no, I'm not gonna say it. You're
Speaker 1: not gonna say they eating poop. Nope, But you did
Speaker 1: it for me, so I could see the look on
Speaker 1: your face and I knew that you were thinking that.
Speaker 1: So I was like, I'm going to do it. Chris
Speaker 1: and I have more to say about how we get
Speaker 1: our asteroids in gear. After this quick break. There are
Speaker 1: some talks about private companies actually investing in this UM
Speaker 1: sort of technology, this sort of approach UM, which is
Speaker 1: kind of cool that you know, it's not just not
Speaker 1: just depending upon for mental agencies that have lots of
Speaker 1: different you know, things pulling on them. Um. I did
Speaker 1: read that scientists don't seem to believe that there's anything
Speaker 1: likely to hit us in the next hundred years or
Speaker 1: so right at the earliest, well at least nothing that
Speaker 1: we can see. Yeah, exactly. So there's still the possibility
Speaker 1: that something smaller it could hit and still cause massive damage.
Speaker 1: It's just not gonna necessarily cause global damage, but it
Speaker 1: could cause catastrophic local damage, you know. Um. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: some interesting organizations out there that are dedicated to trying
Speaker 1: to fix this problem. There's one called the B six
Speaker 1: one to Foundation, uh, and they their goal is to
Speaker 1: have a workable solution by 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 Holton, Paul and Storm. You know,
Speaker 1: um will be eaten. There's there's this kind of Twitter
Speaker 1: rottie that I have formed up and uh and so um.
Speaker 1: He often will chat with those folks in interesting and
Speaker 1: entertaining ways. And he's and he shares a lot of
Speaker 1: really cool science news through his Twitter feed as well.
Speaker 1: I showed you that that amazing photo of the Space
Speaker 1: Shuttle Endeavor across the sun. Yeah. Yeah, that was that
Speaker 1: was courtesy of of Mr Phil Plate. So yeah, he's
Speaker 1: written extensively about this, and he's he's talked about it
Speaker 1: in his 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 Armageddon, 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 an attempt
Speaker 1: to understand them better. Um yeah, I did read that. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, although we may not necessarily be ready to
Speaker 1: destroy one just yet that scientists even alter its path
Speaker 1: right right, Um, But scientists are considering the possibility if uh,
Speaker 1: you know, since they are tracking some asteroids that are
Speaker 1: coming near to Earth and near and again space is big,
Speaker 1: so near as a relative term. Um, But they're talking
Speaker 1: about the idea of visiting some near Earth asteroids with
Speaker 1: the assibility of mining, you know, taking some samples of
Speaker 1: the rocks that are there on the asteroid to get
Speaker 1: a better understanding of elements in the universe and bringing
Speaker 1: them back to Earth, which uh is a really cool idea.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't imagine they would send people to
Speaker 1: do that. Um. So the idea of doing the complex
Speaker 1: calculation necessary to hit a moving object you know that's
Speaker 1: coming around, um, take samples and then return to Earth.
Speaker 1: That's that's really fascinating stuff. And that's not exactly the
Speaker 1: same topic. But I think it's a really cool application
Speaker 1: of science and hope that if they can do that
Speaker 1: that it will be fruitful and we'll learn a lot
Speaker 1: from it. And that wraps up this classic episode all
Speaker 1: of tech stuff. Hope you guys enjoyed it. You know,
Speaker 1: it was always fun to talk about these sort of
Speaker 1: topics with Chris Palette keeping the ear out for Mr Pallette.
Speaker 1: I think we might be able to lure him back
Speaker 1: in for a very special episode later this year. No promises,
Speaker 1: but there is a possibility. And it's always a pleasure
Speaker 1: to have Chris in the studio. And it's been a
Speaker 1: long time since we sat across from each other and
Speaker 1: and did the old podcast thing. So here's hoping we
Speaker 1: can make that happen. In the meantime, if you guys
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for future topics for tech Stuff, or
Speaker 1: maybe there's a special guest co host you would love
Speaker 1: to have on the show, maybe someone who's been on before,
Speaker 1: or someone you would like to have here as a
Speaker 1: person to you know, stop me from chatting all the time.
Speaker 1: Let me know, send me a message on Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle for both of those is tech Stuff H
Speaker 1: s W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How
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