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Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Science Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hoor

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Speaker 1: Hey cham and today we're talking about asteroids. What exactly

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Speaker 1: are they? Should we go out there and mind them

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Speaker 1: or is one of them going to crash into Earth

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Speaker 1: and wipe us out. We're going to be talking to

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Speaker 1: one of the most famous astronomers on the planet about this,

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Speaker 1: Who's going to step us through the nuances of how

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Speaker 1: asteroids form, what it would be like to step on one,

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Speaker 1: and what the most valuable resource in them actually is.

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Speaker 1: So get your asteroids and gear as we tackle the

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Speaker 1: meaty or topic of space rocks enjoying. Hey everyone. I

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Speaker 1: don't know about you, but I like planet Earth and

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Speaker 1: I'm not in a big hurry to leave it. But

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Speaker 1: it does seem that at the rate we're going, we

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Speaker 1: might run out of things here, which is why billionaires

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Speaker 1: and space enthusiasts have proposed maybe goin shopping out there

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Speaker 1: in the asteroid belt. I also like our planet enough

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Speaker 1: that I don't want to see anything happen to it,

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Speaker 1: like getting hit by an asteroid. So basically I had

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Speaker 1: a lot of asteroid questions to answer them, I thought

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Speaker 1: I'd reach out to one of the most well known

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Speaker 1: astronomers on the planet. Doctor Phil Plait Doctor Plate, is

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Speaker 1: the creator of the website Bad Astronomy, as well as

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Speaker 1: the author of several books, including Death from Disguise, a

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Speaker 1: fun survey of all the ways things from space can

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Speaker 1: kill us, including asteroids.

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Speaker 2: He also wrote Under.

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Speaker 1: Alien Skies about what it would be like to visit

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Speaker 1: other parts of the universe, like an asteroid. So I

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Speaker 1: had three questions for doctor Plate. Number one, what exactly

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Speaker 1: is an asteroid? It turns out there's a lot of

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Speaker 1: people get wrong about that. Number two, is an asteroid

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Speaker 1: going to hit the Earth and why it was out?

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Speaker 1: And three should we mine the asteroid belt? It turns

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Speaker 1: out there's more than just rocks and metals out there.

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Speaker 1: We'll start with the first question, what exactly is an asteroid?

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Speaker 1: Here's my conversation with doctor Phil Plate. Well, thank you

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Speaker 1: doctor Plate for joining us.

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Speaker 3: Oh my pleasure. It's nice to see you and hear you.

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Speaker 3: I suppose hear you. Well.

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Speaker 1: I think we're both not enough that everyone knows what

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Speaker 1: we look like, or can know what we look like

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Speaker 1: with a simple search.

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Speaker 3: I'm not too hard to picture, you know, little aged, balding,

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Speaker 3: bearded white guy.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you've seen me.

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Speaker 1: Well, you famously read a book called Death from the

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Speaker 1: Skies in which you talk about, among other things, the

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Speaker 1: possibility of an asteroid hitting the Earth.

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Speaker 2: We'll get into that, but.

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Speaker 1: I guess maybe for people who are not familiar, what

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Speaker 1: is technically an asteroid?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, this is one of those questions where

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Speaker 3: it's like this is really easy to ask and super

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Speaker 3: hard to answer. When you think of an asteroid, you

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Speaker 3: probably think of a you know, big rock in space

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Speaker 3: that's floating around orbiting the Sun. But it gets complicated.

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Speaker 2: That's not the definition of it.

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Speaker 3: Well, there's no real definition. There's not really a size

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Speaker 3: on these things. The biggest ones are a few hundred

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Speaker 3: kilometers across or miles if you're an American, but there's

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Speaker 3: no sort of lower size limit to them. You could

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Speaker 3: think of something a meter across, the size of a

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Speaker 3: chair as an asteroid, and that's not wrong. But if

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Speaker 3: it's the size of a grain of sand, I don't

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Speaker 3: know what you would call that necessarily a meteoroid, but

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Speaker 3: it's still kind of an asteroid. So that's what these

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Speaker 3: things are. You know. I wouldn't call something the size

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Speaker 3: of a grape an asteroid, but.

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Speaker 2: It kind of is kind of that's what happens.

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Speaker 3: You don't have a definition.

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Speaker 2: It's a like a vibe. You go in by vibes.

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Speaker 1: For the definition of asteroids, Yeah, yes, there is no

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Speaker 1: clear definition of what an asteroid is. I mean, it

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Speaker 1: basically means space rock, but not always. If the rock

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Speaker 1: is mostly made of ice, then astronomers call it a

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Speaker 1: or If the rocks are small enough, they call it

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Speaker 1: space dust. And if the rock is on t way

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Speaker 1: to Earth, they might call it a meteority. Now, the

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Speaker 1: size of asteroids vary according to what scientists call an

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Speaker 1: inverse law, meaning the bigger an asteroid is.

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Speaker 2: The rarer it is.

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Speaker 1: For example, really really big asteroids about one thousand kilometers wide.

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Speaker 1: There's one it's called series asteroids about one hundred or

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Speaker 1: more kilometers wide. There are about two hundred of them.

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Speaker 1: But smaller asteroids there are a lot.

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Speaker 3: As they get bigger, there are a fewer of them,

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Speaker 3: which is just kind of how nature operates. And it

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Speaker 3: turns out bigger than about one hundred meters you know,

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Speaker 3: football field sized. There are probably a billion of them

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Speaker 3: orbiting between Mars and Jupiter, which is a lot. But

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Speaker 3: if you say how many are bigger than a meter across.

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Speaker 3: I heave't no, it's hundreds of billions, trillions. I don't

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Speaker 3: even know.

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Speaker 1: There are a lot of asteroids out there. But before

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Speaker 1: you get the idea that space is full of rocks

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Speaker 1: flying all over the place, kind of like that asteroid

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Speaker 1: field and solo flu, the Millennium falcon through and the

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Speaker 1: Empire strikes back, you should know two things. First, space

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Speaker 1: is big.

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Speaker 3: And the thing is there are so many of them,

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Speaker 3: and you think, my heavens Empire strikes back. You know,

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Speaker 3: if I can quote what is now an.

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Speaker 2: Ancient movie, let's not get into how the artful.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, you have a space ship and it's going through

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Speaker 3: an asteroid belt and they're asteroids everywhere, and it's like, no,

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Speaker 3: it's not like that. In fact, when you look at

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Speaker 3: how much space is between Mars and Jupiter, and it's

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Speaker 3: you know, it's a several hundred million kilometers between them.

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Speaker 3: And a friend of mine who studies asteroids actually told

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Speaker 3: me this that if you take all of the one

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Speaker 3: hundred meter sized asteroids a hundred meters, you know, that's decent,

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Speaker 3: and you stand on one in the asteroid belt. If

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Speaker 3: you were to spread them out evenly, you would not

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Speaker 3: be able to see another asteroid with your naked eye. Whoa,

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Speaker 3: they would all be so far away they'd be too

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Speaker 3: faint to see. They're actually really far apart.

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Speaker 1: Wow, it's pretty rare in the Solar System. It seems

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Speaker 1: to run into one an asteroid.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and it just depends on what you mean, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 3: there's zillions of them, so they're not rare, but they're

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Speaker 3: so few and far between because of the just vast

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Speaker 3: amount of space out there that you could go and

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Speaker 3: travel to Jupiter and back thousands of times and never

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Speaker 3: get even close enough to one to see.

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Speaker 1: So there are hundreds of millions of asteroids out there,

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Speaker 1: but space is so big you would rarely run into one,

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Speaker 1: even in the area of the Solar System called the

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Speaker 1: asteroid Belt. And the other thing is that even though

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Speaker 1: there are huge asteroids out there and hundreds of millions

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Speaker 1: of little asteroids, they actually don't add up too very much.

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Speaker 1: Do you have a sense of how much asteroid mass

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Speaker 1: is out there?

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Speaker 3: The weird thing is if you add them all up together,

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Speaker 3: you don't get a very big object. Even though there

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Speaker 3: could be a trillion little ones. The biggest ones really

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Speaker 3: eat up most of the space, and so you wind

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Speaker 3: up getting something that's actually quite small. It's just a

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Speaker 3: couple of thousand kilometers across what's smaller maybe than Earth's moon,

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Speaker 3: or maybe the size of Earth's moon, something like that.

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Speaker 3: Although there are lots of them, they don't add up

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Speaker 3: too much.

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Speaker 1: Interesting, and you're talking about all the asteroids in the

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Speaker 1: asteroid belt.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and I could include the entire Solar System, although

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Speaker 3: it gets more complicated if you go out past Neptune.

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Speaker 3: There are these bodies out there that we call the

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Speaker 3: Kuiper Belt and the ort Cloud, which is comets. There

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Speaker 3: are objects that orbit the Sun beyond Neptune, and those

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Speaker 3: get pretty big. I mean, you're talking about Pluto. There

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Speaker 3: are probably a handful of objects roughly the size of Pluto,

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Speaker 3: and so these are actually decent size. Those would add up, oh,

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Speaker 3: I don't know, twice the volume, ten times the volume

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Speaker 3: of the Moon. So you're still not talking about a planet.

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Speaker 3: I don't think. You know, it's certainly not Jupiter or

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Speaker 3: that sort of thing. You've got a lot of these things,

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Speaker 3: but they're small.

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Speaker 1: Oh, that's fascinating. It doesn't seem like a lot. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's amazing, Okay, The last cool thing about asteroids before

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Speaker 1: we get to the questions of whether we should mind

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Speaker 1: them or whether one of them is going to hit

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Speaker 1: the Earth and kill us all, is that asteroids are

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Speaker 1: not as solid as some people would think. According to

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Speaker 1: doctor Plate, they can be kind of crumply.

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Speaker 3: Some of them are. And this gets weird. Oh, this

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Speaker 3: gets so weird. This is a relatively new concept. Are

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Speaker 3: there rubbel piles? So instead of being a solid object

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Speaker 3: like a rock in your backyard, a chunk of rock,

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Speaker 3: there are actually thousands or millions or billions of smaller rocks,

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Speaker 3: tiny ones up to maybe the size of boulders, that

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Speaker 3: are all held together by their very weak gravity. What

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Speaker 3: and so it's like having a bag of rocks, but

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Speaker 3: you remove the bag and what you're lift with is

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Speaker 3: just the gravity holding them together. And a lot of

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Speaker 3: the smaller ones, and we think the majority of smaller

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Speaker 3: asteroids are these rubble piles. So that's what they look like.

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Speaker 3: When you see pictures of them, you're like, yeah, that's

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Speaker 3: actually not a solid surface, that is just a bunch

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Speaker 3: of rocks.

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Speaker 2: Well, what was happened? If you went there and he

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Speaker 2: stood on this, would you think.

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Speaker 3: Well, that's a good question. The thing is, these rocks,

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Speaker 3: as we found, are very friable, which means they are

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Speaker 3: incredibly fragile, and if you were to hold one in

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Speaker 3: your hand, you could just crush it. There's very little

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Speaker 3: structural strength to these things, and we found that out

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Speaker 3: when a spacecraft, and I want to say it was

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Speaker 3: Osiris Rex, went up to the asteroid and hit it

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Speaker 3: at a very slow speed to collect material. It had

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Speaker 3: a sample collector, and the idea was that it would

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Speaker 3: go up to the asteroid and it would blow rocks

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Speaker 3: off and stuff and collect them into this collector. It

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Speaker 3: hit the asteroid and actually kept going. It penetrated down

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Speaker 3: about a half a meter into the asteroid itself, which

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Speaker 3: was a surprise, and they had to like break and

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Speaker 3: reverse thrust and get it back out of there. They

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Speaker 3: thought it might penetrate a little bit, but I think

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Speaker 3: they were surprised by how much. So, Yeah, if you

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Speaker 3: were to visit one of these things in a spaceship

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Speaker 3: and say I'm going to jump from my ship and

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Speaker 3: land on this asteroid feet first, you might just sink

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Speaker 3: right into it, which would be embarrassing and potentially life threatening,

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Speaker 3: So don't do it.

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Speaker 1: So what you say, at least a lot of the

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Speaker 1: what we think of as large ash asteroids out there

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Speaker 1: are actually just kind of like crumbly cookies.

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Speaker 3: Crumbly cookies, that's pretty good. It is true that a

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Speaker 3: lot of the ones that get in near Earth that

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Speaker 3: we have visited are like this. Some comets are like this.

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Speaker 3: I think this is not at all how I was

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Speaker 3: raised learning about asteroids.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like we've concluded that Star Wars has

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Speaker 1: misled us for years unbelievably. Yes, so it's hard to

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Speaker 1: run into an asteroid a large asteroid, and a lot

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Speaker 1: of them are not sort of big solid rocks, the

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Speaker 1: sort of crumbly cookies.

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Speaker 3: Basically, the force is not worth it.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so those are the basics of asteroids. Now I'll

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Speaker 1: get to the big questions. Should we mind the asteroid belt?

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Speaker 1: And is an asteroid gonna hit the Earth? It turns

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Speaker 1: out that the answer to both of these questions, according

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Speaker 1: to doctor Plate, is yes. When we come back, we're

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Speaker 1: gonna venture out even further to examine how asteroids can

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Speaker 1: kill us and how they can also save us.

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Speaker 2: To stay with us, we'll.

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Speaker 1: Be right back. Hey, we'll come back. We're talking about asteroids.

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Speaker 1: Whether we should mind them and if one of them

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Speaker 1: is going to hit the Earth and wipe us out.

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Speaker 1: So far, we've talked about what an asteroid actually is

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Speaker 1: and how many are out there now. Most of what

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Speaker 1: we call asteroids, meaning rocks floating in space, come from

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Speaker 1: the asteroid belt, which is the big ring between the

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Speaker 1: orbits of Mars and Jupiter. So if you were to

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Speaker 1: fly from Earth towards the edge of the Solar System,

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Speaker 1: you'd hit the orbit of Mars, then the asteroid belt,

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Speaker 1: then the orbit of Jupiter, Saturn, Urinus, and Neptune. And

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Speaker 1: the reason the asteroid belt is there is pretty cool. Basically,

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Speaker 1: you can blame Jupiter.

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Speaker 3: So the early Solar System was the Sun, the young Sun,

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Speaker 3: surrounded by this disk of material that's gas and dust

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Speaker 3: and rock and stuff like that. These things started to accumulate.

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Speaker 3: Grains would bump into each other and turn into pebbles.

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Speaker 3: Pebbles bump into each other, turn into boulders, and eventually

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Speaker 3: you would grow to get something like a planet. That's

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Speaker 3: how our planets formed. But between Mars and Jupiter, Jupiter's

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Speaker 3: gravity is very strong, and so any sort of object

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Speaker 3: that would try to get big enough to form a planet.

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Speaker 3: Jupiter's gravity would kind of swing it around, make it

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Speaker 3: move faster, slam into other stuff in the asteroid belt,

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Speaker 3: shatter it.

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Speaker 1: So basically, the asteroid belt is the graveyard of the

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Speaker 1: chaos caused by the huge gravity of Jupiter. Any planets

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Speaker 1: that try to form there would get dragged by Jupiter

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Speaker 1: and slammed into other rocks.

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Speaker 2: And as we mentioned before, there are a lot.

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Speaker 1: Of rocks in the asteroid belt, and sometimes those rocks

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Speaker 1: can bump into each other and get nudge to fall

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Speaker 1: in our direction, which raises the possibility that one of

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Speaker 1: them could hit us. It wouldn't be the first time.

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Speaker 1: Sixty five million years ago, an asteroid called the Chicchulub impactor,

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Speaker 1: which was about fourteen kilometers wide, hit the Earth and

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Speaker 1: caused so much mayhem that it killed fifty percent of

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Speaker 1: all species on Earth, including the dinosaurs.

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Speaker 2: Could it happen again?

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Speaker 1: That was the next question I asked, Doctor Blade, Doctor Plade,

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Speaker 1: is an asteroid going to hit the Earth? What's the

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Speaker 1: likelihood of that happening? One hundred percent?

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Speaker 3: One hitting us right now as we're talking? What there

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Speaker 3: are thousands of hitting us right now? Well, I said,

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Speaker 3: there's no lower limit to the size of an asteroid. Right,

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Speaker 3: So if you consider something like a grain of sand

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Speaker 3: an asteroid, there are fifty to one hundred tons of

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Speaker 3: material that hits Earth every day. What so, zillions of

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Speaker 3: these things are hitting Earth all the time, and you

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Speaker 3: see them burning up as meteors shooting stars. If you

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Speaker 3: call those asteroids, then we're getting hit all the time.

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Speaker 3: If you say, oh, let's say something that's a meter across,

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Speaker 3: then we get hit by something that size once a month,

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Speaker 3: as we're speaking. One fell over Europe a few days ago,

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Speaker 3: and a couple of nights ago, one came over Ohio

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Speaker 3: and Pennsylvania was seen by thousands of people.

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Speaker 2: You heard about that, Yeah, I saw the needs.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it was really bright. Yeah, I've seen the videos.

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Speaker 3: It's pretty cool. We get hit by those on timescales

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Speaker 3: of a month or so, and the bigger they are,

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Speaker 3: the more rare they are.

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Speaker 1: What picker Plate is saying is that just like the

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Speaker 1: sizes of asteroids out in space, follow an inverse law,

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Speaker 1: so that the asteroids that happened to hit the Earth,

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Speaker 1: small asteroids hit Earth all the time, but as they

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Speaker 1: get bigger, they get rarer and rarer. One of the

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Speaker 1: biggest ones to hit US in recent years with the

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Speaker 1: Cheliabinsk meteor event, which you can find video of if

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Speaker 1: you search for it online.

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Speaker 3: Actually, so when you talk about something like the chel

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Speaker 3: Yabinsk impact, which was in Russia in twenty thirteen, that

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Speaker 3: was nineteen meters across, so you're talking to something the

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Speaker 3: size of a house, big house. Those are much more rare.

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Speaker 3: Those you're talking about every few decades or century. If

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Speaker 3: one is fifty meters across and gets closer than that,

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Speaker 3: it's not great. You don't want that, but it's not

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Speaker 3: classified as potentially hazardous. It's still if it hits Earth,

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Speaker 3: it'll blow up like a nuclear weapon. I mean, you're

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Speaker 3: still talking about a megaton or more explosion. That's bad,

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Speaker 3: but it's not a global catastrophe.

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Speaker 1: Okay, but at around one hundred and footy meters that

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Speaker 1: could be a global catastrophe, Yeah.

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Speaker 3: I think regional. So you're talking about if one hit

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Speaker 3: in the middle of the US, it would be catastrophic

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Speaker 3: for US, but not necessarily for you know, India or

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Speaker 3: something like that, although it's not great and certainly economically

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Speaker 3: you know, if you hit a country that is economically

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Speaker 3: critical to the rest of the world.

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Speaker 2: That's bad.

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Speaker 3: I mean, we saw what happened when like a terrorist

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Speaker 3: attack can cripple the economy of a country and bring

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Speaker 3: about a global recession. So you don't want these things

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Speaker 3: hitting over New York City, Moscow, you know, anything like that.

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Speaker 3: That would be very, very bad.

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Speaker 1: So's if a one hundred footy meter asteroids hit is

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Speaker 1: it would be about how many nuclear weapons?

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Speaker 3: Oh golly, so something like two hundred megatons, so multiple

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Speaker 3: times the largest nuclear weapon ever dropped. But it's not radioactive,

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Speaker 3: so at least you know, yay, no fallout. Hooray.

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Speaker 2: It's still bad, Okay, quick recap here.

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Speaker 1: Earth is hit by asteroids all the time, but most

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Speaker 1: of the time they're small and they end up burning

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Speaker 1: up when they hit all that air in the atmosphere.

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Speaker 1: That's what a shooting star is. When the asteroids start

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Speaker 1: getting about fifty to one hundred and forty meters wide,

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Speaker 1: that's when they can do a lot of damage.

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Speaker 2: They could wipe by.

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Speaker 1: The city and maybe cause a global crisis, but it

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Speaker 1: wouldn't end the human race. And luckily that size of

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Speaker 1: asteroid only hits Earth statistically every one hundred years or so.

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Speaker 1: Now you might be wondering, what about the big ones,

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Speaker 1: you know, like the one that took out the dinosaurs,

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Speaker 1: that are like several kilometers wide.

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Speaker 2: Those would be really bad.

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Speaker 1: But actually scientists are not too worried about those because

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Speaker 1: remember the inverse law of asteroids says, there aren't that

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Speaker 1: many of them out there.

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Speaker 3: We know there are no large asteroids big enough to

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Speaker 3: be catastrophic globally, like an extinction level event. There's none

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Speaker 3: that can get near us for at least the next century.

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Speaker 3: It just gets hard to predict farther in the future

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Speaker 3: because we don't know their orbits perfectly. But you know,

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Speaker 3: something that's a global like like out of a movie

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Speaker 3: armagedd and deep impact, something like that. If you remember

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Speaker 3: those movies from thirty years ago, Now those are extraordinarily rare.

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Speaker 3: Those are like every you know, tens of millions of years,

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Speaker 3: like dinosaur killer impacts. Those are extremely rare.

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Speaker 1: And in fact, there is an office at NASA called

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Speaker 1: the Center for Near Earth Object Studies where the main

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Speaker 1: job of the scientists there is to keep track of

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Speaker 1: all the big asteroids in the Solar System and make

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Speaker 1: sure we're not in a collision course with them. And

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Speaker 1: according to their calculations.

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Speaker 2: We're good for now.

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Speaker 1: Now, does that mean we're totally safe? Not quite. Remember,

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Speaker 1: those smaller asteroids in the fifty to a few hundred

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Speaker 1: meters wide range can still come out of nowhere and

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Speaker 1: do a lot of damage. But there is good news.

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Speaker 1: According to doctor Plate, the good.

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Speaker 3: News is we can do something about them. The first

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Speaker 3: thing we have to do is find them, and we

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Speaker 3: are building observatories now. The Vera Ruben Observatory takes huge

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Speaker 3: images of the sky and looks for things that change

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Speaker 3: from night to night. So an asteroid is, you know,

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Speaker 3: in one spot, and the next night it's in the

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Speaker 3: next spot. Reuben will see it. And in its first

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Speaker 3: night it observed two thousand asteroids and so it's going

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Speaker 3: to do this every night. So it's going to map

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Speaker 3: out zillions of these things, and that's good because you

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Speaker 3: want to know if one's coming toward us, or if

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Speaker 3: it's orbit it's going to intersect ours in twenty years

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Speaker 3: or something like that. Next thing you have to do

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Speaker 3: is push it out of the way. You know, you

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Speaker 3: don't necessarily want a nuke it because that's illegal and

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Speaker 3: that may not do the trick. Well, is it illegal, Yeah,

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Speaker 3: it's actually, the Outer Space Treaty, which was signed by

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Speaker 3: a lot of nations in the sixties, makes it illegal

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Speaker 3: to test nuclear weapons or detonate them in space, but

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Speaker 3: in general, like blowing up a nuke and space is

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Speaker 3: illegal and it's a bad idea. But on the other hand,

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Speaker 3: NASA has just tested a few years ago in twenty two,

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Speaker 3: twenty twenty two, to spacecraft into an asteroid. Ditamos was

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Speaker 3: the name of the asteroid, a few hundred meters across.

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Speaker 3: It has a moon called Dimorphos, which is one hundred

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Speaker 3: and seventy meters across, and they slammed this dishwasher size

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Speaker 3: spacecraft into it called DART, which was the Double Asteroid

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Speaker 3: Redirection Test DART. DART. It hit the Moon at high

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Speaker 3: speed and the idea was the impact would change the

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Speaker 3: orbit of the Moon. And then this thing hit it

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Speaker 3: and the period of that object changed by half an hour,

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Speaker 3: which means we significantly changed the orbit of that asteroid.

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Speaker 3: And that's good because that means that if you have

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Speaker 3: enough time, like ten years lead time, you can build

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Speaker 3: a rocket, send a probe to it, slam it, and

401
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Speaker 3: then hopefully move it enough that over the next few

402
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Speaker 3: years you've pushed its orbit enough that it misses the

403
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Speaker 3: Earth with a dishwasher something like that. So really the

404
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Speaker 3: key here, the absolute key here, is finding them early.

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Speaker 3: And if you have twenty years before you think this

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Speaker 3: thing's going to hit us, that is plenty of time

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Speaker 3: to get to work and try to do something about

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Speaker 3: getting it to move out of the way.

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Speaker 2: So we do have a system in case that happens.

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Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know if I'd glorify it by calling

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Speaker 3: it a system. We have rockets and we've done this.

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Speaker 3: We hit an asteroid in two thousand and five. There

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Speaker 3: was a mission called Deep Impact and that hit an

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Speaker 3: asteroid to see what would happen. And then we hit

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Speaker 3: dimorphos a few years ago, and that's really it. But

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Speaker 3: we're getting better at this all the time. In thirty years,

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Speaker 3: hopefully we'll have learned enough about how to do this

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Speaker 3: that if anything's coming our way, we'll be able to

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Speaker 3: whack it and stop it. You're not trying to shatter

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Speaker 3: it necessarily, you're just trying to change its trajectory.

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Speaker 2: I see, I see.

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Speaker 1: You don't want to stop the asteroid. You just wind

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Speaker 1: to nudget out of the way.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, gently persuade it maybe you should go.

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Speaker 1: Over there hit Mars part is looking pretty good. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but I guess the take home message is that we

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Speaker 1: have the ability and we have actually hit an asteroid

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Speaker 1: that was out there flying and been able to just

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Speaker 1: its trajectory.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: I mean, that's great, fantastic news. I was really excited

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Speaker 3: and I'll tell you relieved in that mission work when

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Speaker 3: dart work, because it shows we can do it.

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Speaker 2: Oh, fascinating.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just all relatively new knowledge. It's pretty cool.

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Speaker 2: Okay.

437
00:22:13,560 --> 00:22:15,760
Speaker 1: Few for those of you worried we were going to

438
00:22:15,840 --> 00:22:18,639
Speaker 1: go extinct because of an asteroid hitting us, you can

439
00:22:18,720 --> 00:22:22,000
Speaker 1: rest a little easier knowing that NASA has our backs

440
00:22:22,440 --> 00:22:27,200
Speaker 1: at least against asteroids now, assuming something else doesn't do us,

441
00:22:27,240 --> 00:22:30,160
Speaker 1: and then the big question becomes, how do we survive

442
00:22:30,600 --> 00:22:33,640
Speaker 1: in the long term. It's possible that in the future

443
00:22:33,840 --> 00:22:36,000
Speaker 1: we might run out of resource this year on Earth,

444
00:22:36,440 --> 00:22:40,320
Speaker 1: and in that case, maybe asteroids can save us. There

445
00:22:40,359 --> 00:22:43,159
Speaker 1: are a ton of asteroids out there, but things that

446
00:22:43,200 --> 00:22:46,119
Speaker 1: we could potentially mine to bring back to Earth.

447
00:22:46,560 --> 00:22:47,720
Speaker 2: But is that really feasible?

448
00:22:48,080 --> 00:22:51,960
Speaker 1: Can we or should we mine the asteroid belt while

449
00:22:52,000 --> 00:22:54,680
Speaker 1: we come back. I'll ask doctor Plate this question, and

450
00:22:54,920 --> 00:22:57,600
Speaker 1: I think you might be surprised by the answer, so

451
00:22:57,760 --> 00:23:19,560
Speaker 1: stay with us. We'll be right back. Hey, welcome back.

452
00:23:20,280 --> 00:23:23,920
Speaker 1: We're talking about asteroids and pew. So far, we've learned

453
00:23:23,920 --> 00:23:26,919
Speaker 1: that while the Earth is getting hit by small asteroids

454
00:23:26,920 --> 00:23:30,159
Speaker 1: all the time, the likelihood of a big one coming

455
00:23:30,240 --> 00:23:34,080
Speaker 1: and ending the human race anytime soon is fairly small.

456
00:23:34,680 --> 00:23:37,639
Speaker 1: NASA and other space agencies around the world are keeping

457
00:23:37,680 --> 00:23:40,359
Speaker 1: track of all the big asteroids in our Solar system,

458
00:23:40,640 --> 00:23:43,240
Speaker 1: and even if a medium size one comes our way,

459
00:23:43,560 --> 00:23:48,560
Speaker 1: we are getting better at reaching them and deflecting them. Now,

460
00:23:48,600 --> 00:23:52,199
Speaker 1: the question is good asteroids actually be good for us?

461
00:23:52,560 --> 00:23:54,959
Speaker 1: A lot of people have noticed that asteroids in the

462
00:23:55,000 --> 00:23:58,280
Speaker 1: asteroid belt are full of materials that we meet here

463
00:23:58,320 --> 00:24:01,040
Speaker 1: on Earth, and so a possible is for us to

464
00:24:01,119 --> 00:24:05,359
Speaker 1: go out there and mine them. But is that a

465
00:24:05,400 --> 00:24:08,520
Speaker 1: good idea? Should we send a spacecraft out there to

466
00:24:08,640 --> 00:24:11,679
Speaker 1: check out the metals and minerals and those floating space rocks.

467
00:24:12,400 --> 00:24:15,199
Speaker 1: Actually it furs out we already have.

468
00:24:17,840 --> 00:24:21,119
Speaker 3: There's a current mission NASA launched called Psyche, which is

469
00:24:21,119 --> 00:24:24,080
Speaker 3: on its way. The asteroid's name is Psyche. It's this

470
00:24:24,200 --> 00:24:26,520
Speaker 3: big asteroid. It's one of the biggest ones, and we

471
00:24:26,560 --> 00:24:29,119
Speaker 3: think it's mostly metal. And when we say metal, we

472
00:24:29,200 --> 00:24:33,520
Speaker 3: mean iron, nickel, and mostly silicon, and then a lot

473
00:24:33,520 --> 00:24:38,240
Speaker 3: of lesser ones titanium, tungsten, aluminum, Platinum, for example, is

474
00:24:38,359 --> 00:24:40,560
Speaker 3: very valuable on Earth and it's used in electronics. It's

475
00:24:40,680 --> 00:24:43,000
Speaker 3: very important metal for a lot of reasons. Palladium is

476
00:24:43,000 --> 00:24:46,680
Speaker 3: another one. And it's not like these are abundant in asteroids,

477
00:24:46,680 --> 00:24:48,320
Speaker 3: but they are out there. And so if you could

478
00:24:48,320 --> 00:24:51,840
Speaker 3: take an asteroid and grind it up and extract these metals,

479
00:24:52,359 --> 00:24:53,840
Speaker 3: you could then sell them on Earth and make a

480
00:24:53,840 --> 00:24:54,919
Speaker 3: lot of money.

481
00:24:56,240 --> 00:24:59,960
Speaker 1: Yes, you could technically mine asteroids and bring back their

482
00:25:00,160 --> 00:25:02,720
Speaker 1: precious metals and sell them for a lot of money.

483
00:25:03,240 --> 00:25:04,840
Speaker 2: So why don't we do it?

484
00:25:05,359 --> 00:25:08,399
Speaker 1: I mean, sending a spacecraft to an asteroid is hard,

485
00:25:08,600 --> 00:25:11,800
Speaker 1: but we've done it before. In fact, we've managed to

486
00:25:11,800 --> 00:25:15,399
Speaker 1: get to flying asteroids several times. In the nineteen eighties,

487
00:25:15,560 --> 00:25:19,199
Speaker 1: we sent fly spacecraft from three space agencies around the

488
00:25:19,200 --> 00:25:22,359
Speaker 1: world to get a close look at hay Least comment.

489
00:25:23,080 --> 00:25:25,840
Speaker 1: Since then, there have been about a dozen more missions

490
00:25:25,880 --> 00:25:29,080
Speaker 1: that were sent to either fly by or actually land

491
00:25:29,240 --> 00:25:30,960
Speaker 1: on comets or asteroids.

492
00:25:31,400 --> 00:25:32,120
Speaker 2: But here's the thing.

493
00:25:32,520 --> 00:25:35,240
Speaker 1: Getting to an asteroid to mine it is not the

494
00:25:35,280 --> 00:25:41,160
Speaker 1: main problem. The real problem is bringing back what you mind.

495
00:25:42,480 --> 00:25:44,719
Speaker 3: The big step is you then bring these things back

496
00:25:44,720 --> 00:25:47,520
Speaker 3: to Earth. But bring it back to Earth it's not straightforward.

497
00:25:47,720 --> 00:25:50,199
Speaker 3: You have something that's moving eight kilometers a second. If

498
00:25:50,240 --> 00:25:52,080
Speaker 3: it's coming from deep space, it could be doing twice

499
00:25:52,119 --> 00:25:54,760
Speaker 3: that fast. You have to slow this thing down and

500
00:25:54,800 --> 00:25:57,040
Speaker 3: then somehow get it to the surface of the Earth

501
00:25:57,480 --> 00:26:00,399
Speaker 3: in quantities that are usable. Right, if I'd drop a

502
00:26:00,440 --> 00:26:02,600
Speaker 3: pound of platinum on the Earth, that's not really going

503
00:26:02,680 --> 00:26:04,480
Speaker 3: to help. And you can just drop that from orbit,

504
00:26:04,560 --> 00:26:06,399
Speaker 3: let it hit. It'll actually lose a lot of it.

505
00:26:06,440 --> 00:26:09,440
Speaker 3: You could encase it in concrete or something whatever, let

506
00:26:09,440 --> 00:26:12,040
Speaker 3: that burn off as it goes through the atmosphere. But now,

507
00:26:12,080 --> 00:26:14,480
Speaker 3: if you're talking about one hundred tons of something, how

508
00:26:14,480 --> 00:26:15,640
Speaker 3: do you get that to the surface.

509
00:26:16,080 --> 00:26:20,240
Speaker 1: That's hard without basically creating a giant asteroid that will

510
00:26:20,320 --> 00:26:21,280
Speaker 1: kill people on Earth.

511
00:26:21,400 --> 00:26:26,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, you could build some sort of machinery that would

512
00:26:26,560 --> 00:26:28,320
Speaker 3: slow these things down and drop them for more of it,

513
00:26:28,400 --> 00:26:30,920
Speaker 3: but that's also very expensive, and to do this at

514
00:26:30,960 --> 00:26:34,320
Speaker 3: scale where you're talking about you know, a building weighs

515
00:26:34,680 --> 00:26:37,440
Speaker 3: tens of thousands of tons, so you need a lot

516
00:26:37,480 --> 00:26:40,480
Speaker 3: of this material to build a rocket or to provide

517
00:26:40,520 --> 00:26:43,760
Speaker 3: for the electronics industry or whatever. And right now it's

518
00:26:43,800 --> 00:26:47,159
Speaker 3: just cheaper to keep doing this on Earth. Some day

519
00:26:47,200 --> 00:26:48,720
Speaker 3: it might be easier to do this. We're just not

520
00:26:48,800 --> 00:26:50,159
Speaker 3: there yet.

521
00:26:51,280 --> 00:26:51,800
Speaker 2: That's right.

522
00:26:51,960 --> 00:26:56,159
Speaker 1: Getting things from space to Earth is hard, or at

523
00:26:56,240 --> 00:26:58,800
Speaker 1: least it's easy. But the hard part is having what

524
00:26:58,920 --> 00:27:02,480
Speaker 1: did drop from faith Land in one piece. And even

525
00:27:02,520 --> 00:27:04,800
Speaker 1: if you do manage to figure out how to, say,

526
00:27:04,920 --> 00:27:07,879
Speaker 1: bring all those precious metals from asteroids to Earth, there

527
00:27:07,960 --> 00:27:11,280
Speaker 1: could be other things that can happen that you didn't expect.

528
00:27:12,320 --> 00:27:14,200
Speaker 3: There are other problems like crashing the market if you

529
00:27:14,240 --> 00:27:17,399
Speaker 3: suddenly introduce a vast amount of material into the market.

530
00:27:17,440 --> 00:27:19,520
Speaker 3: You know, the reason these things are expensive is because

531
00:27:19,560 --> 00:27:21,880
Speaker 3: they are rare, and if you bring in a lot,

532
00:27:22,119 --> 00:27:23,679
Speaker 3: there's more than one hundred tons of gold out there,

533
00:27:23,680 --> 00:27:25,080
Speaker 3: but if you bring in a lot, it could actually

534
00:27:25,160 --> 00:27:28,359
Speaker 3: damage the market. This, I can't stress this enough, is

535
00:27:28,760 --> 00:27:32,280
Speaker 3: super super hard to do. We do not have the

536
00:27:32,320 --> 00:27:35,719
Speaker 3: technology in place to do this. We have the technology

537
00:27:35,880 --> 00:27:38,400
Speaker 3: where we can start looking at it and investigating it

538
00:27:38,720 --> 00:27:41,280
Speaker 3: and doing this step by step. But right now, if

539
00:27:41,320 --> 00:27:44,920
Speaker 3: you wanted to mine an asteroid, I think you're looking decades.

540
00:27:45,080 --> 00:27:47,720
Speaker 3: I don't know how many to at least, but it's

541
00:27:47,760 --> 00:27:49,280
Speaker 3: going to be a while. I may be wrong.

542
00:27:50,200 --> 00:27:53,600
Speaker 1: So mining the asteroid belt for materials to bring back

543
00:27:53,640 --> 00:27:57,480
Speaker 1: to birth is a bit of a hard sell. Or

544
00:27:57,600 --> 00:28:01,240
Speaker 1: at least, you'd have to be really, really really desperate

545
00:28:01,520 --> 00:28:04,080
Speaker 1: to make it worth all that money and development and

546
00:28:04,160 --> 00:28:07,480
Speaker 1: risk to do it. But according to doctor Playd, there

547
00:28:07,560 --> 00:28:10,359
Speaker 1: is one other reason we might want to mine the

548
00:28:10,480 --> 00:28:14,040
Speaker 1: asteroid belt that is not about bringing stuff back to Earth,

549
00:28:14,640 --> 00:28:17,600
Speaker 1: and that is for space exploration.

550
00:28:20,080 --> 00:28:21,800
Speaker 3: If we want to build a space station on Earth,

551
00:28:21,880 --> 00:28:23,800
Speaker 3: we have to build it down here, all the pieces,

552
00:28:23,960 --> 00:28:26,840
Speaker 3: and then launch each piece into space and put it together.

553
00:28:27,240 --> 00:28:28,920
Speaker 3: And that takes a long time. It costs a lot

554
00:28:28,920 --> 00:28:31,240
Speaker 3: of money. The space station International Space Station was one

555
00:28:31,280 --> 00:28:34,680
Speaker 3: hundred billion dollars and took ten years to complete. Something

556
00:28:34,720 --> 00:28:37,880
Speaker 3: like that. The rocket launches are expensive. Takes a lot

557
00:28:37,880 --> 00:28:40,240
Speaker 3: of energy to move those things out of Earth's gravity

558
00:28:40,280 --> 00:28:44,120
Speaker 3: into orbit or off the surface. If you mind an asteroid,

559
00:28:44,640 --> 00:28:47,800
Speaker 3: it's out there in space already. Oh and if you

560
00:28:47,880 --> 00:28:50,640
Speaker 3: can figure out a way of processing it, smelting it

561
00:28:50,880 --> 00:28:52,320
Speaker 3: and processing it in a way that you can use

562
00:28:52,360 --> 00:28:55,840
Speaker 3: it to build structures, that is a lot, lot, lot

563
00:28:55,920 --> 00:28:58,760
Speaker 3: easier than trying to lift everything off of Earth. And

564
00:28:58,840 --> 00:29:00,840
Speaker 3: so this is something that people looked into them.

565
00:29:00,920 --> 00:29:02,840
Speaker 2: I see, it's like it's possible.

566
00:29:03,520 --> 00:29:06,560
Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't think there's anything physically or in an

567
00:29:06,600 --> 00:29:10,240
Speaker 3: engineering sense impossible about any of this. You can imagine

568
00:29:10,400 --> 00:29:13,320
Speaker 3: building a factory around an asteroid, using it, having it

569
00:29:13,440 --> 00:29:16,840
Speaker 3: spin for centrifugal force, which is like gravity, and that

570
00:29:16,920 --> 00:29:18,480
Speaker 3: you can use to separate out metals.

571
00:29:18,840 --> 00:29:19,280
Speaker 2: I see.

572
00:29:19,400 --> 00:29:21,480
Speaker 1: Okay, so let me see if I can recap so

573
00:29:21,680 --> 00:29:24,360
Speaker 1: the idea of going to an asteroid mining it to

574
00:29:24,400 --> 00:29:28,800
Speaker 1: bring back material like rare earth metals technically possible, but

575
00:29:29,280 --> 00:29:30,239
Speaker 1: maybe not worth it.

576
00:29:30,680 --> 00:29:32,640
Speaker 3: Questionably profitable, Yeah.

577
00:29:32,800 --> 00:29:37,560
Speaker 2: Questionably profitable, I mean maybe just not right now. I see.

578
00:29:37,600 --> 00:29:39,280
Speaker 1: But then there's sort of the other reason why we

579
00:29:39,360 --> 00:29:43,520
Speaker 1: might mind the asteroid belt, which is for space exploration,

580
00:29:43,680 --> 00:29:46,360
Speaker 1: Like if we wanted to, we could use it as

581
00:29:46,360 --> 00:29:49,840
Speaker 1: a source of metals to build spacecraft and space stations

582
00:29:49,960 --> 00:29:52,800
Speaker 1: and there. It's not so much a business consideration, it's

583
00:29:52,840 --> 00:29:54,280
Speaker 1: just like if we want to do it or not.

584
00:29:54,600 --> 00:29:57,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's a sort of government level idea. Yeah,

585
00:29:57,440 --> 00:30:00,640
Speaker 3: if you wanted to explore the outer planets, if you

586
00:30:00,720 --> 00:30:04,600
Speaker 3: want to put humans out in space on Mars, for example,

587
00:30:04,680 --> 00:30:08,000
Speaker 3: where some of these materials are scarce. Then yeah, going

588
00:30:08,040 --> 00:30:10,080
Speaker 3: to the asteroid belt and figuring out how to do

589
00:30:10,080 --> 00:30:12,560
Speaker 3: all this is not the worst idea.

590
00:30:12,480 --> 00:30:14,920
Speaker 2: In that case. Maybe it's the cheaper option.

591
00:30:14,960 --> 00:30:17,200
Speaker 3: Rather than lifting it from Earth. Yeah, because right now

592
00:30:17,240 --> 00:30:19,960
Speaker 3: it still costs a lot of money per kilogram to

593
00:30:20,160 --> 00:30:24,360
Speaker 3: just send air, water, food to people living on the

594
00:30:24,400 --> 00:30:28,120
Speaker 3: Moon or Mars. If you could start in space already,

595
00:30:29,160 --> 00:30:33,360
Speaker 3: it's vastly easier. You're getting rid of some majority of

596
00:30:33,400 --> 00:30:36,120
Speaker 3: the cost of just launching something off Earth is so

597
00:30:36,160 --> 00:30:39,160
Speaker 3: expensive and hard. If you're starting in space, it's way easier,

598
00:30:39,200 --> 00:30:42,040
Speaker 3: and so it's a lot simpler technologically, and it's a

599
00:30:42,080 --> 00:30:43,640
Speaker 3: lot cheaper, a lot less expensive.

600
00:30:44,640 --> 00:30:48,360
Speaker 1: So the asteroid belt could become like the wild West

601
00:30:48,560 --> 00:30:52,280
Speaker 1: of the space frontier. And here's the interesting thing. Most

602
00:30:52,320 --> 00:30:56,040
Speaker 1: people assume, like I did, that the most valuable materials

603
00:30:56,080 --> 00:30:58,360
Speaker 1: in the asteroid belt that we would want to mine

604
00:30:58,600 --> 00:31:03,000
Speaker 1: are the metals and the like iron or copper. But

605
00:31:03,040 --> 00:31:07,840
Speaker 1: actually the most important raw element in them is wetter.

606
00:31:09,160 --> 00:31:12,880
Speaker 3: This wasn't known until relatively recently, a few decades ago,

607
00:31:12,880 --> 00:31:15,840
Speaker 3: that asteroids can have a lot of water in them. Oh,

608
00:31:16,000 --> 00:31:20,120
Speaker 3: what series for example, has a mountain on it that

609
00:31:20,240 --> 00:31:23,840
Speaker 3: seems to be salty water from the interior that oozed

610
00:31:23,880 --> 00:31:27,280
Speaker 3: out and froze in place, and it's a mesa. It's

611
00:31:27,320 --> 00:31:30,280
Speaker 3: like this big flat topped mountain. It's huge, and it's

612
00:31:30,280 --> 00:31:33,440
Speaker 3: made of dirty ice, basically dirty salt water ice. Whoa.

613
00:31:33,880 --> 00:31:36,160
Speaker 3: So these things do have water, and you need water.

614
00:31:36,480 --> 00:31:38,960
Speaker 3: Water is the most useful thing you can have in space.

615
00:31:39,040 --> 00:31:41,160
Speaker 3: You drink it. We need that to live. You can

616
00:31:41,200 --> 00:31:43,800
Speaker 3: break it down and make oxygen to breathe. Water is

617
00:31:43,960 --> 00:31:46,720
Speaker 3: h two Oh, it's hydrogen and oxygen together. You can

618
00:31:46,800 --> 00:31:51,000
Speaker 3: recombine these to make hydrogen peroxide, which in its pure form,

619
00:31:51,040 --> 00:31:52,800
Speaker 3: not like the stuff you buy at the drug store,

620
00:31:52,960 --> 00:31:54,280
Speaker 3: which is like three percent.

621
00:31:54,880 --> 00:31:56,160
Speaker 2: You can diyur hairt space.

622
00:31:56,440 --> 00:31:59,040
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, it's like you know, it's three percent hydrogen

623
00:31:59,080 --> 00:32:01,000
Speaker 3: peroxide and the rest of its water, and it's more

624
00:32:01,040 --> 00:32:04,120
Speaker 3: pure form. It's like ninety percent hydrogen peroxide. It burns

625
00:32:04,400 --> 00:32:06,640
Speaker 3: and it becomes a really good fuel. So you can

626
00:32:06,720 --> 00:32:08,120
Speaker 3: drink it, you can breathe it, and you can move

627
00:32:08,160 --> 00:32:10,360
Speaker 3: around with it. So water is it, that's what you want.

628
00:32:10,800 --> 00:32:13,560
Speaker 3: It's actually the single most important thing if you want

629
00:32:13,560 --> 00:32:17,480
Speaker 3: to have a permanent presence in space. Water is the

630
00:32:17,480 --> 00:32:21,600
Speaker 3: most important thing besides you know, food, but even more

631
00:32:21,600 --> 00:32:24,360
Speaker 3: than food, because again with water you can make air and.

632
00:32:24,240 --> 00:32:27,280
Speaker 2: Fuel right right, the grow food, you need water as well.

633
00:32:27,440 --> 00:32:29,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, humans need a lot of water just to survive

634
00:32:29,560 --> 00:32:32,080
Speaker 3: because of not just our direct needs but also our

635
00:32:32,400 --> 00:32:35,960
Speaker 3: needs like growing plants and protection from radiation. Water is

636
00:32:36,000 --> 00:32:39,640
Speaker 3: great at absorbing radiation, so you can encase your ship

637
00:32:39,680 --> 00:32:42,120
Speaker 3: in a tank of water and protect it from solar

638
00:32:42,120 --> 00:32:45,160
Speaker 3: flares and such. So it's all around. It's just like

639
00:32:45,280 --> 00:32:46,720
Speaker 3: the most useful thing ever in.

640
00:32:46,680 --> 00:32:49,360
Speaker 1: Space, right, and you need it to shower if you

641
00:32:49,520 --> 00:32:51,880
Speaker 1: were so inclined to shower in space, Yeah, that would

642
00:32:51,880 --> 00:32:52,320
Speaker 1: be a good.

643
00:32:52,160 --> 00:32:54,160
Speaker 3: Idea too, although who knows, you know, by then we'll

644
00:32:54,200 --> 00:32:58,440
Speaker 3: have sonic showers like in Star Trek. Who knows it's

645
00:32:58,480 --> 00:33:01,680
Speaker 3: out there. There's lots of their comments that are mostly

646
00:33:01,720 --> 00:33:05,000
Speaker 3: water asteroids. There are moons of Jupiter and Saturn that

647
00:33:05,080 --> 00:33:08,000
Speaker 3: are mostly water. Those are harder to get through than asteroids.

648
00:33:08,000 --> 00:33:11,080
Speaker 3: But still there's a lot out there plenty for everybody.

649
00:33:11,760 --> 00:33:13,960
Speaker 1: Yes, it turns out the real question we should be

650
00:33:14,040 --> 00:33:17,600
Speaker 1: asking it's not whether we should mine the asteroid belt,

651
00:33:17,760 --> 00:33:21,080
Speaker 1: but whether we should drink it. Hey, this puts a

652
00:33:21,080 --> 00:33:25,040
Speaker 1: whole new spin on the phrase meteor shower. All right,

653
00:33:25,400 --> 00:33:28,160
Speaker 1: Hopefully this all gives you a good sense of what's

654
00:33:28,160 --> 00:33:31,320
Speaker 1: out there sprinkled in our solar system that could hit

655
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Speaker 1: us or potentially save us as we keep traveling through

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Speaker 1: the vastness of space. Thanks for joining us. See you

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Speaker 1: next time.

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Speaker 2: You've been listening to Science Stuff.

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Speaker 1: Production of iHeartRadio written and produced by me or Hey

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Speaker 1: Cham edited by Rose Seguda, Executive producer Jerry Rowland, an

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Speaker 1: audio engineer and mixer Casey Peckron, and you can follow

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Speaker 1: me on social media to search for PhD comics and

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Speaker 1: the name of your favorite platform. Be sure to subscribe

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Speaker 1: to Sign Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or

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Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts, and please tell your friends

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Speaker 1: we'll be back next Wednesday with another episode. Hey, please

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Speaker 1: take a second and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,

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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to the podcast.

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Speaker 2: Thanks a lot,