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