August 16, 2013 • 46 mins
What's our current plan should an asteroid come hurtling toward Earth? Is the Armageddon scenario feasible? What are alternatives?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking, either everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
podcast that looks at the future and says, sir of
the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid kills is approximately
(00:20):
there's thou swy to one. I'm Jonathan Trick and I'm
Joe McCormick. Today we're going to talk about what happens
when an asteroid has decided to set its stony eye
on Earth in come and say hello, or in other words,
what happens if an asteroid collides with us? Y'all? Is
that a good thing? Asteroid danger? Probably the planet killer? Yeah, yeah,
(00:47):
we have to talk about planet killers. But really, I mean,
in order for us to have this conversation, I've got
some basic, basic terms I want to define. So an
asteroid it's technically a raw key object in space that's
smaller than a planet. Boy, is that helpful? It's like
a hill. A hill is smaller than a mountain. What's
a mountain? It's taller than a hill. Though there's there's
(01:09):
some blurry parts right there. Dwarf planets are basically big asteroids.
Well that's the problem, right, I mean, when do you
get to the point where you I mean, clearly there
are scientists at NASA who do determine these things where
they've decided arbitrarily. Some would argue that a body of
a certain size means a planet, and anything below that
is a dwarf planet or asteroid. But yes, there are
(01:31):
dwarf planets out there that you could also argue our asteroids, um,
quite a few of them actually, uh. And then you
know these can range in size from relatively small to ginormous.
So that's that's the technical term until you hit planet size,
in which case then you're talking about an actual planet
or you know, uh, arguably some would say a moon,
(01:55):
though some dwarf planets and moons are also asteroids. Uh,
you have meteor and meteorite. By the way, whether you
call something an asteroid, a meteor or a meteorite really
depends on two things. Where it is and what what
it's doing. So an asteroid is out in space, okay.
A meteor is burning up in our atmosphere, burning up
(02:16):
through compression and friction and some chemical processes that go on.
But these are shooting stars. When you look up into
the sky and you see a shooting star, that's a
meteor Uh. Typically they just completely vaporized. If they happen
to not completely vaporize, if some part of that hits
the ground, that's a meteorite. So again the definition depends
(02:39):
upon where it is and what it's doing. It's technically
all the same stuff. And then you have a comet,
which is not the same stuff. Commet is an icy
body that releases gas or dust. Uh. They can contain
things like carbon dioxide, ammonia, methane, and other chemicals, and
they have their own orbits, as do asteroids. And these
(03:02):
are the basic tools that we'll be talking about, the
basic elements things we'll be talking about this podcast. So
a comment or an asteroid on a collision course with
Earth could be bad news. Mostly depends on the size
and the composition of said asteroid or comet, because some
(03:23):
stuff will not necessarily cause a planet killing issue. If it's,
for example, more ice then I don't know, plutonium, then
well all right, let's let's let's let's put it this way.
If the meteor or asteroid, I should say I just
(03:43):
defined the terms and then I screwed up. If the
asteroid has made more out of metal, than rock, it
is more likely to actually survive the pathway going through
the your atmosphere and actually end up creating an impact
on the surface of the Earth. If it's more rock
the meteor, it could burn up, but depending upon the size,
it may burn up and it's still coming in with
(04:04):
tremendous kinetic energy. I mean, these things are moving so
fast and then they hit the air's atmosphere. If they
break apart in the air atmosphere, that's still releasing that energy.
So you can have what amounts to a nuclear explosion
over the surface of the Earth if it's rocky versus
if it's metal. So depending upon the size, that could
(04:25):
be catastrophic. Right, even if it doesn't impact the ground
and cause a crater, it can still cause huge amounts
of damage. And in fact, when we get all further
than the podcast, I'll talk about some examples of both. Now, typically,
you know, the Earth gets hit by about a hundred
tons of material every day most yeah, most of that's
(04:48):
about the size of a grain of sand. So it's
not like we're not like we're having you know, uh,
children's sized rocks fall from the sky on a regular basis.
It's usually stuff that's pretty small. And thus, yes, you know,
I wait till I talked about how big the Tunguska
meteorite was based upon how many children wide? UM volume
(05:13):
gets really fun when I talk about, you know, using
children as a unit of measurement. Uh. It used to be,
by the way, that my standard unit of measurement was
the Conquistador. That's a true story. UM. Anyway, about a
hundred tons of materials hits the Earth every day. But
when we're talking about big impacts, stuff that is causing
massive amounts of damage or has the potential to do so,
(05:35):
that is much more rare. Right, we don't see big
events happen frequently. A large impact might happen every hundred
years or so. And by large impact, i'm talking about
meteoroids that are about fifty feet across or larger. That's
maybe once every hundred years. Then you're talking about huge impacts,
(05:57):
I mean the stuff that could and and you know,
wipe out an enormous amount of life, possibly all life
as we know it. Those things happen incredibly rarely. I
mean the last one that was uh, that impacted a
huge amount of life on Earth happened sixty five million
years ago, So it's not frequent, but it can happen,
(06:19):
and it has happened, sure, and there's hypothetically a lot
of them out there. Deep space Industries estimates that there's
some ten thousand or more potentially hazardous asteroids that that
are three or more in diameter, which is, you know,
by far enough to wipe out the whole country, let alone.
It's certainly depending upon what's made out of and where
(06:41):
it hits, it certainly could wipe out a huge amount
of life. Yeah, you know, but remember space is really
big and we are really small, and so the chances
of this actually happening, like we said, yeah, like like
once every few hundred million years. What Lauren is trying
to do is make you feel more comfortable. But people,
I'm trying to tell right now, it's just a matter
(07:02):
of time, just a matter of time. Now that matter
of time might be millions of years. So you know,
it's not something It really isn't something to lie awake
at night dreading that the skies are going to fall,
unless you believe in the singularity and you're planning on
living another few hundred million years, which in which case worry. Yeah,
then you've got to like a couple of million years
from now, it's going to be a real, real problem. Uh.
(07:23):
When we're talking about asteroid impact, keyhole really refers to
a gravitational window. Now, a lot of asteroids, you know,
are well, they're all orbiting the Sun in our solar system, right.
The asteroids orbit the Sun similar to the way that
the planets orbit the Sun. That's the thing a lot
of people might not recognize from the movies. You just
see asteroids just kind of zoom vector just yeah, of
(07:49):
course that wouldn't happen. They might be in some kind
of irregular orbit. They're going to be orbiting the Sun.
So in general, we can say that, you know, a
particular asteroid might have of an orbit which means that
it comes close to the Earth every say, seven years.
The Apotheis asteroid is one of those. So there's this, uh,
(08:10):
gravitational window and and it's it's called a keyhole. And
the gravitational window is usually the small area that if
the asteroid were to go through that area at the
right time, the Earth's gravitational pull would alter the asteroid's path,
thus making it more likely or possibly more likely, that
(08:31):
the next time the asteroid passes through when it completes orbit, Yes,
it hits us. So for the Apotheis asteroid that I
mentioned earlier, Uh, there was worry that perhaps if it
hit this keyhole back when it passed by Earth, uh,
that it would then end up impacting the Earth further
(08:51):
down the line. Uh. I didn't do that. I didn't.
It didn't hit the keyhole. But then there's the question
of what happens in mine? What if it hits the
key hole then? And the key hole tends to be
a pretty small window. And when I say pretty small,
I'm talking about like eight D, which on the solar
scale is nothing. Right, that's just the tiniest of tiny
(09:12):
little windows. So scientists usually say there's like a one
in a million, or less than a one in a
million chance that this will ever happen, but it's something
that can happen, and thus it's something to think about. Now,
if if the if the asteroid had passed through that
key hole, we would still have several years to figure
out what to do. And if you I, I don't
(09:34):
know if that's just a number you tossed out there,
but a one in a million chance, well, I mean,
if it hits our path every twenty nine years. It's
actually it's actually I think but yeah, sorry, Yeah, they
projected it out twice before us. So what so it
could hit the key hole in seven million years? I
(09:54):
mean sure, sure, I mean if you go, if you
go long enough. That's why I said if you if
you extend out the timeline long enough. It's not a
question of will the Earth get hit by an asteroid,
it's the question of when is that going to happen?
I would say, yeah, look at the surface of the Moon. Yeah, well,
I mean the Moon. The Moon doesn't have the capability
(10:16):
like the Earth does of of covering up the old
asteroid impacts. I mean, you see all the places. There's
also no atmosphere for the asteroid to slow down, yeah,
or break apart in um. Yeah. So it's over long
periods of time. There's a lot of risk out there, right,
So let's let's talk about the different factors that go
(10:38):
into these collisions, like the idea of what what makes
a collision so bad? And I've kind of talked about
it already. What's what the asteroids made out of? It's
how fast it's traveling, and it's it's mass, right, those
are the three things. So if it's made out of
metal and it's huge and it's going really fast, that's catastrophic. Yeah,
if an asteroid hits the Earth, basically if I get
(11:00):
out from under it, am I gonna be? Okay? No,
it depends on the size. Uh Yeah. What I want
to know is what are what are the effects and
asteroid impacts you could have apart from just you getting smashed? Okay,
all right, that's fair. Alright, So let's let's say that
you're talking about an asteroid that's oh the size of Epaphus.
(11:21):
Since we talked about that before, Um, that would be
about equivalent if apophis actually collided with the Earth, about
equivalent to a seven fifty megaton explosion. So seven or
fifty megaton explosion, even if you are not exactly where
the little X is whether the meteoroid is going to
hit the Earth, and that little X would be actually
about like fifty yard diameters. Who you know? You Let's
(11:43):
say you're a couple of football fields away with it's
a seven fifty megaton explosion, that doesn't matter so much. Um,
you're talking about massive impacts. Uh, And and they're two
like I said two different types as well. Wait a minute,
how big was the biggest nuclear weapon we've ever or
wouldn't that's our bomb? Megatons? Was that so a seven
(12:05):
fifty megaton explosion? Yeah, fifty seven is the largest nuclear
bomb we've ever times, the biggest nuclear bomb we've ever made.
Now to be fair, uh, you know, you should ask
me really how big the eruption at Krakatoa was? How
big was the eruption of Krakatoa? Two hundred megatons? Yeah,
(12:25):
it's still affected the weather all over the world, didn't
Uh huh yep? And uh and a seven or fifty
megaton collision would probably affect the weather as well. Now,
if you were to compare that to say, the massive
asteroid that hit Earth sixty five million years ago, Apophis
has nothing on that because you're talking a hundred terra tons,
(12:47):
which is a hundred million megaton explosion and uh for
for sixty five million years ago. Uh, and that wiped
out sevent of life on Earth, so to in order
for you to get to an extinction level event we're talking. Uh, Well,
let's see, the the asteroid that hit our years ago
(13:10):
was probably about six miles in diameter, you're talking about
something larger than that that is going to require you know,
you need something bigger than that to actually wipe out
all life on Earth definitively. But um, you don't need
anything that large to at least do some massive, massive damage.
And even if it's a smaller one that doesn't cause
(13:33):
global environmental damage by knocking dust up into the air
or that all nuclear winter thing that we talked about, Right,
even if it's not that level, if it hits an
area that is really important to us in other factors,
like let's say it hits New York City, or it
hits Tokyo, it hits some major financial center, then you're
(13:56):
talking about a global crisis that's an economic crisis, not
necessarily an environment mental one. It doesn't have to be
an enormous asteroid to do enormous amounts of damage. It
just depends upon what kind of damage you're talking about, right, Um.
And like I said, the one that hit million years
ago that was mostly metal had made this enormous crater
off the Yucatan Peninsula and which is estimated between a
(14:20):
d eight kilometers and three kilometers in diameter, depending upon
whom you asked but a hundred eighty seems to be
the general consensus, uh that that's actually not the largest
crater on Earth that was ever created by an asteroid impact.
That goes to um the Rita Hort or Rita fort
Rather crater, which is in South Africa, and I'm probably
(14:42):
terribly mispronouncing it, but it happened two point two billion
years ago, and that was an asteroid that was probably
about ten kilometers in diameter, so close to that six
mile mark, that same one word thing about sixty five
million years ago, but it ended up creating a crater
that was three kilometer Why it actually the impact melted
rock when it hit the Earth. That's how how much
(15:05):
heat and energy was in that collision. And most of
the time, I want to put in, meteorites don't actually
heat up the Earth when they hit. They are, you know,
at absolute zero when they're flying through space, and a
short jaunt through the atmosphere is not going to heat
them up that much. No, but the collision, the kinetic
energy releases such a huge and when they break apart,
(15:27):
they certainly can if you look at the Tanduska uh
meteorite or meteor I should say, because it actually exploded
over the Earth. That was back in nineteen o eight.
This is the one that explode over Russia. So you're
seeing those creepy pictures of just somewhere out in Siberia,
there's all these flattened trees. Yeah, that's exactly the longest
time people were like what happened? Yeah, that was an
(15:51):
asteroid that that came close to the Earth, became a
meteor and exploded, um broke apart. However you want to say,
uh above tangusca over in in Russia. Uh, the heat
from the explosions set fire to the forest, and then
the shockwave from the uh, the explosion and the asteroid
(16:13):
entering the atmosphere ended up flattening trees for hundreds of
square miles. So that's a lot of energy right there.
And clearly if they'd hit over a more populated area
would have done massive devastation to that population. So these
are you know, these are actual historical events. There are
some that are uh you know, there's there's the one
(16:33):
from fifty thousand years ago that uh that collided in Winslow, Arizona.
That's meteor crater. Have you ever heard of meteor crater?
It's it's pretty famous. It's not a national landmark. But
there is a crater out in Arizona called meteor Crater.
It's about uh six feet deep. It's the object was
probably about thirty to fifty yards across. Now that one
(16:56):
had about the energy of a twenty mega ton bomb,
and that one was probably pretty much just made out
of medal. And then you have one from October, so
fairly recent. It was a It was spotted by quite
a few people because that was when video camera technology
was really starting to become a thing. And it happened
(17:19):
on a Friday. Why is that important Because if it's
a Friday afternoon in and video cameras are becoming a thing,
a lot of parents are out at sporting events watching
their kids play sports. And in fact, that's exactly what happened,
was that there were all these people who were videotaping
kids playing sports and then they see this fire in
the sky and it was this meteorite coming in and uh,
(17:42):
it entered, it became visible somewhere over Virginia. Moving northeast,
a meteor rite landed and dented the heck out of
this lady's car in New York. It hit hit hit
the trunk of her car um uh or actually yeah,
the trunk of her all right, hit right on the
back bumper area. There's this huge dent and then you
(18:04):
see like this football sized piece of rock right there. Um.
So even that, like, obviously if you had been under that,
that would have been bad news. That would have killed
you most likely or at least hurt you really really badly,
depending on how it hit you. But that's obviously not
the kind of size that would precipitate like a even
(18:26):
a localized catastrophe beyond the catastrophe of man. I don't
know if my insurance covers meteorite impact. Um. I think
that falls under act of God. It may very well.
And then of course in in this year we had
the meteor that fell across uh the sky and in
(18:46):
Russia again where the dash cams picked it up and
a lot of people with cell phones picked it up,
and the shock way from that ended up causing lots
of damage, a lot of broken windows in the area
where the the media started to break up over the sky.
And did that actually touch ground anywhere or was it
just I didn't see anything about it touching ground And
(19:08):
there may have been pieces that survived. They're planning of
people who claim that they have a piece of what
it was. But then there are a lot of pieces
of the Berlin Wall on eBay too that looks just
like cinder blocks to me. But you know, your mileage
may vary, but at any rate, it's certainly was spectacular
and was caught on a lot of people's cameras. Now,
(19:30):
the interesting thing I think here is this idea that
it doesn't really matter. Again, it does matter, but it
doesn't You can still suffer damage on the surface of
the Earth even if the meteor, even as a meteor
not a meteorite, right, if it explodes over the surface
of the earth, then it explodes with enough force, then
that can cause lots of damage all on its own.
(19:51):
It doesn't have to be this big impact. Um. So,
so this is scary enough that that actually couple of films,
as it turns out, have been made along the premises.
Let's talk about some of these documentaries that were made.
Jelliver jell Eversy Deep Impact. I did not I did.
(20:13):
I think I think I might have seen that in theaters.
I saw it in the theater. Yeah, what wait, what
year did that come up? Oh, what year was? I
think that was also the year that Armageddon came out.
Beat beat it to the box office by like by
a few weeks. NBC beat both with their made for
(20:34):
TV film called Asteroid In It's almost like people in
Hollywood who have a project in development don't keep their
trap shut, and then other people steal that idea and
make the same movie. So a deep impact, what exactly
is heading towards the earth? So Elijah Wood looks through
Little Elijah Wood looks through a telescope and he sees
a comment and they name it after him. It's really
(20:58):
cute and and they're like, oh, it's gonna kill us all.
And it's got President Morgan Freeman I remember, And he's
just incredibly is that the character name? Basically, you know,
let's see what's his name. I've got the the plots
and officers here, President Tom Beckman ever, anyone who's not
(21:19):
He's just well, I mean it's funny because I think
the movie is kind of silly, as I remember, um though,
it's I think it's going for like a kind of
deep emotional gravitas um And they thought they could get
it with Morgan Freeman. It's like we just put Morgan
Freeman in the movie. Yeah, and I'm sure in every
(21:41):
scene he was in, I was just like, oh, tell
me about things, but uh, in all the scenes he wasn't.
There was ridiculous science going on. So so what was
their plan? Did they have a plan? Yeah, destroying That's
what we should We should examine these movies through the
feasibility of their plans, I think. So, imagine a planet
killer asteroid is headed for the Earth. Which movie should
(22:04):
we use as the script for how to save ourselves? Now?
Should we use deep impact? I'm not sure because basically
what they do is there is a spaceship up in
the uh space called the Messiah. Yeah subtle imagery, yeah yeah.
(22:25):
And so what they do is they they landed on
the comet and some crew members they drill down a
hundred meters beneath the surface and they plant nuclear bombs.
Well this sounds really familiar. Yeah, well we'll get to
you're just saying we're gonna be comparing plans. They're the
same plan on the second exactly the same. Um. So
(22:47):
they go back up and then they detonate the bombs
and its like it hurts their uh their spacecraft and
it breaks up the comment. But now you've just basically
got two comic fragments heading for the Earth. Um. So
the plan doesn't really go as planned. So then one
one comet fragment spoiler uh hits the ocean and causes
(23:12):
a tidal wave that kills everybody on you know, on
either side of the Atlantic on the coast basically um.
And then the other comet is going to hit in
Canada and create dusk clouds that will block out the
sun for years and destroy everything on Earth. Um. But
at the last minute, the people from the spaceship are like, no,
let's use the bombs we have left. I don't know
(23:34):
why they didn't use them earlier, but let's use is
only so deep joke exactly, Let's use the bombs we
have left to blow up this other piece. Good idea.
So they blow it up again and that breaks it
up into pieces that are so small they burn up
in the atmosphere, and they save the world. And I'm
sure I'm gets re elected after that. Probably probably depends
(23:56):
on where his where his voter base was, if it
was all eastern seaboard, he's kind of screw you. Um. Okay,
So first of all all right, well we got to
talk about the other one too. So was their plan
the whole time to use the bombs to actually blow
up the comment was that plan? Alright, so all right
we've got that. Let's talk about the other one, of course, Armageddon. Armageddon, right,
(24:20):
the moral classic. Yes, this this, this one was was
directed by Michael Bay. It had J. J. Abrams has
a writing credit on it, along with five other script writers.
That's always a good sign. Um Rumors are that at
least fourteen worked on it. But anyway, yeah, so so
so the premises that they're sending this uh, this this
blue collar drill team out to uh to drill eight
(24:43):
hundred feet into the surface of this asteroid um that's
deeper than and it's it's actually supposed to be apparently
a rogue comment. Again, well in in Armageddon's case, it
was actually a rogue comment. Hit the asteroid belt knocked
a a asteroid the size of Texas um out towards
(25:05):
her like a pool ball. Just just cute if you're
looking at Texas, Uh, first of all, Haldy. Second, h
it's that's about two If Texas is about one thousand
four kilometers across UM the largest asteroid in the Main
Belt series is only nine kilometers just f y. I
(25:26):
also at a thousand kilometers across you're talking, you're talking
such massive amounts of damage. I mean, this really would
be a planet killer. I mean, this is this is
so much bigger diff Texas. Texas also is a territory.
It doesn't have depth. I wouldn't right when you think
(25:47):
of when you think about the three dimensions here, when
you think about the mass this thing would have, it
would be beyond catastrophic. According according to Billy Bob Thornton
in the film, nothing would survive, not even bacteria. Uh
all right, yeah, well I intensity, um, but but so
but so, but so. The the idea is to drill
eight hundred feet, which is like one five thousand of
(26:11):
the way into the into the asteroids. So I'm not
sure how eight feet was the decided upon drilling depth,
aside from the fact that there's a fissure in the
asteroid that apparently they can just drop drop the nuclear
bombs directly into this fissure and the plan is to
split it into like in like in deep impact and
have purpose and have both have missed the planet entirely. Um.
(26:33):
Easily so and and and it works. It totally works,
aside from the part where you know, tragic things have
to happen to someone, so that lives on spoiler alert. Yeah,
you can't spoil that movie. Uh you of course heard
that sounds so exciting. I don't even want to close
my eyes. Of course, you've, of course heard the story
about how NASA uses this movie, right um and their
(26:55):
management training program. NASA screams, screams, screens this film. I'm
sure they're screaming as well. NASA screens this film for
prospective managers in their various departments and asks them to
name things that are wrong scientifically with the movie. According
to an article written in two thousand seven in The
New Scientist. At that time, one sixty eight things were
(27:18):
identified as being impossible in that hundred sixty eight. I'm
sure it's about one per minute. But Astronomy has a
really good right up on exactly what is wrong. He's got.
He's got a really great presentation too, he does. He
does a live presentation with power point and everything. When
it's on Roger Ebert's list of most hated movies, he said,
he said, it's an assault on the eyes, the ears,
(27:40):
of the brain, common sense of the human desire to
be entertained. I've got one other. He also said, I
think it was like the first two hour trailer you'd
ever seen. So here's here's another issue. So we talked
about all right. First of all, the size of this
thing is so huge as to absolutely be able to
kill everything on Earth. I mean, it's so much larger
than even the biggest of the asteroids that we've talked
(28:01):
about already. I really do suspect the bacteria would survive.
But that's because I think that life has an interesting
way of that happened. Maybe I don't know. But the
the other thing I want to talk about was that,
so you know that damage is not just the mass
of the object, but how quick fast it's moving. I
did some math because according to the plot of arm again,
(28:23):
they have eighteen days to figure out what they're going
to do and do it before this asteroid impacts the
Earth eighteen days. So from the asteroid belt where this
asteroid came from, to get to Earth in eighteen days,
that's a that's a trip of about two hundred thirty
two million, four hundred thousand miles or three seventy four
million kilometers to get there in eighteen days, you've gotta
(28:47):
the average speed, if you average it all out, needs
to be about twelve million, nine hundred thousand miles per day,
or about five hundred thirty seven thousand, nine and sixty
three miles per hour, or about eight thousand, nine sixty
six miles for a minute, or about a hundred and
forty nine miles per second, which is about two or
forty kilometers per second. The reason why I bring that
up is that's the average speed it would be. UM.
(29:10):
Generally speaking, even a comet traveling would not go nearly
that fast. Uh. Common speeds depend upon how close they
are to the sun. The closer they get to the sun,
the more they speed up. When they start moving away
from the Sun, they start to slow down. Until they
come back around and start going towards the Sun again,
their speed picks up. But for example, UM Hayley's common
(29:33):
or Halley's common, if you prefer when it's closest to
the Sun, it's moving at about a hundred kilometers per second.
Now this asteroids moving at a mean speed of two
KOs per second. It's moving wicked fast, is what I'm saying,
so the speed at which this is moving, in the
mass at which it the the enormous mass means that
I just can't imagine anything really a surviving for any
(29:56):
length of time with that kind of impact. It's beyond
my comprehension um. And also the idea of being able
to use our explosives, like if you were to gather
up all the nuclear explosives that were ever made in
the history of ever and blow them up on this thing,
it wouldn't destroy it. I guess maybe the fissure was
there explanation of how this would work, but not very
(30:19):
likely it was. It was phil Play pointed out very
lucky that the fissure was was directly aligned with Earth,
so that so that the two halves would split off it.
I mean, it's lucky that it didn't just send one
half hurdling even faster towards because that would have sucked. Yeah. Also,
interesting interesting research that came out of the University of
California and Las Almost National Laboratory has said that even
(30:43):
if we did explode an asteroid, it would probably reform
due to gravity gravity in two to eighteen hours. Yeah,
that's one of those reasons why whenever you see a
science fiction film with you know, you look up into
the sky and you see a moon, but the moon
is in pieces. That's not realistic at all. The moon's
gravity would end up whatever moon you're talking about, the
(31:04):
gravity would be strong enough together it would end up
coalescing back into one body, which is, uh, you know,
one of those things that it looks cool in science fiction,
which is why I suspect it happens a lot in
those films, but it just is not very realistic. So
it sounds like you're telling me that the science from
the nineteen fifty eight Italian sci fi film The Day
(31:25):
the Sky Exploded is not accurate. I don't know, Joe.
Why don't you give me the synopsis of this movie
and pray make it the one that was translated poorly.
I'm going to hear this all right, Well, no I
have to. In fact, what I'm gonna do, I'm not
gonna summarize myself. I'm just going to read directly from
the Wikipedia entry for this film. Uh So, the plot
(31:47):
is an atomic rocket is launched on a manned Moon mission,
but one of the engine's malfunctions, the rocket steering is broken.
The pilot disengages the capsule and returns to Earth. The
atomic ooster, however, continues on, eventually crashing into and exploding
in an asteroid belt. I assume the asteroid belt. The
(32:09):
explosion dislodges many asteroids from their orbits. They coalesced into
one giant cluster and are heading for Earth. As the
cluster approaches Earth, it causes global scale disasters so before
it gets here I guess tidal waves, wind, fire storms,
and earthquakes. One scientist loses his sanity in the crisis
(32:32):
and disables the great computer needed to calculate all the
firing data. I'm not sure what that refers to. Is
poorly written. Uh entry here never never. First of all,
I don't know who the editor of this number one.
Never let a crazy scientist have access to your computer, Okay,
but then fortunately, here we go. He is stopped and
(32:53):
the data provided when no reasonable but when no reasonable
hope can be on the possibility that humans could eventually
avoid the crash, scientists finds that Moon will pass in
front of the cluster so that most of it will
be shielded. However, a small part of the cluster is
(33:13):
not shielded and goes towards Earth. At this point, mankind's
only hope is to arm every missile on Earth with
a nuclear warhead and fire them all at the cluster.
The nations of the world band together and fire the volley.
The cluster is destroyed. Gosh, it's amazing to think that
even nations facing the wrong way because of the rotation
(33:34):
of the Earth could participate in such a global endeavor. Beautiful.
I've not seen this film, but I've seen a trailer
for it, and the trailer is I recommend everyone go
go on YouTube and look up the trailer for The
Day the Sky Exploded because it talks about how, uh,
it's not fiction, this is science fact. It could happen tomorrow.
(33:56):
I think what's funny is that apparently the asteroids have
a vendetta against Earth, like we hit it with a rocket,
and now we want to punish's coming to us. Like,
out of all the vectors that those pieces could take
in all of the Solar System, it aims right back
at our planet. What are the odds? Well, it's probably
because that scientists lost his sanity and disabled the great
(34:19):
computer that was. That was such an unfortunate choice. I
kind of I kind of prefer the melancholy of view
of of that a rogue planet will probably head towards
us and be eclipsed by the Sun right right until
it's it's all up in our Earth. Fries. Well, I
do want to ask a question in case one of
you knows the answer, Um, what do scientists say about
(34:40):
if an asteroid was on a collision course for Earth?
How soon would we know or how far in advance
would we know? It all depends upon the size of
the asteroid it does, um, I It's not the kind
of thing like in Armageddon they were like only fifteen
telescopes can even see it. If something that big we're
coming towards us that fast, we would see it with
the naked eye pretty quickly fifteen days out. Yeah, it's
(35:02):
it's one of those things where like like something that
size would not be a surprise to us. Something on
the size of a thirty yard wide asteroid that could
easily escape detection. I mean, these things tend to be
very faint, they're very small, um, and sky is big,
so you've got a lot of different potential places you
could be looking, and you could miss a relatively small
(35:26):
asteroid until it was pretty close um. In fact, that's
one of the things that scientists say we need to
improve upon. We need to build better telescopes, and we
need to have programs in place where we actually are
looking for things like this while also gathering other scientific
data so that we won't be taken by surprise when
something of that size enters, you know, close to the Earth,
(35:48):
so that we have a chance to react to it
before it becomes you know, just a catastrophe. Right well,
you know not. NASA has the Near Earth Object Program
UM and it's it's a century collision monitoring stem that
are keeping an eye on anything that has the potential
to be hazardous to Earth within the next hundred years.
There's also the Basis twelve Foundation. Have you heard about that?
(36:10):
I have not, so Basics twelve Foundation is a group
of scientists and engineers who who really want to develop
programs they're really meant to to detect and in the
future deflect asteroids. Um. In fact, their motto is defending
Earth against asteroids UM, which I think is great And
(36:34):
um uh. You know the they take their name from
the Little Prince. That's that's the reference there. In case
you were wondering, UM. And there are a lot of
different ways that we could look into moving asteroids all
the way, Uh, the way that NASA has identified as
being the the most likely source, as in, it is
(36:55):
the thing that could create the most kinetic energy to
move an asteroid out of its pathway towards Earth is
do you guys know? Yes it really is, Yes it
really is. But but see here's the difference. In Deep
Impact and in Armageddon. The idea was to use a
nuclear bomb to blow apart these objects, to to either
(37:18):
destroy them or to break them into smaller pieces just smash. Yeah, right.
In general, In general, breaking into smaller pieces doesn't work because,
like you said, Lauren, gravity can make them reform into
one big solid piece. Even if it's closer to Earth.
You've really just changed it from a giant slug into
shotgun pellets towards the Earth. That's not great either. But
if you were to use a nuclear bomb to deflect it,
(37:42):
to move the pathway so that it no longer is
on an intercept course with Earth right exploding it not
even on the surface of the asteroid, but a little
bit out in space in front of it or near
whatever side that's right where, Because I mean the further
and the further out you go, the better your chances are,
right because you only have to move it a little
bit when it's further out from the Earth for that
pathway to have a big difference once it gets closer
(38:03):
to the Earth or you know, once it moves further
toward our orbit. Um. But that's just one method, now
that they did do a full NASA to a full
report on this in two thousand and seven and really
looked at a lot of different possibilities. There are other ones,
like using heat to heat up one side of an
asteroid so that it almost becomes like its own propulsion system.
(38:26):
That heat actually changes the nature of its pathway. So
if you again do that far enough out and you're
doing in a very precise way, you can guide the
asteroid into a new path that is no longer an
intercept course. Um. There another was the idea of using
a gravity toe or a gravity tractor, which is essentially
some sort of massive object that you send up out
(38:47):
into space that will go very close to where the
asteroid is and it's gravitational pull will affect the asteroids
flight path, so you can just very slowly and gradually
move it so it's pathway, this's out of the way. Um,
that's not really NASA has looked into it. They they
have essentially come to the conclusion that that's not terribly feasible,
(39:09):
at least not in the near term. Uh. I mean
it would be if you could get far enough out
where this process, you know, could take over the course
of a year or whatever, uh, to to actually move
it enough so that it's not going to affect you
can I ask quick questions. Do you know in that case,
if you're trying to deflect the path of an asteroid,
(39:31):
which would be better? Would you want to deflect it
towards the Sun or away from the Sun? Well, I
mean it would take you a lot more energy to
move it away from the Sun. The gravitation all the
Sun is going to continue to move that asteroid into
its orbit. Really, what you're looking at is, you know,
it's it's hard to say without without having a full
three dimensional model of the Solar system, so you can
start talking about different vectors. Really, you're just wanting to
(39:54):
make sure that whatever the orbital pathway is, it no
longer intercepts with the Earth. Uh. Keeping in mind, these
are orbital pathways in some cases, it may mean that
you're able to deflect the asteroid, but you've really just
bought yourself some time until the next time around when
it comes back again and there's a possibility for another impact.
But if you're if you're able to develop the technique
(40:16):
for doing this, you could in theory do it over
and over again. UM. There are other suggestions of doing
things like landing thrusters on an asteroid and using the
thrusters to actually kind of turn the asteroid into a spacecraft,
move it out of the pathway so that doesn't impact
the Earth. Um, and then harvest it for supplies. That's
also a possibility. It's certainly, I mean, and in fact,
a lot of the we talked in our last podcast
(40:37):
about the asteroid mining companies. One of the other things
they talked about is that their technology could be used
to help detect asteroids and to project. How are you
going to make money on that? Well, let me put
it to you this way. People have to pay asteroid insurance.
I think you won't help them if they haven't been
paying their feed I think the way you make money
on that is you guarantee you still have a customer
(40:59):
base because they don't old die and that's right glided
with Earth. Turns out that a massive die off of
your customers is a bad way to keep in business,
So I suspect that as some motivating factor to it.
But yeah, I mean, you know, we've also even managed
to already change the pathway of a a space object.
(41:23):
In this case, it was a comet, and in fact,
the spacecraft that that changed the comets pathway was called
Deep Impact five two thousand five spacecraft called Deep Impact,
it was actually a method to study the commet. The
purpose so just just forehead planted right into the moment.
(41:47):
The purpose was to study the comment, not to change
the pathway. That just it happened anyway, but that wasn't
the purpose of the mission. The mission goal was to
create a crater in the comet so it could study
the composition of the comment. That was the real purpose
parts So the spacecraft actually kind of fired off part
of itself that impacted with this comment, But it did
change the commets pathway just a little bit, not you know,
(42:12):
appreciable unless you're looking in the grand scheme of things,
but it shows that we have already done this, and
it's so it's something that in theory we could do
again purposefully, like that is the main goal of whatever
the mission would be. Uh. Well, I mean, obviously the
mission would be to move this out into a new pathway,
so we we know that we could do it. Uh.
(42:34):
It's a complicated issue because of course you have to
plot out all the trajectories and everything in order to
hit the asteroid exactly when and where you want to
in order to move its path uh the right amount.
But it's something that is possible. When I sit there
and I think about it, and I look at all
the math that goes into this sort of stuff, it
boggles my mind to think of how complex this is.
(42:55):
You've got so many different bodies moving around in space,
and you have to take into account so many different
things over timespans that can be years in length. It's
it's tough astrophysics, not for beginners, not for me. Why
do we say boggles the mind instead of like scrabbles
the mind or pictionaries the mind and actually yacht sis
(43:17):
my mind. Yeah, I've got all five alright, So do
you guys have anything else you want to talk about
with asteroid impact? Any other crazy ideas? What's your gut
feeling if there is a Texas sized asteroid? What what
if we've got a year a year, We're totally boned.
(43:39):
We are so doomed. A year. Yeah, now you tell
him a Texas size that's you know, just no, okay, Okay,
let's let's assume we've got a big asteroid headed for us.
It's planet killer size, um, and we can't deflect it.
It's gonna hit. What what What are the best ways
for humans to survive on Earth? Wow? Uh, if you're
(44:01):
talking planet Killer, then survivals, I mean you're just talking
You might be able to survive the initial impact and
then the initial fallout. But if you're talking about planet Killer,
we're talking about the die off of the entire support system,
so you lose all the vegetation. Could either be a
matter of moving to space, being like screw you guys,
(44:22):
I'm I'm heading off planet. Yeah okay, or some kind
of underground bunker with I mean, I mean you could
hypothetically support a small community of people and in a
sealed environment for a very long period of time. Okay, so,
but but just imagine maybe so there's some bacteria that
survived the impact because they're in like vo stock in Antarctica,
(44:44):
you know, or you know you've got that, you've got
the life forms that it can survive via chemicals underneath
the surface, and exactly, and then you just you need
to get in a bunker long enough to wait for
those single cell organism organisms to sort of like re
evolve into edible plants and animals. Um. So it was
(45:05):
probably only take about four billion years actually, And if
you could just weigh out those four billion years in
your bunker, I'm pretty sure you don't have that many
granola bars personally, and I don't. I don't have that
many songs in my iPod. I would go crazy and
I'd be like, ah, this is the four million time
I've listened to this track. I can't stand it anymore.
(45:25):
That sees my mind, It does, it does? All right, Well,
you know this has gotten loopy. We're ending this so
that we can have a serious discussion, like about ice
cream or something. Alright, So guys, if you have any
suggestions for topics, why don't you go on over to
our website. It's for Thinking dot com fw Thinking dot
com and check out our blogs, our podcasts. We've got
(45:47):
lots of content. They're all about the subjects that we've
been talking about and other things about the future that
I think you'll find really interesting and we will taught
you again really soon. Or more on this topic and
the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot Com, brought
(46:14):
to you by Toyota. Let's Go Places,
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking, either everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
podcast that looks at the future and says, sir of
the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid kills is approximately
(00:20):
there's thou swy to one. I'm Jonathan Trick and I'm
Joe McCormick. Today we're going to talk about what happens
when an asteroid has decided to set its stony eye
on Earth in come and say hello, or in other words,
what happens if an asteroid collides with us? Y'all? Is
that a good thing? Asteroid danger? Probably the planet killer? Yeah, yeah,
(00:47):
we have to talk about planet killers. But really, I mean,
in order for us to have this conversation, I've got
some basic, basic terms I want to define. So an
asteroid it's technically a raw key object in space that's
smaller than a planet. Boy, is that helpful? It's like
a hill. A hill is smaller than a mountain. What's
a mountain? It's taller than a hill. Though there's there's
(01:09):
some blurry parts right there. Dwarf planets are basically big asteroids.
Well that's the problem, right, I mean, when do you
get to the point where you I mean, clearly there
are scientists at NASA who do determine these things where
they've decided arbitrarily. Some would argue that a body of
a certain size means a planet, and anything below that
is a dwarf planet or asteroid. But yes, there are
(01:31):
dwarf planets out there that you could also argue our asteroids, um,
quite a few of them actually, uh. And then you
know these can range in size from relatively small to ginormous.
So that's that's the technical term until you hit planet size,
in which case then you're talking about an actual planet
or you know, uh, arguably some would say a moon,
(01:55):
though some dwarf planets and moons are also asteroids. Uh,
you have meteor and meteorite. By the way, whether you
call something an asteroid, a meteor or a meteorite really
depends on two things. Where it is and what what
it's doing. So an asteroid is out in space, okay.
A meteor is burning up in our atmosphere, burning up
(02:16):
through compression and friction and some chemical processes that go on.
But these are shooting stars. When you look up into
the sky and you see a shooting star, that's a
meteor Uh. Typically they just completely vaporized. If they happen
to not completely vaporize, if some part of that hits
the ground, that's a meteorite. So again the definition depends
(02:39):
upon where it is and what it's doing. It's technically
all the same stuff. And then you have a comet,
which is not the same stuff. Commet is an icy
body that releases gas or dust. Uh. They can contain
things like carbon dioxide, ammonia, methane, and other chemicals, and
they have their own orbits, as do asteroids. And these
(03:02):
are the basic tools that we'll be talking about, the
basic elements things we'll be talking about this podcast. So
a comment or an asteroid on a collision course with
Earth could be bad news. Mostly depends on the size
and the composition of said asteroid or comet, because some
(03:23):
stuff will not necessarily cause a planet killing issue. If it's,
for example, more ice then I don't know, plutonium, then
well all right, let's let's let's let's put it this way.
If the meteor or asteroid, I should say I just
(03:43):
defined the terms and then I screwed up. If the
asteroid has made more out of metal, than rock, it
is more likely to actually survive the pathway going through
the your atmosphere and actually end up creating an impact
on the surface of the Earth. If it's more rock
the meteor, it could burn up, but depending upon the size,
it may burn up and it's still coming in with
(04:04):
tremendous kinetic energy. I mean, these things are moving so
fast and then they hit the air's atmosphere. If they
break apart in the air atmosphere, that's still releasing that energy.
So you can have what amounts to a nuclear explosion
over the surface of the Earth if it's rocky versus
if it's metal. So depending upon the size, that could
(04:25):
be catastrophic. Right, even if it doesn't impact the ground
and cause a crater, it can still cause huge amounts
of damage. And in fact, when we get all further
than the podcast, I'll talk about some examples of both. Now, typically,
you know, the Earth gets hit by about a hundred
tons of material every day most yeah, most of that's
(04:48):
about the size of a grain of sand. So it's
not like we're not like we're having you know, uh,
children's sized rocks fall from the sky on a regular basis.
It's usually stuff that's pretty small. And thus, yes, you know,
I wait till I talked about how big the Tunguska
meteorite was based upon how many children wide? UM volume
(05:13):
gets really fun when I talk about, you know, using
children as a unit of measurement. Uh. It used to be,
by the way, that my standard unit of measurement was
the Conquistador. That's a true story. UM. Anyway, about a
hundred tons of materials hits the Earth every day. But
when we're talking about big impacts, stuff that is causing
massive amounts of damage or has the potential to do so,
(05:35):
that is much more rare. Right, we don't see big
events happen frequently. A large impact might happen every hundred
years or so. And by large impact, i'm talking about
meteoroids that are about fifty feet across or larger. That's
maybe once every hundred years. Then you're talking about huge impacts,
(05:57):
I mean the stuff that could and and you know,
wipe out an enormous amount of life, possibly all life
as we know it. Those things happen incredibly rarely. I
mean the last one that was uh, that impacted a
huge amount of life on Earth happened sixty five million
years ago, So it's not frequent, but it can happen,
(06:19):
and it has happened, sure, and there's hypothetically a lot
of them out there. Deep space Industries estimates that there's
some ten thousand or more potentially hazardous asteroids that that
are three or more in diameter, which is, you know,
by far enough to wipe out the whole country, let alone.
It's certainly depending upon what's made out of and where
(06:41):
it hits, it certainly could wipe out a huge amount
of life. Yeah, you know, but remember space is really
big and we are really small, and so the chances
of this actually happening, like we said, yeah, like like
once every few hundred million years. What Lauren is trying
to do is make you feel more comfortable. But people,
I'm trying to tell right now, it's just a matter
(07:02):
of time, just a matter of time. Now that matter
of time might be millions of years. So you know,
it's not something It really isn't something to lie awake
at night dreading that the skies are going to fall,
unless you believe in the singularity and you're planning on
living another few hundred million years, which in which case worry. Yeah,
then you've got to like a couple of million years
from now, it's going to be a real, real problem. Uh.
(07:23):
When we're talking about asteroid impact, keyhole really refers to
a gravitational window. Now, a lot of asteroids, you know,
are well, they're all orbiting the Sun in our solar system, right.
The asteroids orbit the Sun similar to the way that
the planets orbit the Sun. That's the thing a lot
of people might not recognize from the movies. You just
see asteroids just kind of zoom vector just yeah, of
(07:49):
course that wouldn't happen. They might be in some kind
of irregular orbit. They're going to be orbiting the Sun.
So in general, we can say that, you know, a
particular asteroid might have of an orbit which means that
it comes close to the Earth every say, seven years.
The Apotheis asteroid is one of those. So there's this, uh,
(08:10):
gravitational window and and it's it's called a keyhole. And
the gravitational window is usually the small area that if
the asteroid were to go through that area at the
right time, the Earth's gravitational pull would alter the asteroid's path,
thus making it more likely or possibly more likely, that
(08:31):
the next time the asteroid passes through when it completes orbit, Yes,
it hits us. So for the Apotheis asteroid that I
mentioned earlier, Uh, there was worry that perhaps if it
hit this keyhole back when it passed by Earth, uh,
that it would then end up impacting the Earth further
(08:51):
down the line. Uh. I didn't do that. I didn't.
It didn't hit the keyhole. But then there's the question
of what happens in mine? What if it hits the
key hole then? And the key hole tends to be
a pretty small window. And when I say pretty small,
I'm talking about like eight D, which on the solar
scale is nothing. Right, that's just the tiniest of tiny
(09:12):
little windows. So scientists usually say there's like a one
in a million, or less than a one in a
million chance that this will ever happen, but it's something
that can happen, and thus it's something to think about. Now,
if if the if the asteroid had passed through that
key hole, we would still have several years to figure
out what to do. And if you I, I don't
(09:34):
know if that's just a number you tossed out there,
but a one in a million chance, well, I mean,
if it hits our path every twenty nine years. It's
actually it's actually I think but yeah, sorry, Yeah, they
projected it out twice before us. So what so it
could hit the key hole in seven million years? I
(09:54):
mean sure, sure, I mean if you go, if you
go long enough. That's why I said if you if
you extend out the timeline long enough. It's not a
question of will the Earth get hit by an asteroid,
it's the question of when is that going to happen?
I would say, yeah, look at the surface of the Moon. Yeah, well,
I mean the Moon. The Moon doesn't have the capability
(10:16):
like the Earth does of of covering up the old
asteroid impacts. I mean, you see all the places. There's
also no atmosphere for the asteroid to slow down, yeah,
or break apart in um. Yeah. So it's over long
periods of time. There's a lot of risk out there, right,
So let's let's talk about the different factors that go
(10:38):
into these collisions, like the idea of what what makes
a collision so bad? And I've kind of talked about
it already. What's what the asteroids made out of? It's
how fast it's traveling, and it's it's mass, right, those
are the three things. So if it's made out of
metal and it's huge and it's going really fast, that's catastrophic. Yeah,
if an asteroid hits the Earth, basically if I get
(11:00):
out from under it, am I gonna be? Okay? No,
it depends on the size. Uh Yeah. What I want
to know is what are what are the effects and
asteroid impacts you could have apart from just you getting smashed? Okay,
all right, that's fair. Alright, So let's let's say that
you're talking about an asteroid that's oh the size of Epaphus.
(11:21):
Since we talked about that before, Um, that would be
about equivalent if apophis actually collided with the Earth, about
equivalent to a seven fifty megaton explosion. So seven or
fifty megaton explosion, even if you are not exactly where
the little X is whether the meteoroid is going to
hit the Earth, and that little X would be actually
about like fifty yard diameters. Who you know? You Let's
(11:43):
say you're a couple of football fields away with it's
a seven fifty megaton explosion, that doesn't matter so much. Um,
you're talking about massive impacts. Uh, And and they're two
like I said two different types as well. Wait a minute,
how big was the biggest nuclear weapon we've ever or
wouldn't that's our bomb? Megatons? Was that so a seven
(12:05):
fifty megaton explosion? Yeah, fifty seven is the largest nuclear
bomb we've ever times, the biggest nuclear bomb we've ever made.
Now to be fair, uh, you know, you should ask
me really how big the eruption at Krakatoa was? How
big was the eruption of Krakatoa? Two hundred megatons? Yeah,
(12:25):
it's still affected the weather all over the world, didn't
Uh huh yep? And uh and a seven or fifty
megaton collision would probably affect the weather as well. Now,
if you were to compare that to say, the massive
asteroid that hit Earth sixty five million years ago, Apophis
has nothing on that because you're talking a hundred terra tons,
(12:47):
which is a hundred million megaton explosion and uh for
for sixty five million years ago. Uh, and that wiped
out sevent of life on Earth, so to in order
for you to get to an extinction level event we're talking. Uh, Well,
let's see, the the asteroid that hit our years ago
(13:10):
was probably about six miles in diameter, you're talking about
something larger than that that is going to require you know,
you need something bigger than that to actually wipe out
all life on Earth definitively. But um, you don't need
anything that large to at least do some massive, massive damage.
And even if it's a smaller one that doesn't cause
(13:33):
global environmental damage by knocking dust up into the air
or that all nuclear winter thing that we talked about, Right,
even if it's not that level, if it hits an
area that is really important to us in other factors,
like let's say it hits New York City, or it
hits Tokyo, it hits some major financial center, then you're
(13:56):
talking about a global crisis that's an economic crisis, not
necessarily an environment mental one. It doesn't have to be
an enormous asteroid to do enormous amounts of damage. It
just depends upon what kind of damage you're talking about, right, Um.
And like I said, the one that hit million years
ago that was mostly metal had made this enormous crater
off the Yucatan Peninsula and which is estimated between a
(14:20):
d eight kilometers and three kilometers in diameter, depending upon
whom you asked but a hundred eighty seems to be
the general consensus, uh that that's actually not the largest
crater on Earth that was ever created by an asteroid impact.
That goes to um the Rita Hort or Rita fort
Rather crater, which is in South Africa, and I'm probably
(14:42):
terribly mispronouncing it, but it happened two point two billion
years ago, and that was an asteroid that was probably
about ten kilometers in diameter, so close to that six
mile mark, that same one word thing about sixty five
million years ago, but it ended up creating a crater
that was three kilometer Why it actually the impact melted
rock when it hit the Earth. That's how how much
(15:05):
heat and energy was in that collision. And most of
the time, I want to put in, meteorites don't actually
heat up the Earth when they hit. They are, you know,
at absolute zero when they're flying through space, and a
short jaunt through the atmosphere is not going to heat
them up that much. No, but the collision, the kinetic
energy releases such a huge and when they break apart,
(15:27):
they certainly can if you look at the Tanduska uh
meteorite or meteor I should say, because it actually exploded
over the Earth. That was back in nineteen o eight.
This is the one that explode over Russia. So you're
seeing those creepy pictures of just somewhere out in Siberia,
there's all these flattened trees. Yeah, that's exactly the longest
time people were like what happened? Yeah, that was an
(15:51):
asteroid that that came close to the Earth, became a
meteor and exploded, um broke apart. However you want to say,
uh above tangusca over in in Russia. Uh, the heat
from the explosions set fire to the forest, and then
the shockwave from the uh, the explosion and the asteroid
(16:13):
entering the atmosphere ended up flattening trees for hundreds of
square miles. So that's a lot of energy right there.
And clearly if they'd hit over a more populated area
would have done massive devastation to that population. So these
are you know, these are actual historical events. There are
some that are uh you know, there's there's the one
(16:33):
from fifty thousand years ago that uh that collided in Winslow, Arizona.
That's meteor crater. Have you ever heard of meteor crater?
It's it's pretty famous. It's not a national landmark. But
there is a crater out in Arizona called meteor Crater.
It's about uh six feet deep. It's the object was
probably about thirty to fifty yards across. Now that one
(16:56):
had about the energy of a twenty mega ton bomb,
and that one was probably pretty much just made out
of medal. And then you have one from October, so
fairly recent. It was a It was spotted by quite
a few people because that was when video camera technology
was really starting to become a thing. And it happened
(17:19):
on a Friday. Why is that important Because if it's
a Friday afternoon in and video cameras are becoming a thing,
a lot of parents are out at sporting events watching
their kids play sports. And in fact, that's exactly what happened,
was that there were all these people who were videotaping
kids playing sports and then they see this fire in
the sky and it was this meteorite coming in and uh,
(17:42):
it entered, it became visible somewhere over Virginia. Moving northeast,
a meteor rite landed and dented the heck out of
this lady's car in New York. It hit hit hit
the trunk of her car um uh or actually yeah,
the trunk of her all right, hit right on the
back bumper area. There's this huge dent and then you
(18:04):
see like this football sized piece of rock right there. Um.
So even that, like, obviously if you had been under that,
that would have been bad news. That would have killed
you most likely or at least hurt you really really badly,
depending on how it hit you. But that's obviously not
the kind of size that would precipitate like a even
(18:26):
a localized catastrophe beyond the catastrophe of man. I don't
know if my insurance covers meteorite impact. Um. I think
that falls under act of God. It may very well.
And then of course in in this year we had
the meteor that fell across uh the sky and in
(18:46):
Russia again where the dash cams picked it up and
a lot of people with cell phones picked it up,
and the shock way from that ended up causing lots
of damage, a lot of broken windows in the area
where the the media started to break up over the sky.
And did that actually touch ground anywhere or was it
just I didn't see anything about it touching ground And
(19:08):
there may have been pieces that survived. They're planning of
people who claim that they have a piece of what
it was. But then there are a lot of pieces
of the Berlin Wall on eBay too that looks just
like cinder blocks to me. But you know, your mileage
may vary, but at any rate, it's certainly was spectacular
and was caught on a lot of people's cameras. Now,
(19:30):
the interesting thing I think here is this idea that
it doesn't really matter. Again, it does matter, but it
doesn't You can still suffer damage on the surface of
the Earth even if the meteor, even as a meteor
not a meteorite, right, if it explodes over the surface
of the earth, then it explodes with enough force, then
that can cause lots of damage all on its own.
(19:51):
It doesn't have to be this big impact. Um. So,
so this is scary enough that that actually couple of films,
as it turns out, have been made along the premises.
Let's talk about some of these documentaries that were made.
Jelliver jell Eversy Deep Impact. I did not I did.
(20:13):
I think I think I might have seen that in theaters.
I saw it in the theater. Yeah, what wait, what
year did that come up? Oh, what year was? I
think that was also the year that Armageddon came out.
Beat beat it to the box office by like by
a few weeks. NBC beat both with their made for
(20:34):
TV film called Asteroid In It's almost like people in
Hollywood who have a project in development don't keep their
trap shut, and then other people steal that idea and
make the same movie. So a deep impact, what exactly
is heading towards the earth? So Elijah Wood looks through
Little Elijah Wood looks through a telescope and he sees
a comment and they name it after him. It's really
(20:58):
cute and and they're like, oh, it's gonna kill us all.
And it's got President Morgan Freeman I remember, And he's
just incredibly is that the character name? Basically, you know,
let's see what's his name. I've got the the plots
and officers here, President Tom Beckman ever, anyone who's not
(21:19):
He's just well, I mean it's funny because I think
the movie is kind of silly, as I remember, um though,
it's I think it's going for like a kind of
deep emotional gravitas um And they thought they could get
it with Morgan Freeman. It's like we just put Morgan
Freeman in the movie. Yeah, and I'm sure in every
(21:41):
scene he was in, I was just like, oh, tell
me about things, but uh, in all the scenes he wasn't.
There was ridiculous science going on. So so what was
their plan? Did they have a plan? Yeah, destroying That's
what we should We should examine these movies through the
feasibility of their plans, I think. So, imagine a planet
killer asteroid is headed for the Earth. Which movie should
(22:04):
we use as the script for how to save ourselves? Now?
Should we use deep impact? I'm not sure because basically
what they do is there is a spaceship up in
the uh space called the Messiah. Yeah subtle imagery, yeah yeah.
(22:25):
And so what they do is they they landed on
the comet and some crew members they drill down a
hundred meters beneath the surface and they plant nuclear bombs.
Well this sounds really familiar. Yeah, well we'll get to
you're just saying we're gonna be comparing plans. They're the
same plan on the second exactly the same. Um. So
(22:47):
they go back up and then they detonate the bombs
and its like it hurts their uh their spacecraft and
it breaks up the comment. But now you've just basically
got two comic fragments heading for the Earth. Um. So
the plan doesn't really go as planned. So then one
one comet fragment spoiler uh hits the ocean and causes
(23:12):
a tidal wave that kills everybody on you know, on
either side of the Atlantic on the coast basically um.
And then the other comet is going to hit in
Canada and create dusk clouds that will block out the
sun for years and destroy everything on Earth. Um. But
at the last minute, the people from the spaceship are like, no,
let's use the bombs we have left. I don't know
(23:34):
why they didn't use them earlier, but let's use is
only so deep joke exactly, Let's use the bombs we
have left to blow up this other piece. Good idea.
So they blow it up again and that breaks it
up into pieces that are so small they burn up
in the atmosphere, and they save the world. And I'm
sure I'm gets re elected after that. Probably probably depends
(23:56):
on where his where his voter base was, if it
was all eastern seaboard, he's kind of screw you. Um. Okay,
So first of all all right, well we got to
talk about the other one too. So was their plan
the whole time to use the bombs to actually blow
up the comment was that plan? Alright, so all right
we've got that. Let's talk about the other one, of course, Armageddon. Armageddon, right,
(24:20):
the moral classic. Yes, this this, this one was was
directed by Michael Bay. It had J. J. Abrams has
a writing credit on it, along with five other script writers.
That's always a good sign. Um Rumors are that at
least fourteen worked on it. But anyway, yeah, so so
so the premises that they're sending this uh, this this
blue collar drill team out to uh to drill eight
(24:43):
hundred feet into the surface of this asteroid um that's
deeper than and it's it's actually supposed to be apparently
a rogue comment. Again, well in in Armageddon's case, it
was actually a rogue comment. Hit the asteroid belt knocked
a a asteroid the size of Texas um out towards
(25:05):
her like a pool ball. Just just cute if you're
looking at Texas, Uh, first of all, Haldy. Second, h
it's that's about two If Texas is about one thousand
four kilometers across UM the largest asteroid in the Main
Belt series is only nine kilometers just f y. I
(25:26):
also at a thousand kilometers across you're talking, you're talking
such massive amounts of damage. I mean, this really would
be a planet killer. I mean, this is this is
so much bigger diff Texas. Texas also is a territory.
It doesn't have depth. I wouldn't right when you think
(25:47):
of when you think about the three dimensions here, when
you think about the mass this thing would have, it
would be beyond catastrophic. According according to Billy Bob Thornton
in the film, nothing would survive, not even bacteria. Uh
all right, yeah, well I intensity, um, but but so
but so, but so. The the idea is to drill
eight hundred feet, which is like one five thousand of
(26:11):
the way into the into the asteroids. So I'm not
sure how eight feet was the decided upon drilling depth,
aside from the fact that there's a fissure in the
asteroid that apparently they can just drop drop the nuclear
bombs directly into this fissure and the plan is to
split it into like in like in deep impact and
have purpose and have both have missed the planet entirely. Um.
(26:33):
Easily so and and and it works. It totally works,
aside from the part where you know, tragic things have
to happen to someone, so that lives on spoiler alert. Yeah,
you can't spoil that movie. Uh you of course heard
that sounds so exciting. I don't even want to close
my eyes. Of course, you've, of course heard the story
about how NASA uses this movie, right um and their
(26:55):
management training program. NASA screams, screams, screens this film. I'm
sure they're screaming as well. NASA screens this film for
prospective managers in their various departments and asks them to
name things that are wrong scientifically with the movie. According
to an article written in two thousand seven in The
New Scientist. At that time, one sixty eight things were
(27:18):
identified as being impossible in that hundred sixty eight. I'm
sure it's about one per minute. But Astronomy has a
really good right up on exactly what is wrong. He's got.
He's got a really great presentation too, he does. He
does a live presentation with power point and everything. When
it's on Roger Ebert's list of most hated movies, he said,
he said, it's an assault on the eyes, the ears,
(27:40):
of the brain, common sense of the human desire to
be entertained. I've got one other. He also said, I
think it was like the first two hour trailer you'd
ever seen. So here's here's another issue. So we talked
about all right. First of all, the size of this
thing is so huge as to absolutely be able to
kill everything on Earth. I mean, it's so much larger
than even the biggest of the asteroids that we've talked
(28:01):
about already. I really do suspect the bacteria would survive.
But that's because I think that life has an interesting
way of that happened. Maybe I don't know. But the
the other thing I want to talk about was that,
so you know that damage is not just the mass
of the object, but how quick fast it's moving. I
did some math because according to the plot of arm again,
(28:23):
they have eighteen days to figure out what they're going
to do and do it before this asteroid impacts the
Earth eighteen days. So from the asteroid belt where this
asteroid came from, to get to Earth in eighteen days,
that's a that's a trip of about two hundred thirty
two million, four hundred thousand miles or three seventy four
million kilometers to get there in eighteen days, you've gotta
(28:47):
the average speed, if you average it all out, needs
to be about twelve million, nine hundred thousand miles per day,
or about five hundred thirty seven thousand, nine and sixty
three miles per hour, or about eight thousand, nine sixty
six miles for a minute, or about a hundred and
forty nine miles per second, which is about two or
forty kilometers per second. The reason why I bring that
up is that's the average speed it would be. UM.
(29:10):
Generally speaking, even a comet traveling would not go nearly
that fast. Uh. Common speeds depend upon how close they
are to the sun. The closer they get to the sun,
the more they speed up. When they start moving away
from the Sun, they start to slow down. Until they
come back around and start going towards the Sun again,
their speed picks up. But for example, UM Hayley's common
(29:33):
or Halley's common, if you prefer when it's closest to
the Sun, it's moving at about a hundred kilometers per second.
Now this asteroids moving at a mean speed of two
KOs per second. It's moving wicked fast, is what I'm saying,
so the speed at which this is moving, in the
mass at which it the the enormous mass means that
I just can't imagine anything really a surviving for any
(29:56):
length of time with that kind of impact. It's beyond
my comprehension um. And also the idea of being able
to use our explosives, like if you were to gather
up all the nuclear explosives that were ever made in
the history of ever and blow them up on this thing,
it wouldn't destroy it. I guess maybe the fissure was
there explanation of how this would work, but not very
(30:19):
likely it was. It was phil Play pointed out very
lucky that the fissure was was directly aligned with Earth,
so that so that the two halves would split off it.
I mean, it's lucky that it didn't just send one
half hurdling even faster towards because that would have sucked. Yeah. Also,
interesting interesting research that came out of the University of
California and Las Almost National Laboratory has said that even
(30:43):
if we did explode an asteroid, it would probably reform
due to gravity gravity in two to eighteen hours. Yeah,
that's one of those reasons why whenever you see a
science fiction film with you know, you look up into
the sky and you see a moon, but the moon
is in pieces. That's not realistic at all. The moon's
gravity would end up whatever moon you're talking about, the
(31:04):
gravity would be strong enough together it would end up
coalescing back into one body, which is, uh, you know,
one of those things that it looks cool in science fiction,
which is why I suspect it happens a lot in
those films, but it just is not very realistic. So
it sounds like you're telling me that the science from
the nineteen fifty eight Italian sci fi film The Day
(31:25):
the Sky Exploded is not accurate. I don't know, Joe.
Why don't you give me the synopsis of this movie
and pray make it the one that was translated poorly.
I'm going to hear this all right, Well, no I
have to. In fact, what I'm gonna do, I'm not
gonna summarize myself. I'm just going to read directly from
the Wikipedia entry for this film. Uh So, the plot
(31:47):
is an atomic rocket is launched on a manned Moon mission,
but one of the engine's malfunctions, the rocket steering is broken.
The pilot disengages the capsule and returns to Earth. The
atomic ooster, however, continues on, eventually crashing into and exploding
in an asteroid belt. I assume the asteroid belt. The
(32:09):
explosion dislodges many asteroids from their orbits. They coalesced into
one giant cluster and are heading for Earth. As the
cluster approaches Earth, it causes global scale disasters so before
it gets here I guess tidal waves, wind, fire storms,
and earthquakes. One scientist loses his sanity in the crisis
(32:32):
and disables the great computer needed to calculate all the
firing data. I'm not sure what that refers to. Is
poorly written. Uh entry here never never. First of all,
I don't know who the editor of this number one.
Never let a crazy scientist have access to your computer, Okay,
but then fortunately, here we go. He is stopped and
(32:53):
the data provided when no reasonable but when no reasonable
hope can be on the possibility that humans could eventually
avoid the crash, scientists finds that Moon will pass in
front of the cluster so that most of it will
be shielded. However, a small part of the cluster is
(33:13):
not shielded and goes towards Earth. At this point, mankind's
only hope is to arm every missile on Earth with
a nuclear warhead and fire them all at the cluster.
The nations of the world band together and fire the volley.
The cluster is destroyed. Gosh, it's amazing to think that
even nations facing the wrong way because of the rotation
(33:34):
of the Earth could participate in such a global endeavor. Beautiful.
I've not seen this film, but I've seen a trailer
for it, and the trailer is I recommend everyone go
go on YouTube and look up the trailer for The
Day the Sky Exploded because it talks about how, uh,
it's not fiction, this is science fact. It could happen tomorrow.
(33:56):
I think what's funny is that apparently the asteroids have
a vendetta against Earth, like we hit it with a rocket,
and now we want to punish's coming to us. Like,
out of all the vectors that those pieces could take
in all of the Solar System, it aims right back
at our planet. What are the odds? Well, it's probably
because that scientists lost his sanity and disabled the great
(34:19):
computer that was. That was such an unfortunate choice. I
kind of I kind of prefer the melancholy of view
of of that a rogue planet will probably head towards
us and be eclipsed by the Sun right right until
it's it's all up in our Earth. Fries. Well, I
do want to ask a question in case one of
you knows the answer, Um, what do scientists say about
(34:40):
if an asteroid was on a collision course for Earth?
How soon would we know or how far in advance
would we know? It all depends upon the size of
the asteroid it does, um, I It's not the kind
of thing like in Armageddon they were like only fifteen
telescopes can even see it. If something that big we're
coming towards us that fast, we would see it with
the naked eye pretty quickly fifteen days out. Yeah, it's
(35:02):
it's one of those things where like like something that
size would not be a surprise to us. Something on
the size of a thirty yard wide asteroid that could
easily escape detection. I mean, these things tend to be
very faint, they're very small, um, and sky is big,
so you've got a lot of different potential places you
could be looking, and you could miss a relatively small
(35:26):
asteroid until it was pretty close um. In fact, that's
one of the things that scientists say we need to
improve upon. We need to build better telescopes, and we
need to have programs in place where we actually are
looking for things like this while also gathering other scientific
data so that we won't be taken by surprise when
something of that size enters, you know, close to the Earth,
(35:48):
so that we have a chance to react to it
before it becomes you know, just a catastrophe. Right well,
you know not. NASA has the Near Earth Object Program
UM and it's it's a century collision monitoring stem that
are keeping an eye on anything that has the potential
to be hazardous to Earth within the next hundred years.
There's also the Basis twelve Foundation. Have you heard about that?
(36:10):
I have not, so Basics twelve Foundation is a group
of scientists and engineers who who really want to develop
programs they're really meant to to detect and in the
future deflect asteroids. Um. In fact, their motto is defending
Earth against asteroids UM, which I think is great And
(36:34):
um uh. You know the they take their name from
the Little Prince. That's that's the reference there. In case
you were wondering, UM. And there are a lot of
different ways that we could look into moving asteroids all
the way, Uh, the way that NASA has identified as
being the the most likely source, as in, it is
(36:55):
the thing that could create the most kinetic energy to
move an asteroid out of its pathway towards Earth is
do you guys know? Yes it really is, Yes it
really is. But but see here's the difference. In Deep
Impact and in Armageddon. The idea was to use a
nuclear bomb to blow apart these objects, to to either
(37:18):
destroy them or to break them into smaller pieces just smash. Yeah, right.
In general, In general, breaking into smaller pieces doesn't work because,
like you said, Lauren, gravity can make them reform into
one big solid piece. Even if it's closer to Earth.
You've really just changed it from a giant slug into
shotgun pellets towards the Earth. That's not great either. But
if you were to use a nuclear bomb to deflect it,
(37:42):
to move the pathway so that it no longer is
on an intercept course with Earth right exploding it not
even on the surface of the asteroid, but a little
bit out in space in front of it or near
whatever side that's right where, Because I mean the further
and the further out you go, the better your chances are,
right because you only have to move it a little
bit when it's further out from the Earth for that
pathway to have a big difference once it gets closer
(38:03):
to the Earth or you know, once it moves further
toward our orbit. Um. But that's just one method, now
that they did do a full NASA to a full
report on this in two thousand and seven and really
looked at a lot of different possibilities. There are other ones,
like using heat to heat up one side of an
asteroid so that it almost becomes like its own propulsion system.
(38:26):
That heat actually changes the nature of its pathway. So
if you again do that far enough out and you're
doing in a very precise way, you can guide the
asteroid into a new path that is no longer an
intercept course. Um. There another was the idea of using
a gravity toe or a gravity tractor, which is essentially
some sort of massive object that you send up out
(38:47):
into space that will go very close to where the
asteroid is and it's gravitational pull will affect the asteroids
flight path, so you can just very slowly and gradually
move it so it's pathway, this's out of the way. Um,
that's not really NASA has looked into it. They they
have essentially come to the conclusion that that's not terribly feasible,
(39:09):
at least not in the near term. Uh. I mean
it would be if you could get far enough out
where this process, you know, could take over the course
of a year or whatever, uh, to to actually move
it enough so that it's not going to affect you
can I ask quick questions. Do you know in that case,
if you're trying to deflect the path of an asteroid,
(39:31):
which would be better? Would you want to deflect it
towards the Sun or away from the Sun? Well, I
mean it would take you a lot more energy to
move it away from the Sun. The gravitation all the
Sun is going to continue to move that asteroid into
its orbit. Really, what you're looking at is, you know,
it's it's hard to say without without having a full
three dimensional model of the Solar system, so you can
start talking about different vectors. Really, you're just wanting to
(39:54):
make sure that whatever the orbital pathway is, it no
longer intercepts with the Earth. Uh. Keeping in mind, these
are orbital pathways in some cases, it may mean that
you're able to deflect the asteroid, but you've really just
bought yourself some time until the next time around when
it comes back again and there's a possibility for another impact.
But if you're if you're able to develop the technique
(40:16):
for doing this, you could in theory do it over
and over again. UM. There are other suggestions of doing
things like landing thrusters on an asteroid and using the
thrusters to actually kind of turn the asteroid into a spacecraft,
move it out of the pathway so that doesn't impact
the Earth. Um, and then harvest it for supplies. That's
also a possibility. It's certainly, I mean, and in fact,
a lot of the we talked in our last podcast
(40:37):
about the asteroid mining companies. One of the other things
they talked about is that their technology could be used
to help detect asteroids and to project. How are you
going to make money on that? Well, let me put
it to you this way. People have to pay asteroid insurance.
I think you won't help them if they haven't been
paying their feed I think the way you make money
on that is you guarantee you still have a customer
(40:59):
base because they don't old die and that's right glided
with Earth. Turns out that a massive die off of
your customers is a bad way to keep in business,
So I suspect that as some motivating factor to it.
But yeah, I mean, you know, we've also even managed
to already change the pathway of a a space object.
(41:23):
In this case, it was a comet, and in fact,
the spacecraft that that changed the comets pathway was called
Deep Impact five two thousand five spacecraft called Deep Impact,
it was actually a method to study the commet. The
purpose so just just forehead planted right into the moment.
(41:47):
The purpose was to study the comment, not to change
the pathway. That just it happened anyway, but that wasn't
the purpose of the mission. The mission goal was to
create a crater in the comet so it could study
the composition of the comment. That was the real purpose
parts So the spacecraft actually kind of fired off part
of itself that impacted with this comment, But it did
change the commets pathway just a little bit, not you know,
(42:12):
appreciable unless you're looking in the grand scheme of things,
but it shows that we have already done this, and
it's so it's something that in theory we could do
again purposefully, like that is the main goal of whatever
the mission would be. Uh. Well, I mean, obviously the
mission would be to move this out into a new pathway,
so we we know that we could do it. Uh.
(42:34):
It's a complicated issue because of course you have to
plot out all the trajectories and everything in order to
hit the asteroid exactly when and where you want to
in order to move its path uh the right amount.
But it's something that is possible. When I sit there
and I think about it, and I look at all
the math that goes into this sort of stuff, it
boggles my mind to think of how complex this is.
(42:55):
You've got so many different bodies moving around in space,
and you have to take into account so many different
things over timespans that can be years in length. It's
it's tough astrophysics, not for beginners, not for me. Why
do we say boggles the mind instead of like scrabbles
the mind or pictionaries the mind and actually yacht sis
(43:17):
my mind. Yeah, I've got all five alright, So do
you guys have anything else you want to talk about
with asteroid impact? Any other crazy ideas? What's your gut
feeling if there is a Texas sized asteroid? What what
if we've got a year a year, We're totally boned.
(43:39):
We are so doomed. A year. Yeah, now you tell
him a Texas size that's you know, just no, okay, Okay,
let's let's assume we've got a big asteroid headed for us.
It's planet killer size, um, and we can't deflect it.
It's gonna hit. What what What are the best ways
for humans to survive on Earth? Wow? Uh, if you're
(44:01):
talking planet Killer, then survivals, I mean you're just talking
You might be able to survive the initial impact and
then the initial fallout. But if you're talking about planet Killer,
we're talking about the die off of the entire support system,
so you lose all the vegetation. Could either be a
matter of moving to space, being like screw you guys,
(44:22):
I'm I'm heading off planet. Yeah okay, or some kind
of underground bunker with I mean, I mean you could
hypothetically support a small community of people and in a
sealed environment for a very long period of time. Okay, so,
but but just imagine maybe so there's some bacteria that
survived the impact because they're in like vo stock in Antarctica,
(44:44):
you know, or you know you've got that, you've got
the life forms that it can survive via chemicals underneath
the surface, and exactly, and then you just you need
to get in a bunker long enough to wait for
those single cell organism organisms to sort of like re
evolve into edible plants and animals. Um. So it was
(45:05):
probably only take about four billion years actually, And if
you could just weigh out those four billion years in
your bunker, I'm pretty sure you don't have that many
granola bars personally, and I don't. I don't have that
many songs in my iPod. I would go crazy and
I'd be like, ah, this is the four million time
I've listened to this track. I can't stand it anymore.
(45:25):
That sees my mind, It does, it does? All right, Well,
you know this has gotten loopy. We're ending this so
that we can have a serious discussion, like about ice
cream or something. Alright, So guys, if you have any
suggestions for topics, why don't you go on over to
our website. It's for Thinking dot com fw Thinking dot
com and check out our blogs, our podcasts. We've got
(45:47):
lots of content. They're all about the subjects that we've
been talking about and other things about the future that
I think you'll find really interesting and we will taught
you again really soon. Or more on this topic and
the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot Com, brought
(46:14):
to you by Toyota. Let's Go Places,
Fw:Thinking News
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