Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. Welcome to StarTalk All Stars. I'm your All Star host of the evening Bill Nye, and I'm here with my co-host, the remarkable and exciting Chuck Nice. Bill, and on this episode of All Stars Chuck, we're talking about planetary defense ice. Defending the Earth. I did not know that we need defending from an asteroid.
Are they defending our honor? No, it's an asteroid. It's just an asteroid. In comments. So the oak and comments, which in some level are hard to distinguish, but universe is a hostile place. Can be. Yeah. So there is no evidence whatsoever that the ancient dinosaurs had a space program. Yeah. And it was hard on them. Is that because they didn't have opposable thumbs? Well, their arms are so short. It's tiny, tiny arms. I went to, I went dry, but I can't reach it.
So, but they may have, I'm not joking. Maybe they did have a space program, but it didn't show up in the fossil record. Right. So now, when you think about that, let me just ask you, please, since we know that that was an event that happened, right? Because they look at the layers in the Earth. You got, yes, Chuck. You're such a nerd. I love you. So layer of a ridium, a layer of a ridium. Tomic number. Oh, I don't know. 77. There you go. So 77 is an odd number. It's not that common.
So when you find it and so on and so on. Right. So here's what I, uh, following thing, following thing that I read, that that it basically, uh, when we had this cataclysmic collision, right? Then, uh, up comes, uh, up comes all this detritus. It's super heated. And then it just rains fire and destroys everything. Is that accurate? Well, yeah. So they, they, we it astronomers speculate that the cone of the ejecta, the ejected material,
yeah, is bigger around than the diameter of the Earth. So gravity pulled it into a big ring of fire or sphere of fire. Right. And it was very troublesome. So when you understand things, so when the only animals that made it through were underground, they were on the ground animals and or mostly underground, right? Or maybe descendant of some subterranean, subterranean little thing that crawled up to the surface after everything were scurried. Scurried. Oh, yes. Yeah.
In my case, probably scurried. Spray, Sprayly, yeah. Very athletically bounded to the surface. Or could have been, could have been like cave dwelling animals at the same time. Yeah, yeah. Those, those, those, oh yeah. I'm an expert on cave doing it. It could be. It's very reasonable. Yes. Okay. Cool. I mean, it's a fascinating. Oh, man, it's amazing. So when I was in second grade, Mrs. McGonagall reads to us from a big book. Well, the only of the reason the ancient
dinosaurs died is they had small brains, which is just crazy. We have crazy cave. We have heard people say, people still say that today. Well, the reason they died off is because they weren't intelligent creatures. They had tiny brains. And so they couldn't adapt. So make a joke there about
what my old boss right there. But he was alive. So what I'm saying is it was in my lifetime that this discovery was made in 1980, 1983 that people discovered this layer of erudium, which is almost certainly from an ancient asteroid, which is almost certainly the ancient asteroid that finished off the ancient dinosaurs. They may have been having trouble with volcanism, sulfur being pumped into the sky from volcanoes in what is now India, right? Where these tectonic plates are colliding.
But they were finished off by a big rock from the rock, our group of rocks from the sky. Nice. Man. God. Wow. I mean, it's exciting and fascinating and the same time it's kind of scary. Yes. We don't want it to happen again. So what we want to do is deflect an asteroid if it starts coming toward us because it happened once. Yes. Well, it turns out the earth, there's all sorts of impact craters if you know what you're looking for. Right. So you look at the moon. I was going to
say it and the moon. God. What a look at Mars. A beautiful little snapshot you have there. A leader festival. Right. So it's very reasonable that the same number of impacts per square meter, a kilometer happened here. But the earth has all these processes. We have tectonic plates. We have rain. We have rain. No. When. And so these craters get erased over millennia. Right. So what we want to do is detect all the earth crossing asteroids that have the potential to hit us.
And then if we find one, it is to be hoped 30 years out and we could send out the right spacecraft and give it a little nice. Except it's in space. There's no sound. That's how it's there. That was it. That was the sound. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I'm just trying to figure out some more weather-related events I can bring up now. Sound effects. I can get you to do the sound. Can you do the thunder storm? It's thunder. Let's thunder. Let's see. That's pretty good, Dad. That's very good. Yeah.
Okay. So we've got our cosmic wearies. The sound effect. Star-talk sound effect show. Maybe without coming. The sound effects fest. Coming to start to talk very soon. We've got our cosmic queries. Of course, we have gleaned these questions from all over the internet. And all over the cosmos. All over the cosmos. You can be on Beteljuice in orbit around Beteljuice. If you can get us weary. We will. On to the internet. Roughly in English. We'll do we can't. There you go. If it comes
in in Beteljuice and we can go to Google Translate. Yeah. We're in for you, man. We are here for you. I say man, it could be entities. Right. Here we go. Betel, do you believe the biggest threat to humanity is from asteroids or is it from humanity? Oh, from us right now. I mean, humans are the big problem. There's a lot of us breathing and burning the same atmosphere in right now. The world's most influential democracy is going to be run
by people who say they don't believe in human-close climate change. I got a feeling that when shoving and pushing comes to shove that they'll change. But right now it's very troubling. So yes, humans are the biggest problem. However, one rock from outer space at 11 kilometers a second is very low probability event, but very high consequence event. So true. Sell them get in a car wreck, but when you do sucks. Yeah. Exactly. Right.
Hold them get hit with an asteroid, but when you do, man, whoa, man, you can't you can't call a state farm or a dry no all state or no. Yes. So you can't call those guys. Isn't one of those guys right? Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, whatever that was it. That is. Could clearly a very effective ad campaign. Here's a Brittany, Mencati. And Brittany. But what did she do to anger you or just make you fill you with passion?
Mencati. Mencati. Because I think it's probably mencati. It is mencati. Brittany, mencati says this. Hey, Bill, Chuck. I'm a psychology student at the University of Kentucky. Right on. Oh, cats. I was wondering if money was not an issue. What would be the very best planetary defense given our current technology? Two things. Go ahead. Invest in a spacecraft that would be the next the follow on to what there's one called neo wise. Okay. One of the next spacecraft to
look for asteroids. And as the saying goes, finding an asteroid is like looking for a charcoal brachet in the dark. Ah, I got you. It's difficult. I got you. You can do it. Or a life fine. And Chuck and I said, night, when he's not smiling, uh, I let you make that joke. But I'm here with it. I love it. And Bill was just like, okay. And good for you. Well, I'm not going there. I'm not going to go with you. Now you're not going to drag me down
that rabbit hole, Chuck. You can do that. You guys, you can make that such a joke. Go check. I can't write exactly. I was brought up in Washington, DC. Okay. Many years ago when it really was a nice Southern racist town. I've heard a lot of that. But I, right. I do my best. Uh, but see, that's because life is because you are a great human being. Okay. And you know, you know, the difference between a joke and the fact that, okay, I know he's joking and a joke. And well,
if I say it's still offensive because I'm saying it. See, so, you know, I get what you're saying, though, I have a great deal of respect for you for that. So I'm playing the hand. I'm dealt here. Yes. Or more alike than they are different. This is true. Now the other part of the, uh, uh, planetary defense thing that we have to deal with or come up with, the first one is to detect the asteroids. That's the space. Second thing is the spaceship. Okay. So the first thing is
the Texas and detection is probably best done with a spacecraft. That's about three quarters of an astronomical unit from the sun. That's about the same distance from the sun as Venus. Okay. However, what would be styling is if you had it, um, with a solar sail so it could go around slowly. That would be pretty styling. And then you'd look for all these asteroids that are in the infrared. So here's the thing, even if it's a charcoal, brachet in the dark, chuck nice, you know,
concerted here, uh, it still glows in the infrared. Right. As do you, by the way. Yes. Yes. That's like I can, I can distinguish you from asteroids. Oh, right. I saw the movie predator. So you can see the asteroid in the infrared. They glow at about 150 kelvans. Okay. And that's 150 Celsius degrees above absolute zero. So with the right detector, you can detect. And then, uh, that spacecraft would assay or keep track of all these asteroids. And then we'd build a spacecraft
to give one of them a nudge. And that would be this is all kind of existing technology. Everybody, but she said, Brittany said unlimited. I love it. It doesn't make a difference. We can do it. I mean, for four and 50 million, 500 million, we could do the spacecraft, the detector. And then for, give me another number, five billion, we could build a deflector spacecraft. You know, I have to tell you with as much money as we waste on other things, that is not a big.
Well, saving the earth from death of everyone, control, all, delete for all humankind. Yeah, that's a well worth it. That's kind of worth it. But I've been at that fancy thing, the Ted talk. Yeah. Yeah. And I mentioned this asteroid problem and people laugh. But if it happened, it would really suck Chuck. Yes, it would be a bad old thing. And the funny thing is people do laugh. And there's been several, uh, major motion pictures made about it. And people, you know, they, they look at it as
folly. But what I always say is it's already happened, dude. Right. What don't you get about? No, also this is already happened. And by the way, in general, there is no business case for a commercial company to make an asteroid deflector. Yeah. There's just, there isn't a reason to do it. I don't see a lot of profit in that. Yeah. However, people do try to raise money to observe asteroids. But that's different from building a spacecraft with no one to sell it to.
Right. Cool. What if you were? Yes. What if you were an entrepreneur? It's so wealthy that you built your own spacecraft and then you threatened to not use it unless they paid you. So delightfully evil. But it's just unlikely. Because what is the guy? Yeah. That's a long now. Want him self to get herself to get destroyed too. Well, no, that's because you know, you know, you have an evil layer. That's also sad. That's also horrible in the air. Great. It's orbiting the earth.
You're way you can escape to your evil layer. Yeah. Thinking. Yeah. All right. Let's go to Nelson. Sa. Nothing. Sa says, what's the students we can detect, detect a likely collision? And what could we do about it in that time frame? Well, everybody wants 30 years. That's what people want. Wow. That long. Yeah. So you deflect the asteroid. I mean, you detect the asteroid and then you have 10 years to build a spacecraft and then 20 years out there with the
spacecraft just gently, whoo. Except in space, there's no sound on the asteroid. It's giving a little nudge. That's a little nudge. And so astronaut Ed Lou, who runs the B612 Foundation, which is named after the asteroid that the little prince lives on, and is in a quaint of mine and is a Cornelian, has a patent on the space tractor. This is a spacecraft that is so massive, how massive is it? Its own gravity would pull the
asteroid off first. It's just ever so. And that's all you never say. That's all you need. It doesn't cross the Earth's orbit when we're there. Right. Cross the Earth's orbit just not while the Earth's not with there. Right. Exactly. I want you to be exactly. It's a rocket science people. Nice. Nice. That's excellent. That's you. Let's go to Sean Harris. Sean says what policies or plans are currently in place to detect
incoming threats from asteroids? Is there a foolproof plan to eliminate those threats and avoid death and destruction here on the Earth's surface? We caution you, Sean, against anybody ever who tells you it's foolproof. But I know what you're driving at. No, we have this Neo-Y spacecraft, Neo-Y2 that are measuring asteroids and there are trajectories, but it's not foolproof. And the more of that we do, the better. Does that answer the question? Yeah, that could do more. You could do
more. But by the way, all the money that's spent in space is spent on Earth. This would be a worthy use of our intellect and treasure people. Ah, so true. Let me come over there. Hey, Captain Francois says, how do you, how do you purpose to educate the masses on the importance? You mean, propose? Yeah, I know you're looking up and looking down. I was. Right. What did I say? Purpose. Can I say purpose? It must be related to propose, but I'm not at touch. How do you propose?
Decated enough. Yes. Do you propose to educate the masses on an important issue, such as this? I mean, start talk isn't amazing podcast, but everyone's the best. Totally. Okay. But not everyone wants to listen or learn. What'd you say? You know, not everyone wants to listen or learn. How can we help spread the news to those who are less passionate about science? You know, this is a problem.
I think what what what Captain says here, I think is a problem for so many science related issues, which is if you can motivate a mass awareness, then you can actually create a campaign to get those in charge to do some Chuck, why do you do this podcast? You're trying to change the world. This is true. We're trying to make the world the scientific literature. Am I a little way? Yes. So what I would say, Kathy, who is it? Kathy, friend, Swathi. Kathy, this is what we're doing here
is we're trying to change the world. We are trying to influence people. If you can spread the word about listening to start talk podcast, having the time of your life, then it'll build in cascade fashion. So this is why Chuck and I do this job or this this is this activity. This to get people excited about science so that we'll have scientific literate people and especially scientifically literate voters, which it is to be hoped will lead to scientifically literate
politicians. Yes. We'll make scientifically literately, inform, literally, scientifically informed decisions about our use of intellectual treasure so that we can dare us at save the world. Hello, I'm Alexander Harvey and I support start talk on Patreon. This is start talk with Dr. Neal to Grass Tyson. Let me just read this one from Laurel. Laurel Riffle. Laurel Riffle says this. Dear Mr. Nye, I grew up watching your show Bill Nye the Science Guy and it got me interested
in excited about science. Now my four year old son has the same curiosity and general love of learning. He is always reading his science book and he is full of great questions. We are learning new things together now. Laurel, this is wonderful. Let me ask you though Laurel. Chuck. Yes. I'm Laurel's proxy now. Yes. Laurel's proxy. Is there a question? I mean, this is wonderful. This is lovely. Yes. Now there's there a question. Here's what here's what she says. I don't have a
question for you. I just want to thank you for inspiring my generation and indirectly inspiring subsequent generations. Oh, I love you Laurel. Thank you. You go, man. Laurel's children. Just wanted to get that out of the way. I was like, you man. There's really no place in the show for that. So let's just do it up front and do it. You just put a place. I had to make a place for that. That's a great, great sentiment. Thank you. Okay. And then you know when she is not alone,
I have to tell you, here's the best thing guys. Going out with Bill Nye and being on the street and then watching people go, oh my god. Oh my god. What they mean is oh my entity. And I presume deity. Oh my deity. All that. The side. No, it is very nice. It's very much better than I hate you, you suck. You're once in a while. There you go. Hey, Justin Codes wants to know this. What level of international cooperation would be required in order to defend the planet from an asteroid or
comet? Is it even possible in today's climate of conflict when the world's government can't even come together to combat climate change to get them to come together and combat this threat? Wow, that's a that's a pretty deep question, man. No, the answer is yes. How do you get to the international space station on a Russian rocket? Mm-hmm. Okay. How do you explore Mars with the inter with cooperation from Japanese aerospace exploration, Roscosmos and European space agency?
That's how you do things. So there's a lot of international cooperation when it comes to space. Right. Okay. Exploration. So the answer is yeah, pretty doable. This, but right now I got to speculate that the search for asteroids will still be led by the US and National and on Space Administration. Okay. NASA. But then the actual deflecting, that'll be team effort, I think. So once we identify the problem, which it'll be easier to get people to get on board. Once you
identify, man, if you had a real asteroid really coming, yeah, be really taking a meeting. Yeah. Don't want to send Bruce Willis. I mean, he's a fine guy, but you don't want to blow it up. You just want to give it a nudge because if you blow it up, there's a chance you'll make it worse. Right. So just give it a nudge. But you do want an arrowsmith soundtrack while it's happening. Can you provide that? Not really.
Do we have to pay royalties if I whistle at some? No, no, and I know what it looks like a lady too, so not bad. There you go. I did what I could. Yeah. All right, Jay William Bosch wants to know this. What is the probability that whatever we do could make matters worse? It's funny you should bring that up right after that little commentation that I commented. Yeah, you don't want to make it so that you accidentally have a piece of it that's going even faster and going to hit the
earth earlier in its orbit, which is apparently a possibility. Only if the asteroid is really close and there really isn't time to give it a nudge, then you blow it up. That's when you blow it up. Yeah, but we just don't want to do that, everybody. And plus, it takes tremendous amount of energy, trying to blow up a rock planet. Right. I mean, I know about the science fiction, but in real life, it's a real space. It's a hard thing. Now, but this would have to be an asteroid because now some
comets are like marshmallow, right? So even worse, how do you blow up a marshmallow? We're just going to get more marshal mellow. More marshal more mellow. You're not really going to change anything. Right. Okay. So there you go. Okay, wait. He was ready. Then he stopped himself. You guys stumped him. So you stumped me because your name was on a different page. JD provost.
JD, what is JD's inquiry? JD says this to the great one Bill Nye. Oh, there have been a talk of a few stories about ground-based lasers being used to hit asteroids millions of miles away to change their trajectory. Is this tech realistic or is it even possible? It's really hard. So one of the things we are considering is putting a reflective surface on an asteroid. So sunlight would hit it and give it a little nudge, the pressure of photons, the momentum of photons, even though they
have no mass. Right. They have momentum and it would nudge the asteroid ever so nudgeically, nudgingly. I believe you have a little thing called a solar sail. That solar sail has been discussed. Yes. And so trying to keep the beam of a laser on the asteroid shooting from the earth or the far side of the moon is not trivial. I'm not saying it couldn't be done. And you could do it, let's say every month. The moon goes around the earth and you zap it for a few earth days or
weeks and then the moon would go on the other side and you'd wait, that's possible. But more likely is to go out there and change the reflectivity of the asteroid. And by the way, one of the things that makes asteroids hard to track is this jarkosky effect where they reflect sunlight while they're spinning. So some sides of the asteroids are shiny. Other sides are darker. Some sides of the asteroid have pot holes and don't reflect very well. Other sides of an asteroid might be smoother
and more reflective. So they're spinning very slowly in space. And so they change their directory directories, trajectories depending on how light is hitting them and how they're rotating. So it's one more, oh wow, that's it just makes it a little trickle more tricky because you've got to track them. You got to track them good. Track them well. They said track them good for a comedic effect. All right. All right. I'm Ariens out there. Track them good. That's right.
Am right. All right, here we go. Natalie Wilcox says, hi Bill. Have you heard of the comet research group? Do you believe as they do that we need to be paying more attention to the Torrid meteor stream and that it poses a threat to us annually? Also, what do you think about their research regarding the cataclysmic impact events that potentially took place 12,800 years
ago? Thank you. Something to be concerned about. But whether or not that specific, specific comet trail that induces that specific meteor shower, whether that's a big concern, I'm not an expert on. I don't know. Was there a substantial meteoric impact 12,800 years ago? Sure. I had one at Chalubens that could have been a big deal. We had one in Tunguska, which could have, I mean, if that Tunguska event in 1908 had landed on Paris, that would be the end of Paris.
That would have been the end of Paris. I mean, that's it. Or the, or Pekipsi. What did I mention earlier? Kansas City. It would be done. So there's nobody in control of this right now. If these one of these objects comes in, they're very hard to see. It happens in a moment. So now, the, how big was the object that came in just recently? Chalubens in Russia. They people say 25 meters, 30 meters? Really? Not even that big, you know, because big is your
smaller than your house. Yeah, I was going to say that's not a big meter. A part of a meteorized thing. It's just they're going so fast. They have so much energy that they're going at least 11 kilometers a second, which is escape velocity. So now, as another question, because I haven't, I've gone through all of these. And so I don't see anybody ask this. So I'm just going to chuck your the host to the co-host of the show. So I could, I could lay it on us, man. So
is there, you know, when this asteroid hits? Okay, of course the impact we know what that does. We do. But the first impact is actually with the atmosphere. That's right. So what exactly does that do? They see the streak in the sky first. And they go, there's a streak in the sky. Well, it's not going to hit me. I'll relax. And three minutes later, the sonic boom hits the ground and blows out all the windows. And that's why there were so many, apparently, a thousand
injuries, substantial sutures and stuff. People standing near glass windows. Very strong sonic boom hit the ground and blew all the windows into everybody's face. It was a surprising result that you just wouldn't think of. Right. The first time it happens. It's really interesting. So if you see a streak in this guy, you better get some compliments to get out of the glass. Yeah. Wow. As the old saying goes, by analogy to earthquakes, earthquakes don't kill people. Buildings kill people. Right. So
meteorites that cause sonic booms don't hurt people. Glass windows hurt people. This is an analogy. Right. Right. Right. Not, you know, this an aphorism. It's not going to direct your entire life something to think about. See the big streak. There are three minutes. There might be a big sonic boom. It could blow all the windows. They did blow the windows out. Wow. Yeah. Lead on. All right. Nathan Emily says, hello, Dr. Nye. What are the plans to put into orbit a
satellite whose sole job is to watch the skies 24 hours a day in all directions? All directions is the tough part. But neo wise is the satellite that does that. And we want to build follow-ons to do more awning of following. But watching 24 seven, it does watch 24 seven, but not the entire sky. It points to different places. And is that because there's just limitations? It's just look at things. So there's you. You can't look in every direction at once. No. Though your
wife has eyes in the back of her head. Ah, there you go. That was it. Anyone? I was going with my mom, but you know, it's the same thing. Well, they're they're married long enough that it's the same thing. They got they have slide shows on Tuesdays where they talk about how to mess with you. Right. Is there a likelihood of any of a direction from which an asteroid will come or will we just be blind
side? I'm not an expert, but I would speculate. No, except it's probably going the same direction we are around the sun. Ah, I mean, right. Right. Because the cosmic disk, primordial disk of dust that formed us would have a particular net direction. So here's the thing everybody, you have a big bunch of cosmic dust four and a half billion years ago. And it has even if it's dust, it has gravity.
In fact, if you've ever observed dust on a bookshelf, one of the little insights that Isaac Newton had. Well, okay, was that not only does the earth have gravity that's pulling the dust down, the dust must needs have. Aversus light bit of gravity that's ever so slightly pulling the earth up or mutually attracted right. So cosmic dust comes together. It's going to have it will not be perfectly balanced.
It's like a cloud. There'll be bulges and bubbles. And so it ends up with a net as we say angular momentum. It ends up with a net spin. And here we are with that resolves itself into a big disc. People do mathematical models of this. And you get little swirl pools and that becomes like the planet earth. And here we are swirling and pooling. And now you know your history of how you got here. The solar system. It really is an amazing insight. So we are made of cosmic dust. We are made
of star dust. So we are Chuck. You and I are one of the ways the cosmos knows itself. Sweet. To me is just. Hey, it gives me the shaky wakes. It makes me feel like I have purpose. Well, Chuck, you know, finally. Yeah, fine. Yeah. You're like Chuck. Don't. It's not good for you. Yeah, it's not good. It's not good. It's not good. It's not good. It's not good. It's not good. Three kids are your purpose. That's what you do. Man on that one. All right, Steve Andrews wants to
know this. If the earth was in danger of an asteroid strike two day. Yes. Could we protect ourselves? I mean, okay, like this afternoon kind of thing. Well, no, not like we found out two day. Yeah. Asteroid is going to show away on the way. I don't know. So I'll put it. If it's 30 years from now, I'm going to discover it today that it's going to hit us in 30 years. Let's get to work. All right. So now I'm going to say I'm going to I'm going to modify Steve's question.
What is the Supreme Amendment? What is the? It's a friendly amendment. What is the absolute shortest window that we could have as an alert to think it's less than 10 years? I think it's about 10 years. And there are people I've been in meetings and seeing scientific papers presented on this. It's about 10 years. 30 is way better. 30 is better, but 10 we might be able to do that. It might have a shot. Might have a shot. That's a maybe. That's a maybe. Wow. All right. I mean, wow. I mean,
so I mean 10 years is not a long time. No, yes. Think about it. Right. No. You can't build a high, what you can't build a big dig in Boston in 10 years. Let alone build an spacecraft that no one's ever thought of and go out and deflect an asteroid in deep space and get everybody in the world to
take your word for it that you're really doing it. That's wicked. Actually, when you put some explosive on it to give it some pressure wave and space and everybody's taking your word for it that you're putting this enormous nuclear weapon on top of a rocket for the good of all humankind rather than for some nefarious weaponizing of space. I can see where you might have a problem. So you maybe need international treaties with normal people who can conduct state craft in
traditional ways. Okay. And very quickly on top of that. Just thinking out loud. Do we have in place any international protocol in case something like this happens? Well, we have the international space treaty from 1967, which mumbles about this. But when it's really time, that's when we're really going to have to have agreements and who's going to build the rocket and who's going to launch it and who's going to track it and who's going to take responsibility for it. It's all so exciting.
Today, by the way, if you're just rejoining us, we're talking about planetary defense. Yes, seeing the earth from getting hit with the cosmic impactor. Fascinating subject. It really is. And it's important. It's important. You're adhered to us at the planetary society, the world's largest non-governmental space infrastructure organization, which I'm the CEO,
because this is our old mission. Carl Sagan, when I was in his class, in the disco era, would talk about the Tunguska event where June 30th in the modern calendar, 1908, Tunguska region of Siberia was hit with something. It blew down all the trees in a moment. And if that had happened in a big city, that would be the end of the big city. Yeah. Yet. And so since then, along after Carl Sagan's class,
Chelyabinsk, also in Russia, got with a big sparky thing. And a much smaller event, but nevertheless, recorded on countless cameras. And so it's something to think about. Don't want to get hit with an asteroid. You don't. That said, Chuck. And doesn't come back to the show. Thank you. Thank you. And those two events make me think that maybe Russia should be a little more involved in this. The thing you keep in mind about Russia, first of all, let's say we take the earth and divide it
in half by hemispheres. It's going to hit one hemisphere of the other. Yeah, we're okay. That's one and two. Then Russia takes up nine time zones. Yes. So third of the, it's more than a third of the world. Right. So or that former Soviet Union. So if it's going to hit someplace, it's likely to hit. It's likely to hit there. Yeah. There or the Pacific. Yeah. Yeah. It's about it. The fact not a fault. There you go. All right. You say true fact. That's a joke, everybody.
Okay. So Anna Bacon says this. The Doomsday shows about asteroids always have it hitting the planet. But what would happen if the asteroid passed between the earth or the moon or if it hit the moon instead of the earth? Well, we photographed asteroids hitting the moon. I mean small ones, manageable ones. Yeah. And asteroids have passed closer to the earth than the moon's orbit. That's happened. Right. 2012. I believe it's the last one.
So if you like to worry about things, it's a great, this is great for you. Right. So far, the ones that have passed that close have been relatively small. So now this is a, let's take a like extinction level size object. All right. Listen to your fluency. Extinction level size. How big is extinction level size? Let's let's go with something like a office. All right. Office. Which is the Greek, we're named for the Greek God of anxiety.
Really? Which is perfect. And hits the keyhole, barrels towards earth instead, plows into the moon. I guess it would be troublesome moon wise. But I don't think what that do anything to us. I don't think so. I'm sure. I am sure people have run this computer model. Okay. Okay. But I don't know it. So I imagine it would just disturb the orbit of the moon. Okay. Rather than it's almost certainly would not be catastrophic life ending on the moon
because the moon seems to be lifeless. But that's a great question. I'm sure people have run that test. And then what it deflects, you know, the moon is slowly spiraling away from us. Yes. Could it be hit hard enough to start slowly spiraling toward us? Who? Who? Who? Who? Who? Who? Who? Who? Who? Who? Who? Who? Who? Who? Who? Who? Who? Like a pool table. That'd be not awesome. What am I talking about? That'd be the end of all of us.
Well, not right away. You'd probably have several millennia to give it some thought. And you know what? And you'd have some really beautiful nights in the meantime. Yeah. And then I just shudder to think of all the babies that would I just can't even just be. All right. All right. Here we go. This is Ian Coleman and Ian says this. Hey, Bill, huge fan here. I was wondering about the possibility of NASA's controversial EM drive being something that could actually work.
Apparently leaks have confirmed that this is the least moving, it's at least moving along well. And they're even saying that it may work. Could we use this in planetary defense? I don't know what an EM drive is. Electromagnetic. What's that? No, it's, um, now there's iron drives. And there's this nuclear weapon idea where you explode a nuclear weapon behind your spacecraft every few seconds for a while to get and get
these pressure waves of particles that push you through space. But I don't know what he means by EM drive. If he means electromagnetic, no, I think it's supposed to be some kind of, um, new rocket engine. Well, that's why I mentioned the nuclear thing. Then the other one that we're all hot for is a solar electric propulsion, SCP, uh, solar electric module. So this is where you have something like xenon in the liquid form. Ooh, put in a big scoop of tank there on your spacecraft.
Use solar power from, from photovoltaic panels. Okay. To make electricity. I and I strip the electrons off the xenon have a grid akin to a window screen and shoot the xenon out the back of the spacecraft really, really, really fast. And we do that. We have iron drives right now. Just everybody wants to build a big one. I mean, big one. And it takes a lot of xenon, but the other thing takes a lot of electricity. And when you get things that big in space, it's just
getting everything in alignment is tricky. But here's the idea. Although each atom of xenon or argon or whatever inert gas you're going to, or, uh, element you're going to use, although it is very low mass each individual atom, they're going so fast. Okay. 24, 7 out the back of the spacecraft that you can go really, really fast much faster is generally presumed than you can with just a regular chemical rocket. Because it never stops. Right. So it's on all the time. That's, that's
actually cool. And we use iron drives, but we want to, people want to build a really big one. Okay. All right. All right. So this is Jason Leber. Jason says this using asteroids to destroy asteroid. Whoa. That's like so out there. Select one asteroid. So it's gravity nudges and that's another asteroid. That my friend Chuck, that would be two words. Rocket science. Rocket science. Yes. Yeah. Harnessing asteroids in the planetary like orbit keeping them on a proverbial lease
until we need to crash them into an incoming asteroid. That's, that's pretty hard. Another idea for you asteroid buffs is go to an asteroid with a big enough solar panel and yet to be figured out system to dig up the ice off the asteroid or comet Terry body, comet like body. Volatile zap, cook the ice into liquid water and then into hydrogen and oxygen H2O. Using electricity over months or years. Right. Then when you need to deflect an asteroid,
you recombine those into rocket fuel. And now the, that asteroid has its own rockets. Or you take your rocket from one icy asteroid to the one you want to deflect all out there in deep orbital space. That is rocket science people. It's cool to speculate, but a quite difficult thing to do. Now, you know what? Is it some level difficult, but another level so much fun. What's that? The lightning round. And the lightning round now has a, a rubber chicken with a pneumatic system that makes it
crow. Except that's surprising use of that verb makes it chicken. It makes it roost makes it it. Yes. No, it makes it make a sound. Yes. So let's try a question in the lightning round, Chuck, who's thoroughly charmed by the, I don't know the chicken. Ed, the Vena, and I'm such a, I'm such a juvenile person. What can I say? Y'all are, we're guys. Let's get right to the lightning round with NASA more likely losing funding, which will likely happen. Which agency of defense?
Will we see an increased budget for, for like, setty, or will Russia or Japan increase funding to their native program? Well, here's the thing. Without US investment in rockets, uh-huh. Ross Cosmos, the Russian space agency doesn't have as many rockets to sell. Don't sell as many rockets. So there, the agency goes down. Japan is working all the time to
maintain its space agency because they have other concerns there. And Japan's populace is shrinking and people there are freaking out about, are we going to have enough workers in the future? And so they're going to have to allow immigration. Wow, it's crazy. But with that said, uh-uh, the talk is taking Earth science out of NASA and putting it into NOAA. And if they, if it was zero sum, it is to say if they really took just transferred money rather than
slashing, slashing, slashing, everything would be okay. Chuck, what do you think the chances are of everything being okay in the next four years? Let's take another one. Let's take another one. Here we go. Um, Alan Polasco says, Mr. Nye, how deep should I build my bunker and how much food and water should I store since the only other option is to try to get a front rose seat? Alan Asteroid Impact? Alan Asteroid Impact. As much as you want. Carry on.
There you go. Uh, Chris, Merchison says this, uh, which is more feasible trying to figure out how to stop the impact or learning how to survive one. Or surviving, I think, is a stone drag. I guess that's a pun. I don't think you can survive a catastrophic asteroid impact where the ecosystem around the world has been completely upset. A small one that just makes tsunamis, just makes tsunamis, devastates a few coastal cities. Okay, maybe. A dinosaur killing ancient asteroid type
thing. Nope. No, carry on. Get about it. Huh? Wow. There you go. So it really prevents in this thing or which I said was a low probability high consequence event. Man, man. Whoo. John Parker. Come up. We shook him up. I think you did take me up, man. John Parker says this, Mr. Nye, would it be feasible to send some oil rigs rough next arm with nuclear warheads and military training to an asteroid to blow it up? If so, what would be the
actual outcome in your opinion? Wouldn't work. We'd get another piece of asteroid on a different trajectory. There would be just as much trouble. Oh, there you go. James Peters would like to know this. Hey, Bill, can we use sonic technology to break them up? There's no air and space to transmit sounds. However, fluid mechanics is such that the particles coming off a nuclear blast can be modeled like a sound wave. It's a different thing, but if you're saying really sound, no real sound. Yeah,
but a sound wave model like that. Okay, there you go. I just got to read this just to read it. I'm sorry. Read it. We got a minute. We go. Willie Cutsall says, hello, Dr. Nye, we need science in Guatemala. Yes. Help. So to that end, the planetary report, we're trying to get it translated into Spanish. So it'll be a little easier for Guatemalan subscribers to enjoy both on our website and the paper magazine. So we're doing our best to the north to enable our neighbors to the south to
know and appreciate the cosmos in our place within a nice. I'm going to give that a chicken screen. 30 seconds. There we go. Nick Fivefield says, I love you. Could we use solar sales and an army of solar sales to effectively turn a meteor into a space slay? Well, sort of. So what do we do is drape solar-sailed material onto the asteroid and change its trajectory. The other thing we want to do is use lasers powered by sunlight to zap the asteroid and cause it to deflect. That's it for our
show on cosmic queries of Star Talk. And it's Chuck Knice here with your guest, all Star host, Bill and I. This has been Star Talk. Please keep looking up.