Rerun: Can we stop an asteroid from hitting Earth?

classic episode. But don't worry, brand new material will be coming out very soon. For today, however, we're going to listen to a classic episode titled Can We Stop and Asteroid From Hitting Earth? And the reason I picked this rerun is because I've been getting a lot of notifications from a particular news sign outlet that seems to have an update on potential disaster about asteroids on a daily basis. I have a feeling that they're being a bit alarmist.

It is something to be concerned about, because we're talking about a contingency that would be truly disastrous, but maybe not something that we need a daily update of. Maybe it will happen tomorrow. Levels So Chris Palette and I sit down to talk about what we would do in the event of an asteroid heading towards Earth and what what are our various plans might be in order to prevent that from becoming a worldwide catastrophe. Let's sit back

and listen. Asteroids and preventing a collision with Earth, and what sort of tech would be involved with that. And this comes courtesy of some Facebook requests and email requests. I can't believe that we had people send us multiple people sent us this request, which seems really specific for more than one person. But hey, we're going to do it, okay.

And um you know, if you have seen the documentary Armageddon, you remember that we shot Bruce Willis up into space um with Ben Affleck and some other folks like Steve Bussemmy to scare an asteroid out of the way, because Steve Busumy is a scary guy. Uh wait, I think I might be. I think I might be a little off track. Oh well, anyway, the premise of the movie was that there was this enormous asteroid the Signs of Texas, which,

by the way, not that guy. You yeah, that that's that's a reference that goes over everyone's head because no one, none of our listeners have ever played the game Asteroid. What any really some of you have played Asteroids, and maybe maybe maybe our our buddy Floyd the truck driver, he might have. Hopefully not while driving, well, I hope not. Anyway,

we're getting off track already. So the whole, the whole premise of the movie is that there's this giant asteroid the size of Texas that's going to be flying at Earth. And so they come up with this idea where they scramble a bunch of of uh minors essentially to shoot up into space, land on the asteroid and plant a nuclear device on the asteroid that will blow it up to tiny little bits and save the Earth. And so we want to address this um this first. So let's

let's get this out of the way. That would not work. That would that would be a bad thing. First of all, the power of such a device is hard to imagine. How would you create a nuclear device powerful enough to explode Texas into tiny bits the equivalent of Texas flying at you. Also, by the way, an asteroid that size would pretty much wipe out everybody um, you know, when we talk about asteroids that are are dangerous enough to

wipe out a city, fifty yards is big enough. A fifty yard asteroid, like an asteroid fifty yards across, we have enough power, enough enough force to destroy a city if it impacted the city. Um. Now, NASA classifies earth threatening asteroids as being a hundred and forty meters or larger. But then that conveniently is about the size that we can detect them. Well, it's uh, it's important to note too that it's happened before. We have been hit with with many space objects in the past, and I assume,

to some small degree, continue to do so. It's something that we hear about in the news every day. But every single day the Earth is hit by by tiny little object. Granted we haven't been hit by a massive asteroid in a really long time, but meteorites hit the Earth every day. Sometimes they're so small that you know, they're almost undetectable, but it does happen the But yeah,

they've happened in the past. I mean, that's what wiped out the dinosaurs was an asteroid impact were possibly common impact, but it was a mass of impact that that altered the Earth's climate, and dinosaurs did not have air conditioning, so they were pretty much doomed. Doomed. I figured it was their debaucherous lifestyle and it was unsustainable. Now you're thinking of Rome, right, you know, I get this confused

a lot. Yeah, well, you know, if you've ever seen a t rex in a toga never mind, So so why would this plan not work with destroying an asteroid with a nuclear device. Let's assume that, for for argument's sake, that somehow you managed to find a nuclear device capable of breaking up a Texas size asteroid while it was hurtling towards Earth. And keep in mind this was this this asteroid was close to Earth by the time it

blows up. Otherwise it's not nearly as dramatic an ending. Right, of course, you've gotta have it close enough to the Earth where people are starting to really freak out. Oh and how long exactly did they have to prepare for this? It was like a couple of days or something like that.

It was crazy short time period. We would yeah, anything that's anything that that size we would be able to spot between Mars and Jupiter, giving us years, literally years to prepare it would not be a last minute thing. And that's one of the myths that movies perpetuate is that you know, you have some uh some some amateur astronomer out in the middle of nowhere just looking up

and saying, that's weird that star wasn't there yesterday. And then and then that information slowly filters its way to some official source which immediately clamps down and keeps it all secret so that nobody knows that doom is on the way until it leaks to the media causing a panic. Yeah, that we don't want to cause a panic. That's definitely Hollywood related. So why would blowing up the asteroid not

be a good idea? Well, that asteroids moving at a really fast speed and the nuclear warhead is not going to slow it down. Okay, so you've still got this this material moving at an incredible speed, and the mass isn't gone. You haven't destroyed the mass, You've just spread it out some. So instead of it being a one massive asteroid hitting the Earth, it's a whole bunch of them hitting the Earth. And it's like the difference between getting hit by a slug and getting hit by um

shotgun shot. We've just spread out the area of impact is what you've done. This is mission control. We just wanted to say, oops, yeah are bad? So um so yeah, here's here's why all this stuff would really work in the real world. All Right, We've got lots of powerful

telescopes pointing in all sorts of directions. Now, so the the the myths of the amateur astronomer who detects uh something the size the size that's in depicted an armageddon is really that's that's busted because it would be detected by much more powerful telescopes much earlier. And um that information would go to uh it's kind of a clearing house for near Earth objects that could potentially cause harm.

It's called the Minor Planet Center. It's in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Now, the Minor Planet Center would then take the information that was sent to it, which usually would involve the size of the asteroid and it's it's shape of orbit around the Sun and whether that orbit could potentially uh collide with the Earth, send that information out to observatories all

across the planet. Now, these observatories would then train their telescopes onto the object to try and make their own calculations based upon their own their own perspective to see if perhaps this would be a quote unquote interesting object. Now, in astronomical terms, interesting means, holy crap, we're all going to die. That's the that's what they mean by interesting

as in potentially impact the Earth interesting. And that information would then be shared amongst those observatories, and the likelihood of a clamp down is really low, just because you have so many people who would be involved in this and have the information, and lots of them were gonna talk. A lot of them, we're gonna talk and say we got to prepare now, because if we don't, we're all going to die, or a significant number of people are

going to die. Because if this asteroid hits a land mass, then it's gonna be like, depending on the size of the asteroid, it could be like the entire world's nuclear arsenal exploding in a single point. Um. If it hits the ocean, then it could generate a tsunami of unprecedented uh force that could wipe out an entire coast of a of a continent. Um. So I mean this is serious business. Uh. Fortunately, we haven't discovered anything so far that would cause that much of a problem. But again,

our ability to detect these objects is limited. Most of the objects that NASA concentrates on is anything that's a higher forty meters or across or larger. And uh, the problem is that smaller objects could cause significant harm. But finding those objects is a lot trickier because space is big. Really, yeah, and in relation to space, fifty yard across asteroid or is nothing. Yeah, it's it's you know, you you it's it's impossible to exaggerate how tiny that is. Yeah, it's

like a it's like a germ on a bug. And and and you happen to be like a blue whale. That's kind of and even then that's not even close that. Yeah, I can't get my mind around it. That's that's how it is. So so all right, So nuking a an asteroid directly, as in trying to blow it up, is

not a feasible option. So let's let's assume for the moment that we have developed technology that helps us that's improved our ability to detect asteroids to the point where any asteroid that could potentially cause significant harm to people on Earth, to life on Earth, that you have somehow managed to to create the technology to detect it. Yeah, all right, and it's and it's important to do so because it is probable that we will be hit by

something largish again, yeah, at some point. Essentially, like it's worthwhile to to develop this technology exactly. So, yeah, the the risk might be low, but the impact would be huge. So you know, even taking a low risk perspective of it, the actual impact would be so enormous that it is a good argument and a lot of people have made this argument to um to invest in technology to help

prevent it from happening. I'd like to interrupt this particular podcast about potential disaster in order to take a moment to thank our sponsors. Let's assume that we have improved technology so we can actually detect these asteroids from a pretty good distance. Like I said, it might be years before they get here, or we're gonna need that time because we're gonna need that time to develop the actual vehicles that the tools that we're going to use in

order to intercept that asteroid. So by intercepting it, what could we do to to avoid a collision. Well, the real key is deflecting the asteroid. You just have to move it a tiny bit, especially the further out you go, the further out you go, the tinier that that adjustment needs to be, because by the time it gets to the Earth, it's going to be the distance is going

to be much more enormous. You know. Just think about like you're walking to have a friend standing across from you across the football field, and you're both facing each other exactly. Now, imagine that your friend just turns slightly a little bit to the left and starts walking forward. Well, from a distance, it looks like there that your friend may actually meet up with you once they get all

the way across the football field. But as they continue, you see that they're getting further and further away until they reach essentially a point parallel to you, and they are a good distance from you right there, further down the field, like further to the right or to the left,

whichever way that the person turned. Um, that's kind of the idea here, is that if you can catch an asteroid early enough and deflect it just a couple of degrees, then you've solved the problem because it's going to miss the Earth by millions of miles. But how do you deflect it. Well, there's a lot of different options. Yeah, I read uh too. Specifically that seemed to be the options people are thinking of most like what's that um. One of them, ironically enough, was to use nuclear devices, Yes,

but not to destroy, but to nudge. Right. Yeah, the idea is being that you would you would detonate the device over the asteroid. This would actually um cause a couple of things to happen, and it's you know, it's interesting that again that we're talking about something. You know, you might say, hey, you just said nuking is bad. Well, in this case, what would happen is that you would uh create an uh a nuclear radiation would create this uh this vaporizing energy and vaporize the surface or a

section of the surface of the asteroid. Now that's going to cause that part of the surface to eject material into space. And you know, for a react action, there's an equal and opposite reaction, so that ejection from space is actually going to act as a pushing force on the asteroid. And it's tiny, but that's all you need necessary. You know, that might be all you need to move that asteroid out of the pathway of the Earth. So yeah, um, you're just using it again to to give the asteroid

a little push. Actually, most of the the options I've seen are some variation on pushing the asteroid. It's just lots of different potential ways we could do that. Well, that's true. I did read UH yet. To be fair, I did read of the possibility of using an inert UH device nothing that explodes, but basically a bullet if you will, to shove, using us kinetic force to push the asteroid out of the way. Yeah, that is another potential UM solution, although it's it's again one of those

that that has its own set of difficulties. But yeah, that's that is what I've also heard, where you're just using a kinetic force to to tap the asteroid out of the way. And it's it's important to note that. Um. What we really can't stress how much detection and identifying the the objects path, how important that is because um,

there there's an effect called the Yarkovsky effect. Did you read about this, um, As the object gets close to the Sun, closer to the Sun. Um, And I'm not talking about directly on a path too, but you know, as it gets closer and closer to the Sun in the center of our solar system, it's going to heat up UM and for larger object it doesn't matter so

much UM. But according UH to an article that I um than an article I read, the Arkovsky effect basically means that once the the object starts to heat up, the heat can affect its path. It can basically started

to move in a slightly different direction. So you need to be able to We would need to be able to know exactly where the or as least as close enough to UH where the object is going to be so that we can accurately hit it with something if we're going to try to use a brute force method of moving the the asteroid out of the way, And a lot of the attempts to move asteroids may depend upon sun, the sunlight and the Sun's power because UM, there are a lot of different options that would harness

the power of the Sun in order to create a pulling effect or pushing effect on the the asteroid. For example, there's one UM one possible technique where we would coat the asteroid with white and dark coating like paint or dust or whatever, and that would cause it to move because the Sun's energy would actually push against the asteroid. And if we've coded the rights the correct side, not the right side. I mean there's no real right or left, but the correct side of the asteroid. It could push

the asteroid those couple of degrees. By the time it gets to where the Earth is, it's millions of miles away. It's it's millions of miles off course from hitting the Earth. Um. Similarly, there were suggestions that maybe we could create a solar sail that would attach We would use a like a probe to attach a solar sail to an asteroid, and the solar sale would catch the Sun's energy and be propelled by the solar wind, essentially to pull the asteroid

again outside of its pathway. UM. That that's kind of a far fetched one, really. I mean, it's definitely a lot more challenging than say, coading and asteroid with a light colored material. Um. But then there's also the idea of using a net, an enormous net to encapsulate the the the asteroid, and the net would again act as almost like a solar sale. It would it would react against you know, the Sun. The Sun's energy would push against the net, which again would alter the course of

the asteroid. UM. Mirrors are another potential UH solution where you you launch a device that is going to deploy mirrors around the asteroid to direct sunlight to specific points in the asteroid to again push it out of the way. Um. Well, everyone knows that asteroids are vein, so if you, you know, put the mirrors on the far side of the Earth, they'll go toward the mirrors and gold my best side. I look good. Um. But then a couple of other elements.

There are a couple other ways of nudging an asteroid all the way that don't involve sunlight at all. Uh. And one of them, one of them's strapping a rocket to it. So essentially you have a um, do we have to land somebody on the asteroid. No, not necessarily. You'd have to have some sort of of remotely operated probe that could embed into the asteroid itself and then use um, have enough fuel in it to be able to push as a rocket to push the asteroid out

of the way of the pathway of collision. Now it doesn't have to push very hard, it doesn't have to push for very long. Again, as long as you catch the asteroid early enough that we have to keep stressing that this is this is assuming that we capture that we detect the asteroid and years and years and years in advance, and that we're able to react quickly enough so that by the time the probe reaches the asteroid,

because you remember, this isn't gonna be overnight. It's gonna take time for the for whatever solution we deploy to get to the asteroid. Like it, maybe you know, we launched something and we don't know if it's going to work for another two years or three years. I mean, that's kind of scary to think about, but that's true. So, um, yeah, you have to figure away where you have this this device, and it has to be able to carry enough fuel

so that it can actually deploy properly. A lot of people suggest that this kind of approach would be best if it were already space born. So in other words, we already had some sort of launching platform in space so that the the individual probes would not need so much fuel to both escape the arts gravity and land on an asteroid and then propel it away. Um that that does prose a problem. But then another one is

the gravity tractor. Ah. Yes, and I when I looked up the gravity tractor, I had to check just a moment ago and yes, someone has named their band gravity Tractor.

Good for them, Yeah, lead singer John Dear nice, thank you. Um. But yeah, the gravity tractor is fascinating, um because this is essentially using a different body and the gravity of another body and body that we would launch into space to pull the asteroid away without even I mean there's not the point here is not even to touch the asteroid.

It's to get something near enough to it to affect um the asteroids path with another gravitational field, right, because you getta remember everything in the universe exerts a gravitational pull on everything else. It's just that that pull is dependent upon distance and mass and lots of other stuff. But they you know, so if you were able to put a massive enough object close enough to the asteroid, you could alter its pathway. There is there are some

problems with the gravity tractor, really. Yeah. One of them is that you have to figure out are a well, you want the gravity tractor to pull the asteroid away from the path of collision. You don't want the asteroid to pull the gravity tractor into the path of collision. So so that means that you would have to have some sort of propulsion system aboard the gravity tractor to make little course corrections and continue to gently pull the

asteroid out of its pathway. Well, if you have propulsion, then there's the possibility of that propulsion that you're going to when you fire your rockets to to give it a boost that forced me push against the asteroid, thus negating the gravity pull that you are exerting upon it. So essentially you're getting a net zero result because that you're you're pulling it out with gravity, but you're pushing

on it with your propulsion system. So finding a way where you could create some sort of gravity tractor where the propulsion system would not actually push against the asteroid itself is would be part of the solution. Plus this would be really really expensive. It's a much more costly approach and not necessarily uh the most easy to implement compared to other approaches. So I don't know that this

is necessarily likely to happen. I mean, if if enough research goes into it where it proves that this is the most effective way, then sure I can see it happening, just because people would finally say all right, well you know we have to invest in it, because we can't we can't just play roulette all our existence. We have to prepare for this, But I would imagine that we'd probably go with some other route before we tried this one. Yeah.

An article I read suggested that the the gravity tractor would have to be at least twenty tons in order to safely to you know, effectively to I should say, not safely effectively to an asteroid away from the Earth. Um, And I can't you know, I just imagine that's going to be very hard to get out of the Earth's orbit. I mean, you know, our gravity. I'm sorry to leave the gravitational field of the Earth. They launched something that big into space. But you know, I'm not a rocket scientist,

so nor are you a brain surgeon. Now I'm not a rocket surgeon either, so um, well that's good. I can just imagine that going wrong. So I've got another another potential, although it's far fetched, possibility of getting rid of an asteroid that um that's coming at you. You let robots eat it. Really, Yeah, that's kind of cool.

Robert Lamb actually wrote about this. He has a great article on the Our Our Discovery news site called top ten ways to stop an asteroid, and one of them is talking about using them robots that would actually essentially kind of chew up the asteroid and then shoot out the tiny bits of asteroid uh into space electromagnetically UM and essentially disperse the asteroid while it still really really really far away from the Earth, because keep in mind,

if it's really far away from the Earth, then not all of that mass is going to hit the Earth the way it would in the beginning of UM the or or at the end of ARM again rather. So, Yeah, these these robots eating poop. They eat asteroids and they poop asteroid dust. I am. I wanted to go there, and I said, no, I'm not gonna say it. You're not gonna say they eating poop. Nope, But you did it for me, so I could see the look on your face and I knew that you were thinking that.

So I was like, I'm going to do it. Chris and I have more to say about how we get our asteroids in gear. After this quick break. There are some talks about private companies actually investing in this UM sort of technology, this sort of approach UM, which is kind of cool that you know, it's not just not just depending upon for mental agencies that have lots of

different you know, things pulling on them. Um. I did read that scientists don't seem to believe that there's anything likely to hit us in the next hundred years or so right at the earliest, well at least nothing that we can see. Yeah, exactly. So there's still the possibility that something smaller it could hit and still cause massive damage. It's just not gonna necessarily cause global damage, but it

could cause catastrophic local damage, you know. Um. Yeah, there's some interesting organizations out there that are dedicated to trying to fix this problem. There's one called the B six one to Foundation, uh, and they their goal is to have a workable solution by that's coming up pretty pretty soon. Um. If you guys want to learn more about the topic, well, I can recommend a couple of things and how stuff works. We actually have two articles that you go into more

detail about the stuff we've talked about. One is called could we really blow up an incoming asteroid with a nuclear bomb? And one is called could we stop an asteroid on a collision course towards the Earth? And also, uh, there's a great program that aired on Discovery UM called Bad Universe, and it was. It's hosted by Phil Plate,

the bad astronomer. Phil Plate, by the way, one of my favorite bloggers and scientists out there, because he's one of those scientists who really dedicates his work to explaining science to the layman in terms that are easy, easy to understand. It makes science fun and exciting, and he does not shy away from topics like this where you know, he's like, yeah, it'll kill you, so that's why I gotta fix it. So he's very matter of fact about it. Um.

Really intelligent guy, very entertaining guy. So if you have not read his stuff or watched his show, I do recommend trying to catch that because it's he's a great guy. And he also has a really amusing Twitter feed, and he interacts with a lot of other uh Twitter Wisenheimer's out there, like Jonathan Holton, Paul and Storm. You know, um will be eaten. There's there's this kind of Twitter rottie that I have formed up and uh and so um. He often will chat with those folks in interesting and

entertaining ways. And he's and he shares a lot of really cool science news through his Twitter feed as well. I showed you that that amazing photo of the Space Shuttle Endeavor across the sun. Yeah. Yeah, that was that was courtesy of of Mr Phil Plate. So yeah, he's written extensively about this, and he's he's talked about it in his blogs and on on on the show Bad Universe. Um, so I recommend that as well. And uh, well, I don't have any other potential solutions off the top of

my head. Do you have anything else you want to add before we conclude? Not in particular. Now, well, then, um, I would suggest we all just take a moment to uh to to ridicule the documentary Armageddon, uh for its portrayal of how we would uh alter the course of a of an asteroid by blowing it up real good uh Texas style. But you have to land a space shuttle on it first. Yeah, and you have to sing the song I quoted at the beginning at some point,

and uh and Bruce Willis has to die. Oh spoiler alert. Yeah. Um. I was interested in though, that scientists are also talking about the possibility of of mining asteroids in an attempt

to understand them better. Um yeah, I did read that. Uh. You know, although we may not necessarily be ready to destroy one just yet that scientists even alter its path right right, Um, But scientists are considering the possibility if uh, you know, since they are tracking some asteroids that are coming near to Earth and near and again space is big,

so near as a relative term. Um, But they're talking about the idea of visiting some near Earth asteroids with the assibility of mining, you know, taking some samples of the rocks that are there on the asteroid to get a better understanding of elements in the universe and bringing them back to Earth, which uh is a really cool idea. I don't I don't imagine they would send people to

do that. Um. So the idea of doing the complex calculation necessary to hit a moving object you know that's coming around, um, take samples and then return to Earth. That's that's really fascinating stuff. And that's not exactly the same topic. But I think it's a really cool application of science and hope that if they can do that that it will be fruitful and we'll learn a lot from it. And that wraps up this classic episode all

of tech stuff. Hope you guys enjoyed it. You know, it was always fun to talk about these sort of topics with Chris Palette keeping the ear out for Mr Pallette. I think we might be able to lure him back in for a very special episode later this year. No promises, but there is a possibility. And it's always a pleasure to have Chris in the studio. And it's been a long time since we sat across from each other and and did the old podcast thing. So here's hoping we

can make that happen. In the meantime, if you guys have any suggestions for future topics for tech Stuff, or maybe there's a special guest co host you would love to have on the show, maybe someone who's been on before, or someone you would like to have here as a person to you know, stop me from chatting all the time. Let me know, send me a message on Facebook or Twitter. The handle for both of those is tech Stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon.

Text Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.