Asteroids Headed Towards Earth with Rick Binzel

How likely is an asteroid to impact Earth? Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice sit down with planetary scientist Rick Binzel, the creator of the Torino Scale, to discuss asteroid hazards, the results of the asteroid sample return, and the search for Planet 9.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not every day you get to talk to someone who invented a hazard scale.

• 0:05Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 0:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And studied the asteroid, has an asteroid named after him.

• 0:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 0:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's my man.

• 0:12Chuck Nice?

  Yep, and that is this show, and you will find out, we are all going to die.

• 0:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Eventually. Coming up on StarTalk.

• 0:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Got with me Chuck Knight. Chuck, baby.

• 0:44Chuck Nice?

  Hey, what's happening?

• 0:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, co-host, comedian.

• 0:47Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 0:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what we're gonna talk about today?

• 0:49Chuck Nice?

  What?

• 0:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 0:50Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 0:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hazardous asteroids, Pluto, and Planet Nine.

• 0:56Chuck Nice?

  So, are we saying that Pluto and Planet Nine are just now demoted to hazardous asteroids? Cause you know, they were a planet, you knocked them down, you know, humiliated them completely.

• 1:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're not over that, you still haven't gotten over that.

• 1:12Chuck Nice?

  And then, and then it was like, okay, you're a dwarf planet. It's like, well, at least I get to be a planet. Now you're just like, you know what? Hazardous asteroid.

• 1:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, while I have some expertise in the space, I don't have all the expertise I want for this show.

• 1:26Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 1:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we, we went back.

• 1:29Chuck Nice?

  Uh oh.

• 1:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of my peeps.

• 1:31Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 1:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of my people.

• 1:32Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 1:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got one of my people who invented the international scale to measure how hazardous an asteroid will be to life on Earth.

• 1:43Chuck Nice?

  Okay, that is a hell of a, like, uh, quality to have on your resume.

• 1:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The business card, you know?

• 1:51Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 1:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I tell you what, your ass is fried or not.

• 1:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's amazing.

• 1:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, let me introduce us all.

• 1:59Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 1:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To Rick Binzel.

• 2:01Chuck Nice?

  Hey.

• 2:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Professor Richard Binzel. Rick, how you doing, man?

• 2:04Speaker 02

  Hey, Neil, great to see you. Chuck, nice to see you.

• 2:06Chuck Nice?

  Nice to see you.

• 2:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so you are retired now, Professor Planetary Sciences at MIT, which stands for?

• 2:14Chuck Nice?

  Um, Massachusetts, uh...

• 2:17Chuck Nice?

  Institute of Technology.

• 2:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you. That took you too long to.

• 2:21Chuck Nice?

  Uh, and well, you know, I was gonna say something smart ass, but I you saw me bridling myself.

• 2:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, you did bridle. You did bridle. Uh, and you are the inventor of this hazardous scale. Uh, hazard scale, the Torino scale. We'll get into that in a moment.

• 2:36Chuck Nice?

  Okay, I got my first question already.

• 2:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. You're a co-investigator on Osiris Rex. Uh, remind me, Rick, that was the mission that did the, was that the one that did the touch and go?

• 2:46Speaker 02

  Yes, Osiris Rex was the touch and go that successfully returned an asteroid sample to the earth.

• 2:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Back to earth. So that's badass.

• 2:53Chuck Nice?

  That's more than badass.

• 2:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we're gonna find out if it had any bugs in it.

• 2:56Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 2:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, and, and of course, my boy has an asteroid named after him, 2873 Binzel. And that is not his password on his account.

• 3:10Speaker 02

  No, sorry.

• 3:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He tells me that's not his password. He's also a staunch Pluto lover.

• 3:17Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 3:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we have, we've had some dust ups in our day.

• 3:19Chuck Nice?

  I can only imagine.

• 3:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, put your thumb down, dude.

• 3:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we're old friends. So we went to graduate school together.

• 3:27Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow.

• 3:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We were in the same class in graduate school.

• 3:30Chuck Nice?

  That's pretty, uh, pretty cool.

• 3:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's pretty cool. And.

• 3:33Speaker 02

  That was a previous millennium, too.

• 3:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, way back. Okay.

• 3:37Chuck Nice?

  Since you were in school at the same time, what was the most advanced technological equipment that you had at your disposal when you were in school? Cause that will get people really.

• 3:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got one for you. Ready?

• 3:48Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 3:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At the time, you were able to visit someone's house, dial a set of numbers to forward your phone number to their phone number so that if someone was calling you at home, they could still reach you while you were at your dinner party.

• 4:05Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow. So.

• 4:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that you could get your phone number to follow you.

• 4:08Chuck Nice?

  How telling. That's amazing.

• 4:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 4:10Chuck Nice?

  It's like, it's.

• 4:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I thought that was good.

• 4:12Chuck Nice?

  You can have your phone number follow you.

• 4:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 4:15Chuck Nice?

  Call you could, you're forwarding your own calls to you.

• 4:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct. Rick, what, do you have an opinion on this?

• 4:20Speaker 02

  You, you could connect to the, from your home, you could connect to the computer on campus by dialing, literally dialing a phone.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  Sticking it into a box that had two earmuffs to connect your phone.

• 4:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the handset of the phone, yeah.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  A handset of the phone into a, what was called an acoustic coupler. And you could talk to the computer on campus from your own home.

• 4:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was amazing. That was amazing, huh? Amazing.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  At three hundred baud, three hundred bits per second.

• 4:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Oh, my God, that's awful.

• 4:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We were not streaming videos back then. That's amazing. You published a paper at age fifteen? I forgot about that. What was that paper on?

• 5:02Speaker 02

  It was on asteroids, Neil.

• 5:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, OK, he goes back.

• 5:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, we had an experience of a camp run by Columbia professor named Joe Patterson. And he just reached out to high school kids, gave them this fantastic experience that was formative in our careers. And so many of those students became professors and professional astrophysicists.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  Anyway, so it was a super opportunity. And I haven't stopped since.

• 5:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There was a research project in that camp.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  That's right, that's right.

• 5:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  OK, so I attended the same camp, but not at the same time. Not at the same time. But we didn't know each other at the time. We get into graduate school and we find out that the two of us, plus another person in our class. In that camp? All attended that camp. It was astronomy camp called Camp Uraniborg. Camp Uraniborg. Do you know what Uraniborg is? I believe it's the Borg ship. The Borg?

• 6:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So when you're on the Borg ship, you're on a Borg. You're on a Borg when you're on the Borg ship. OK, that's a good one. That's good. No, but that's good. It was the Observatory of Tukulba. Oh. Tukulba. Tukulba, that's your buddy. That's my man. You like that. He got all the data on the planets. And so it was a camp and we lived nocturnally. We slept during the day and up during the night. It was totally geeked out. We're both fourteen or fifteen. Right.

• 6:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 6:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Rick, one other thing about your time in graduate school, which betrays some of your affection for Pluto, is Rick made, correct me if I got this wrong, he made the first measurement. Of the light dimming of Pluto's moon going in front of and behind Pluto.

• 6:54Chuck Nice?

  So Sharon transiting Pluto.

• 6:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct, and that was the best evidence available at the time that the moon even existed.

• 7:05Chuck Nice?

  Amazing.

• 7:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then, well, isn't it, what, isn't that what allowed people to calculate a true mass for Pluto? And, and its size and all this?

• 7:14Speaker 02

  That's right, Neil. Uh, when you have a body in space, unless you have something orbiting around it, um, you know, you use Kepler's third law to, to calculate the mass of the primary, the mass of the system.

• 7:26Chuck Nice?

  What's Kepler's third law, please?

• 7:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dude, why do we have to explain that to you?

• 7:29Chuck Nice?

  Just because, you know.

• 7:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, for other people.

• 7:31Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you know, not me, I'm just saying, some people might be wondering what Kepler's third law is.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  All right, so Kepler's third law is a relationship between the orbital period of, um, of an object, uh, compared to the mass or the mass of the primary, the mass of the system. And so if you can measure the size of the orbit and the orbital period, you can calculate the mass of the system.

• 7:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And confess, Rick, that we got the mass for Pluto and was way littler than people wanted it to be.

• 8:00Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 8:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Confess that right now on my show.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  That the mass of Pluto is what the mass of Pluto is.

• 8:06Chuck Nice?

  Oh, let me tell you something, Rick, you do great in Congress. Or court.

• 8:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That put you on Pluto's radar from, from, from Jump Street right there, so that, so I was not surprised that he turned out to be a staunch Pluto lover his whole life.

• 8:23Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 8:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause he, he birthed Pluto's mass.

• 8:26Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, but by birthing Pluto's mass, you also birthed its demise. But go ahead.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  So Neil, I was, uh, looked at Pluto for five years. I actually spent about 10 or 15 years total working on the Pluto system, but we started looking to see if we could detect this moon around Pluto, um, about 1980 and, um, and, you know, it was a five-year search of, uh, looking for these, uh, transits and that didn't show up until 1985. And then they were continuing from about 1985 to 1990. Uh, it's the same technique that we use for looking at, uh, planets around other, other stars, of course, transiting exoplanets, but this was planetary transits and we were, we were kinda doing it before it was popular.

• 9:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, Rick, I, you just reminded me of something. There was a fuzzy photo.

• 9:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  of Pluto and there's a little bump on the edge of the what is the circular outline. Uh, it's fuzzy, a little bump. And that that was a hint. If we believe the photo and the emulsion, because back when there was authentic photographs.

• 9:30Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. If we believe that, that meant maybe it has a moon. And I just, I was just reminded that not all transits go exactly in front of the thing you want them to transit.

• 9:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if the angle is wrong.

• 9:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not gonna see it.

• 9:45Chuck Nice?

  You're not gonna see it.

• 9:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's why you were looking for it and you didn't see it for four years because our sight line to it wasn't properly oriented yet. Is that, did you know that at the time?

• 9:57Speaker 02

  What we, yeah, Neil, uh, that's right. I mean, what we didn't know is we didn't know what that angle is or the inclination of the orbit. And so we didn't know when the earth, most of the emotion around, um, the, uh, in this case was, uh, the earth's motion around the sun. Um, we just simply didn't know what the inclination of the, of Charon's orbit, that's what we call the moon today. We didn't know the inclination of Charon's orbit, so we didn't know when it would become edge on to the earth and, um, you know, uh, by going back to those bumps, those, that was 1978, those were on glass plates. That's when telescopes, we didn't have CCDs, we didn't have those electronic detectors yet.

• 10:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Back in the day.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  Back in the day, you had to climb uphill in the snow both ways to get to the telescope.

• 10:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now that's when, that's when telescopes, here's what you did, you put your head under a hood.

• 10:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They have an old, old man hour here. Okay.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  So anyway, those bumps and those fuzzy images would move around and it moved around with about a 6.4 day period, which we knew was the rotation period of Pluto. So it all made sense, but you know, we really didn't know and make sure that it wasn't some funny photographic effect. Until we got those transits in 1985 and those first transits were just along the top edge of Pluto, along the pole of Pluto. And, uh, so it was the beginning of a long series of these transits that we actually used to make the first maps of Pluto.

• 11:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, because you can say how it dims or brightens as Sharon moves across it. So you get a blunt understanding of the reflectivity.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. So if it goes across a dark spot, the light doesn't change very much. But suddenly, as the edge of the moon goes across Pluto and you get a big light drop, then you know there's really high albedo spot underneath.

• 11:45Chuck Nice?

  Very cool.

• 11:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  High albedo.

• 11:46Chuck Nice?

  Albedo.

• 11:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Love that word.

• 11:47Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 11:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, it's, it's almost, do you albedo? I, I albedo.

• 11:51Chuck Nice?

  Now, you just made it creepy. You just made it very creepy.

• 11:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, it's one, it's a fun word that gives no indication of what it means.

• 12:01Chuck Nice?

  That's true.

• 12:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right?

• 12:03Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you would never know what it was.

• 12:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tell us, tell us about albedo, Rick. Cause albedo is, is half your work, right?

• 12:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, albedo is a fancy name for reflectivity. You know, something with a low albedo doesn't reflect very much light. And something with a high albedo reflects a lot of light. So ice is a very high albedo.

• 12:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A lump of coal is near zero albedo.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  A few percent, yeah, a few percent.

• 12:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and a, and a mirror or just a coat of white paint with a very near 100% albedo.

• 12:30Chuck Nice?

  All right, this is starting to sound very racist.

• 12:47Speaker 03

  Hello, I'm Vicky Brook Allen and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Nailed Grass Tyson.

• 13:06Chuck Nice?

  Let me ask you this. A, a long time ago, I read this article. And I mean, it was long ago and it talked about, cause you just said reflectivity and albedo. It talked about how Pluto was so reflective the way it was, that they were able to determine that that's because it was mostly ice, which means it was a lot smaller than they actually thought. Because what you were seeing was more reflection than you were actual body.

• 13:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you don't know anything about a cosmic object orbiting the sun. You'll make an assumption of what its albedo might be based on other albedos that you have measured, correct?

• 13:44Speaker 02

  That's right, that's right. So you make, when you first discover something, you make a best guess that it's albedo or reflectivity. And, um, and then maybe someday you get the actual measurements and you can refine it.

• 13:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so what was your first presumption of the albedo of Pluto?

• 14:01Speaker 02

  Uh, probably around 20.

• 14:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  20%, okay. And so given its brightness, you would say, if, if it's that bright and it's only reflecting 20% of the light, it must be this size.

• 14:13Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 14:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so now, given that it has an icy, more reflective surface than previously, its albedo jumped from 20% to what?

• 14:22Speaker 02

  Into the 30s, maybe up to 40%.

• 14:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 14:25Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow.

• 14:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, factor of two almost.

• 14:27Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, so that's a big deal.

• 14:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a, that, that work. Alright, alright. By the way, you're in my Pluto book. I mentioned you. Uh, I don't know if you remember that.

• 14:34Chuck Nice?

  I believe the actual words were, "Take that, Rick."

• 14:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's go back to asteroids. A big part of your career has studied asteroids.

• 14:48Chuck Nice?

  Cool.

• 14:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you were at a conference in Torino, Italy, where you proposed a way to track how hazardous an asteroid might be. And it came to be known as the Torino Scale.

• 15:03Chuck Nice?

  Which I have a problem with, uh, because I understand that there's a 2873 Benzo, okay? And that's an asteroid named after you.

• 15:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 15:13Chuck Nice?

  Well, why wouldn't it just be the Benzo Scale, since you're the guy that came up with it? Why so, why so humble, man? You gotta, you gotta take it while you can get it. Okay? Grab the gusto and the glory. Like, you know, we live in the time of Trump now, man. You gotta, you, you, you, you know what I mean? It's, it's the best scale, the biggest, the most beautiful scale. It's wonderful. Like, you know?

• 15:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It can measure everything.

• 15:36Chuck Nice?

  It can measure everything, not just asteroids. It's used by plumbers, it's used by carpenters. It's the best. Like, but why, why not, why call it the Torino Scale and not the Benzo Scale?

• 15:48Speaker 02

  Well, it is wonderful. And it's the best.

• 15:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love it. Whoa.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'll just say the Torino scale or how we talk about asteroids is something that we have to do very internationally. And so the fact that it was adopted in at the conference in Torino, you know, gave it more of that international flavor and that.

• 16:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is my people.

• 16:10Chuck Nice?

  All scientists, you're all the same. Scientists are always sharing, sharing the glory and, and, and, and sharing the wealth with one another and collaborating with one another.

• 16:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't say that like it's a bad thing.

• 16:24Chuck Nice?

  Do you know what world, do you know what world you live in is what I'm saying.

• 16:30Chuck Nice?

  No, that's fantastic. That's I'm, I'm so happy for that.

• 16:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, last I read up on this, but it's been a while, so forgive me if I misremember. This scale has multiple factors operating simultaneously, right? One of them is the risk that it will hit Earth. And two is how much damage will it create if it does?

• 16:52Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 16:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Those are combined into this one scale. Is that correct?

• 16:55Speaker 02

  Consequences versus probability is the basis for the scale.

• 17:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rick, if memory serves, the Torino scale, there's more going on than just a number. So, so remind me what, what you put into it.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  First of all, the trainer scale is a 10 point scale from zero to 10. All right, zero is really good and 10 is a really bad day for the dinosaurs. And the way you, the way you calculate where an object falls on the Torino scale depends on the size or the consequences of what that object would be if it struck the earth versus the probability, the currently current best estimate for the probability that it could impact the earth. And so it's two dimensions, consequence and impact probability.

• 17:43Chuck Nice?

  And is the scale pointed at specific asteroids that are out there? Or is it just a generalization for any uh body that's that might come our way?

• 17:54Speaker 02

  Well, it it could apply to anything, but it really only matters for objects that asteroids that have orbits that can come close to the earth. Um, if you're in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, you know, it's you're not going to bother the earth.

• 18:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a zero, you're a zero on the scale.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're zero, they're zero.

• 18:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, how about your the asteroid with your name on it? What's the hazard scale for that?

• 18:16Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  Zero, zero, I'm afraid, or I'm happy to say.

• 18:20Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, because that would uh.

• 18:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't want asteroid Binzel come and take us out.

• 18:25Chuck Nice?

  At an eight, and it's like, okay, this whole thing was rigged. He created the scale and now the asteroid.

• 18:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's the one that's going to take us out.

• 18:32Chuck Nice?

  Takes us out.

• 18:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a Lex Luthor move, right?

• 18:36Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, you know, at the lowest level, you know, things are green. You have a green level, which means, oh, this is normal. Uh, we're gonna find a lot of these. Um, we're currently at that next level up, which is yellow, which just says, um, these merit attention by astronomers. So that's what level three is, is merits attention by astronomers. And uh, if the probability gets worse, uh, we would go to orange, which means there's a possible threat here. And where we want to stay out of is the red zone of eight, nine, and 10, which means uh, we have 100% probability of uh hitting the earth. And and now it's a matter of what would be the consequences. And those consequences depend on where the object lands. So uh, we're in the yellow zone. We'd we'd rather be green.

• 19:21Speaker 02

  Um, and if we go completely to zero, that's uh, that's just colorless. That's just a blank zero. And so we expect this object or the odds are greatly in our favor. We'll get it down to zero. We just have to keep watching it and refining that track and uh, and get the information we need to to drive it down to zero.

• 19:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's green, yellow, orange, red, four colors?

• 19:44Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. Correct.

• 19:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got it, very simple.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  And zero is uh, no hazard, so that uh, it doesn't even get a color.

• 19:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So recently, uh, 2024 Y R four, uh, the two letters and then the numeral has been in the news. By the way, it's one of, I think, tens of thousands of earth crossing asteroids. So this was one that happened to be the one to talk about today.

• 20:06Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 20:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We saw that it. It had a 1.3% chance of hitting us. What does that mean? If that number is given?

• 20:16Speaker 02

  When you discover an asteroid, you know, you're only seeing a tiny piece of the orbit as it's moving through space. And so, you know, we'd like to project forward, extrapolate that position, you know, for decades, if not centuries into the future, just to make sure that it's not going to intersect with the Earth. And we do that for every asteroid that's discovered.

• 20:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He didn't say slam into Earth and kill us all. Intersect. Intersect. Right. It's a very dispassionate word. Oh, without a doubt, yeah. Go on.

• 20:49Speaker 02

  So we do it for every asteroid. We, you know, every time we discover an asteroid, we'd like to make sure that we know that one's on the good list and not on the naughty list. And, you know, in this case, we know this asteroid in the year 2032. And in fact, every four years, it comes somewhere near the Earth. But we find in 2032, it's going to come close to the Earth, probably about as close as the moon or closer. And we simply don't have enough precision in terms of how well we know where that asteroid is precisely going to be in 2032 or other decades in the future, to know for sure that it's going to miss the Earth. And so, because we know,

• 21:32Speaker 02

  because we can't say we're certain it's going to miss, it gets a probability of intersecting near Earth. So that's just simply where we are. It's really that that probability number is really a measure of, you know, what we don't know. It's not a measure of what we know. It's what we don't know. Because we simply haven't been able to track this thing for very long.

• 21:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's something that might be new to Chuck. Were you able to get a pre-discovery image of this asteroid?

• 21:58Speaker 02

  When we discover an asteroid that has some future chance of intersecting with the Earth. One of the tricks we can do is go back and see if it's shown up on in images that we've taken of asteroid searches, you know, many years before. Because if we can find it like we that it was someone accidentally saw it four years ago, but didn't measure it.

• 22:22Speaker 02

  That gives us another four years of an orbital length that we can use to calculate forward. And so these are called pre-discovery images. And I know people have been searching the records for pre-discovery images to get a longer track on this asteroid, but those haven't shown up. You know,

• 22:43Speaker 02

  the asteroid 2024 YR4 is simply a pretty small object. It's probably about 50 meters across, something like

• 22:52Speaker 02

  what Tunguska Siberia observed, experienced in 1908.

• 22:58Speaker 02

  And, you know, for the longest time, we never had the capability of even seeing these objects out in space at great distances. And it's simply our capabilities have just gotten so good that we're starting to see really small objects far away. And so we can, you know, start to make these extrapolations forward. And, you know, this is just the first, probably many cases to come where our capabilities exceed the, you know, the precision of computation. So we'll have, we'll have lots of these cases, I think, coming along.

• 23:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I posted a, a short video in a series that we do called What's Up With That? And that's where my producers say, Neil, this is in the news. We should, what, what can you tell us about that? It's been five or 10 minutes. I commented that when you have an uncertainty of an asteroid risk of hitting Earth, as time moves on, that uncertainty goes to one of two numbers. It goes to 100% or to zero. Once you have a tighter and tighter knowledge of its orbital path. And so recently,

• 24:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It jumped from 1.3% to 2.3%. It's on its way towards 100. Rick, what's going on? Protect us!

• 24:23Chuck Nice?

  And when do we need Ben Affleck?

• 24:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it's Bruce Willis.

• 24:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, know your disaster movie.

• 24:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, dude.

• 24:32Chuck Nice?

  Well, Ben Affleck was in that movie.

• 24:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, he was, but he wasn't the hero.

• 24:35Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, but I like Ben Affleck.

• 24:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, fine. He was Batman, don't confuse him with that.

• 24:39Chuck Nice?

  Well, Batman I wouldn't call to save me from an asteroid, that is for sure. That's a Superman job if ever.

• 24:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If ever, right, right. So, so is this on its way to 100%?

• 24:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, so Neil, as you just said, ultimately, when we get the final answer, we'll know it's either 0% or 100%. It either hits you or it misses you. And the odds are greatly in our favor, about 50 to 1 right now, that it's going to miss. So I like those odds. It turns out for this asteroid, the region of uncertainty is like this long spaghetti string that stretches from beyond the moon, basically all the way across the moon's orbit. And it happens to, part of the string happens to lie on top of the earth. And so that spaghetti string, and we use Italian pasta because it's the Torino scale,

• 25:35Speaker 02

  that spaghetti string will shrink as we get more and more data that improve the track of the asteroid orbit. But until that spaghetti string shrinks and doesn't have the earth underneath a piece of it, we can see that probability number bounce, bounce around. It's, there's really no surprise there. And I'll just say that ultimately, we'll get to the final answer, and that uncertainty will shrink to the size of a grain, basically a tiny grain. And so the chances are that when we shrink that uncertainty region, or that spaghetti string, down to a single grain, that single grain could be further than the moon, it

• 26:17Speaker 02

  could be somewhere between the earth and the moon, but the chances of that grain being on the earth are just that few percent.

• 26:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but if it is on earth, the grain could be on top of Hackensack, New Jersey, or Hoboken, where you live?

• 26:30Chuck Nice?

  Hoboken.

• 26:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hoboken.

• 26:31Chuck Nice?

  And I thank you for destroying where I live.

• 26:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Often when we think of an uncertainty... I think of a circle and is most likely to hit in the middle of the circle and less likely toward the edge. But what you're saying is, given its orbit and the orientations, the circle is now elongated maybe to an ellipse, but this is a severe ellipse. It's so elliptical that it's a spaghetti strand. That's what you're telling me.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  That's right. What we call the uncertainty ellipse is really just sort of flattened out into this very long string. It's like you take pasta and you keep stretching it and stretching it. And this uncertainty region has just stretched out into this long spaghetti string.

• 27:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but is it linguine or fettuccine?

• 27:13Speaker 02

  No. I thought it was linguine to start, but it's now getting so thinly stretched out, it's definitely spaghetti. And I don't think it's quite angel hair pasta yet, but definitely a spaghetti string.

• 27:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Torino strikes again.

• 27:27Chuck Nice?

  Yes. And what sauce is with this? I need to know. I need to know what sauce we're putting with this meal.

• 27:34Speaker 02

  That's a personal choice.

• 27:35Chuck Nice?

  Okay, okay.

• 27:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. So this is 50 meters across Tunguska's scale. And by the way, we didn't have telescopes monitoring for killer asteroids in 1908. So this just hit the atmosphere and exploded on impact with our air, given how fast it's going. So without these telescopes, if this hit us, it would be just another surprise air blast. All right. But we are wise astronomers today. So my question is, if it does hit Earth, is there an easy rule of thumb for how big a crater a 50-meter asteroid would make?

• 28:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's 10 to 20 to 1. So an object that's, say, 1 kilometer across would make a crater about 10 or 20 times that size. Fortunately for 2024 YO4, it's about 50 meters across. And that's right at the size limit where the atmosphere most likely will protect us from it ever reaching the ground. It depends on the entry angle into the atmosphere, you know, as to how much resistance the atmosphere puts up. And so in all likelihood, this thing will break apart in the atmosphere. The pressure wave will still hit the ground, and that's what causes the damage.

• 28:45Chuck Nice?

  And what kind of shock wave are we looking at from? You know, it's like you slap the atmosphere and what would kind of be the result on? I'll say a metropolis.

• 28:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, in Tunguska, it incinerated 10,000 square kilometers of forest.

• 29:02Chuck Nice?

  Oh my.

• 29:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that was not just the blast wave, that was the pulse of of of energy that showed up as photons, as light.

• 29:16Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 29:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? Am I remembering this correctly, Rick?

• 29:19Speaker 02

  Um, no, mostly it wasn't so much heat. Uh, it was mostly the pressure wave, what we call an overpressure. Uh, that would have knocked down the trees. So it was really a flattened forest for a few hundred square miles.

• 29:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why am I remembering fire?

• 29:32Speaker 02

  It may be right at the center, but that was fairly localized. Most of the damage was just trees knocked over for a few hundred square miles.

• 29:40Chuck Nice?

  I'm gonna say that's um, pretty impressive in terms of a disaster for a pressure wave to uh, take out how many kilometers of trees?

• 29:52Chuck Nice?

  I mean.

• 29:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, few hundred square miles, few hundred square miles.

• 29:55Chuck Nice?

  That's insane because that's insane.

• 29:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait.

• 29:58Chuck Nice?

  You're both so.

• 30:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's small compared with the surface area of the earth.

• 30:03Chuck Nice?

  Oh, yeah. It's not small compared to northeast Philadelphia. We had one plane crash and it took out like three blocks of people.

• 30:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I remember that.

• 30:10Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that was just a couple of little while ago. And I'm just saying like, you're talking about miles and miles of trees being knocked off. It is hard.

• 30:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's flat.

• 30:20Chuck Nice?

  It's hard to flatten a tree. That is difficult. That's no small thing.

• 30:26Speaker 02

  Well, you have to remember, most of the earth's surface is water. So this could, uh, in all likelihood, if it came to pass, it would be over water. Um, and the very poor coupling between that pressure wave and the water, you wouldn't want to be in a ship underneath that. But that would be pretty, pretty easy to evacuate.

• 30:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, I'm pretty sure, right? My good fellow here.

• 30:51Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 30:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Once you, once the spaghetti uncertainty shrinks down to a dot, if it's going to hit Earth, we'll know exactly where on Earth it's going to hit, correct?

• 31:00Speaker 02

  Recently, our capabilities have become good enough that, you know, a small object the size of a compact car can be discovered a few days or hours before, you know, if it's on terminal approach. And, you know, those predictions get very well refined that they basically can tell people when to go out, hold your cellphone camera up and see a streak in the sky. And then meteorite hunters can then descend on the area to try to pick up pieces. So when we get, you know, a precise orbit, we could be very specific about where these things are going to arrive. So.

• 31:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's a scientist talking there. He says, when you know where it's going to arrive, get your cameras ready.

• 31:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rather than get your ass out.

• 31:42Chuck Nice?

  Instead of leave. Get out.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  No, no, we're, we're gonna run, you know, we, these are the sort of things we run towards. You know, we want to get data, man. We want to pick up pieces.

• 31:53Chuck Nice?

  Science!

• 31:53Speaker 02

  This is free stuff. This is free stuff from space.

• 31:57Chuck Nice?

  Free stuff from space.

• 32:01Chuck Nice?

  That's great.

• 32:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man of from heaven.

• 32:03Chuck Nice?

  Right, there you go.

• 32:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Rick, where is 2024 YR4 on the Torino scale?

• 32:11Speaker 02

  So 2024 YR4 ranks a three on the Torino scale, which means if it were to strike the Earth, it would be a localized event. And I think the important thing about a three on the Torino scale is that we like to emphasize that most likely, when we get more data, we'll be able to reduce it to zero. And three is also sort of an alert to astronomers to say, let's pay attention to this object. We're not worried about it. No one has panicked about it. But let's get the data and make sure that it's gonna miss.

• 32:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It may be fun to deflection program.

• 32:47Chuck Nice?

  I was about to say, I don't want to be macabre, but what, what, what point on the scale do we have to do something? And what, I mean, what's the number where it's just like, hey, guys, we gotta, we gotta get up there and fix this?

• 33:00Speaker 02

  Eight, nine, and 10 are the numbers you don't want on the Torino scale because those are the levels where you are certain of an impact. And YR4, if it misbehaves, it would go all the way up to 8 on the Torino scale. That would be its maximum.

• 33:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, because it's not massive enough to render anybody extinct. And your scale, it sounds like it's logarithmic or something, right? Or exponential, the higher the number, the much higher damage it would do, right?

• 33:27Speaker 02

  That's correct.

• 33:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which is true, that's the same true with the earthquake scale, the Richter scale. Exactly.

• 33:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tell us what's the latest about Apophis? Isn't Osiris Rex visiting Apophis?

• 34:00Speaker 02

  Yes, so Apophis ties into our current asteroid story because back in 2004, it was kind of the same thing. Apophis got all the way up to 4 on the Torino scale. And in this case, we were able to find earlier images of that asteroid and refine its orbit and rather quickly have it go down to 0. So Apophis was the winner in terms of the highest ever recorded value on the Torino scale. But what that means, or what we found when we pinned down the orbit of Apophis, is that on April 13th of 2029, the asteroid Apophis is going to come very close to the Earth, but it's going to safely pass the Earth.

• 34:45Speaker 02

  And that safe passage of the Earth is at a distance closer than some of our orbiting satellites, the one out at geosynchronous distances. And so this stadium-sized asteroid, Apophis, is going to make a very close approach on Friday, April 13th, 2029. That Friday means nature has a sense of humor.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  I've been leading a lot of efforts to try to figure out how can we scientifically study the asteroid Apophis because the Earth's gravity and the tides that the Earth exhibits on the moon are going to tug on that asteroid too. And if we can see how the asteroid responds to the way the Earth tugs on it, we'll be able to understand how that asteroid is put together. And that's terra incognita. We've never been able to discern how the inside of an asteroid is put together.

• 35:40Chuck Nice?

  What about a giant net? Is that like a butterfly net?

• 35:45Speaker 02

  No, no, no, we wanted to go past. We wanted to go past. So, um, yeah, so we'll let it go past and we just simply want to get the most science, the most knowledge we can out of this object. You know, you know, someday the knowledge of how these things are put together could be some of the important, most important knowledge that we've ever, uh, you know, extracted from, uh, from a, a space program. And so, um, we, we just want to, we just want to get smart.

• 36:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So as you monitor the tidal forces on it, which would serve to break it apart.

• 36:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 36:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If it stays together in spite of those tidal forces, that tells you one thing.

• 36:24Chuck Nice?

  A lot more solid.

• 36:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Solid, right. And if it starts breaking apart, it didn't have much of a matrix to hold it together.

• 36:30Chuck Nice?

  It's a crumbly collection of cookie crumbles.

• 36:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cookie crumbles.

• 36:33Speaker 02

  That's right. And if it doesn't care, um, Apophis has been around for probably thousands, if not maybe a million years, occasionally whizzing past the Earth. Um, it's probably come closer than this in some previous millennium. And, uh, you know, it, it may say, oh, this rodeo is not really that tough of a rodeo and, uh, it may just pass by and Apophis itself may not care, uh, too much.

• 36:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are they still naming, are you guys still naming Earth crossing asteroids that are newly discovered after gods that are?

• 37:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, in part, death and destruction on the world because Apophis is the Egyptian god of death and darkness.

• 37:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? So is that still the habit, the tradition?

• 37:17Speaker 02

  Uh, there's a lot of different mythical traditions, but you know, for Apophis, it kind of shows that astronomers have a sense of humor, too.

• 37:24Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Any, any plans to name one Trump?

• 37:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Trump probably has a plan.

• 37:33Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 37:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Osiris Rex went on a trajectory after the sample return to intersect Apophis, is that correct?

• 37:42Speaker 02

  That's right. So NASA has approved, uh, that, uh, the next mission for this Osiris Rex spacecraft, which is renamed as Osiris Apex. Apex is Apophis Explorer.

• 37:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 37:55Speaker 02

  And so, uh, we're repurposing this spacecraft to go visit Apophis. Um, the laws of orbital mechanics and how much propulsion we have on the spacecraft don't allow us to get to Apophis until after it's gone by the earth. So we're gonna kind of, uh, get a sort of an aftershock of Apophis, um, after the earth does whatever it might do to the, uh, to the asteroid.

• 38:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're not gonna touch and go on this one, right?

• 38:21Speaker 02

  No, we, we'll leave it alone, um, uh, except maybe at the very end.

• 38:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or you might crash into it?

• 38:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, after we made sure where it's gonna go for a long period of time, we may, uh, kind of touch down, let our thrusters blast the surface to kind of create a little crater that we can then look into, um, but we won't physically touch the asteroid. Um, but I just want to say that, uh, you know, there's really been this fantastic cooperation with European Space Agency where they're working on a mission called Ramses, um, which would go to Apophis and get there before the asteroid reaches the earth. And so it could be the European Space Agency, uh, giving us a before look and then NASA's spacecraft, Osiris Apex, will give us the after look.

• 39:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause there's still a few years in there. The sample that did come back from the asteroid Benu.

• 39:12Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 39:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What did that reveal?

• 39:15Speaker 02

  So the reason we went to Bennu is it looked like it was a very dark, low albedo, carbon-rich asteroid, and we're interested in carbon because the stuff we're made of is, you know, carbon. We're all carbon-based units. And so this was a chance to go back and look at some of the original carbon chemistry that made the planets and ultimately made life. And we have found that very primitive carbon chemistry, even down to some basic amino acids that make up the structure of proteins and, you know, essential for life. So, so we really have found sort of the holy grail ingredients of the origins of, or the chemistry that can make life.

• 39:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Part of that was even expected, though, right?

• 40:02Speaker 02

  Yes, I mean, that, that, that's what we wanted to find. And the important thing about bringing the sample is it was collected in space, it was stored in the vacuum of the capsule, and then, you know, retrieved in pristine laboratory con- conditions. So we knew everything organic that we're measuring in this sample was intrinsic to the asteroid, to the space material itself, and not something introduced because it, you know, the asteroid, meteorite landed in a pond or in the mud, and to pick, pick it up out of the mud and get it to a lab and things like that.

• 40:38Chuck Nice?

  How does that compare to any other samples that we have from space?

• 40:41Speaker 02

  It turns out that this kind of early carbon chemistry is extremely rare in the meteorites that we have on Earth because most of those, it, it's not very strong material, and the Earth's atmosphere breaks it apart and incinerates it all the way down. And so it's very hard to collect this, these kind of samples in a free sample from space in a meteorite. And that's why going and get this, getting this kind of sample was really a scientific breakthrough.

• 41:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's implicit in what you said, but I want to make it explicit. These asteroids... Harken from the beginning of the solar system. Mm hmm. Undisturbed by weather, erosion, contamination. Right. So. Perfectly preserved. Perfectly preserved. Is that a fair way to say that, Rick?

• 41:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I like to call asteroids the building blocks of the planets. Uh, it's the, they're leftover rubble, they're leftover pieces of all the material that went in to make the planets, to make the earth.

• 41:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like Ikea. Like Ikea furniture. That's the stuff that's left over. The building blocks.

• 41:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not furniture, it's the building blocks of furniture.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  It's been a bit disassembled over time because it clashes, crashes into each other out there over millions and millions of years, but the fundamental pieces are still there.

• 42:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we are all of a particular handedness of these molecules for life on earth. But some of those molecules in a mirror are perfectly legitimate molecules. We just don't use that version of them. Right. So, but space, if there's not something to pre-select a handedness of the molecule, you might expect it to be 50 50. I mean, and if it's not, somebody's got to answer to that. Something's doing some filtering there. Something's doing something, right. Something's doing something. So that'd be fun to see. That's pretty cool. Where the future of this goes. Yeah. All right. So Rick, take us out with planet nine. What the hell is planet nine? It's a place where I'm doing fine. No, it's cloud nine. Oh, that's cloud nine. Okay.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  Pluto is the ninth planet because dwarf planets are planets too. And so.

• 42:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got out of that one, boy. Here we go. He got out of that one.

• 42:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm fine. I'm fine with, uh, you know, um, something else being out there. But the thing that's called planet nine, um, is, uh, just some indications in the data that there may be something even further out in our solar system that's been tugging on some of these other asteroids out there. There's a region out there called the Kuiper Belt. Uh, there's lots more asteroids out beyond Pluto and, um, some irregularities in the distribution of where all those objects are suggests there's something out there tugging on them. Um, it's a little speculative. It could be right, it could be wrong. But, uh, you know, when you have an idea, you go out and search and, and see if you're right or wrong.

• 43:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what would make better data than that? What's that? The object itself.

• 43:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? I mean, you're, what you're saying, you're seeing all the objects that it's gravit- it's supposed gravitational field would have influenced, and you're triangulating back on where this object must be and maybe how much mass it has. And, but no one has spotted the object yet, if it's, if it's real.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  Right, and I think the indication there will be something very far away, a little difficult to detect, so, uh, so, you know, the jury's definitely out, but, uh, you know, when you get these ideas, you, you put a forward a hypothesis and you go out and test it, so that, so, that's how science works.

• 44:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the interest of getting clicks, I'm gonna say it's a massive alien ship.

• 44:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He, he's not gonna agree with that. No, I'm sure.

• 44:22Speaker 02

  That's a zero, I'm afraid.

• 44:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 44:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Rick, I think we're, we're done here. God, it's been, really, I'm amazed I hadn't, we haven't done this before. Uh, our show's been on for quite some time. Yeah. And, uh, you demand, oh, by the way, I don't know if anybody knows, when I get a call from CNN. Right. About something in the solar system, I call Rick. I say, Rick, this is what I know. Is it, is it enough? What do you know? What can I bring to this conversation? Super cool. So, he's my go-to planet man. I love it. Cause I was a galaxy guy.

• 44:54Speaker 02

  Speed dial.

• 44:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, speed dial.

• 44:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause I'm, I'm a galaxy guy, you know, large-scale universe guy, and planets was like a whole other, that's a different species of astro, yeah, well, you know what makes them different? They get to go there. Nice. Right? I, we don't, you know, we're not going to a black hole or the center of a galaxy or anything. Right. They get to, oh, I wonder what that object is? Send a probe. It's like, so that's, that's, that damn near experimental science. Nice.

• 45:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, and as a planetary scientist, you really put yourself on the line because you can have a hypothesis and idea, and you send a probe there and you find out you were wrong. Um, but that's pretty exciting when you're wrong, actually, because you have to relearn, you've, you've gained really great insight for the things that, uh, that don't prove to be, uh, what you might have expected, so, but I love the challenge of, uh, being able to study things that you can go there and, and, uh, find out if you're right or wrong.

• 45:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For today's cosmic perspective, it's clear. That among other interesting points of knowledge, wisdom, and insight, we've also learned that as a scientist, discovering how the universe isn't can be just as valuable to the researcher as discovering how the universe is.

• 46:14Chuck Nice?

  It also works when you're looking for a job.

• 46:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that is a cosmic perspective. Rick, thanks for being on the show, man.

• 46:24Speaker 02

  My pleasure. Great to be with you.

• 46:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Love to the family and Chuck.

• 46:29Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 46:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Always good to have you, man.

• 46:30Chuck Nice?

  Always a pleasure.

• 46:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, all right. This has been StarTalk, the hazardous asteroid edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Keep looking up.