Will It Happen Again? Comets and Asteroids Extinction with Govert Schilling - #533

Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/list to win a meteorite 💥 Sixty-six million years ago, a single asteroid ended the reign of the dinosaurs—and Govert Schilling says the next one could be headed for us. In this episode, we uncover the science of cosmic threats, extinction risks, and whether humanity stands a chance when the sky turns deadly. Key Takeaways: 00:00 Intro 00:33 Is Earth particularly sensitive to impacts? 03:24 The role of cosmic impacts in human existence 07:59 The closest Earth has come to total destruction 10:23 Asteroids vs. comets 18:28 Recent near misses 21:12 Could we stop an asteroid? 24:42 Panspermia 28:44 Was the extinction of dinosaurs inevitable? 35:18 How to protect the Earth from impacts 38:09 Existential risks and human responsibility 44:46 What Govert wishes for when he sees a shooting star 46:16 Outro Additional resources: 📚 Target Earth by Govert Schilling: https://a.co/5uCEmZi ➡️ My new book: 📖 Into the Impossible Volume 2: Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: Lessons from Laureates to Concentrate Your Creativity and Ignite Your Career: ⁠⁠⁠https://a.co/d/hi50U9U⁠⁠⁠ ➡️ Follow me on your fav platforms: ✖️ Twitter:⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating⁠⁠⁠ 🔔 YouTube:⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠ 📝 Join my mailing list:⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://briankeating.com/list⁠⁠⁠ ✍️ Check out my blog:⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://briankeating.com/cosmic-musings/⁠⁠⁠ 🎙️ Follow my podcast:⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://briankeating.com/podcast⁠⁠⁠ — Into the Impossible with Brian Keating is a podcast dedicated to all those who want to explore the universe within and beyond the known. Make sure to follow/subscribe so you never miss an episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:28Speaker 01

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• 0:59Brian Keating?

  Earth's been hit before, and it'll get hit again. 66 million years ago, a rock from space erased the dinosaurs in under three minutes flat. What's terrifying isn't that it happened, it's that we're long overdue for the next one. Today, I'm asking Govert Schilling, is humanity ready for its target Earth moment? And if not, who survives when the sky falls? Govert, how are you doing today?

• 1:29Speaker 03

  I'm very good, Brian, and thanks for inviting and having me on your show.

• 1:33Brian Keating?

  It's always a pleasure to have you on, and, you know, we're going to be discussing this book and the cover of it, as well as we love to do, soon. Soon, we'll get there. And we'll explain whether an asteroid could wipe us out, just like it did to the dinosaurs. But first, I want to ask you, why does the Earth seem to be such an attractive target for these cosmic darts, these bullets that are coming from deep space? Why is Earth, or is Earth, particularly sensitive to impacts?

• 2:04Speaker 03

  Well, I guess it's not. I think Earth is a very average celestial body that is threatened by cosmic impacts, just as any other body in the solar system. And the funny thing is that in the past, we used to believe that other objects might have much more impact history. For instance, the moon. If you look at the moon with a telescope, you can see all these giant craters, all caused by impacts billions of years ago. And people thought, well, apparently the moon has been battered by cosmic projectiles, and the Earth apparently not. And now we know it's because Earth has such a rich geological history, so that the scars of previous impacts are all wiped out, washed out, so to say.

• 2:47Speaker 03

  And we've only learned over the past century how often Earth has been impacted by cosmic bodies, like it did sixty-six million years ago with the dinosaurs.

• 2:58Brian Keating?

  You talk about the impacts, starting off with a human impact. Can you talk about how meteorites and other objects from space have not only targeted the Earth, but individual human beings? I thought I heard once that some person was hit twice by meteorites. Is that true, or am I misremembering that?

• 3:16Speaker 03

  Actually, I don't know that story, but it could possibly happen. Some people have been hit by meteorites. Luckily, usually it was very small ones. I know the story of an African boy who was hit by a couple of small grains from meteorite fall. The meteorite exploded in the air, and it rained down in the... Yeah, like many pieces of gravel, and he got a couple of them on his head. And there was a lady in Alabama in the 1950s who was hit on her side while sleeping on her bed, hit by a big meteorite. And actually, that's a story I'm telling in the book. Actually, that particular lady, Anne Hodges, it happened in 1954. That was the reason, one of the reasons I got interested in this topic in the first place.

• 4:01Speaker 03

  Because a photo of her, an old-time photo from the mid-passed century, was in a book that my father owned. And I was a young boy. I looked through this book. I saw this image. And I was horrified by the... But they thought that something from outer space could could kill you. She looked like she had died, which she actually had not. But from that on, I was all I was sort of hooked on the topic.

• 4:25Brian Keating?

  Fascinating way to get hooked on it. And luckily, it wasn't, you know, too deadly for most of the inhabitants of Earth. But this book goes through a bunch of really fascinating details. And I think that the thing that most sort of is mesmerizing to me is the fact that we owe our existence to impacts on Earth. And in fact, not only do we owe our existence here in our conversation to three major impacts, the the Thea collision that formed the moon, which makes life on Earth possible, the later, well, you know, we call the later, but really the early heavy bombardment, which came after the Thea incident. And then finally, the Chicxulub incident, which you spend a lot of time and is just so delightful to hear

• 5:09Brian Keating?

  your perspective as a popular science writer on. And that occurred 66 million years ago or so. So these three major events without which we would not be having this conversation because obviously, we need the moon and the moon wouldn't have formed, we wouldn't be here. Obviously, the dinosaur or the great bombardment had to take place so we could have water so we could be made of 70% water and the oceans, you know, populated the land masses with life. And then finally, we wouldn't be here, as you point out, if the dinosaurs were still lurking around, if they had a, you know, DART program or a NASA program 67 million years ago. So not only did these three massive impacts have to occur, but in just the right order, you know, if the if the heavy bombardment occurred before the

• 5:51Brian Keating?

  Thea collision that created the moon, there'd be no oceans, right? So what do you make of this, Gober? Does it seem like, you know, I don't want to dive into intelligent design or anything and get accused of that. Let's avoid that. But let's talk about how improbable is our existence? And what can that be used to say about the existence of life on other planets? If they have not been so fortunate to have massive Earth ending asteroids hit and all sorts of the debacles that you talk about in this book? Do can we say anything about the improbability of life on other planets?

• 6:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's an exciting topic, Brian, and I think it's hard to tell for sure because we don't know how easy it is for life to form. Maybe life can form very easily, whatever circumstances are there, whatever events happened before. So it could be that our life has formed the way it has just because of this train of events that you mentioned. And somewhere else, other things happened and a completely different form of life might have emerged. So I don't think that there's a, like, as you said, some intelligent design behind all this. Because it's similar to the story of my being here, right at this moment. This is because of my parents, right? If my parents had never met, I wouldn't be here. How did my parents met?

• 7:08Speaker 03

  Well, there's a story to it which had to do with a bicycle and a flat tire and friends. And my father and mother met each other and that happened. So if that had not happened, I wouldn't be here, but somewhere else would be here. So it's hard to say that there's a story behind this, like some intelligent design, like chain of events that had to be set in motion. But it's funny and it's true and good to realize that we are all the products of a big cosmic history, that we are really part of this big number of events that are happening in the universe. And especially the extinction of the dinosaurs is a very, very good one because it's well documented.

• 7:51Speaker 03

  It's not that long ago, sixty-six million years is not very long in astronomical terms. So we know a lot about it. And it's true that the dinosaurs had been the major form of life on the earth for more than hundred fifty million years or so. They could easily have reigned for another sixty-six million years, no problem whatsoever. But then came this big impact and that changed everything and life took a different course and now here we are. And I'm not going to say that otherwise two dinosaurs would be talking about cosmic impacts. But the earth would have looked very, very different. So in one sense, cosmic impacts are a danger and that's something that I describe in the book.

• 8:33Speaker 03

  Wipe life out if they are massive enough. But on the other hand, they're a boon. They have made our existence possible, as you say. So it's a two-sided sword. And I like those kind of things very much to think about it, to realize that we are not isolated individuals here on this planet, but that we are really part of the big universe. And we cannot escape whatever happens outside the earth.

• 9:00Speaker 01

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• 9:29Brian Keating?

  The time we spoke, I kind of made your jaw drop when I used the only phrase in Dutch that I learned from my late great colleague Hans Parr, which is een klap van de molen. But now we're going to talk about klap van de asteroiden. I think that means hitting the head with asteroid. The former means hitting the head with a windmill, which means that basically a dunce. What's the closest that Earth has come to total destruction?

• 9:54Speaker 03

  Total destruction of what? What are we talking about? The earth? Life on earth? Intelligent life on earth? It's all different. To destroy the earth, you would have to have it smashed with an object at least as massive as the moon. If a big planet would smash into earth, both would be pulverized and vaporized and would be the end for the earth. But that's not going to happen. We know there are not those kind of big objects in the inner solar system. If you're talking about life, well, there have been many major impacts that were on the verge of wiping out all life on earth. And the dinosaur impact was relatively...

• 10:32Speaker 03

  Benign, so to say, but there have been some others in the past that wiped out more than ninety percent of all living organisms on our planet. So that could happen with a big comet, for instance, that we may not have discovered so far. Comets come from outside the solar system. We don't know where they are. We could discover one tomorrow that could smash into Earth a couple of years from now. That is something to worry about. But then again, we have to realize, Brian, that our species, Homo sapiens, the human beings, we are very vulnerable because we think we are so intelligent and so powerful, but we are vulnerable in the sense that we cannot cope with big differences in our environment.

• 11:16Speaker 03

  We are not like the crocodiles who have lived on for 250 million years without evolution. We change. We are not like the microorganisms that have been around us for a couple billion years. We are beings that have emerged only very recently, just a few hundred thousand years ago, and just as easily it could, the universe could spell the end for us. So will the end of mankind be brought by an asteroid? Hard target in the earth? I don't know. Maybe we are that vulnerable that there will be something else that will, that will mean the end for humankind.

• 11:53Brian Keating?

  I'm a private pilot. I fly little Cessnas around or the Southern California airspace. And one of the things that my flight instructor always told me is that constant bearing equals collision. In other words, if you see some lights and they're not moving and it's not a planet, it's probably another plane. And if it's bearing, i.e. it's azimuthal and elevation are not changing, you're gonna hit it. And so you make the point, which I didn't really appreciate until I read this book, that actually comets are far more dangerous because they kind of are the ultimate stealth, you know, B2 bomber, deployed, deep impacters. And we'll get to some of the portrayals of comet and asteroid impacts in the movies in just a bit. But talk about comets.

• 12:38Brian Keating?

  Are they the sneaking, you know, kind of stealth killers?

• 12:42Speaker 04

  The Widowmakers, the heart attack and waiting for Planet Earth more so than the asteroids that get a lot more attention for some reason, I don't know why, but are comets really the, you know, sneaky assassins, the ninjas we need to be careful about?

• 12:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, the thing is asteroids get a lot more attention because we can study them, we can observe them, we can chart them, we can chart their orbits. They are very, very, very numerous. There are more than a million asteroids already known so far. Quite a number of them have orbits that can bring them close to Earth, so they pose a potential danger. So it's very important to know how exactly they are moving. And the good thing is, we are able to study their orbits and to chart their paths around the Sun, so we can know whether or not they pose a danger. So that's something we can do something about, and that's why there is so much attention. But now comets. Comets can come to the inner solar system from half a light year distance. So we can only see them when they are really approaching the solar system, maybe when

• 13:40Speaker 03

  they're out somewhere around the orbit of Saturn, for instance. And then we can discover a new comet, and only then can we chart its path. But then there is very little warning time. And if the comet turns out to be on a collision course with Earth, there's only so much years that you can do something about it, which is not too much. And then with asteroids, it's easier because we can find an asteroid that's on a potential dangerous orbit, and we could calculate that maybe it has a chance of impact 15 or 20 years from now. Well, in that time, you can study the orbit much better, you can find out that it's not a danger after all, which is lucky. And if it would pose a real, serious danger, you

• 14:22Speaker 03

  have lots of time to act upon it. So in that sense, comets are more dangerous. The lucky thing is they're far less numerous than asteroids.

• 14:29Speaker 04

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• 15:19Brian Keating?

  So the movies that I've been watching lately to prepare for this interview have been kind of laughable, but also delightful. I watched Armageddon with my youngest kid the other night and, you know, he even picked up on the fact that there is some astronomical, you know, unrealism and he's not even, you know, seven or eight years old. He picked up on the fact that, you know, at some point there's a fire burning on the asteroid and he started to say, well, that's not realistic. You know, there's no oxygen in space. But besides that, the awful kind of, you know, dialogue and plot lines and so forth. Of all the movies and TV shows recently, there was, it was a movie, Don't Look Up with Leonardo DiCaprio and versus Armageddon and Deep Impact. Deep Impact and Don't Look Up are about comets.

• 16:05Brian Keating?

  And so they're actually more faithful to what you, you know, just said and more accurate in that sense that the stealth killer is likely to be one that we don't know about and from the comet perspective. But also they were consulting on at least Deep Impact with the Shoemaker, you know, family Shoemaker Levy that discovered the impactor that hit Jupiter. I remember that very vividly 31 years ago now. It's crazy. What does Hollywood get right? What do they get wrong? Is it important? Do we think you will see more of these things? And is there part of our psychology, Govert, that kind of is terrorized and terrified by these cosmic events that up until now and maybe even still now, we have no control over?

• 16:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, let's start with that last question. I think that's true. For some reason, we we love horror movies or disaster movies. And if the disaster can be set by a human being, like a killer or a fire or whatever, it's something we can, well, we also like to watch it, but we know you could in principle do something about it, because it's human affairs that we're watching. When it's an earthquake or a tsunami, for instance, that's a natural disaster. And then something different, like the gods are playing with us, natural forces are even wrecking here on Earth. And if it's something from the universe, that's even more so. It's way beyond our daily experience. It's like a mystical world out there for many people.

• 17:29Speaker 03

  So I think that that tends to to speak to us in a different way. So I'm not that surprised that disaster movies about impacts are very popular. The other interesting thing that you mentioned is that the two late 1990s movies, like Deep Impact and Armageddon, they were clearly based on this Jupiter impact event. That was, that happened in 1994. It was the first time that we, as modern human beings, were watching how an object would hit a planet. We had never seen something like that before. We saw these pieces of the comet smash into Jupiter. So that starts to make you think. And it starts to make movie directors think. And then we had these big disaster movies.

• 18:12Speaker 03

  The astronomers knew all along that it could be cosmic impact. But now the the movie director suddenly realized, oh, there's something that's going on that's out there and that's threatening us. We can make something out of that. And they did. Don't Look Up is a very different movie. Yes, it is an impact, but in fact, it's a metaphor for the other things that can go wrong here on Earth that we have control of, like climate change. So that's a step further, where we where we use the impact threat as a way to to let people know that it's stupid not to act on certain warnings that we have in our environment. That's a little bit different. And about your question, how much did these movies get the things right or wrong?

• 18:56Speaker 03

  I'm actually a strange person in that respect. Many of my colleagues, science writers, or the astronomers that I know. Always look at movies and say, ah, this isn't correct and this doesn't. And I don't care because it's a movie. I love to be entertained in a movie theater. I loved Armageddon, right? Because it was so over the top and because so many things were not that, uh, that correct. It's not that important. The important thing is that the people who went to that movie maybe started to realize, oh, wow, there's really something out there going on. Maybe I should someday read a newspaper story or a magazine article, or maybe a book about this topic.

• 19:33Speaker 04

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• 19:59Speaker 00

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• 20:29Brian Keating?

  What about the recent near misses? I'm thinking about 2013, Chelyabinsk, or, you know, even the Tunguska, also in Russia. It seems like Russia's got the big target on its back, but of course, it's the biggest lead area country. Talk about those near misses. Have there been other ones that we've just been blissfully unaware about because of their non-proximity to Earth?

• 20:52Speaker 03

  Near misses, the Tunguska event in 1908 and the Chelyabinsk event in 2013, they were real hits, obviously, and asteroids were not that very big. So they only caused sort of regional damage. Tunguska is pretty big, that you wouldn't like to have that in the center of the Netherlands, for instance, or in San Diego, for that matter. But talking about near misses, it's exciting to know that there are. Asteroids flying around the inner solar system all the time, and we have not succeeded in discovering all of them. And there are programs that try to look at moving objects in the sky, and these asteroids are small, so you can only see them when they're close to Earth. And sometimes they see something that is approaching the Earth, they calculate the orbit, and they know, okay, it's safe,

• 21:35Speaker 03

  it will pass safely by in a couple of days. But it also happens that the asteroid is only discovered after it had its closest encounter to the Earth. So you see a possible threatening object when it's already moving away from us, and you were basically too late. And that tells you that had that particular object had been moving in a slightly different direction, it would have been a hit out of nowhere. So yes, there are near misses that teaches a lot. It helps us with the statistics, obviously. It also teaches us that, yeah, someday, sooner or later, we will discover something that will hit you. And that has happened also. In one of the chapters of my book, I describe these search programs that look for small asteroids

• 22:20Speaker 03

  moving toward the Earth. And sometimes they discover something just a few meters across, and they can say, tomorrow it's gonna hit the Earth. Well, it's small, so it's probably breakup in the atmosphere, but they know when and where a big meteorite will fall. And then people go out to the place where the fragments have been landed on the Earth, and they find those fresh meteorites. So we're already succeeding in predicting impacts on our planet. So far, only with the smaller ones, which is not strange, because the smaller ones are obviously much more numerous. But sooner or later, it will happen with a slightly bigger one, and maybe with even Chelyabinsk or two goose size object. And if you could predict such an impact a couple of days in advance,

• 23:04Speaker 03

  you would have to start evacuating a city or a region and do whatever you can to prevent the damage here on Earth. So yes, it's an exciting topic.

• 23:13Brian Keating?

  Yeah, I'm always impressed when I go to Arizona and go to Meteor Crater, Arizona, that the meteor just barely missed the gift shop, Govert. Incredible. Before we get to everyone's favorite, you know, kind of... Impact story, the story, father and son's story of the mystery of the Chixalob crater and the extinction of the dinosaurs, at least the big dinosaurs. There are still some small dinosaurs around, right? But the bigger ones certainly that led to rodents like some of my colleagues. So, the mammalian rise of the mammals. But first I want to ask you, can NASA really stop an asteroid headed for Earth? Let's say we had X number of years. Could we stop it? Could we nuke it? Could we deflect it? Could we heat it?

• 23:57Brian Keating?

  What are some of the tools, techniques and tricks? And what is X in that equation? How many years do we really need? Obviously, more is better, but you know, in the movies, they only gave 18 days to Bruce Willis and he pulled it off. A great sacrifice to himself, I might add. God bless Bruce Willis. But tell me, Govert, could we really stop an asteroid? And how much time do we need?

• 24:16Speaker 03

  The first question, it all depends on the size or better the mass of the asteroids. The bigger it is, the more push it has, so to say, the harder it is to deflect it or to stop it. I've sometimes made the comparison to when a bicycle is running towards you, you can just push out your hands and push the bicycle away. That's easy. And so that it doesn't hit you. But when a big truck or a steam locomotive is is coming towards you with a high speed with all those mass, you can't do anything about it. You couldn't deflect it by sending a bomb or a projectile to this oncoming target, because that would be like throwing a ping pong ball to the oncoming truck.

• 24:58Speaker 03

  It doesn't matter too much. So if the asteroid is very big, I'm sorry to say, we can't do anything about it right now. If it's very small, like just a few meters or maybe 10 or 20 meters, there are so many of them, we don't need to do anything about them at all, because most of them will explode in the atmosphere by the buildup of atmospheric pressure. And there will only be slightly small local damage. But the targets in between, like a couple hundred meters in diameter, those are the ones that are still rather numerous. They can pose a real And we are able to do something about them because they're not that massive.

• 25:40Speaker 03

  And that's the thing that scientists are focusing on now. And yes, all the things that you mentioned, like nuke them or deflect them all has been, has been tried and not tried, but has been studied. And a couple of years ago, we had our first experience with really deflecting a small asteroid, just a few hundred meters across, and that was a successful operation. So we now know we have the technology. And then your question about how many lead time do you need? That's clear. You have to have as much lead time as you can. Because if the asteroid is orbiting the sun and you know, 10 orbits from now it might hit the earth, well, you have maybe like 10 years to do something about it.

• 26:25Speaker 03

  And then only a very minor deflection might be enough to avoid the impact. But if you only have a year, you have to use much more energy to put it on a different course. So it's all a mathematical question of mass and velocity and impact and time.

• 26:43Brian Keating?

  I want to ask you about the dinosaurs and I'll get to that in one second. But first I want to ask you about panspermia, which is a word that sounds dirty, but it's not, and actually ties into a giveaway that I do for all my listeners on this channel that have .edu email addresses. You can win an actual chunk of the early solar system, a real live meteorite. If you live in the USA, go over it. Next time you're in town, I'll give you one that you sorely deserve. So you're guaranteed to win one of these beauties if you go to briankeating.com/edu if you have a .edu email address. But if you don't, I give, I do give away them to people that don't have .edu email addresses and that's at briankeating.com/yt or slash list, whatever you like. And you'll get one of these beauties.

• 27:25Brian Keating?

  And my question to you is, what are the odds that life on earth was made possible by a meteorite, perhaps coming, you know, billions of years ago, probably soon after the earth cooled from the Thea impact? What are the odds and the best science that we know about today for not destruction of life? Let's think creatively. How could life have come about? Thanks to an Impact on target Earth.

• 27:47Speaker 03

  Well, the funny thing is, obviously, no one knows how life originated here on the Earth. So we only have one case that we can study and we can't say anything confident about it. But the interesting thing is that over the past decades, we have discovered that the building blocks of life are really everywhere in the universe. It started with complex carbon-bearing molecules, and then it became amino acids, which have been discovered in comets and meteorites and in interstellar space. And then the organic building blocks that are really the start of organic matter. That's being found all over the place in the universe. So we know that the building blocks are out there, and we know that the circumstances on Earth were okay for the for the development of the first living cells.

• 28:33Speaker 03

  So even if life did not originate out there, the building blocks of life certainly did. And then it's not so strange to think about the possibility that maybe life had its origin on another place and was brought to the Earth on meteorites in the very early days of the solar system. There's even one very exciting story. I think it has been, for the first time, proposed by American scientist Paul Davies. He's also a popular science writer.

• 29:03Brian Keating?

  Yeah, he's been on many times.

• 29:05Speaker 03

  He said, suppose life also has originated on Mars a long time ago in the early days of the solar system. Well, Mars was a smaller planet and it was farther away from the Sun, so it cooled much quicker than the Earth. So if life could originate very quickly after the planet cooled down, it would first have formed on Mars before it formed on Earth. We also know that impacts on Mars can smash Martian rocks out into space that can land on Earth as Martian meteorites. So now comes the idea, suppose there was very early life on Mars and a Martian meteorite made it strip to Earth with a couple of those Martian bacteria on board. Well, maybe it has seeded our planet with the earliest forms of life.

• 29:49Speaker 03

  And in that case, you and I are the descendants of Martian bacteria. So, yeah, it's very speculative whether or not life could have originated outside the Earth and brought here. But one thing is sure, the building blocks of life were all around in the forming solar system. And somehow they were brought to the Earth. And after the formation of Earth. The circumstances here were so extreme, everything was so hot that complex molecules couldn't survive. So these first building blocks could only have come through later impacts from asteroids and comets and the late heavy bombardment, as you mentioned before. So yes, I think it's pretty probable that the building blocks, the first steps of the origin of life, were made in the universe.

• 30:33Speaker 03

  And maybe, just maybe, very speculative but very exciting, life could have originated elsewhere and only later moved to this place here in the outskirts of our galaxy.

• 30:44Speaker 00

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• 31:13Brian Keating?

  Sixty-six million years ago, a space rock the size of Mount Everest is hurtling towards Earth at 20 kilometers per second, and it unleashes energy beyond every nuke theoretically possible. In a geological instant, the dinosaurs are gone, they're extincted. Was their extinction inevitable? Were there ways that we, you know, if we were dinosaurs, we could have avoided it? Is there any hope for the survival of mammals should this occur again in the near, and hopefully in the very distant future?

• 31:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm afraid with the impact the size of the dinosaur killer, like 10 kilometers in diameter, there's little hope for us to survive that because that's so big. And the interesting thing is, you were asking, what does it matter what kind of object it is, a comet or an asteroid, rocky or icy? It doesn't matter that much because most of the damage is created by the very big explosion that follows on the impacts. And the explosion energy is not like a nuclear explosion, but it's just the... The transformation of the energy of motion into heat. And the energy of motion is determined by the mass and the velocity of the object. And it doesn't matter too much what the object is made of. If there was a big banana smashing into earth 10 kilometers in diameter

• 32:33Speaker 03

  and with the same mass as the dinosaur asteroid, the consequences would be just the same. It's this huge mass with this huge velocity that has so much kinetic energy, so much energy of motion, that when it hits the earth and it comes to stand still in a fraction of a second, that all this energy is converted into enormous amount of heat. And that means that at the place of the impact, there's a huge explosion which is melting part of the earth's crust, melting and vaporizing all of the impacts, spreading the amount of matter through the atmosphere. Well, you can hardly do anything about it. And an impact the size of 10 kilometers in diameter, it doesn't even matter where it happens. For such a big impact, the thin layer of ocean is not a barrier at all.

• 33:18Speaker 03

  A mountain range, or a desert, or a populated area, or a forest, it doesn't matter at all. Northern hemisphere, southern hemisphere, East Asia, America, no matter where it happens, the consequences would be the same. They would be devastating for life on earth. And I really bet that, as I said before, our vulnerable human beings would not survive an impact that size. And then the good thing is, those things only happen on average about once every 100 million years or so. So there's very, very little change that will occur to us. We have much bigger problems to worry about right now. We don't need to lose sleep over that, but it's good to realize that it can and that it will happen.

• 34:02Brian Keating?

  Let's say NASA does detect something years in advance. In the movies, there's always this moral dilemma that the egghead scientist and the president of the United States and other world leaders go through. Should we notify the public? What's your take on that? Let's say there was maybe nothing we could do. We're not sure where it's going to hit. It's not going to wipe out the whole earth, but it could, you know, take out a major city or so, or just cause, you know, massive tidal waves and tsunamis. Do we tell the public?

• 34:31Speaker 03

  We don't need to tell the public yet. Of course we will, because it wouldn't help not to tell them. You know, if something is heading towards the Earth, maybe even a few hundred meters in diameter, it would be discovered by observatories that will discuss these things with politicians. They might decide not to tell the public, but we have thousands, tens of thousands, very specialized amateur astronomers all over the world using pretty big semi-professional equipment to study the stars. And such an object would be discovered by everybody with a decent telescope in their backyard. So it doesn't matter at all. It doesn't make sense to decide not to tell the public, because we're gonna learn about it very soon in a very different way.

• 35:14Speaker 03

  So it's just something that you cannot avoid. The thing is, the big observatories are probably the first one to hear about that. You might think about spending a couple of days in deciding how exactly do we bring the news. And that's been a topic of discussion for a couple of years already, because you may remember this past spring, there was a discovery of a pretty decent-sized object that was approaching the Earth and still a very distant, very far away, and the prediction for an impact was in 2032, but when it was discovered, there was a possibility of a couple of percent that it would have a direct hit on the Earth. So are we going to tell it? Yes, of course we're going to tell it. We also

• 35:58Speaker 03

  go to tell the public that we don't know the orbit exactly yet, that we do more observations, which we have done, that now we know it will not hit the Earth, but there's still a slight chance that it will hit the Moon, which might be interesting, to say the least. And most likely, in the coming years, we will discover that it also will not hit the Moon, because the Moon is such a small target. So that's how it will happen. We will start with with the discovery, with the potential chance of impact some years in the future. Then we will refine our orbital mapping, and we will know what to do about it, and by the time it becomes really evident that something is heading towards the Earth, it will be observed by tens of thousands. Thousands of people with telescopes in their backyard.

• 36:43Speaker 03

  So this whole theory of politicians and astronomers not saying anything to us, it's nonsense. Doesn't make sense.

• 36:51Brian Keating?

  How do you personally balance the awe that you have for the universe? With the awareness that we're in a cosmic shooting gallery not optimized for our survival?

• 37:00Speaker 03

  Ah, yeah, I think that that the wonder that I feel when looking at the universe and reading about it is is tied to that knowledge that the universe can do this to us. It's it's something, the universe is in a sense so powerful and that gives you this sense of awe and wonder that you feel. And it's not that I'm afraid of it. It does make me feel small as part of the cosmic whole. That's true. So I have a big feeling of awe, as you say, for for the cosmos. But not because it can do anything to Earth, but maybe, yeah, maybe that power that the universe inflicts upon us, that is part of of my

• 37:42Speaker 03

  feeling as the universe is a very awe inspiring universe that I am part of. I would see a contradiction there.

• 37:48Brian Keating?

  Think about the relative ranking of some of the ways proposed to protect the Earth from laser heating to wrapping in tin foil to nuking it. What are the different prospective ways to protect the Earth from being a target? That you think are most probable, most likely to succeed? Shrink a couple of them, please.

• 38:08Speaker 03

  Okay, you mentioned nuking asteroids. That would obviously have the problem of launching nuclear weapons, which is danger in itself. We know that a rocket can explode. You don't want a rocket to explode with a nuclear bomb on board. It also would destroy the asteroids in a lot of tiny fragments that all carry on in the same orbit. So instead of one big impact, we would have thousands of smaller impacts, which is not necessarily better. So I don't believe in the nuking thing. Then there's a thing, very exciting, of wrapping it in in reflecting foil or painting it white even. That would change the reflection of the asteroid, so the way it reflects sunlight. And the reflection of sunlight.

• 38:51Speaker 03

  Over time, it will very slowly change the the motion of an asteroid. It's all a combination of orbital mechanics and and radiation, absorbing and reflection of radiation. So if you change the reflecting properties of asteroids, over time, its orbit will slowly change. If you have a lot of time in advance, you might try to do that. But I think the best way is still that what the DART spacecraft has tried a couple of years ago is deflecting the asteroids, really giving it a push by sending some big body into it, giving it a push and and making it go on in a very slightly different direction. And if you have a lot of lead time, a lot of warning time, that push don't have to, don't have to be that much for it

• 39:36Speaker 03

  to miss Earth in a couple of years from now. And deflecting can be done in a number of ways. You can give it a push, or you can put a massive object close to the asteroid, like a very massive spacecraft. You move your spacecraft a little bit away, and the gravity of the spacecraft will draw on the asteroid and will be tucked out of its orbit. Space tractor, it's called, very interesting concept. So you don't have to shoot the asteroid, you just gently pull it away. And there's even one other thing that I really am excited about. If there's a very big asteroid heading towards an impact fraternity, that we can nothing do without it, about it. What we could do is targeting a smaller asteroid, changing the orbit of the smaller asteroid in such a way

• 40:21Speaker 03

  that it would fly very close to the bigger one, and then the smaller object will divert the bigger one. That would be like a cosmic game of billiards. It might be eventually the way in which we even could prevent ourselves from the very biggest impacts that there are around there.

• 40:40Speaker 00

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• 40:58Speaker 00

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• 41:10Brian Keating?

  Where do you rank these different things that all propagate in the Earth's atmosphere? Let's go through them. Things like a COVID pandemic, virus which is airborne transmitted, nuclear fallout, nuclear winter, which is concomitant with some of the effects that the dinosaurs basically endured. Then we have things in addition to that. We have other forms of warfare, chemical warfare, etc. Where do you rank these? And global warming obviously affects the atmosphere as well. So all this thin layer of atmosphere that you can barely see from space. Where do you rank all these? And maybe throw in AI as well. Where do you rank asteroids, AI, global warming, pandemic, and nuclear war? How do you deal with these existential threats?

• 41:52Speaker 03

  It's quite a list that you're mentioning, Brian. I think some of them are caused by human beings, like global warming and chemical pollution in the atmosphere. So it's relatively easy. If we caused it, we can also reverse it if we want to. Then there are the natural disasters like volcanic eruptions, which can have a very big effect. A very huge series of large volcanic eruptions can cause a global cooling. They can have a lot of impact on crop growth. They could cause starvation of large numbers of people. So that's a very big problem, similar with tsunamis or whatever. But when you're talking about

• 42:37Speaker 03

  the cosmic impacts, the big cosmic impacts, I think they are not that numerous. So they're not very frequent. The biggest ones, maybe only a couple of thousands or tens of thousands of years, much less frequent than volcanic eruptions or earthquakes. But when they hit, the results are very catastrophic. Eventually, if you do the statistics... For any human being during the total existence of humankind, the chance of dying as a result of a cosmic impact is maybe as large as the chance of dying from a volcanic eruption. But a volcanic eruption only kills a small number of people any time, but it happens very often.

• 43:18Speaker 03

  The cosmic impact has a lot of victims, but it is not very frequent. So it's hard to rank them. And I think the main importance here is to realize that the problems that are causing immediate danger to us, like the ones you mentioned, global warming is one of them. We really need to focus on that. It's not that I say looking for asteroids is not important, but looking for asteroids is, well, it's good to do that because we know there might be a risk there. But we certainly do know that there are other risks around here that are much more imminent and that we could actually do something about. And I think that's the message of "Don't Look Up." It's also the message that the film directors were bringing,

• 44:00Speaker 03

  that the general public and the governments are not very keen on acting on very slow developments and very small signs of danger. With the climate change, it happened over tens of many, many decades, tens of years. If there was suddenly a climate change from one day to the other, everybody would think we have to act upon it. If there was a sudden imminent danger of us dying because of climate change, well, we would stop emitting carbon dioxide. And with asteroids is the same. Yes, there is a potential danger and it could happen in the future. And who knows, maybe thousands of years from now, and nobody's going to act upon that. And they should, obviously.

• 44:43Speaker 03

  So that's also the message of that last movie.

• 44:46Brian Keating?

  Speaking of warfare, I kind of came up with an idea during the reading of this book that you then mentioned was one of the concerns of Carl Sagan, which is that anything you can do to prevent a disaster could also be used to cause one on one's enemies, right? So it wouldn't be the first time that astronomers have been recruited to come in for military purposes. But talk about... That scenario that Carl was worried about of a nation, maybe a rogue nation, although they have to be very technologically sophisticated. But to get a, you know, a small rock from space to target not only Earth, but your enemy's, you know, capital city is not theoretically impossible.

• 45:26Brian Keating?

  So what was Carl worried about and how likely do you think this next movie scenario that I'm dreaming up for our collaboration at Cannes Film Festival next year? Uh, tell me about how likely that of a scenario that is.

• 45:39Speaker 03

  Okay, suppose some rogue nation would wipe, would like to wipe out the United States. Would they wait for an asteroid to come pretty close to Earth and then send rockets to this asteroid to deflect it so as to crash into the United States? Well, to destroy the whole nation, it would have to be very big, so it would have effects on the rogue nation too, so that would be dangerous. And if you only would like to wipe out Washington DC, you don't need to have an asteroid, you just send a rocket, not to an asteroid, but to Washington DC, right? So I don't think that that is the main concern, but there's another concern, and that's maybe something that Carl also had in mind. If we have the opportunity of slowly changing asteroid's orbit, then realize what's happening.

• 46:22Speaker 03

  Suppose there was a, an asteroid coming towards Earth. We know for sure, if we do nothing, it will crash onto Washington DC. So we have to do something about it. We sent our spacecraft to deflect the orbit a bit. Now, if we deflected a very small, tiny amount of direction, then the asteroid will not smash into Washington DC, but it will smash into Chicago. So that's not enough. You have to deflect it a little bit more so that it will safely pass by the Earth. But during that process, the impact points, the projected impact points will move across the Earth. Uh, like first it moves to Chicago, then to Los Angeles, and only then will it be a safe object.

• 47:05Speaker 03

  If the potential impact point is moving about the Earth. What happens if it moves over Moscow? Would the Russians be happy with such a maneuver? Probably not. So there's a lot of political things there. In the case that we really need to deflect an asteroid, how are we going to do it? In a sense that there will be no political consequences here on Earth. And that's the reason, one of the reasons why the United Nations has a special committee dealing with these kinds of things. Because you really need to know for sure how you're going to handle these kinds of things. And yeah, that's something that ties the political things to the cosmic events beyond the Earth. So yes, it's all connected.

• 47:47Brian Keating?

  Okay, Govert, this is a beautiful book. It's a short book. It's an easy read. But let's close with this beautiful passage that you conclude your book with. Let's just be thankful that asteroids on a collision course rapidly approaching comets and other deadly projectiles are vastly rarer than the countless rocks, pebbles, and grit flecks of dust that rain down on the Earth every day, some of which you can get at BrianKeating.com/list if you win the meteorite giveaway this month. These are expertly captured and rendered harmless by our planet's atmosphere. Thank you, Oxygen Blanket. And the fireballs that we see each night bears beautiful and silent witness to that. But you close, Govert, by saying beautifully, "There is an old tradition that says, if

• 48:29Brian Keating?

  you see a falling star, you can make a wish." Govert, let me ask you, when you see a falling star, a meteor shower, what do you wish for?

• 48:38Speaker 03

  Oh, man. The easy answer would be, I wish I would see another one much brighter and much more beautiful. But that's not a good wish. I think my best wish would be for much more people to be aware of their place in the universe, of their sense of wonder for the sky above our heads, and of feeling...

• 49:01Speaker 03

  Us, aqui, neste pequeno planeta, todos conectados uns aos outros. Todos estamos no mesmo barco pequeno, cruzeando pelos cair-çadores, e precisamos uns dos outros. Precisamos cuidar da nossa planeta, e essa é a lição que o universo está ensinando a nós. O meu desejo seria que muitos seres humanos percebam isso.

• 49:17Brian Keating?

  Govert, posso dizer apenas "dank you very much", e aprecio isso. E a próxima vez quero ouvir sobre suas aventuras no Chile, no nosso querido Observatório de Simões. Entendo que foi um grande evento. Vou referir aos leitores os seus artigos sobre o telescopio sobre essa aventura. Obviamente, vou ter um link para o livro. Algo mais que você deseja promover ou falar sobre como um projeto em breve?

• 49:39Speaker 03

  Estou agora trabalhando em um livro em inglês sobre o telescopio James Webb. Não acho que haja uma tradução em inglês, porque há tantos livros de inglês sobre o JWST pelos meus colegas americanos e ingleses. Mas é um grande tópico para trabalhar, porque o telescopio traz tantas novidades. E outra coisa que eu realmente gosto é de trabalhar em uma novela gráfica sobre a vida extraterrestre, juntamente com um ilustrador. Então, é parte de ficção, é parte de ficção científica, é parte de ciência, e é um projeto divertido para trabalhar. E quem sabe haja uma edição em inglês dessa?

• 50:14Brian Keating?

  Isso seria ótimo. Bem, muito obrigado, Govert. Foi um prazer, como sempre.

• 50:19Speaker 03

  Você é muito bem-vindo. Obrigado por me convidar.

• 50:20Brian Keating?

  Esse foi um episódio fenomenal com Govert, e eu sei que se você gostou desse episódio, você vai gostar desse com Mario Jurec, que falou sobre a capacidade do Observatório de Verubens de proteger a planeta de outro impacto asteroide acabando por terra. Clique aqui para ver esse vídeo, e não se esqueça de curtir, comentar e se inscrever.

• 51:07Speaker 05

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