Planetary Defense with Bill Nye

What would we do if a life-destroying asteroid was coming our way? Bill Nye and comedian Chuck Nice answer questions about planetary defense, asteroids in space, and sci-fi technology.

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

• 0:01Chuck Nice?

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

• 0:14Bill Nye?

  Welcome to StarTalk All-Stars. I'm your All-Star host of the evening, Bill Nye, and I'm here with my co-host, the remarkable and exciting Chuck Nice.

• 0:23Chuck Nice?

  Hey, Bill.

• 0:24Bill Nye?

  And on this episode of All-Stars, Chuck, we're talking about planetary defense.

• 0:29Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 0:30Bill Nye?

  Defending the Earth.

• 0:32Chuck Nice?

  I did not know that we need defending.

• 0:34Bill Nye?

  From an asteroid.

• 0:35Chuck Nice?

  Are they defending our honor?

• 0:37Bill Nye?

  No, it's asteroids.

• 0:38Chuck Nice?

  It's just asteroids.

• 0:39Bill Nye?

  And comets.

• 0:40Chuck Nice?

  And comets.

• 0:41Bill Nye?

  Yeah, which in some level are hard to distinguish, but...

• 0:44Chuck Nice?

  The universe is a hostile place.

• 0:46Bill Nye?

  Can be.

• 0:47Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 0:47Bill Nye?

  So there is no evidence whatsoever that the ancient dinosaurs had a space program.

• 0:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 0:54Bill Nye?

  And it was hard on them.

• 0:55Chuck Nice?

  Is that because they didn't have opposable thumbs?

• 0:57Bill Nye?

  Well, their hands, their arms are so short.

• 0:59Chuck Nice?

  Just tiny, tiny, tiny arms.

• 1:01Bill Nye?

  Some of them.

• 1:02Chuck Nice?

  I would try, but I can't reach it.

• 1:05Bill Nye?

  So, but they may have, I'm not joking, maybe they did have a space program, but it didn't show up in the fossil record.

• 1:11Chuck Nice?

  Right. Now, when you think about that, let me just ask you, since we know that that was an event that happened, right? Because, you know, they look at the layers in the Earth.

• 1:20Bill Nye?

  You got, yes, Chuck, you're such a nerd. I love you. So... Layer of iridium.

• 1:26Chuck Nice?

  A layer of iridium.

• 1:27Bill Nye?

  Atomic number...

• 1:28Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I don't know.

• 1:30Bill Nye?

  Seventy-seven.

• 1:31Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 1:31Bill Nye?

  So seventy-seven's an odd number. It's not that common, so when you find it, and so on and so on.

• 1:36Chuck Nice?

  Right. So here's, here's what I...

• 1:40Bill Nye?

  The following thing.

• 1:41Chuck Nice?

  The following thing that I read, that, that it basically, when we had this cataclysmic collision, right, then up comes, up comes all this detritus. It's superheated, and then it just rains fire and destroys everything. Is that accurate?

• 2:04Bill Nye?

  Well, yeah, so they, they, we, it, astronomers speculate that the cone of the ejecta,

• 2:12Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 2:13Bill Nye?

  The ejected material.

• 2:14Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 2:15Bill Nye?

  Is bigger around than the diameter of the Earth. So gravity pulled it into a big ring of fire, or sphere of fire.

• 2:22Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 2:23Bill Nye?

  And it was very troublesome.

• 2:25Chuck Nice?

  So when you understate things.

• 2:28Bill Nye?

  So when the only animals that made it through were underground.

• 2:31Chuck Nice?

  They were underground animals.

• 2:32Bill Nye?

  And or mostly underground.

• 2:34Chuck Nice?

  Right, or maybe.

• 2:35Bill Nye?

  Descendant of some subterranean.

• 2:37Chuck Nice?

  Subterranean little thing that crawled up to the surface after everything.

• 2:41Bill Nye?

  Or scurried.

• 2:41Chuck Nice?

  Or scurried, yes, yeah, in my case, probably scurried.

• 2:44Bill Nye?

  Spry, spryly. Very athletically bounded to the surface.

• 2:48Chuck Nice?

  Or could have been, could have been like cave dwelling animals at the same time.

• 2:52Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:52Chuck Nice?

  Those, those.

• 2:53Bill Nye?

  Oh, yeah, I'm an expert on cave dwelling. It could be. It's very reasonable. Yes.

• 2:58Chuck Nice?

  Okay, cool. And I mean, it's a fascinating.

• 3:00Bill Nye?

  Oh, man, it's amazing. So when I was in second grade, Mrs. McGonigal reads to us from a big book. Well, the only, the reason the ancient dinosaurs died is they had small brains, which is just lame.

• 3:13Chuck Nice?

  Isn't that crazy? Because you have heard people say, people still say that today. The reason they died off is because they weren't intelligent creatures. They had tiny brains and so they couldn't adapt.

• 3:23Bill Nye?

  So make a joke there about what my old boss, right there. But he was alive. So what I'm saying is, it was in my lifetime that this discovery was made. 1980, 1983, that people discovered this layer of iridium, which is almost certainly from an ancient asteroid, which is almost certainly the ancient asteroid that finished off the ancient dinosaurs. They may have been having trouble with vulcanism, sulfur being pumped into the sky from volcanoes in what is now India.

• 3:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:55Bill Nye?

  Where these tectonic plates are colliding. But they were finished off by a big rock from the sky, or group of rocks from the sky.

• 4:03Chuck Nice?

  Nice. Man, God, wow. I mean, it's, it's, it's exciting and fascinating, and at the same time, it's kind of scary.

• 4:10Bill Nye?

  Yes, we don't want it to happen again. So what we want to do is deflect an asteroid if it starts coming toward us.

• 4:15Chuck Nice?

  Because it happened once.

• 4:16Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 4:17Chuck Nice?

  It could happen again.

• 4:18Bill Nye?

  Well, it turns out the Earth, there's all sorts of impact craters, if you know what you're looking for.

• 4:21Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:22Bill Nye?

  So you look at the moon.

• 4:23Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say, and the moon, God, what a.

• 4:25Bill Nye?

  Look at Mars.

• 4:26Chuck Nice?

  A beautiful little snapshot you have there.

• 4:28Bill Nye?

  Crater Festival.

• 4:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:29Bill Nye?

  So it's very reasonable that the same number of impacts per square meter, kilometer, happened here. But the Earth has all these processes. We have tectonic plates, grinding, we have rain, snow, wind.

• 4:47Bill Nye?

  And so these craters get erased over millennia.

• 4:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:51Bill Nye?

  So, um, what we want to do is detect all the Earth crossing asteroids that have the potential to hit us. And then if we find one, it is to be hoped 30 years out.

• 5:03Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 5:04Bill Nye?

  And we could send out the right spacecraft and give it a little.

• 5:07Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 5:08Bill Nye?

  Except it's in space. There's no sound.

• 5:09Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. That was it. That was the sound.

• 5:12Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 5:12Chuck Nice?

  Right. Yeah. I'm just trying to figure out some more weather related events I can bring up now.

• 5:17Bill Nye?

  Sound effects.

• 5:18Chuck Nice?

  So I can get you to do the sound.

• 5:19Bill Nye?

  You do the thunderstorm?

• 5:20Chuck Nice?

  There's thunder. There's thunder. Let me see.

• 5:25Bill Nye?

  That's pretty good, Dad. That's very good. Yeah.

• 5:28Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 5:28Bill Nye?

  So, uh.

• 5:29Chuck Nice?

  So we've got our cosmic queries.

• 5:30Bill Nye?

  The sound effect, StarTalk Sound Effects Show. Maybe that's coming.

• 5:34Chuck Nice?

  The Sound Effects Fest, coming to StarTalk very soon. Uh, we've got our cosmic queries. Uh, of course, we have gleaned these questions from all over the internets and, uh.

• 5:45Bill Nye?

  All over the cosmos.

• 5:46Chuck Nice?

  All over the cosmos.

• 5:47Bill Nye?

  You can be on Betelgeuse, in orbit around Betelgeuse. If you can get us.

• 5:54Bill Nye?

  Query.

• 5:54Chuck Nice?

  We will.

• 5:55Bill Nye?

  Onto the internet, roughly in English, we'll do what we can.

• 5:58Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 5:59Bill Nye?

  If it comes in in Betelgeusean and we can go to Google Translate.

• 6:03Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 6:04Bill Nye?

  We're in for you, man. We are here for you.

• 6:07Bill Nye?

  And I say man, it could be entity.

• 6:08Chuck Nice?

  Right. Here we go. Uh, uh, Bill, do you believe the biggest threat to humanity is from asteroids or is it from humanity?

• 6:17Bill Nye?

  Oh, from us right now. I mean, humans are the big problem. There's a lot of us breathing and burning the same atmosphere. And right now, the world's most influential democracy is gonna be run by people who say they don't believe in human caused climate change.

• 6:36Bill Nye?

  I got a feeling that when shoving and pushing comes to shove, that they'll change. But right now, it's very troubling. So yes, humans are the biggest problem. However, one rock.

• 6:48Bill Nye?

  From outer space at 11 kilometers a second is very low probability event, but very high consequence event.

• 6:56Chuck Nice?

  So true.

• 6:57Bill Nye?

  Seldom get in a car wreck, but when you do, it sucks.

• 7:00Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly. Right.

• 7:02Bill Nye?

  Seldom get hit with an asteroid, but when you do, man, whoa, man.

• 7:05Chuck Nice?

  You can't, you can't call State Farm.

• 7:07Bill Nye?

  No.

• 7:08Chuck Nice?

  Allstate or.

• 7:09Bill Nye?

  Oh, yes.

• 7:10Chuck Nice?

  You can't call those guys.

• 7:11Bill Nye?

  Any of those guys.

• 7:13Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:14Bill Nye?

  Boom, ba bum bum bum bum bum, whatever that, yeah.

• 7:16Chuck Nice?

  That was it. That is. Yeah. Clearly a very effective ad campaign. Uh, here's, uh, Brittany Mencati.

• 7:24Bill Nye?

  What, what did she do to anger you? Or just make you, fill you with passion? Mencati.

• 7:32Chuck Nice?

  Mencati.

• 7:34Bill Nye?

  Cause I think it's probably Mencati.

• 7:36Chuck Nice?

  It is Mencati. Uh, Brittany Mencati says this, hey, uh, Bill.

• 7:43Bill Nye?

  Chuck, Brittany.

• 7:45Chuck Nice?

  I'm a psychology student at the University of Kentucky.

• 7:47Bill Nye?

  Right on.

• 7:48Chuck Nice?

  Cats. I was wondering if money was not an issue, what would be the very best planetary defense given our current technology?

• 7:58Bill Nye?

  Uh, two things.

• 7:59Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 8:00Bill Nye?

  Invest in a spacecraft, uh, that would be the next to follow on to, well, there's one called NeoWise.

• 8:07Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 8:07Bill Nye?

  One, the next spacecraft to look for asteroids. And as the saying goes, finding an asteroid is like looking for a charcoal briquette in the dark.

• 8:17Chuck Nice?

  Ah, I got you.

• 8:19Bill Nye?

  It's difficult.

• 8:20Chuck Nice?

  I got you.

• 8:21Bill Nye?

  You can do it.

• 8:22Chuck Nice?

  Or like finding Chuck Nice at night when he's not smiling.

• 8:25Bill Nye?

  Uh, I let you make that joke.

• 8:29Bill Nye?

  But I'm familiar with it.

• 8:30Chuck Nice?

  I love it. And Bill was just like, okay, and good for you.

• 8:34Bill Nye?

  Well, I.

• 8:35Chuck Nice?

  And I'm not going there. Not gonna go with you. Now you're not gonna drag me down that rabbit hole, Chuck.

• 8:40Bill Nye?

  Well, you can do, you guys, you can make that such a joke and I can't.

• 8:44Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly.

• 8:45Bill Nye?

  I was brought up in Washington DC.

• 8:47Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 8:48Bill Nye?

  Many years ago, when it really was a nice southern racist town. And I've heard a lot of that, but I

• 8:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:56Bill Nye?

  I do my best, uh

• 8:57Chuck Nice?

  But see, that's because

• 8:59Bill Nye?

  Live my life.

• 8:59Chuck Nice?

  That's because you are a great human being, okay?

• 9:02Bill Nye?

  I'm okay.

• 9:03Chuck Nice?

  And you know, you know the difference between a joke and the fact that, okay, I know he's joking, and a joke and, well, if I say it, it's still offensive because I'm saying it. See, so you know, I, I, I get what you're saying, though. I, I have a great deal of respect for you for that.

• 9:19Bill Nye?

  Well, I'm playing the hand I'm dealt here. People are more alike than they are different.

• 9:22Chuck Nice?

  This is true.

• 9:23Bill Nye?

  Now, the other part of the, uh, planetary defense thing that we have to deal with, or come up with, the first one is detecting asteroids.

• 9:31Chuck Nice?

  That's a spaceship.

• 9:32Bill Nye?

  Second thing is the spaceship.

• 9:33Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so the first thing is detection?

• 9:35Bill Nye?

  And detection is probably best done with a spacecraft that's about three quarters of an astronomical unit from the sun. That's about the same distance from the sun as Venus.

• 9:46Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 9:46Bill Nye?

  However, what would be styling is if you had it, um, with a solar sail so it could go around slowly.

• 9:55Chuck Nice?

  Sweet.

• 9:56Bill Nye?

  That would be pretty styling.

• 9:57Chuck Nice?

  Mmm.

• 9:57Bill Nye?

  And then you'd look for all these asteroids that are, uh, in the infrared. So here's the thing, even if it's a charcoal briquette in the dark.

• 10:06Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:07Bill Nye?

  Chuck Nice, you know, concerted here. Uh, it still glows in the infrared.

• 10:13Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:13Bill Nye?

  As do you, by the way.

• 10:15Chuck Nice?

  Uh, yes, yes.

• 10:16Bill Nye?

  It's like, I can, I can distinguish you from asteroids.

• 10:19Chuck Nice?

  Don't worry, I saw the movie Predator.

• 10:21Bill Nye?

  Uh, so you can see the asteroid in the infrared, they glow at about a hundred and fifty Kelvins.

• 10:27Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 10:28Bill Nye?

  And that's a hundred and fifty Celsius degrees above absolute zero, so with the right detector, you can detect. And then, uh, that spacecraft would assay or keep track of all these asteroids, and then we'd build a spacecraft to give one of them a nudge. And that would be, this is all kind of existing technology, everybody, but she said, Brittany said unlimited

• 10:49Chuck Nice?

  Unlimited cash, doesn't make a difference. We can do whatever we want.

• 10:52Bill Nye?

  For four and fifty million, five hundred million, we could do the spacecraft, the, uh, detector, and then for Give me another number, uh, five billion, we could build a deflector spacecraft.

• 11:04Chuck Nice?

  You know, I have to tell you, with as much money as we waste on other things, that is not a bad.

• 11:10Bill Nye?

  Well, saving the earth from death of everyone, control alt delete for all humankind. Yeah, that's well worth it.

• 11:16Chuck Nice?

  It's kinda worth it.

• 11:17Bill Nye?

  But I've been at that fancy thing, the TED Talk.

• 11:21Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:22Bill Nye?

  And I mentioned this asteroid problem and people laugh.

• 11:29Bill Nye?

  But if it happened, it would really suck, Chuck.

• 11:31Chuck Nice?

  Yes, it would.

• 11:32Bill Nye?

  It would be a bad old thing.

• 11:34Chuck Nice?

  And the funny thing is, people do laugh and there's been several, uh, major motion pictures made about it. And people, you know, they, they look at it as folly. But what I always say is, it's already happened.

• 11:47Bill Nye?

  Dude.

• 11:48Chuck Nice?

  Right. What don't you get about that?

• 11:50Bill Nye?

  I know, so this is.

• 11:51Chuck Nice?

  It's already happened.

• 11:52Bill Nye?

  And by the way, in general, there is no business case for a commercial company to make an asteroid deflector.

• 12:01Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 12:01Bill Nye?

  There's just, there isn't a reason to do it.

• 12:04Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I don't see a lot of profit in that.

• 12:06Bill Nye?

  Yeah, however, people do try to raise money to observe asteroids. But that's different from building a spacecraft with no one to sell it to.

• 12:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:16Speaker 02

  Cool. What if you were?

• 12:18Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 12:18Speaker 02

  What if you were an entrepreneur, so wealthy that you built your own spacecraft and then you threatened to not use it unless they paid you.

• 12:32Chuck Nice?

  That is so delightfully evil.

• 12:35Bill Nye?

  But it's just unlikely, because what is the guy?

• 12:38Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's a long gamble.

• 12:39Bill Nye?

  Want himself to get, herself to get destroyed too?

• 12:42Chuck Nice?

  Well, no, that's because you know, you know, you have an evil layer that's also sad.

• 12:46Bill Nye?

  That's asteroid resistant. Oh, it's orbiting the earth.

• 12:50Chuck Nice?

  So you can escape to your evil layer, yeah.

• 12:52Bill Nye?

  Thinking.

• 12:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. All right. Uh, let's go to Nelson Sa. Nelson Sa says, what's the soonest we can detect, uh, detect a likely collision? And what could we do about it in that timeframe?

• 13:05Bill Nye?

  Well, everybody wants 30 years. That's what people want.

• 13:08Chuck Nice?

  Whoa, that long?

• 13:10Bill Nye?

  Yeah, so you deflect the asteroid, I mean, you detect the asteroid. And then you have 10 years to build the spacecraft and then 20 years out there with the spacecraft just gently. Except in space, there's no sound. On the asteroids, giving a little nudge.

• 13:27Chuck Nice?

  I said a little nudge.

• 13:28Bill Nye?

  And so astronaut Ed Lu, who runs the B612 Foundation, which is named after the asteroid that the little prince lives on, and is an acquaintance of mine, and is a Cornelian, has a patent on the space tractor. This is a spacecraft that is so massive, how massive is it? Its own gravity would would pull the asteroid

• 13:54Chuck Nice?

  Of course.

• 13:55Bill Nye?

  Just ever so.

• 13:56Chuck Nice?

  And that's all you need.

• 13:57Bill Nye?

  That's all you need. So it doesn't cross the Earth's orbit when we're there.

• 14:01Chuck Nice?

  Right. Wow.

• 14:03Bill Nye?

  Cross the Earth's orbit, just not while the Earth's there.

• 14:05Chuck Nice?

  Just not while we're there, right, exactly.

• 14:06Bill Nye?

  How hard could it be?

• 14:07Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 14:08Bill Nye?

  It's some rocket science, people.

• 14:09Chuck Nice?

  Nice, nice, that's excellent.

• 14:11Bill Nye?

  That's you.

• 14:15Chuck Nice?

  Let's go to Sean Harris.

• 14:16Bill Nye?

  Sean.

• 14:17Chuck Nice?

  Sean says, what policies or plans are currently in place to detect incoming threats from asteroids? Is there a foolproof plan to eliminate those threats and avoid death and destruction here on the Earth's surface?

• 14:29Bill Nye?

  We caution you, Sean, against anybody ever who tells you it's foolproof.

• 14:34Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 14:34Bill Nye?

  Yeah, we just, but I know what you're driving at. Uh, no, there's, we have this NeoWise spacecraft, NeoWise 2, that are measuring asteroids, uh, and their trajectories, but it's not foolproof, and the more of that we do, the better. Does that answer the question?

• 14:51Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that does.

• 14:52Bill Nye?

  You could do more.

• 14:52Chuck Nice?

  You could do more, but...

• 14:53Bill Nye?

  By the way, all the money that's spent in space is spent on Earth. This would be a worthy use of our intellect and treasure, people.

• 15:01Chuck Nice?

  Ah, so true.

• 15:02Bill Nye?

  Make me come over there.

• 15:06Chuck Nice?

  Hey, Kathy Francois says, how do you, how do you purpose to educate the masses on the importance?

• 15:14Bill Nye?

  You mean propose? Yeah, I know you're looking up and looking down.

• 15:17Chuck Nice?

  I was, right, what did I say?

• 15:19Bill Nye?

  Purpose.

• 15:19Chuck Nice?

  Did I say purpose?

• 15:20Bill Nye?

  Which must be related to propose, but I'm not etymologically sophisticated enough.

• 15:26Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 15:27Chuck Nice?

  How do you propose to educate the masses on an important issue such as this? I mean, StarTalk is an amazing podcast, but everyone...

• 15:35Bill Nye?

  It's the best.

• 15:36Chuck Nice?

  Totally. Okay? But not everyone wants to listen or learn.

• 15:41Bill Nye?

  What'd you say? You know, not everyone wants to listen or learn.

• 15:45Chuck Nice?

  How can we help spread the news to those who are less passionate about science? You know, this is a problem, I think, what Kathy says here, I think is a problem for so many science-related issues, which is, if you can motivate a mass awareness, then you can actually create a campaign to get those in charge to do something.

• 16:10Bill Nye?

  Chuck, why do you do this podcast?

• 16:11Chuck Nice?

  Um...

• 16:13Bill Nye?

  You're trying to change the world.

• 16:14Chuck Nice?

  This is true.

• 16:15Bill Nye?

  You're trying to make the world scientifically literate.

• 16:17Chuck Nice?

  In my own little way, yeah.

• 16:18Bill Nye?

  Yes. So, what I would say, Kathy, who is it?

• 16:22Chuck Nice?

  Kathy Francois.

• 16:23Bill Nye?

  Kathy, Kathy, this is what we're doing here, is we're trying to change the world. We're trying to influence people. If you can spread the word about listening to StarTalk Podcast, having the time of your life, then it'll build in cascade fashion. So, this is why Chuck and I do this job, or this is this activity.

• 16:47Chuck Nice?

  Activity.

• 16:47Bill Nye?

  Is to get people excited about science, so that we'll have scientifically literate people, and especially scientifically literate voters, which it is to be hoped will lead to scientifically literate politicians.

• 16:58Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 16:59Bill Nye?

  Will make scientifically literately, literally scientifically informed decisions about our use of intellect and treasure, so that we can, dare I say, save the world.

• 17:21Speaker 03

  Hello, I'm Alexander Harvey and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 17:37Chuck Nice?

  Let me just, uh, read this one from Laurel, Laurel Riffle. Laurel Riffle says this. "Dear Mr. Nye, I grew up watching your show, Bill Nye the Science Guy, and it got me interested and excited about science. Now my four-year-old son has the same curiosity and general love of learning. He is always reading his science book and he is full of great questions. We are learning new things together now."

• 18:05Bill Nye?

  Laurel, this is wonderful. Uh, let me ask you though Laurel, Chuck.

• 18:10Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I'm Laurel's proxy now.

• 18:12Bill Nye?

  Yes, Laurel's proxy. Is there a question? I mean, this is wonderful, this is lovely.

• 18:16Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 18:17Bill Nye?

  But is there a question?

• 18:18Chuck Nice?

  Here's what, here's, here's what she says. "I don't have a question for you. I just want to thank you for inspiring my generation and indirectly inspiring subsequent generations."

• 18:28Bill Nye?

  Oh, I love you Laurel.

• 18:29Chuck Nice?

  There you go, man.

• 18:30Bill Nye?

  Laurel's children.

• 18:31Chuck Nice?

  Just wanted to get that out of the way. I was like, there's really no place in the show for that, so let's just do it up front and do it.

• 18:36Bill Nye?

  You just put a place.

• 18:37Chuck Nice?

  I had to make a place for that. That's a great, great sentiment.

• 18:40Bill Nye?

  Yes, thank you.

• 18:41Chuck Nice?

  Okay, and then, and you know what? She is not alone, I have to tell you. Here's the best thing, guys. Going out with Bill Nye and being on the street and then watching people go, "Oh my God, oh my God."

• 18:54Bill Nye?

  What they mean is, "Oh my entity."

• 18:59Bill Nye?

  And I presume deity.

• 19:01Chuck Nice?

  Oh deity, oh my deity.

• 19:02Bill Nye?

  And all that aside, no, it is very nice. It's a lot better than "I hate you, you suck." I hear once in a while.

• 19:07Chuck Nice?

  There you go. Hey, Justin Coats wants to know this. "What level of international cooperation would be required in order to defend the planet from an asteroid or comet? Is it even possible in today's climate of conflict? When the world's governments can't even come together to combat climate change, to get them to come together and combat this threat?" Wow, that's a, that's a pretty deep question, man.

• 19:26Bill Nye?

  No, but the answer is yes. How do you get to the International Space Station? On a Russian rocket.

• 19:31Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:31Bill Nye?

  Okay, how do you explore Mars with the internet with cooperation from Japanese Aerospace Exploration, Roscosmos and European Space Agency? That's how you do things. So there's a lot of international cooperation when it comes to space.

• 19:45Chuck Nice?

  Right. Okay.

• 19:46Bill Nye?

  Exploration.

• 19:47Chuck Nice?

  Oh, there you go.

• 19:47Bill Nye?

  So the answer is, yeah, pretty doable. This... But right now, I gotta speculate that the search for asteroids will still be led by the US and National International Space Administration.

• 19:58Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 19:58Bill Nye?

  NASA. But then the actual deflecting, that'll be a team effort, I think.

• 20:02Chuck Nice?

  So, so, once we identify the problem, which it'll be easier to get people to get on board, once you identify.

• 20:08Bill Nye?

  Oh, man, if you had a real asteroid really coming, it'd be really taking a meeting.

• 20:12Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 20:12Bill Nye?

  You don't wanna send Bruce Willis. I mean, he's a fine guy. But you don't wanna blow it up. You just wanna give it a nudge, because if you blow it up, there's a chance you'll make it worse.

• 20:21Chuck Nice?

  Right. So just give it a nudge. But you do want an Aerosmith soundtrack while it's happening.

• 20:26Bill Nye?

  Uh, can you provide that?

• 20:27Chuck Nice?

  Uh, not really.

• 20:32Bill Nye?

  Do we have to pay royalties if I whistle out?

• 20:33Chuck Nice?

  No, no, and I knew it was dude looks like a lady, too, so not bad. There you go.

• 20:37Bill Nye?

  I did what I could.

• 20:38Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. All right, Jay William Bosch wants to know this. What is the probability that whatever we do could make matters worse?

• 20:48Bill Nye?

  It's funny you should bring that up right after that little commentation that I commented.

• 20:52Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:52Bill Nye?

  That, yeah, you don't wanna make it so that you accidentally have a piece of it that's going even faster and gonna hit the Earth earlier in its orbit, which is apparently a possibility.

• 21:04Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 21:04Bill Nye?

  Only if the asteroid is really close, and there really isn't time to give it a nudge, then you'd blow it up.

• 21:10Chuck Nice?

  That's when you'd blow it up.

• 21:11Bill Nye?

  Yeah, but we just don't wanna do that, everybody. And plus, it takes tremendous amount of energy trying to blow up a rock.

• 21:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:17Bill Nye?

  Planet.

• 21:18Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:18Bill Nye?

  It's, I mean, I know people do it in science fiction, but in real life, it's our real space. It's a hard thing.

• 21:24Chuck Nice?

  Um, now, and, and, but this would have to be an asteroid, because now some comets are like marshmallow-y, right?

• 21:29Bill Nye?

  Even worse.

• 21:30Chuck Nice?

  Oh, you're like that.

• 21:31Bill Nye?

  How do you blow up a marshmallow? You're just gonna get more marsh and mellow.

• 21:35Chuck Nice?

  More marsh and more mellow.

• 21:37Bill Nye?

  You're not really gonna change anything.

• 21:39Chuck Nice?

  Right. Okay, so there you go.

• 21:41Bill Nye?

  Okay, wait, he was ready, then he stopped himself. You guys stumped him somehow.

• 21:45Chuck Nice?

  You stumped me because your name was on a different page, J D Pravost.

• 21:50Bill Nye?

  J D, what is J D's inquiry?

• 21:52Chuck Nice?

  J D says this, "To the great one, Bill Nye, I have been seeing a few stories about ground-based lasers being used to hit asteroids millions of miles away to change their trajectory. Is this tech realistic? Or is it even possible?"

• 22:09Bill Nye?

  It's really hard. So, one of the things we are considering is putting a reflective surface on an asteroid. So sunlight would hit it and give it a little nudge. The pressure of photons, the momentum of photons, even though they have no mass.

• 22:27Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:27Bill Nye?

  They have momentum and it would nudge the asteroid ever so nudgically, nudgingly.

• 22:32Chuck Nice?

  I believe you, uh, you have a little thing called a solar sail.

• 22:35Bill Nye?

  Solar sail has been discussed, yes. Uh, and so trying to keep the beam of a laser on the asteroid, shooting from the earth or the far side of the moon, is not trivial. I'm not saying it couldn't be done. And you could do it, let's say, every month. The moon goes around the earth and you'd zap it

• 22:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:56Bill Nye?

  for a few earth days or weeks, and then the moon would go on the other side and you'd wait. That's possible. But, uh, more likely is to go out there and change the reflectivity of the asteroid.

• 23:07Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 23:08Bill Nye?

  And by the way, one of the things that makes asteroids hard to track is this Jarkowski effect where they reflect sunlight while they're spinning. So some sides of the asteroids are shiny, other sides are darker.

• 23:23Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:23Bill Nye?

  Some sides of the asteroid have potholes and don't reflect very well. Other sides of an asteroid might be smoother and more reflective.

• 23:31Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:32Bill Nye?

  So they're spinning very slowly in space. And so they change their directory, uh, directory trajectories depending on how light is hitting them and how they're rotating. So it's one more.

• 23:45Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow, that's a

• 23:46Bill Nye?

  Just makes it a little tricky.

• 23:47Chuck Nice?

  A little more tricky.

• 23:48Bill Nye?

  And so you gotta track them. You gotta track. Track them good, track them well. Everything in space. I said, track them good for comedic effect, alright? Merian's out there.

• 23:55Chuck Nice?

  Track them good.

• 23:56Bill Nye?

  That's right.

• 23:57Chuck Nice?

  Am rap. Alright, here we go. Natalie Wilcox says, hi Bill. Have you heard of the comet research group? Do you believe, as they do, that we need to be paying more attention to the torrid meteor stream? And that it poses a threat to us annually? Also, what do you think about their research regarding the cataclysmic impact events that potentially took place 12,800 years ago? Thank you.

• 24:21Bill Nye?

  Uh, something to be concerned about.

• 24:24Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 24:25Bill Nye?

  But whether or not that specific meteor, specific comet trail that induces that specific meteor shower, whether that's a big concern, I'm not an expert on, I don't know.

• 24:38Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 24:39Bill Nye?

  Was there a substantial meteoric impact 12,800 years ago?

• 24:44Chuck Nice?

  Sure.

• 24:45Bill Nye?

  Yeah, okay. We had one at Chelyabinsk that could have been a big deal. We had one in Tunguska, which could have, I mean, if the Tunguska event in 1908 had landed on Paris, that would be the end of Paris.

• 24:56Chuck Nice?

  That would have been the end of Paris.

• 24:57Bill Nye?

  I mean, that's it. Or the, or Poughkeepsie. What did I mention earlier? Kansas City, it would be done. So it, there's nobody in control of this right now. If these, one of these objects comes in, they're very hard to see. Happens in a moment.

• 25:11Chuck Nice?

  So now, the, how big was the object that came in just recently?

• 25:17Bill Nye?

  Chelyabinsk?

• 25:17Chuck Nice?

  And in Russia?

• 25:19Bill Nye?

  It was, they people say 25 meters, 30 meters.

• 25:22Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 25:23Bill Nye?

  Not even that big, you know, like as big as your, smaller than your house.

• 25:27Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, that's not a big meter.

• 25:29Bill Nye?

  Apartment sized thing. It's just, they're going so fast.

• 25:32Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:33Bill Nye?

  They have so much energy that they're going at least 11 kilometers a second, which is escape velocity, so.

• 25:38Chuck Nice?

  Now, as another question, because I haven't, I've gone through all of these, and so I don't see anybody ask this, so I'm just gonna ask.

• 25:46Bill Nye?

  Chuck, you're the host of this, the co-host of this show.

• 25:48Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, so I could, I could tell.

• 25:49Bill Nye?

  Lay it on us, man.

• 25:50Chuck Nice?

  So, um, is there, you know, when this asteroid hits?

• 25:58Chuck Nice?

  Okay, of course the impact, we know what that does.

• 26:00Bill Nye?

  We do?

• 26:01Chuck Nice?

  But the first impact is actually with the atmosphere.

• 26:05Bill Nye?

  That's right.

• 26:06Chuck Nice?

  So, i- i- what exactly does that do?

• 26:09Bill Nye?

  They see the streak in the sky first.

• 26:12Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:12Bill Nye?

  And they go, "There's a streak in the sky. Well, it's not gonna hit me, I'll relax." And three minutes later, the sonic boom hits the ground and blows out all the windows. And that's why there were so many, apparently a thousand injuries, substantial sutures and stuff.

• 26:27Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 26:27Bill Nye?

  People standing near glass windows.

• 26:29Chuck Nice?

  All in glass.

• 26:30Bill Nye?

  Very strong sonic boom hit the ground and blew all the windows into everybody's face. It was a surprising result that you just wouldn't think of.

• 26:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:40Bill Nye?

  The first time it happened.

• 26:42Chuck Nice?

  That's really interesting. So if you see a streak in the sky, you better get someplace safe.

• 26:46Bill Nye?

  Couple minutes to get out of the glass.

• 26:48Chuck Nice?

  Get out of the glass.

• 26:48Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:49Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 26:49Bill Nye?

  As the old saying goes, by analogy to earthquakes, earthquakes don't kill people. Buildings kill people.

• 26:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:57Bill Nye?

  So, meteorites that cause sonic booms don't hurt people. Glass windows hurt people. This is analogy every.

• 27:05Chuck Nice?

  Right, right.

• 27:05Bill Nye?

  Not, you know, this is an aphorism, it's not gonna direct your entire life.

• 27:12Bill Nye?

  Something to think about. See the big streak, there are three minutes, there might be a big sonic boom. It could blow all the windows. It did blow the windows out.

• 27:20Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 27:21Bill Nye?

  Yeah, lead on.

• 27:22Chuck Nice?

  All right, Nathan Emly says, "Hello, Dr. Nye. What are the plans to put into orbit a satellite whose sole job is to watch the skies 24 hours a day in all directions?"

• 27:35Bill Nye?

  All directions is the tough part, but NeoWise is a satellite that does that. And we wanna build follow-ons, do more on-ing of following. But watching 24/7, it does watch 24/7, but not the entire sky. It points to different places.

• 27:51Chuck Nice?

  And is that because there's?

• 27:52Bill Nye?

  Just limitations. Things either said are you. You can't look in every direction at once.

• 27:58Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 27:58Bill Nye?

  Though your wife has eyes in the back of her head.

• 28:00Chuck Nice?

  Ah, there you go. That was it.

• 28:03Bill Nye?

  Anyone?

• 28:05Chuck Nice?

  I was going with my mom, but, you know, it's the same thing.

• 28:07Bill Nye?

  Well, they're in.

• 28:08Chuck Nice?

  I've been married long enough that it's the same thing.

• 28:10Bill Nye?

  They got, they have slide shows on Tuesdays where they talk about how to mess with you.

• 28:14Chuck Nice?

  Right. Is there a likelihood of a direction from which an asteroid will come? Or will we just be blindsided?

• 28:23Bill Nye?

  I'm not an expert, but I would speculate. Uh, no. Oh. Except it's probably going the same direction we are around the sun. Aha. You know what I mean? Right, right. The cosmic disk. Mm-hmm. Primordial disk of dust that formed us would have a, uh... Particular flow. A net direction, so... Here's the thing, everybody. You have a big, big, bu- bunch of cosmic dust. Four and a half billion years ago, and it has, even if it's dust, it has gravity. Mm-hmm. In fact, if you've ever observed dust on a bookshelf. One of the little insights that Isaac Newton had. Well, okay. Was that not only does the earth have gravity that's pulling the dust down, the dust must, needs have

• 29:07Bill Nye?

  ever so slight bit of gravity that's ever so slight, pulling the earth up. Oh. Mutually attracted, right? Mutually attracted. Cosmic dust comes together, it's gonna have, it will not be perfectly balanced. It's like a cloud, there'll be bulges and bubbles. And so it ends up with a net, as we say, angular momentum. It ends up with a net spin. Spin, right. And here we are, with, that resolves itself into a big disk. Mm-hmm. People do mathematical models of this. And you get little swirl pools, and that becomes like the planet earth. And here we are. Here we are. Swirling and pooling. And now you know your history. Of... Of how you got here. Of the solar system. The solar system. It really is an amazing insight.

• 29:51Bill Nye?

  So, we are made of cosmic dust. We are made of stardust. Mm-hmm. So, we are, Chuck, you and I, are one of the ways the cosmos knows itself. Sweet. That to me is just... Hey. Gives me the shaky wakes. It makes me feel like I have purpose. Well, Chuck, you don't. Finally. Yeah, fi- yeah. You're like, Chuck, don't, don't start getting crazy. Yeah, yeah. Let's not get carried away, Chuck. No, no. The three kids are your purpose, that's what you do. Man, on that one. All right, Steve Andrews wants to know this. If the earth was in danger of an asteroid strike today. Yes.

• 30:28Chuck Nice?

  Could we protect ourselves?

• 30:29Bill Nye?

  I mean, okay, like this afternoon kind of thing?

• 30:32Chuck Nice?

  Well, no, not like we find out today.

• 30:36Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 30:37Chuck Nice?

  Asteroid is on the way. On the way. Um, I don't know. So I'll put-

• 30:43Bill Nye?

  If it's 30 years from now, if we discover it today that it's gonna hit us in 30 years, let's get to work.

• 30:48Chuck Nice?

  Alright, so now I'm gonna say, I'm gonna, I'm gonna modify Steve's, uh, question. What is?

• 30:55Bill Nye?

  It's a friendly amendment.

• 30:56Chuck Nice?

  What is the, yes, a friendly amendment. What is the absolute shortest window that we could have as an alert to-

• 31:05Bill Nye?

  I think it's less than 10 years. I think it's about 10 years. There are people, I've been in meetings and seen scientific papers presented on this. It's about 10 years.

• 31:13Chuck Nice?

  About 10 years.

• 31:14Bill Nye?

  30 is way better.

• 31:15Chuck Nice?

  30 is better, but 10, we might be able to do-

• 31:18Bill Nye?

  Might have a shot.

• 31:19Chuck Nice?

  Might have a shot.

• 31:19Bill Nye?

  And that's a maybe. That's a maybe.

• 31:22Chuck Nice?

  Wow. Alright.

• 31:23Bill Nye?

  I mean, wow, I mean, so-

• 31:24Chuck Nice?

  I mean, 10 years is not a long time.

• 31:26Bill Nye?

  No, yes.

• 31:27Chuck Nice?

  When you think about it.

• 31:27Bill Nye?

  Right.

• 31:28Chuck Nice?

  You know?

• 31:29Bill Nye?

  No. You can't build a highway, you can't build a big dig in Boston in 10 years, let alone build an spacecraft that no one's ever thought of and go out and deflect an asteroid in deep space and get everybody in the world to take your word for it that you're really doing it.

• 31:42Chuck Nice?

  That's wicked hot.

• 31:43Bill Nye?

  Especially when you put some explosive on it to give it some pressure wave in space and everybody's taking your word for it that you're putting this enormous nuclear weapon on top of a rocket for the good of all humankind, rather than for some nefarious weaponizing of space.

• 31:59Chuck Nice?

  I can see where you might have a problem convincing a few people.

• 32:02Bill Nye?

  So you'd maybe need international treaties with normal people who can conduct statecraft in traditional ways.

• 32:09Chuck Nice?

  Okay, and very quickly on top of that.

• 32:11Bill Nye?

  Just thinking out loud.

• 32:13Chuck Nice?

  Do we have in place any international protocol in case something like this happens?

• 32:19Bill Nye?

  Well, we have the International Space Treaty from 1967.

• 32:22Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 32:22Bill Nye?

  Which mumbles about this. Well, when it's really time, that's when we're really gonna have to have the agreements. And who's gonna build the rocket? And who's gonna launch it? And who's gonna track it? And who's gonna take responsibility for it? It's all so exciting!

• 32:52Bill Nye?

  Today, by the way, if you're just rejoining us, we're talking about planetary defense. Yes. Keeping the Earth from getting hit with a cosmic impactor. Fascinating subject. It really is, and it's important. It's important. It's near and dear to us at the Planetary Society, the world's largest non-governmental space interest organization, of which I'm the CEO, because this is our old mission. Carl Sagan, when I was in his class, in the disco era, would talk about the Tonguska event, where, June 30th, in the modern calendar, 1908, Tonguska region of Siberia was hit with something. It blew down all the trees in a moment. And if that had happened in a big city, that would be the end of the big city. Yeah.

• 33:36Bill Nye?

  Be it. And so, since then, long after Carl Sagan's class, Chelyabinsk, also in Russia, got with a big sparky thing, and a much smaller event, but nevertheless, recorded on countless cameras. And so, it's something to think about. Don't want to get hit with an asteroid. No, you don't. With that said, Chuck. And judging from... Welcome back to the show, listener. Thank you, sir. And those two events make me think that maybe Russia should be a little more involved in this. The thing you keep in mind about Russia, first of all, let's say we take the Earth and divide it in half by hemispheres. It's going to hit one hemisphere or the other. Okay. It's one and two. Then Russia takes up nine time zones. Yes. It's a third of the, it's more than a third of the world. Right, so...

• 34:21Bill Nye?

  Or that former Soviet Union. So, if it's going to hit someplace, it's likely to hit... Likely to hit there. Yeah, there or the Pacific. Yeah, yeah. That's about it. True fact, not a false fact. There you go. All right. I say true fact, that's a joke, everybody. Ha, ha.

• 34:37Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so Anna Bacon says this, "The doomsday shows about asteroids always have it hitting the planet, but what would happen if the asteroid passed between the Earth or the moon? Or if it hit the moon instead of the Earth?"

• 34:53Bill Nye?

  Well, we've photographed asteroids hitting the moon.

• 34:56Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 34:57Bill Nye?

  I mean, small ones, manageable ones, yeah. And asteroids have passed closer to the Earth in the moon's orbit. That's happened.

• 35:05Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:05Bill Nye?

  2012, I believe is the last one. So, if you like to worry about things, this is great for you.

• 35:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:12Bill Nye?

  So far, the ones that have passed that close have been relatively small.

• 35:16Chuck Nice?

  So now, this is a, let's take a, like, extinction level size, uh, object, alright?

• 35:23Bill Nye?

  Listen to your fluency. Oh, extinction level size. How big's extinction level size in check?

• 35:29Chuck Nice?

  Well, let's go with something like Apophis, alright?

• 35:32Bill Nye?

  Apophis, which is the Greek, named for the Greek god of anxiety.

• 35:37Chuck Nice?

  Which is perfect. And hits the keyhole, barrels towards Earth, instead plows into the moon.

• 35:48Bill Nye?

  Uh, I guess it would be troublesome moon-wise, but I don't think-

• 35:52Chuck Nice?

  Would that do anything to us?

• 35:53Bill Nye?

  I don't think so. I'm sure, I am sure, people have run this computer model.

• 35:58Chuck Nice?

  Okay, okay.

• 35:58Bill Nye?

  Uh, but I don't know it. So, I imagine it would just disturb the orbit of the moon.

• 36:04Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 36:04Bill Nye?

  Rather than, it almost certainly would not be catastrophic life-ending on the moon because the moon seems to be lifeless. But that's a great question, and I'm sure people have run that test. And then, would it deflect, you know, the moon is slowly spiraling away from us.

• 36:22Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 36:23Bill Nye?

  Could it be hit hard enough to start slowly spiraling toward us? I don't know, I don't think so.

• 36:29Chuck Nice?

  Like a pool table. That'd be not awesome. What am I talking about? That'd be the end of all of us.

• 36:34Bill Nye?

  Well, not right away. You'd probably have several millennia to give it some thought.

• 36:38Chuck Nice?

  And you know what? And you'd have some really beautiful nights in the meantime.

• 36:41Bill Nye?

  Yeah, and then I just shudder to think of all the babies that would, I just can't even-

• 36:46Chuck Nice?

  It'd just be, would be wild.

• 36:48Bill Nye?

  All right.

• 36:49Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. This is Ian Coleman and Ian says this. "Hey Bill, huge fan here. I was wondering about the possibility of NASA's controversial EM drive being something that could actually work. Apparently leaks have confirmed that this is the least moving, it's at least moving along well. And they're even saying that it may work. Could we use this in planetary defense?"

• 37:15Bill Nye?

  I don't know what an EM drive is. Electromagnetic, what's that?

• 37:19Chuck Nice?

  No, it's um...

• 37:20Bill Nye?

  Now, there's ion drives and there's this nuclear weapon idea where you explode a nuclear weapon behind your spacecraft every few seconds for a while to get, and get these pressure waves of particles that push you through space. But I don't know what he means by EM drive, if he means electromagnetic.

• 37:40Chuck Nice?

  No, I think it's supposed to be some kind of um, new rocket engine.

• 37:45Bill Nye?

  Well, that's what I mentioned, the nuclear thing. Then the other one that we're all hot for is solar electric propulsion, SEP, solar electric module. So this is where you have something like xenon in a liquid form.

• 38:01Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 38:02Bill Nye?

  Put it in a big scuba tank there on your spacecraft.

• 38:04Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 38:05Bill Nye?

  Use solar power from, from photovoltaic panels.

• 38:10Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 38:11Bill Nye?

  To make electricity. Ionize, strip the electrons off the xenon, have a grid akin to a window screen, and shoot the xenon out the back of the spacecraft really, really, really fast. And we do that. We have ion drives right now. Just everybody wants to build a big one. A really big one. And it takes a lot of xenon, but the other thing, it takes a lot of electricity. And when you get things that big in space, it's just getting everything in alignment is tricky. But here's the idea.

• 38:40Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:41Bill Nye?

  Although each atom of xenon or argon or whatever inert chem, uh, gas you're gonna use, or element you're gonna use.

• 38:51Bill Nye?

  Although it is very low mass, each individual atom, they're going so fast.

• 38:56Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 38:56Bill Nye?

  Twenty-four seven, out the back of the spacecraft, that you can go really, really fast. Much faster is generally presumed than you can with just a regular chemical rocket. Cause it's never stops.

• 39:07Chuck Nice?

  Right, so it's on all the time. That's, that's actually cool.

• 39:12Bill Nye?

  And we use ion drives, but we wanna, people wanna build a really big one.

• 39:15Chuck Nice?

  Okay, alright. Alright, this is Jason Leberit. Jason says this. Using asteroids to destroy asteroids.

• 39:25Bill Nye?

  Whoa, that's like so out there.

• 39:29Bill Nye?

  Deflect one asteroid, so its gravity nudges another asteroid. That, my friend Chuck, that would be two words. Rocket science.

• 39:37Chuck Nice?

  Rocket science, yeah. Harnessing asteroids in planetary-like orbit, keeping them on a proverbial lease until we need to crash them into an uncoming asteroid.

• 39:45Bill Nye?

  That's hard, that's pretty hard. Another idea for you, for you asteroid buffs. Is go to an asteroid with a big enough solar panel and yet to be figured out system. To dig up the ice off the asteroid or comet-ary body, comet-like body. Volatilize, zap, cook the ice into liquid water and then into hydrogen and oxygen, H2O.

• 40:11Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 40:12Bill Nye?

  Using electricity over months or years.

• 40:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 40:15Bill Nye?

  Then when you need to deflect an asteroid, you recombine those into rocket fuel.

• 40:21Chuck Nice?

  And now the asteroid has its, has its own rockets.

• 40:24Bill Nye?

  Or you take your rocket from one icy asteroid to the one you wanna deflect, all out there in deep orbital space. That is rocket science, people. It's cool to speculate, but a quite difficult thing to do. Now, you know what? Is at some level difficult, but at another level, so much fun.

• 40:41Chuck Nice?

  What's that?

• 40:42Bill Nye?

  The lightning round.

• 40:46Bill Nye?

  And the lightning round now has a chicken. A rubber chicken with a pneumatic system that makes it crow. Except that's surprising use of that verb. Makes it chicken. Makes it roost, makes it gobble. No, it makes it make a sound.

• 41:07Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 41:07Bill Nye?

  So let's take a question in the lightning round Chuck, who's thoroughly charmed by Edina the chicken.

• 41:12Chuck Nice?

  Edina, I'm such a juvenile person. What can I say?

• 41:16Bill Nye?

  We all are. We're guys.

• 41:18Chuck Nice?

  Let's get right to the lightning round with NASA more likely losing funding, which will likely which will likely happen. Which agency of defense will we see an increased budget for? For like SETI? Or will Russia or Japan increase funding to their native program?

• 41:41Bill Nye?

  Well, here's the thing. Without US investment in rockets. Roscosmos, the Russian space agency doesn't have as many rockets to sell. Don't sell as many rockets, so their agency goes down. Japan is working all the time to maintain its space agency because they have other concerns there. And Japan's populace is shrinking and people there are freaking out about, are we going to have enough workers in the future and so they're going to have to allow immigration? Well, so it's crazy things, but with that said, the talk is taking earth science out of NASA and putting it into NOAA. And if they, if it was zero sum, that is to say if they really took just transferred money rather than slashing, slashing, slashing, everything would be okay.

• 42:25Bill Nye?

  Chuck, what do you think the chances are of everything being okay in the next four years? Let's take another one.

• 42:31Chuck Nice?

  Let's take another one. Here we go. Alan Pulasko says, Mr. Nye, how deep should I build my bunker and how much food and water should I store since the only other option is to try to get a front row seat?

• 42:47Bill Nye?

  An asteroid impact?

• 42:48Chuck Nice?

  An asteroid impact.

• 42:49Bill Nye?

  As much as you want. Carry on.

• 42:52Chuck Nice?

  There you go. Murchison says this, uh, which is more feasible, trying to figure out how to stop the impact or learning how to survive one?

• 43:03Bill Nye?

  Well, surviving, I think, is a stone drag. I guess that's a pun. I don't think you can survive a catastrophic asteroid impact where the ecosystem around the world has been completely upset. A small one that just makes tsunamis, just makes tsunamis and just devastates a few coastal cities. Okay, maybe.

• 43:22Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:23Bill Nye?

  A dinosaur killing ancient asteroid type thing, nope. Nope, carry on.

• 43:27Chuck Nice?

  Forget about it, huh? Wow. There you go. So really prevention is it? Or we're just?

• 43:32Bill Nye?

  That's it, well, sure, yes. It's a low probability, high consequence event.

• 43:37Chuck Nice?

  Man, man. Woo, John Parker.

• 43:41Bill Nye?

  We shook him up.

• 43:42Chuck Nice?

  You did shake me up, man. John Parker says this, Mr. Nye, would it be feasible to send some oil rigs, roughnecks armed with nuclear warheads and mental training to an asteroid to blow it up? If so, what would be the actual outcome in your opinion?

• 43:56Bill Nye?

  It wouldn't work. We'd get, uh, another piece of asteroid on a different trajectory that would be just as much trouble.

• 44:02Chuck Nice?

  Boom, there you go. James Peters would like to know this, uh, hey, Bill, can we use sonic technology to break them up?

• 44:13Bill Nye?

  There's no air in space to transmit sounds. However, fluid mechanics is such that the particles coming off a nuclear blast can be modeled, uh, like a sound wave. It's a different thing, but if you're saying really sound.

• 44:25Chuck Nice?

  No real sound.

• 44:26Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 44:27Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, but a sound wave model.

• 44:30Bill Nye?

  Like that thing.

• 44:31Chuck Nice?

  Okay, there you go. Um, I just gotta read this, just to read it, I'm sorry.

• 44:35Bill Nye?

  Read it, we got a minute left.

• 44:36Chuck Nice?

  Willie Cutzel says, hello, Dr. Nye, we need science in Guatemala. Please help.

• 44:44Bill Nye?

  Uh, so to that end, the planetary report, we're trying to get it translated into Spanish, so it'll be a little easier for Guatemalan, uh, subscribers to enjoy, both on our website and the paper magazine. So we're doing our best to the north to, uh, enable our neighbors to the south to know and appreciate the cosmos in our place within it.

• 45:03Chuck Nice?

  Nice. I'm gonna give that a chicken scream.

• 45:06Bill Nye?

  30 seconds Chuck.

• 45:07Chuck Nice?

  There we go. Nick Feifield says, "I love you. Could we use solar sails and an army of solar sails to effectively turn a meteor into a space sleigh?"

• 45:19Bill Nye?

  Well, sort of. So what we do is drape solar sail material onto the asteroid and change its trajectory. The other thing we want to do is use lasers powered by sunlight to zap the asteroid and cause it to deflect. That's it for our show on Cosmic Queries of StarTalk. It's Chuck Nice here with your guest, all-star host Bill Nye. This has been StarTalk. Please keep looking up.