Fun Fact: If it wasn’t for Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, the Earth would get hit all the time with asteroids. Jupiter’s rich gravity ALMOST always takes the blows.

This is a myth. It's the exact opposite. I'm assuming a ton of people already corrected you but I can't be assed to read all the replies.

thank you jupiter

Agree it’s a fact. But fun?

This doesn't make sense. Jupiter can only be on one half of the solar system from us, so even if it is swinging all the asteroids approaching us from one side, what about the other one?

That guy was so chill talking about the devastating impacts of asteroids, so you can tell he's been researching them for a long time

It is chil. That is reality and chances of you dieing are very low in your life time. If you love in the USA you have a better chance getting ship by a cop

@Thanos his student did not him.

hij liegd alles aan elkaar! allemaal fake

@Vivek Kapoor I think you mean mass x gravity but yes it would be a lot of momentum

Brother think of asteroid having momentum equal to weight× gravity×speed will fall on earth as fire ball due to atmospheric friction.

After all these years of inventions and developments it might seem depressing to know that there really is nothing we can do to stop an asteroid from hitting the Earth or even evacuating people before it does. An ode to the fragility of human life.

I think the atomic bomb will work far better than he estimates. 15:04 I agree to most of what he says, but that this rubble will reform due to gravity after a 15Mt Nuke blast is absolutely wrong. Let's take Bennu, a 500m Asteroid. It has an escape veloicity between 0.178 m·s−1 and 0.00534 m·s−1 so even the max escape velocity is just 0,6km/h. If you jump up from bennu at 0,6km/h you will never return. So suggesting that a 15Mt nuke blast will totally obliberate a 500m asteroid in all directions and a relevant portion of that that isn't accelerated above 0,6km/h is a totally unrealistic assumption. He explained how a 50m asteroid creating 20Mt TNT of energy takes magnitudes more earth it weights itself where it hit into and spreads it over a really big area leaving a gigantic hole, an atomic bomb with the same energy release will obliberate the 500m Asteroid totally no problem and give that small rocks for shure speeds 200 times faster than escape velocity easily. As in space, there is no 9,8m/s" gravity to pull down the ejected material down to the surface, like on earth and no atmosphere to slow it down, that remains will be spread over the whole solar system, a lot of it probably accelerated above escape velovity of the solar system.

Be positive, the asteroid can hit somewhere where it can not do damage but rather benefit humans. I like to day dream about happy things. Just how large of a asteroid is needed to obliterate Detroit ?

@Young Flashy ...or use punctuation . I still don't know what you were trying to say.

@B L yeah... I didn't stutter...

Derek, you are fantastic at what you do. You are among the top information sources, not on Youtube but in the whole of Internet. Respect to what and how you do it. Thank you.

Yeah he's usually pretty good putting it in layman's terms too.

LMAO There is no truth to any of it .

A 1-2 kilometer rock would definitely obliterate Germany or France, but when you consider impact angle and the amount of ejecta even those could have a global effect. It may not turn the earth into a roaster like the K-T event, but it definitely would have a climatic effect considering a volcano that releases far less energy can affect the entire Earth's climate.

@LordQuacki I hope that we don't ever have to face one

@pandemicNEETbux I was kidding about slowing the earth down to use the Sahara desert as a giant litter box.

@B L Not sure if this is meant to be ironic shitposting/stupidity but they usually drop in the ocean, due to oceans being the majority of surface area. This means we've got tons of undetected impacts, in fact we never even found Chicxulub until some oil survey team mapped the ocean floor because a lot of the crater is under water. It also means that in most cases nobody even sees or hears of a big Chelyabinsk boom, and Russia is a frequently hit for the same reason, which is it's got greater landmass than any other country so it's statistically most likely to be hit of any country. The problem with a land impact he already talked about. Think of it kinda like a really big nuke on land vs in the ocean. In the ocean it's just going to bore a hole to the ocean floor, cause a tsunami, not really eject that much material but just vaporize tons of ocean water (idk the short term impact this will have on weather). The problem with a land or shallow water hit is it's going to eject countless gigatons of material, that's then going to partly rain down and heat up the atmosphere, bury the area in dust/ash/sediment, pollute the air, and a sufficiently big impactor will theoretically cook the surface like an oven from so much debris raining back from near orbit. On top of that you'll have so much ash in the atmosphere it'd block out the sun. So not even getting into why slowing earth's rotation down is a stupid idea, you'd get everyone killed and guarantee a mass extinction event pointlessly.

A video about exactly what the dinosaurs experienced would be really interesting…

@Jinx DL kurzgesegt*

There is one Kurtegerzal in a nutshell. Analyzed the impact - very well made

I love how the scientists basically said "well when the asteroid is a problem, we'll figure it out then" true procrastination in its finest

@B L definitely several options, but it all depends on a lot of factors. Thrusters is one. A sail to capture solar wind. We could put something in orbit around it and nudge it enough to miss us. We have the tech for sure.

@B L A Moon-sized asteroid in a solar orbit is called a planet.

@Nature and Physics It's magical thinking to believe we can stop moon sized asteroids. All the money and resources in the world won't be enough.

@00FireFlyer00 It's a fiction film. It is full of exaggerations.

@Mickey A. Bacination Several options? To prevent asteroids we cannot prevent or do you mean a bunker system?

Wouldn't a rubble pile burn up much faster than a single asteroid? You're dealing with far more surface area in direct contact with the atmosphere. Wouldn't stop it, but seems like it would make a drastic difference.

@grog3514 so its really not the problem of “vaporizing” it, its moreso the problem of even the most powerful nuke that we know of still leaves debris behind, even if it’s not much. that debris, if it were in space, would then just go right back together and reform. so while yes, theoretically, making an asteriod smaller might be possible its also not very likely given the circumstances

Thik of the conglomerate "pile of rubble" as more like a chunk of concrete sidewalk: there are stones and pebbles and smaller bits of gravel and sand, but they are fused together into a big chunk that won't break apart until after re-entry.

I dont get it. Couldn't a 1km asteroid could EASILY be vaporized with a large nuke? Or does the liquified surface rock protect the rest underneath?

@Josh K Bond Except for the fact 'vaporizing' an asteroid isn't a thing with our current technology, and sounds like an enormous waste of energy, compared to crashing a small spacecraft on it, which should be enough to the trick. And a huge cloud of hot gas or plasma will still be damaging to satellites and telecommunication services for that matter

Yes if its already been evaporated into a gas by our biggest weapons, your only then talking then talking about single atoms , even if really high speed, interacting with earth minimally, which happens daily from the sun. Its not even the the same ballpark of results.

It would be helpful if you also covered the implications of various levels of incidence. For example asteroids commonly skip off the atmosphere when they don't enter at a steep enough angle. And if they do enter, the angle is usually still great enough to burn off most or all of the asteroid before impact. For a small asteroid to actually make it to the Earth's surface requires a perfect 'shot'

Each day there's 17 perfect "shots", meaning they hit the surface. That's about 6100 perfect "shots" in one year.

Thank you for the videos! I have an idea that may not be feasible. Would it be possible to build a rocket that could dock and use the asteroid material as propellant? Maybe, some sort of a nuclear heater that spits out rock gas?

I have been to a meteorite crater in India, it’s overwhelmingly beautiful, but also a bit scary. As for the present, We should not blame (lack of) technology. More of the problem lies in less number of people working towards a common goal of science exploration, and making our planet better and safer. Maybe we should go under the ground, build a fallout shelter even while there is no threat.

No thanks. I'd rather die from an unlikely meteor hit than live in fear underground turning into a falmer.

@virupaksha walla I know. I'll let the mole people move underground and I'll just take my chances.

You’re right about that, my dad keeps telling me stuff like these won’t last long. He says programming is the future

Maybe we should just chill. All good things come to an end eventually.

This is one of the best example of clear, rational, scientific thinking and presentation of a subject. Outstanding. Full marks.

Hats off to the cameraman who filmed all this space stuff for us.

How to r/whoosh yourself: say that its cgi.

@Gary Ryan Whats Real again, congrats. Also I didn’t say anything if there was a camera

@redsteyexpert you think there is a camera man . lmao

@Gary Ryan Whats Real Congrats i cannot tell if your bieng ironic or not

@Mandran Magelan ok I'll stop . ;-)

Nothing but respect to the people that do this very difficult job, but the way in which we detect near earth asteroids is extremely flawed and hit or miss at best. Hopefully we can develop better, more reliable methods in the near future.

An asteroid is scary, but what's even scarier to think about, is how there could potentially be so many other things like black holes, gamma ray bursts, supernovas, etc. that can potentially wipe out life as we know it.

An asteroid can wipe out life as well. Whats your point.

Black holes do not have the ability to just wipe out a planet immediately after they form (unless a black hole somehow forms very close to the solar system, which seems unlikely). Gamma ray bursts and supernovae close enough to wipe out humanity are very rare occurrences.

@Taylor plastic is very real, it exists with 100% certainty (I've got a chunk of it in my hand right now) and it breaks down very slowly. With factories across the planet cranking out plastic items by the millions every day, the stuff is gonna start accumulating in places we don't want it to be.

@Brad Thompson Not really sure . But it's not reflecting sun raze . I get you only have an I.Q. of 52 but if you research enough you'll get it . Eventually

I love your videos, I learn so much from them I did not know anything about until I came across your work. Keep up the good work.

3:41 Only the few will recognize this piece of space history for what it truly is, AMAZING! Not to mention, the size of it! I have found small ones the size of pebbles in the Arizona desert, but this one could easily make you A LOT of money. Not that I would sell it if I had it and it is obvious this man does not plan to either.

Since learning about the Chicxulub Asteroid, I've always wondered how much it impacted our atmosphere and thought, this may be the reason nothing grows as large as the dinosaurs did. That is, because it destroyed a major portion of the oxygen in the atmosphere. Maybe that's way off base. I got the idea after having kept fish for about 10 years. Then I learned that, how big a fish grows in a tank depends on two things: #1, how much oxygen is in the water AND #2, how many other fish are also using that oxygen. So it makes sense. But is this the reason animals do not grow as large as they did during the time of the dinosaur?

@Ziggy F Thank you. Yes, increased CO2 certainly is a concern. The hardest question is, can we do anything effective about it now? When the pandemic struck and so many people stayed home -- and many office-type jobs learned about remote working -- I was hopeful this would become a popular trend, long term. I kept thinking, it is so good on several levels: less commuting means less pollution but it also means people waste less time because of their jobs and can regain some time with their families. AND the businesses can save money on all the expenses of keeping larger office areas. It's a win-win-win! But, no. Most have reverted and seem to cling to the old ways. :( Failure to adapt... that's what killed the dinosaurs.

In a roundabout way you are totally correct - the earth's atmosphere used to have (many millions of years ago) a far higher % of oxygen than it does today. I remember reading it was something like 28-35% back in the early days of dinosaurs, whereas its down to 20-22% these days. what caused the depletion of all that oxygen is up for huge debate - certainly many causes over 10's of millions of years.... and I'm sure huge asteroid explosions that changed the whole structure of the atmosphere contributed a considerable amount. also note that with a higher % of oxygen comes a much higher chance for huge forest fires that burn for months at a time... and what they burn releases CO2, thereby reducing oxygen further. For all we know, the total amount of oxygen in the atmosphere may be on a permanent very-long-term decline, but the timeframe is so huge (hundreds of millions of years) it doesn't really affect us and we may as well consider it stable. The huge rise of atmospheric CO2 concentration that we humans have been causing in the last 300 years on the other hand is totally unprecedented and is a MASSIVE cause for concern for us right now!

The idea of a kilometres-wide chunk of iron getting so hot that it becomes - not just a liquid, but a GAS - is genuinely hard for me to imagine.

@Peter the temperature of liquid lava is about 700-1200 °C. This is lower than the melting point of some metals, and easily achievable with technological methods.

The boiling point of iron is 2862 °C. This is not a very high temperature compared to the extremes created by humans on earth or in natural processes such as fusion in stars.

@jeewoo7195 Just an ordinary asteroid wending its way across space when suddenly a giant passenger-bearing spheroid gets in the way!

@Kami sama Though at somewhere between 25km/s and 40km/s, it won't be for very long! For an asteroid only a kilometer across, it would be "Don't blink; you could miss it!"

@Brad Thompson You will have to handle your warm wood yourself, as you've always done. I was talking about poor thermal conductivity of rocks. See the comment I replied to.

I take solace in knowing that even if there’s a catastrophic asteroid out there that will eventually hit earth, I know it’s out of all our control and space is so much bigger than all of us. Interesting for sure

Very interesting to study about asteroids. Sir, the person you interviewed is very knowledgeable about this subject. How I wish to hear from him again. Thank you so much.

"Sir"?? Has he been Knighted by the Queen?

Sir. You vegana

This was really good. Ar really well made scientiifically documented video. Thank you!!!

It's scary that we still aren't that good at detecting asteroids, but the size of the universe and all the objects within space makes it so hard to predict. The idea of wrapping tin foil around an asteroid seems like something out of a science fiction comedy movie, but it's cool that the radiative properties of some metals are something to think about when entering outer space.

What a painful way for the dinosaurs to go. I grew up in Florida, so I'm familiar with "the sky cooking everything on the ground" as you know, a close-to-accurate, but not actually *literal* description. :(

Hmm.. now i am prepared strong enough to face December 2020.

No you are not

I am from Future and I just wanna say don't worry

Rip your notifications

Hi bro

Oop

To put your mind at ease, here are more things that are even more likely to kill us! Thanks Veritasium, I feel so much better!

Since tons of animals managed to survive chicxulub, has there been any research in how that would work for us humans if we tried to hide in deep tunnels or underwater through various means?

@VVayVVard And then eat and breathe what ... and then 10,000 years of ice age.

Surviving the impact is the easy part. Surviving on a planet where the majority of plants and animals we depend on have gone extinct and decades of winter caused by the ejecta will be the difficult part.

@VVayVVard I'm assuming you did your research :D

Even with a Chicxulub-scale asteroid, underground bunkers far from the site of impact would be completely unscathed. They don't even need to be extremely deep; at 10+ m most people on Earth would be safe. At a depth of a few km, people could be safe even near the site of impact, though it's impossible to know how close you could be. I'm pretty sure nothing could survive direct impact due to extreme heat, though I could be wrong; 5+ km of granite could provide enough insulation and cushion to make a difference.

@The random Dude true, and the critical point for an asteroid to cause mass extinction is, as said in the video, a few kilometers wide.

Saw a meteor light up Death Valley like it was daylight one night from the Panamint mountains. Talked to a ranger the next day and he said there had been no other reports. My partner and I were surprised that an event that spectacular had gone unreported. We gave them our location and bearings, but never heard anything further.

This is a fantastic video! Having grown up right next door to a minute man missile base in the 60s taught me that there's some things I'm just not going to worry about LOL!

Aren't most of those closed now? Strategic disarmament was progressing until certain 'leaders' turned up.

I’ve been subscribed for a decade plus and just can’t get enough of this channel!! Love it!!

@vknaga what?

4 and a half billion years ago are you kidding me... I believe in 100 thousand years ago but not billion, my man Is so confident talking about 4 billion years ago like he seen with his own nacked eye 👁️

Veritasium's videos now have better production than most documentaries i watched as a kid (and are more informative)!

@Fun and Adventure tour drop drop

GHUB 8

@Fun and Adventure tour stops parking garage

@Fun and Adventure tour stops parking

@Fun and Adventure tour tour stops breathing

I saw one this impressive after midnight about a year ago. I was having a smoke and then everything lit up. I turneed around and watched, fascinated at 1st, then leary as I thought it would hit nearby community. It burned out and heard no sound. So similar to this vid too!

@Michael Bruns Yes, it looked like it all just melted up, nut no sound!

Wow, but the sound would've been heard probably like a minute or so after you saw it, did you wait a little while afterwards?

I heard that there's something being tested later this year that might deal with the asteroid problem. BTW, concerning the aluminum foil issue, have you considered shooting little aluminum drills at the asteroid?

When I learned about all the asteroids near to the earth that could potentially destroy humanity, it really felt like somebody is holding me at gunpoint and could pull the trigger any second.

With NASA's DART mission, I am glad we're making progress.

Nope

This guy is just so likable and cool! So nonchalant about the devastation that could come.

I like how the guy casually walks into his living room with the heart of a 4.5 billion year old planet

@Nothing I'm talking about the trex skull

@ETAN not replica, its real

In the end of the day it's just a rock

put a supreme sticker on it

@Zelmerlow Yeah, but he owns a piece of the heart

Very informative and interesting. The scientist chap was very good of explaining the history and nature of asteroids. His lessons would sure be interesting

Yup. I’m in his lecture and it’s super interesting. He always manages to crack a few jokes in his lectures

We had a small asteroid land here in Mississippi. If felt like a mini earthquake. I can’t imagine the impact of a huge one.

I love that he suggests the best way to avoid an asteroid strike is to wrap it in foil.

Wow, this was very well done, thank you Veritasium you deserve your millions of views. With all the mass murders and our national debt and world debt and wars, etc. an asteroid does not bother me. I can see why the Bible says, "fear nothing, stop fearing."

In 2015 (i think) Neil deGrasse Tyson was on a science tour thing and I went to see him with my dad. He talked about the asteroid and played one of the videos that you showed here. He also played a video of a someone standing in front of a mirror and then a guy flew through the mirror, back first , and slammed into the other person. I immediately laughed because a guy just flew through a mirror at someone. It was not so funny after I got context. Also I was like 7 or smt idk.

Did you give him a banana? 🍌

That scientist dude is definition of being cool and a nerd at the same time

Ikr, I love how passionately he talks about literally anything plus being really smart about it

Shame he doesn't know about gaps in cloth vs. viral sizes.

Not sure that's possible

Kinda like Neil Degrassi Tyson and Bill Nye? Lol

Nerds are cool. The richest people in the world are all nerds.

I live in Hawaii driving north on the clearest day ever on the freeway when horizontally a rolling cloud looking much like the space shuttle Columbia when it came in for a crash landing and just went away but never hit the ground. Hardly anyone was on the freeway so I looked over at this guy and we both gave facial expressions like we couldn't believe what we saw.

Despite our supposedly superior technology we are just as vulnerable as the cave men who looked at the sky and saw doom in shooting stars. They were right long before science proved their fears true. Btw I followed your suggestion to visit DoS - Domain of Science and I'm glad I did. He holds himself to the same high standards as you do and also has a quirky sense of humor. So now I have to watch twice as many videos on these subjects. *Straightens glasses, picks up cold drink in one hand and puts other on the mouse. Ok, awaaaay we go!)

Enjoy!

I felt like the solutions he offered weren't super representative of the ideas we have today. I study astronomy and asteroids have ended being a point of focus for me, I even took an entire class about defending the Earth from asteroids. To start, the animations in this video didn't properly show where force would be applied to redirect an asteroid. Rather than pushing it away from the Earth we would push it in its orbit, either from the 'front' of direction of movement or from 'behind'. This either increases the asteroid's orbital velocity or decreases it, subsequently increasing its orbit or decreasing it. This would be used put the asteroid on a non-intersecting orbital path. We have a few ways of doing this. The first and most realistic is a kinetic impactor, this simply smashes a heavy impactor into the object. Kinetic impactors are feasible if we have about 1-2 years of preparation with a smaller object (max a couple hundred meters). Currently the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) from NASA is on its way to test a kinetic impactor on a binary asteroid system, one of the main goals is to determine is this method has future potential for application. On a side note, my professor for the above mentioned class was on this project, and a TA of mine from another class was involved in the principal calculations. Similar to the kinetic impactor we also have nukes. In the video they only talked about surface detonations, with nukes we would aim to detonate a distance from the surface of the asteroid to prevent breaking any large sections off. Again this method relies on the force created by the detonation to either increase or decrease orbital velocity. This method is a bit less feasible, although it is a solution for slightly larger asteroids (up to several kilometers). Realistically the world would have to come together against a threat that requires nuclear deflection, signing treaties and agreements that allow for the detonation of a nuclear weapon in space. There are many other proposed methods like a gravity tractor which would place a large ship in front or behind of the asteroid's orbit to increase or decrease its orbital velocity via gravitation. This is much more theoretical and at its current conceptual stage would require many years to affect its gravity enough to prevent an impact. Time is most important with all of these methods, the farther out a high chance impactor, the easier it will be to alter its orbit enough to prevent an impact. The asteroids we are most worried about range from ~50-1000 meters, because their potential for devastation is great and they are small enough that some avoid detection. When it comes to larger asteroids, their size gives us a leg up, we would likely discover an impactor chance from a larger body with significant time beforehand, giving us more time to solve a more difficult deflection. Also looking at the statistics and the functions of our solar system, the chance of any significant asteroid impacting in our lifetimes is low.

Excellent to know. Makes total sense what you said about nudging it out of its orbit. Are there ways to use the asteroid's velocity against itself? This is a purely speculative question, but could some aspect of its energy be used or redirected or harnessed somehow to cause enough of a change in its trajectory to make it a near miss instead of an impact?

The Gravity Tractor idea is extremely intriguing... I will enjoy daydreaming about that, thank you! The point about the animation is also interesting, and I should have picked up on it, but I didn't think about it at all. When I first learned about Orbits I was taught that increasing or decreasing forward momentum was the key to changing orbital distance, but I still just let the animation flow past without criticism... A decent reminder that real scientists have to bully themselves into remembering to think about all kinds of simple factors, and never take anything for granted.

Interesting comment

Will you please give me a simplified version? It's 12:00 and my mom would kill me, so I don't have much time to read an entire paragraph

there's something particularly haunting about seeing someone who knows so much say "we don't know what will happen until our lives are directly threatened".

"We're really not that good at detecting asteroids before they're going to hit us." Well. That's comforting.

Hello does anyone here believe in Jesus??

@BIG PUMA p

@Dragulia 🅥 Asteroids can easily by that size as well; larger even. Look at the asteroid Ceres

That's like the idea of every human being able to jump out of a plane without a parachute at least once.

@chrikke pl

The rocket idea is pretty solid, other than the tethering part. As long as the rocket can pulse on and off as it spins

An only solution that comes to mind for me to having figured out 15 to 20 years back; is to have all laptops become constructed of with an absolute mirror and automatic aim of reflecting the sun towards the comets all at the same time and areas until it is gone.

The thought of getting instantly vaporized and disintegrated into fundamental particles, is calming. More calming than the slow death and struggles to stay alive. In the society where people step on one another to get themselves higher and further.

Not really scary, it’s just fascinating how stuff like this exists, despite how old sol is.

Isn't that terrifying to know that we could all die by a rock!

well, throughout history, many people have died, rocked to death by their fellow Jews

This scientist is such a legend. He has a 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite, a men in black chair, and a t rex skull

Do scientists lie

@Insertname .

0in

ລ

Good info. But, like all other depictions of what happens with a big impact, they take one look at the stuff that goes into the stratosphere and put no thought to closer in effects. But those will exist, too.

I know that I'm living in a dream world, but is it possible to setup an invisible "screen" of energy that will ward off any threat given by the asteroids? maybe microwaves?

I couldn't imagine all of the people that were driving bear the meteor in chelyabinsk; their windshields shattering and then crashing. It's a horrific reality

bears aren't real

Asteroids travel about 25 km/s on average, but the fastest man-made object, which is a large steel manhole cover launched by a nuke, traveled 6X Earth's escape velocity, which is 67.2 km/s (150,322.1 mph)! Nobody knows for sure exactly how fast the manhole cover was going, but it was traveling 125,000 mph at minium!

The discoverer of the asteroid named KANSAS, Dave Tholen, was in my Astronomy classes at the University of Kansas. I visited him and other near earth object NEO ASTRONOMERS at the University of Arizona in about 1985 .

“If you are scared of a meteor impact then this will put you at ease, *you can die a thousand more painful ways* “

In the West

well on the bright side, everyone dies so there'll no one to leave behind.

Luckily it did not happen to me I was born in 2014

Imagine those people were you that would be bad

This far out part of the visible universe is so well organised that a large enough impact is so improbable - It can never happen. again. those objects are already where they belong.

such a great person, family man dad and a perfect channel too. thanks alot for being there for us!!!

I start to think that evacuating a city can be done quickest if you let the people walk. You close all roads exept for transport of those who can't walk. In a week's time, you could reach another big city walking. If people flee in all directions, the masses thin out. So, if you have many evacuation centers all around the city in a distance of a five days walk, you can transport the people from there.

Thats what I was thinking… If the roads are blocked then any reasonable person would simply start walking. A few days is more than enough time to make it out of a city on foot

What’s sad to me is there’s scientists that have said we could actually make a weapon that could destroy meteors before they hit at full weight but even now it would take at least a decade for them to build something like that.

@VVayVVard They're more feasible because they're infinitely cheaper and still do the job? Again, we ARE crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid THIS MONTH, we have the technology to do this already, so why develop something way more complex and expensive to do the same job? Also, due to orbital mechanics it is relatively easy to hit an asteroid. Remember that we're not talking about a rocket in the atmosphere, we're talking about a satellite in heliocentric orbit in space, using electric thrusters to slowly change its orbit such that it intercepts the asteroid at some point. Approaching the target, the satellite autonomously navigates and corrects its course using optical and other sensors, just like Osiris-Rex did when it collected a sample from asteroid Bennu, to hit the asteroid right in the middle for maximum momentum transfer. It will even release a cubesat to observe the impact. Don't underestimate orbital mechanics and our current space technologies, it's all about finding cheap, smart solutions to problems.

@2424Lars om ok real space engineer like you .. but if your pet asteroid gets vaporized into monoatomic gasses and dispersed in all directions, i wont hold it over your head. Instead we shall mourn for... no really... you name it something. Its beffer that way in the end.

​@2424Lars How are kinetic impactors more feasible? And what I meant by hitting the asteroid on its "side" is hitting it at a 90-degree angle. Which, based on classical mechanics, would presumably result in maximum effect, since deviation from that angle should cause that component of the rocket's moment to be lost. And I would assume hitting an asteroid would be quite difficult. We can't hit nuclear missiles in flight with perfect accuracy yet, and with rockets being subject to cosmic rays and potential collisions with smaller asteroids, they would likely be even harder to deliver reliably. And though their target would be much larger, it would be much further away (because if it wasn't, it couldn't be deflected anymore) meaning that any error in the trajectory of the rocket (or the asteroid) would significantly increase the likelihood of the rocket missing.

@VVayVVard We just need better infrared telescopes, and there are several in development for this exact purpose (NEO Surveyor for example). It's also relatively easy to hit an asteroid due to orbital mechanics. In fact, we're gonna crash a spacecraft into an asteroid later this year to test exactly how well we can change its velocity (DART mission). Nobody is seriously talking about nuking asteroids, real space engineers (like me) know a kinetic impactor is a much more feasible option. And by the way, by hitting it on its prograde face you actually change the orbit way more effectively than by hitting it on its side.

If you put the rock at the axis of rotation you can exert a consistent force over time.

A wise man once said "Don’t worry about a thing, 'Cause every little thing, is gonna be alright."

@JaKoB_pLaYz omg my damn brother watches him all the time and it's like bruh.. lmao

That what's the dinosaurs said

That's why I also choose not to worry.

@flameodeX Seriously? Lmfao smh that makes no sense! “Avengers” aren’t a wise man it’s a stupid Hero Movie

This was absolutely fascinating!

I had this crazy idea. Would it be possible, if we hired a team of professional drillers (perhaps from a drilling rig in the ocean) and sent them up to the astroid with some astronauts. They could perhaps drill a hole into it, and ignite a massive bomb. Seems like it could work? right?

@Christopher Hillian cant help to think, no nukes no nukes :)

Also you have to take into consideration that these aren't the average rocks on earth. Most of these are made if metals. Like nickel, iron etc. We might not be able to drill into it. Blowing it up might not be a good idea. Because if you got a 1 kilometer wide rock split into pieces of different sizes you now still pose the same threat to earth. Also these rocks are moving very fast. Sometimes you might not even see them depending on how light hits them.

no nukes no nukes no nukes :)

That would make a good film

@Tiff Tuff 🙏🏿

His whole thing about evacuations is partly true but I live in the southern US and we have LOTS of hurricanes. Yes, the highways get clogged but within a day or two a city like New Orleans will empty out and become a ghost town.

Instead of trying to destroy the object, we could explode a part of it so the damage is reduced,and the rocket we throw at it will slightly change its motion.

Any impact will slightly change its orbit, and if you do it early enough you can make the asteroid miss Earth altogether. We're actually going to test this in september by smashing a spacecraft into an asteroid moon to see how well we can change its orbit.

The inertial power of an object that size is truly humongous. Even 100 rockets wouldn't do much except knock off a few chips to small to matter. A synchronous blast of 2,000-5,000 or so nuclear blasts, (more or less depending on the kiloton range), might do it but also might just break it up into (radioactive) chunks that fall to earth. Rocks are HARD which you no doubt know if you've ever been hit by one and you can't stop them by putting out your palm, your wrist or arm will break. So, despite our supposed technological superiority we're just as vulnerable as the cavemen who looked at the sky and saw doom in shooting stars. They were right!

Just let Kim jung-un go all out on it

15:02 it is really cool watching this video after the testing that shows you can alter the trajectory of an asteroid. Really cool stuff

Never have I ever imagined that I would grow emotional for the dinosaurs that no longer exist...until I watched this. Watching the excerpts of cgi dinos trying to run from that unexpected pain really just sort of broke my heart. How horrible it would have been to just be minding your business, eating a plant or carcass...and BOOM! You're suddenly in excruciating pain and being cooked alive. How awful!

More unthinkable is if nothing this had happen with dinos, we would never have a planet for us.

@lego death star productions well written . Needs to be at least a graphic novel.

Watch the movie dinosaurs. That movie hits you hard . The poor animals crying for the ones left behind . I won’t spoil it for you but man it will make you cry .

I feel the same way

@Bir Şiir Of course not. Bacteria arent conscious. Dinosaurs are intelligent conscious being with emotions and the ability to suffer. Im assuming you dont torture dogs right? Why don't you?

We could probably predict more if we knew the strength of the gravitational pull in the other planets.

The gravitational effect is pretty well known, the biggest unknown influence on an asteroids orbit is the Yarkovski effect. It's basially a force that is exerted on the asteroid by the infrared radiation its surface emits as it cools down, which has a certain direction depending on the rotation of the asteroid. You can only model this if you accurately know the rotation rate of the asteroid and the thermal properties of its surface, so you would need to send a spacecraft close enough to measure these things. The OSIRIS-Rex mission recently did this for the asteroid it was investigating, and with the emerging technology of interplanetary cubesats we migth be able to do this for many more asteroids in the future.

We do know the gravitational attraction of other planets though. The problem is that the n-body problem is chaotic, i.e. even minuscule errors in measurements would drastically increase the errors in predictions.

There is a 11 km comet. It’s called Halley’s Comet and it’s been very close to earth and is predicted to hit or nearly hit planet earth in 2061. The most amazing thing about Halley’s Comet that it’s only visible to the humans in the ground in every 75 or 76 years. It’s beautiful to watch it soon by.

I was 12 years old and remember seeing the comet in 1986 . Don’t think I’ll be round to see it again

Thanks for mentioning the source of the music in you description! Great subject. I love your videos! 🙂

My seismic crew and i saw an asteroid with our naked eyes that I have no doubt, if it would have impacted , would have changed life on earth as we know it. It was march 1985, in northernmost Alberta,Canada,10 pm or so.our linetruck driver drew our attention to it by exclaiming: WHAT THE F***!!! At first I thought it was the moon ,thru the trees ,but we pulled into a clearing and hopped out to get a better look. it was a large ..rock.. moving across the clear night sky..slowly..with its leading edge glowing incandescently..i could see its terrain..a couple of small chunks came off and were trailing flame of purple and green hues..it must have been traveling at enormous speed..but yet seemed to be moving slowly across the sky..it relatively appeared to be the size of a full moon..we stood there..mouths agape..and watched it.. travel across the sky..it took what seemed to be a minute..maybe more..an extremely long time compared to any footage I have ever seen of any other meteorites or fireballs..even the Russian one,which was gone in a flash compared with this.. Im no expert..but this is what I know: it was moving very fast to have the leading edge glowing incandescent it was far away to seem to be moving slowly..had to be the very outer atmosphere yet still hitting atmosphere to glow incadescently.. ..and appeared the relative size of the moon in the sky.. and it was completely silent..we stood there awhile..no sonic boom..nothing. (if it was closer ,there should have been a mighty,earth shattering, KA-BOOOM ) I roughly tried to figure it out at one point,knowing the rough distance to the outer atmosphere,distance to the moon and its diameter..basic trig. and... the thing would likely have been in excess of a kilometer across..i believe it was a rubble pile of great magnitude. I hope to god I never see it again but I WILL NEVER FORGET WHAT I SAW THAT NIGHT ! the thought of it still makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end

Rule of thumb: Whenever there is that much energy outside, don't stand by your window It's the same with tornados, windstorm, etc....... Your window glass could end up in your face

Asteroids in a nutshell: low-probability, high consequence.

just like having a child with a family member

It's not that low of probability. Seems every couple life spans there's a big enough impact to cause deaths

Jus

So you better WORRYYYYYY!!

Asteroids in a nutshell pt.2: high-probability low consequence

This is a very real and very important threat. We are the only species on Earth that can actually do something about it that has ever existed. We need to get a handle on this! Hopefully some of us find a way to live on Mars so one single strike doesn't take us ALL out. It would be as if we never existed at all.

Mars' moon Phobos will likely crash onto mars in about 40 million years and is about 30km in size, so Mars will definitely not be a safe haven for impacts in the far future ;)

12:24 Well not quite zero. Any impactor that could be extra-solair would still be possible, and also the ones we didn't yet catalog and yet still exists somewhere in a near unstable/metastable path, that could allow release from it's celestial counterpart. (similar to a very fine spiral trajectory) And impactors that are on a 100+ year trajectory for a single orbit of the Sun. (with highly different apses, one very near the Sun and one beyond even Pluto.)

This professor speaks very clear and smart. I’m not native and don’t use English everyday but I think I understood most.

Given the margin for error and a 100km fatal blast radius, and a 7 day notice period, mentioned in the video, and the inability to use a car, one starts to question if it's worth even walking away at all, given that you may be inadvertently walking TOWARDS where it will hit. You just maybe have to hope it doesn't hit you.

Ive been to Meteor Crater. It’s a very surreal experience.

What an amazing professor, I envy the the students that have had the opportunity to attend his lecture.

Very enjoyable to listen to.

@Jeff Carter i think its in the description.

Does anyone know the professor's name?

@Jarko ¿ Aww hey you should be excited! The fact that you are doing somthing says alot, it's not easy, or cheap you've got that right. I've seen alot of people decide to just take the easy way, and spend their time and energy and money on crazy things. But whatever makes them happy I guess.

@SpagettiOsMeatballThief medical billing&coding. Not something I ever once thought about until recently. And I don't feel exciting giving that answer. I needed to invest in something that will provide. And work around the way things are. I made a choice I was going to start with something with more opportunity for growth in a at home flexible setting. It's a start. Never have I ever would have guessed the cost. But I'm in to deep now l. Ha.

thank you for the list of stuff to be paranoid about! this really helped my mental health

I never knew the world is this insane, i don't even realise how many people stuggle in life.

Somehow, I felt more hope with "no chance" than I did after hearing the foil idea.

No wonder Professor Jewitt highly recommends this video to us. What a pleasant surprise!

The thing is not to explode a nuke inside an asteroid but rather explode it sideways to create pushing force from the side pushing it away. Several fusion nukes should do the job changing at least the flypath

Immense production value.

a

@Tab Let tyc I 54reed

@Jerald Bonbon P

Most láton

I love this dudes energy, just chillin at his house with no shoes on talking about stuff he presumably loves

I feel like scientists did predict that the asteroid would enter the earth's atmosphere, but chose not to disclose it for fear of public panic.

A calmly horror video that satisfies and also make us tremble

well done brother, its very much interresting to watch chatting and interviewing scientists and valuable persons.

“To ease your mind, here are other ways the world could end”

I love how there's this massive bright light in the sky that looks like a missile and everyone's just like "Yeah, Probably just another nuclear bomb."

Why would the pieces of an exploded rubble pile move away slowly and get pulled back into each other rapidly enough to have essentially done nothing? And if we really could hit it with one...couldn't we hit it with more than one and/or successive strikes to disperse the tending-to-reform rubble pile such that each smaller piece that impacts may not be as bad as the whole?

Derek Alexander Muller is an Australian-Canadian science communicator, filmmaker, television personality and inventor, who is best known for his YouTube channel Veritasium. Muller has also appeared as a correspondent on the Netflix web series Bill Nye Saves the World since 2017.

Was having an anxiety attack (real life issues) and watching this helped me out. I feel better. Science is just full of interest and fun. I think I messed up my life by not going into the STEM fields, lol.

it's never too late, the older folks on campus were universally popular back during my run

Here's an idea. We can repurpose old fusion bomb cores and send them into space as sleeper impacters. We can even put telescopes like the James Webb on the other side of the sun, we could launch multiple telescope space stations at each hemisphere of the sun designed to to autonomously catalog and communicate data on smaller orbiters. Theres a lot we CAN do, if we set aside the cost and just do it.

I'd honestly worry about the (admittedly very remote) possibility of such sleeper bombs a) being hit by other satellites (though whether that could cause detonation is another exponentially unlikely calculation on top, the almost certain outcome of this would be radioactive material being spread throughout a substantial range of orbital trajectories relative to the impact vectors) or b) that they might end up decaying in orbit with the wrong mix of solar ejecta, time, and initial altitude. Decommissioning or refurbishing them after their operating components have reached the end of their design life would be a more likely problematic scenario to consider honestly given how unlikely collisions are.

yeah, we can do the most out of any life form on earth every other life form.. can’t do anything they aren’t even aware of it

I have an idea about sending bombs only just powerful enough to break those 1-2km into smaller pieces that small enough for atmosphere to do the rest to burn them. About the asteroid gravity that would unify the small pieces again, i think we can detonate the bombs when the asteroids are close enough to the earth so the asteroid gravity didnt have enough time to bring them back together. Of course my idea had zero math calculation