This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Lisa, tell them about our new show. We have a new podcast. It's called Don't Lie To Me. I'm Lexi Juanio, we're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa de Julio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions, and at this point in my food days, I've lived it all. Now in my 30s, being the founder of new shoes, good taste is my business. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too with their laser blaster. Yeah, and this is Stuff You Should Know. I was reminded today of the Asteroids joke from the movie vacation. I don't remember that. It's when they go visit cousin Eddie and the two boys are hanging out, Anthony Michael Holland, the cousin. And he's talking about you got Pac-Man, something you got Asteroids. And I think he says something like, no, but my dad does. And sometimes he can't even sit on the toilet or something like that. Dumb, dumb joke. That is a dumb joke. That's a Chevy Chase level joke. Oh, he didn't write that. Well, it's John Hughes. Yeah, I don't know. I think Chevy Chase maybe contributed that one. Okay. I know your lifelong grudge against Chevy Chase continues. Yeah, it really does. Unabated. I know. So we are talking about asteroids, not hemorrhoids, I think is what they were getting at, right? Yeah, probably. And they are small rocky bodies. That's the point here. These are essentially two different things, Chuck. They're either ancient pieces of the like early universe. Yeah. That were meant to become planets, but never did. So they disappointed their parents tremendously. Or they're smashed remnants of early planets, right? Whatever they are, they're big or sometimes small chunks of rock floating around in our solar system. Most of the time trapped between Jupiter and Mars in an asteroid belt. But every once in a while, one of them gets spit out. And by God, there is a non-zero chance that the thing is headed right toward Earth, ready to kill you and everything you love. Yeah, I mean, that is a deep impact in Armageddon. Weren't those the two movies? Yeah, at the same time. Yeah, that happened a few times back then. Back in the good old days of movie making, but there are, and they probably said some of this stuff in the movie, who knows? There are more than 1.8 million known asteroids. And they can be, you know, 38, 35 feet in radius. They could be several hundred kilometers in radius. The ones that we worry about are the 25,000 near Earth asteroids. And we discover about 1100 of those every year. You know, those are the ones that we keep an eye on. And as you'll see, we have plans for potentially. Yeah, the reason we want to keep an eye on them is because they sometimes can fall into orbit, or fall through an orbit and interact with a planet, whether it's Earth, the moon, if you look at all the craters on the moon, those are from former asteroid strikes. And so one of NASA's big roles is to monitor these asteroids that are near Earth and classify them even further if they pose a threat. We'll get into that. But NASA is carrying on a several hundred-year-old tradition of discovering new asteroids that started in the 1770s, the swinging 70s. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy when you look at the year when some of these discoveries were being made. Like how far ahead of stuff they were, super impressive. And there was an astronomer named Johann Bohd, and they discovered a through math, a mathematical sequence that you're going to, I'm going to make you explain it, I'm just kidding. That explained the distances from the Sun for all-known planets. And when they were doing their calculations, they were like, wait a minute, there seems to be one missing here in the calculation. There should be something like a planet orbiting between Mars and Jupiter, and eventually, well, they started to search for it in an 1801, an Italian astronomer named Giuseppe Piazza, found a faint body that he called "series". And I guess we should explain what these planetismals were and kind of what happened back then, right? Yeah, the planetismals, which is, it's an okay word, I guess. They were either forming into planets and didn't, like I said, or they were broken up from other chunks of planets. And when they came near Jupiter, Jupiter is so immense, and its gravitational pull is so strong, how strong is it? It actually can break stuff into other planets, just from orbiting around it. So these asteroids have been broken into smaller and smaller pieces. But the one that remained the largest series is so big that it makes up one-third of the total mass of the entire asteroid belt. 1.8 million known asteroids, one-third of the mass of all of them is just series. That is an asteroid we do not want coming anywhere near us, Chuck. I think series is Latin for problem, problematic. Potentially problematic, all right. I got to. Yeah. Yeah, did you say how big it was? 620 miles across. 1,000 kilometers across. So that is very large. There had been five asteroids, you know, there's something called asteroid watch, which is exactly what you think it is. It's a watch made of asteroids. Oh shoot. There were five asteroids on that list in December 22 alone. Two were thought to be about the size of a commercial jet. And earlier in 22, there was one that was two and a half times the height of the Empire State Building and it flew. The closest is Scott in 200 years to planet Earth in 2022, which was 1.2 million miles. So everyone can now breathe a sigh of relief. Yeah, and that sounds like a really far distance and it is pretty far. It's further than the moon is, but for an asteroid that's close. It's close enough that NASA keeps them on what's called its close approaches list. And I said, oh, there's a close approach list. Let me go check that out. And most of these, these are like, you know, airplane size, meteors or asteroids. Millions of miles away and as close as they're going to get but Chuck, there's one. There's one that's coming April on April 13th, 2029, a pop fist, APO, PHIS, 375 meters in diameter. That's big. It's going to come within 20,000 miles of planet Earth. That's relatively close. That's closer than some of the satellites we've launched in orbit around Earth are. It's going to come really close. And NASA was like calm down everybody. There's basically no chance of it hitting Earth for the next hundred years. They added that kind of quietly on the end. Great. So look out on April 13th, 2029 for some end of the world parties that are going to be bitching. Oh, I bet. I mean, they did come out and say like, hey, something bigger than 400 meters is could collide with Earth about every 160,000 years. So it's not a matter of if but when and it could be a hundred thousand years from now. But you know, at some point, it's happened before and we'll talk about some of those events and it will happen again. And the idea is that NASA is just going to keep an eye out and hopefully thwart anything in the near future. That's the hope for sure. One of the ways that they do it is by launching space telescopes to keep an eye on these things. And not only are they using them to track, they're using them to discover new ones because like you said, I think just Cepi Piazzi discovered a planet ismol that he named series. And he noticed that it was way darker than the other planets. And one of the reasons why is that asteroids reflect far less visible light than planets to another celestial bodies. So they've created infrared space telescopes to keep track of them. And these are turning up an alarming number of near Earth objects that we didn't realize were there before. Yeah. I mean, we're throwing around a lot of terms near Earth object is one. There's also a PHA potentially hazardous Hats droid. So this near orbit surveyor has been, you know, infraredting around spotting these PHAs, writing them down, probably not writing them down. It's probably digital, I would guess. And basically anything over 460 feet or 140 meters in size that has an orbit that will bring them as close as 4.6 million miles. So they're really like, they're really pushing it out there. Those are the ones that are potentially hazardous. Yeah, and that are ended up in the close approaches list too. So yeah, there's all sorts of, the other thing too is there's different lists. There's different definitions for what's close. There's different definitions for what size we need to keep an eye on. But essentially what they're saying is there are some out there that could be close enough that we really need to track. Right. And that we eventually may need to actually do something about this. So.
Let's start thinking about that today because we might need a decades worth of heads up to do something about it And I say Chuck that we take a break and come back and talk about that after the break. Let's do it Lisa, we should tell them about our new show. Oh my god, Lexi. I'm Lexi You want to wear two best friends 22 years apart, but so close at heart and I'm Lisa Julio the old one Which means we have wildly different references occasionally different opinions and at this point in my 50s I've lived it all. I'm not gonna get any of your fighting. That is wild. I learned that about you today Now in my 30s being the founder of new shoes, good taste is my business and I've always got something to say Man, we're just honest about this. There would be so much more peace in the world We're gonna talk about dating relationships beauty getting older and a little wiser We're best friends, but we don't always agree Because you told us how accommodating you are Obviously, I would do what I think I could do to fight the fight, but there's only so much fight I can fight Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me liar. Listen on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts I don't really care So we're back. I want to make a quick Not a correction, but maybe clear something up that near-Orthorbit surveyor is not launched Yet, I think they said September 27 was like the earliest it could get out there But they had something for 25 years another space telescope called the neo wise and so it's not like Nothing was going on. No, and I think you said that there was like a I'll it discovers we discover 1100 new ones every year. That's new asteroids Like overall new asteroids. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, no, I think those are near-earth Asteroids even. Oh, are they okay? Yeah, but not potentially hazardous. There's so many distinctions right exactly There's this and this and this and they're all subclasses It's really the potentially hazardous ones that we need to keep an eye on sure But neo wise is how we started discovering so many every year That's right and I think these guys were like we really should start doing something about that There are some there's here's another subclass. This is one of my favorites It's a subclass of potentially hazardous asteroids that are extinction class asteroids Yeah, the kind that are so big that they could conceivably wipe out all Life on earth which makes them an existential risk by the way That's right what buster rhymes would call an extinction level of it Is that one of the buster rhyme songs? That's One of his records. Oh, okay. That sounds like a buster rhyme record for sure Yeah, I don't know if that there may be in the song called that but yeah ELE okay I'm not gonna say it like buster rhymes please no no no But extinction class is anything bigger than 6.2 miles or 10 kilometers in diameter and that's basically like hey if this thing hit earth Could possibly destroy all of life. Mm-hmm. There are we there are four of these That are PHA's so for extinction class asteroids that are potentially close enough to one day cause us a problem Even if that day is a hundred thousand years from now. Yeah, and not just cause us a problem cause bacteria a problem like everything on earth Would die if one of these hit it, you know, yeah, but who cares about bacteria exactly? The chances are very small Obviously, um, and I think NASA's like we've got 90% of the near earth asteroids at least half a mile wide Tracked and they did they stopped taking questions before anybody could be What's up with the other 10% yeah, right? They rushed off stage And they're like none of that 90% are have a significant chance of of hitting earth But there is a non-zero chance which means we really need to keep an eye on these things There could be some bigger ones out there that we don't know about And it doesn't have to be an extinction class Asteroid for us to want to do something about it They gave an estimate of what would happen if a mile wide I think you said a six mile wide would be extinction class. This is one sixth of an extinction class one What would happen if it hit the the planet chuck? What would happen? Yeah? We have a few scenarios if it's a mile wide asteroid And it Comes in cooking at 30,000 miles an hour That would be about a one million megaton bomb You probably don't even know what that means so So let's lower the stakes a little bit make it a little more relatable Yeah, let's say it was the size of a house and asteroid the size of a oh, I don't know Let's call it a 1800 square foot home two story one story Well, let's go to story maybe a basement subterranean basement ranch Dutch colonial revival Dutch colonial at 30,000 miles an hour hits the earth It would be equal to the bomb that fell on Hiroshima It would completely flatten any kind of reinforced concrete building about a half a mile from where it hit And any wooden structure up to a mile and a half out is just gone so right that's one the size of a house chuck I want to go back and point out that there are I think five or six Airplane size like jet like jet like air commercial aircraft size asteroids that are passing by earth Today and tomorrow today September 1st and tomorrow September 2nd that we're recording this so like If it was even bigger than say a house or a commercial airline or say like a 20-story building That would be roughly Something like 20 to 50 megatons worth of explosion. I saw that the most powerful Nuclear warhead in the United States arsenal is 1.4 megatons. This is potentially 50 megatons Which is the same size as the Tsar bomba which is the far and away the largest A nuclear warhead ever exploded on earth and it was just a test That's right. If you want to wipe out almost everything on earth that would have to be about seven and asteroid seven to eight miles Or 11 to 12 kilometers big It would there would be a dust plume basically, you know We would experience something like a nuclear winter would block out the sun Race temperatures to scorching heats Almost everything would be destroyed, but potentially Some stuff might live. I think they said it would have to be an asteroid 60 miles or 96 kilometers wide to completely wipe out every like bacteria that you were talking about everything on earth would die Like unquestionable. There's just no way something would survive although life tends to surprise us, you know Lifelines away. Right. Can't you just see like a couple bacteria just jumping right at the moment of impact like a elevator going down And surviving That's right, and you know, we're going to detail some past events Kind of like the 166 million years ago That most people agree that it was an asteroid that took out the dinosaurs and a lot of other things It was a global mass extinction event about 75% of all species were killed off and We discovered this and in 1978 we discovered Along the Mexican Gulf Coast to these geologists. We're doing an underwater survey for an oil company And we're like there's a weird arc like formation on the seabed here North of the Yucatan Peninsula, and they're like Buddy, this is an underwater underground crater Between 112 and 124 miles in diameter. That's a big crater for sure. It's a very large crater So by the way, I've mentioned this in a little more detail in the end of the world That's one of my favorite things to talk about is this insane event in That took place in a moment in earth's history Just talking about it and like all the little details of what happened as a result are just mind boggling to me And what episode was that that was I don't remember Okay, I guess they're gonna have to listen all 10 That's right But this was the chikshilub impactor is what they call whatever it was they hit the earth And I think I don't know if you said it could have been a comet could have been an asteroid But it seems pretty clear that it was definitely an asteroid that did this Yeah, the eridium is kind of the giveaway Eridium is in the earth's crust But it's like asteroids are just loaded with eridium and the chikshilub impact crater You know landed. I think it was named after a village near there where it hit And it left the crater and it also scattered eridium all over the planet because all over planet earth and geologic layers that Mark 66 million years ago the end of the Cretaceous period. Yeah, there's really high levels of eridium So if you're still in the comet train you're probably missing
out on the good parties would be my guess. Hey, great. So, a couple of things about this. They think now, just basically by crunching some numbers, that it was this chicholub impactor, this asteroid, was about 8.7 miles in diameter. That's big. Yeah, it is. That it produced an explosion or an impact or a blast, I guess you could call it, equal to about 100 million megatons. That's 20, 30 times the total megatonnage of all of the nuclear weapons and all the nuclear arsenals in the world today, all going off at once in one place. And they figured out that right when it hit, since it hit in what's now the Gulf of Mexico, part of it, that it just created all sorts of chaos, not the least of which was a tidal wave that formed within five seconds of impact, right? Yeah, a 15 mile, 15 mile high tidal wave. So nuts. I mean, I feel bad for all the animals. Like, can you imagine just being a stegosaurus, just grazing around and all of a sudden it's just over everything? Yeah, I can. That's what I think that I find this so fascinating. I can just imagine this stuff happening. I can imagine like a sauropod getting carried away on that 15 mile high tidal wave going. For real, I feel bad for that. Would you say it was a sauropod? I believe that's one of the flipper ones. Okay. The flipper guys. I'm sure they were into ways, but nothing like that. No, not like that. So all the rock and seawater would have been vaporized. It's going to obviously kick up all kinds of debris, geologic debris that's going to come back down to earth like it what goes up must come down. Sure. And that produced friction that set off what's called the heat pulse throughout the atmosphere that basically that's what killed off all the surface dwelling life. And then the after effects are sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere, raining down as sulfuric acid, the acidity of the planet and the oceans as a whole like changes in a instant basically. Yeah, the ocean acidity increased 100 fold very, very quickly. That is a really quick, really big rise in acidity. So that killed a lot of stuff off immediately, right? There was just like plankton doesn't like stuff that ass acidic. And so you've got a food web, which means if you kill off stuff like plankton or ferns on the surface, it's going to have an extended cascading effect on the rest of life. And that's what happened not just from the acidity, but also from the nuclear winner that followed because remember, like you said, what comes up or what goes up must come down, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it comes down immediately. So a lot of that vaporized rock floated as dust in the atmosphere and blocked the sun for God knows how long and a nuclear winner said in. And it was it was an extended one. Yeah. I mean, they estimate that it took about 30,000 years for the earth to just be earth again. Yeah. It's a long time. Yeah. That really, really knocked earth off of its good mood. It's it's charted course. Well, I mean, I don't know if you can say like bright side or anything, but it allowed mammals to fill in a lot of niches that were vacated. The mammal diversification after this was just bonkers. Birds obviously humans probably would have never evolved had it not been for this event. So, you know, bright side. Yeah, I call it a bright side for sure for us at least. Yeah. I mean, we wouldn't have this podcast. No. And you know what? Nothing alive today would know that this even happened if we hadn't evolved. So, yeah. Good. Good point. Okay, Chuck. So even though there's there's a silver lining that humans evolved as a direct result of the KPG extinction event. We wouldn't want it to happen while we're around because we'd be the dinosaurs this time, right? That's right. But unlike the dinosaurs, we have things like nuclear weapons. We have brains. We're space-fearing. Well, you know, I guess that was pretty dinosaurs. We're space-faring species too, which means we can actually get out there and meet the asteroid where it's at and deal with it there. So you put all this stuff together and it's actually becoming a lot clearer that we could conceivably deal with an asteroid that we figured out was headed for Earth to mess stuff up. That's right. So the first thing obviously that you might think is nuclear bomb and that is a reasonable thought because we have all seen those two movies. And that could work. I've actually not seen either of those movies. Oh, really? Well, wait a minute. I saw both of them. Does one of them feature a leonie standing on a beach where their dad is like a tidal waves about to kill him both? I think that was deep impact. Okay. Then I guess I was Morgan Freeman president, although that doesn't really narrow it down for disaster movies from the 90s. Bet your sweet bippy. He was president and deep impact. I guess I have seen that one then. Yeah. I mean, you know, they both were what they were like fairly fun summer movies like not great cinema, but not like terrible. Armageddon was a, I don't know which one did better. I feel like Armageddon probably did better or maybe I'm just thinking because of the Erasmus song. I was going to say you can chalk it up the Erasmus if it did. Oh, Bruce Willis, poor Bruce Willis makes me sad every time I think about him. All right. So nuclear bombs is a reasonable assumption. And like I said, it depends on how big the asteroid is. If it was smaller, a nuclear bomb could just take care of that one and blow it into a million tiny pieces. Sure. But those are the ones that aren't really a threat to the earth. Like the ones that are big enough to be a threat to the earth, like hitting it with a nuclear bomb wouldn't even work because the pieces of it would still be big enough to be a problem. Yeah, even if so NASA was like, let's think this through. If we went out to an asteroid and we landed on the asteroid and we drilled into it and put a nuclear warhead in there and blew it up. Or maybe we just left one on the surface. Who knows what would happen? And they were like, it would basically break it into a large, like smaller chunks, but still really problematic chunks and it might not blast them all off of their, off of course for earth, right? So they're like, I don't think blowing up asteroids is a very good way to approach this. But that doesn't mean that we can't use the world's nuclear arsenals for a really good, noble purpose and use nuclear warheads in a different way. And what they figured out is that something called a standoff explosion where you set these things off near an asteroid on one side of it, that actually could have a pretty pronounced effect on dealing with an asteroid head of earth. Yeah, the idea there is obviously just blow it off its course. There was a report in 2007 from NASA that said planting a nuclear bomb either on the surface or under the surface would, would fracture it. And it's going to be an issue. So that was like sort of official confirmation that that wasn't the best plan. So in 2005, I think Congress said, all right, NASA, do your, do your thing. We need some like real plans. We just saw Armageddon. Yeah, they just saw Armageddon. And in 2007, they presented the ideas at what was called the planetary defense conference in DC. And they said, all right, like Josh Clark will one day say, I think the best idea is to try and nudge these things off course, at least away from the United States. No, like completely off course from, from planet earth. Sure. Because a nuclear winner affects everybody. I think that was the slogan of the planetary defense conference. Yeah. And on the back, it said, don't be a dinosaurs. That's right. So the staggered explosion where you set off a bunch of nuclear explosions, like all in one place, just off of the surface of an asteroid, would actually sear it. And it would vaporize a bunch of the asteroid. And it would push the asteroid in the opposite direction. Yeah, that's like exhaust almost, right? Yeah, it go big and shoot off somewhere else. That is essentially the only explosive technique that seems to be endorsed by the scientific community that we could conceivably do, the staggered explosion technique. Most of the other ideas are not explosive, which is why they don't get as much press, but they do seem to be even more viable. They all basically fall into the kinetic impactor deflection category. The KID cat is what I call it. The kid cat? Yeah. That's even better. And essentially what it is is trying to try to figure out how to use a spacecraft as a cue ball hitting an eight ball, the asteroid being the eight ball and sending the eight ball off into a different trajectory. Yeah. And to the corner pocket, hopefully. And that's basically what they're trying to figure out is like, how many remote controlled spacecrafts would we have to ram an asteroid with to knock it off a course? Is that an idea that could work? And they're potentially sure. And then they're like, yeah, that's kind of hard, though, that's I think they likened it to shooting at a speeding cannon ball with a bullet. So the ESA, the European Space Agency said, all right, we got a plan called the, we'll call it the Don Quixote. And we're going to get two spacecraft out there. One's going to land on that asteroid.
and analyze it for a while and give us all sorts of data points to where we can make sort of a more pinpointed strike and just the right place to maximize it so we're not just throwing cue balls at this thing or we could just have an unmanned probe, just park it in orbit and shoot lasers at it because Star Wars is a thing guys, I don't know if you've seen that. Yeah, and people are like, "Where are you going to get your lasers, Buck O?" that requires a lot of energy and somebody said, "I have a witty retort. How about we put a bunch of mirrors on the space probe and concentrate a beam of sunlight and use that as a laser and that's shut those critics up real fast." Yeah, what was the sun beam laser years ago that the Mythbusters tested that we covered with? Archimedes, right? That's right, Archimedes death ray. So something sort of like that, not a bad idea and it's sort of the same thing as that laser is going to heat up. It's not like it shoots it and it blows it up. It just heats it up and bits of steam start popping off as the laser hits it and that creates, again, like an exhaust, like a jet almost moving it in a different direction. Yeah, or like when somebody is in a manned spacecraft and they're using like the little boosters, they're not called boosters are called, "I just had it." Yeah, or you're just like, you know, evening out or something like that. Druster? Boosterous? Yes. Okay. And you're creating with this beam of sunlight, this Archimedes death ray, little thrusters within the rock as this gas vaporizes and explodes and all of them start pressing the pushing the asteroid in a different direction. None of this is going to happen. We should say none of this will happen in any kind of rapid way. We're talking, pushing this asteroid with a beam of sunlight, such a minute fraction of a minute fraction of a nanometer that it will take years and years and years and years to actually have the effect that we're looking for, which is why we said earlier, we need to start planning for this stuff now and know what we're going to do because we might need 30 years of lead time to be successful in moving the asteroid off course, using some of these totally viable solutions that we have today. Yeah. Another idea was like, maybe we should just park a probe in its orbit and just leave it there. And if you have enough time, it might, like Jupiter did, it might have a gravitational pull that will pull that asteroid again. Office course just enough to wear in like 30, 40 years, 50 years, it ends up in a completely different place. Pretty neat. And they call that a gravitational tractor. I love that like a tractor beam. For sure. I saw somewhere 20 ton probe essentially working as a gravitational tractor could move a 60 million ton asteroid in less than a year. Amazing. It is, especially considering this is just something that's messing with its gravity just by orbiting around it. I mean, that's like, you know, dollar tree version idea. Like, you don't have to do anything. Just send a probe up there and get it into orbit around the asteroid. Done. I'm glad you didn't say Teemo. What is that? Oh, that's the, that's the big thing to call the cheap version, something the Teemo version. I think it's a Chinese company that does knock off stuff. So everything is like your, your Teemo, like if you look like somebody, your, Teemo, Ryan Gosling. I gotcha. That kind of thing. Well, there's a non-zero chance I would have said that had I known about that. Me. Yeah, but that's, I love how I touch you are sometimes with some of that stupid stuff. Yeah, I definitely. You're like, you're better for it, you know, dollar tree is better. I appreciate that. I mean, I don't think the Gen Z listeners agree, but I appreciate that. So we should talk about project near because the, the question here toward the end of this thing is like, how worried should we be? And the answer is not super worried, like in our lifetime, and like I said, it could be thousands and thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years that this is going to happen. Or 100 years, or 100 years. You and I don't need to sweat it. Well, I'm 55 years old. I'll be lucky to make it till 80. And people like, what about your, your child, Chuck? I'm not going to be around. I'm not even going to know. Exactly. What do you care? I'm just kidding, of course. But project near capital N E A R, what does that stand for? Do you know, near earth asteroid, rolydex? Yes. Okay. That was the project near was the first spacecraft to orbit a small body of the solar system. And it launched in 1996 in February of that year. And at first, it flew by the asteroid Matilda, or Matilda, June 1997. It came within 753 miles, or a little over 1200 kilometers of its surface, kept going and eventually orbited an asteroid called 433 euros in February of 2000. Yeah. It went psych Matilda and headed on to arrows. And arrows is a big deal because it's a big asteroid, right? It is a big asteroid. Just orbiting Matilda, I think, was like a first-time thing, like just to say that they could do it. So they put it into orbit around arrows, 433 arrows. And it was, it's a potato-shaped 21 mile long, eight mile wide asteroid. Look like a baker, new potato. Russ it. Russ it. Okay. Everything I saw, I said Russ it. Okay, I got it. And it's, I mean, it's a ways away from us. So it's a great little test asteroid. But what they did was they put near the near spacecraft in orbit around arrows for about a year, just kind of, just to make arrows a little nervous. Like what's this thing? Four miles over the surface, which is, I mean, like if you're a high altitude sky diver, you might be diving, sky diving onto arrows from that, that height. It was just kind of circling it for a year, and then it's like, you know what? I'm going to go down and get on arrows, and it did. That's right. And it got data, measured its gravity, took nice, some nice pictures, mapped it out, of course, and made some chemical measurements of the surface. So they're basically proving in real time, like, hey, this is something we have proven that we can do. I think it was an orbit for about a year when it landed on it, and was sending back good data until it completely just froze. Like the extreme cold just destroyed how it could communicate. Yes. And so one of the big things about near is that it, it satisfies that thing that the European Space Agency pointed out, which was like, you really need data on this thing before you actually shoot a probe at it to knock it off course. And so near approved, okay, great. We can send a probe to send back data on it that will need to shoot a probe in exactly the right place. So that was a big deal. Then they came up with the Dart test. Dart, we don't have to make up the name for, we understand what the acronym stands for. Yeah, it's the double asteroid redirection test. And it is a robotic spacecraft that launched a few years ago, I guess five years ago, geez, time's flying November 2021. And its mission, they were like, program to slam into an asteroid dimorphos at 4.1 miles per second and see if we can change this orbit. And they did. And it did. Yes. Now remember I said we're talking like just my new little amounts that it's moving it. But when it adds up over time, so what they figured out, and this is just amazing that there are people here on earth that can talk about the orbit of an asteroid being moved this slightly. They figured out that Dart, when it hit it, it knocked it off of its course at a rate of 11.7 microns that's one tenth the width of a human hair per second, which is a crazy small amount. But over the course of a year, all of those microns per second add up to about 360 meters a year. So it depends on how far you need to move the thing out orbit. If you have a decade or two heads up time, you could just do that. So everybody, I just want to make sure this is getting through. We have shown as of 2022 that we can handle asteroids that are coming near earth. Isn't that amazing? That makes us an amazing time to be alive. Don't you think? I think so. And just that little nudge, I believe it was former president of the United States, one Barack Obama who talked about making change and how you might not feel like you're making change when you're making change. But I believe he likened it to a big ship in the ocean. And he said, if you just get that thing a couple of inches in another direction in 10 and 20 years, you'll be surprised about where that ship ends up. Wow. I was not expecting an Obama quote. Just substitute asteroid and outer space. And it's the same sort of idea. I think that's what he was really saying if you read between the lines he's talking about the dark project. That's right. And then he said, don't be a dinosaurs piece out. I should say, by the way, just to be specific, that one tenth of a human hair with a width of a human hair, that's if you're using salon selectives. If you're not, it's probably your hair's a little
thinner. Yeah, the more body, right? That's my experience. I knew there was going to be a hair, girth joke coming. Well, since Chuck figured out that there's going to be a hair, girth joke, I think that that means listener mail is coming up, don't you? Yeah, and I think hair, girth might rival diarrhea planet is one of the worst band things you could think. I wonder if there's one. I'm going to look it up while you figure out what what listener mail we're going to read. Can't wait to hear people get actually listen to listener mail for change just so they can hear. Hey guys, first of all, I love the show. I was born in 1970, so I relate to many of the things you guys randomly reminisce about during each episode. This morning, I dragged myself out a bit early to go for a run before work. My back was stiff, my throat was a little sore, but I resisted the temptation to have a handy excuse not to run. I got dressed, put on my earbuds, and I looked at my app to see if there were any good podcast episodes to listen to, and I gleefully saw your episode on Terry Fox. I remember seeing that movie several times on HBO before even joined cross country in junior high. What an inspiration he was for Canadians and Americans and all humans alike. So thanks for this great episode and for being in my ear during many, many runs in the last several years. And that is from Jim. Thanks a lot, Jim. That was a good one. And that was a good episode. I we haven't heard from enough Canadians to keep me from being nervous about it still, but I feel like it was a good one. Yeah, and imagine if you're debating on whether or not to go for a run and you see that pop up, you're like, I've got to go for the run. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, for sure. You just be like, I feel a little slack for not. That's right. So Terry Fox continuing to inspire. I love it. Very nice. Who was that from? That's Jim. Thanks a lot, Jim. I appreciate that. Chuck appreciates it. Jerry does too. And before I tell you where to send your own email to, I want to tell everybody that if you have a band and you want to name it hair growth, you will have zero competition out there. You'll be the only band named hair growth as far as the internet reports. Wow. And you know what? I just Google it in quotes just to see if hair growth is a term. And the only thing you see is like hair comma, girth, and root awakenings by somebody named Michael Nader. Oh, Mike Nader said that. Okay, please tell me you're getting. Yeah, I am. Okay. I guess it's a book. So yeah, book, book, plug. Okay. Well, way to go, Mike Nader. Does it say the name of the book? That's it. Hair, girth, and root awakenings, childhood, fatherhood, and the chaos in between by Michael Nader. Awesome. It's released 2014. It's out there. It's a short 112 pages. Oh, that's a slim tone. That's great. Yeah. A brisk read. Yeah. So Anthony Jezzelnick, pay attention. You should be in your book club list. Awesome. Well, if you've read any of Michael Nader's work, that would be fantastic to let us know how it was. We'll let everybody else know. And if you want to just send us an email for any reason at all, you can send it off to
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