Asteroid Impact Risks: The Torino Scale Explained with Rick Binzel

[00:00:00]Rick if memory serves the Torino scale there's more going on than just a number consequences versus probability zero is really good and 10 is a really bad day for the dinosaurs so recently uh 2024 yr4 has been in the news so it's green yellow orange red where we want to stay out of is the red zone of 8 n and 10 because those are the levels where you certain of an impact and yr4 if it uh if it misbehaves uh it would go all the way up to eight on the trino scale that would be its maximum this is Star Talk Neil degrass Tyson your personal astrophysicist got with me Chuck KN Chuck baby hey what's happening all right co-host comedian yes you know what I'm going to talk about today what oh my gosh go ahead hazardous asteroids Pluto and Planet 9 so are we saying that Pluto and Planet 9 are just now deoa to hazardous asteroids cuz you know they were a planet you you knocked them down you know humiliated them completely you're not over that you still haven't gotten over that no and then and then it was like okay you're a dwarf planet it's like oh at least I get to be a planet now you're just like you know what has this asteroid well while I have some expertise in the space I don't have all the expertise I want for this show okay so we we went back uhoh one of my peeps okay okay one of my people all right I got one of my people who invented the international scale to measure how hazardous an asteroid will be to life on Earth okay that is a hell of a like a quality to have on your resume I'm just in the business card you know I tell you whether your ass is fried or not that's amazing so let me introduce us all yeah to Rick Benzel hey Professor Richard binzel Rick how you doing man hey Neil great to see you Chuck nice to see you nice to see you yes so you are retired now professor of planetary Sciences at MIT which stands for um Massachusetts uh Institute of Technology thank you that took you too long to well you know I was going to say something smart ass but I you saw me bridling myself yes you did Bridle you did Bridle uh and you were in the Center of this hazardous scale uh hazard scale the Torino scale we'll get into that in a moment okay I've got my first question already all right you're co-investigator on Osiris Rex uh remind me Rick that was the mission that did the was that the one that did the touch and go yes Osiris Rex was the touch and go that successfully returned an asteroid sample to the Earth back to Earth so that's badass that's more badass we're g to find out if it had any bugs in it um and and of course my boy has an asteroid named after him 2873 binzel and that is not his password on his accounts okay no sorry he tells me that's not his password he's also a staunch Pluto lover oh really so we had we've had some dust UPS in our day I could only imagine oh put your thumb down dude so we're old friends so we went to graduate school together oh wow we were in the same class in graduate school it's pretty uh pretty cool that's pretty cool and that was a previous Millennium too oh yeah way back okay since you were in school at the same time What was the most advanced technological equipment that you had at your disposal when you were in school cuz that will give people really I got one for you ready at the time you were able to visit someone's house dial a set of numbers to forward your phone number to their phone number so that if someone was calling you at home they could still reach you while you at your dinner party oh wow so so that you get your phone number to follow you how telling that's amazing yeah it's like it's you have was good you can have your phone number follow you correct call you could you're forwarding your own calls to you correct Rick what do you have an opinion on this you you could connect to the from your home you could connect to the computer on campus by dialing literally dialing a phone sticking it into a box that had two ear muffs to connect your phone receiver so the handset of the phone yeah a handset of the phone into a what was called an acoustic coupler and you could talk to the computer on campus from your own home that was amazing that was amazing H amazing at 300 bod 300 bits per second yeah oh my God that's awful we were not streaming videos back then that's amazing you published a paper at age 15 I I forgot about that what what was that paper on it was on asteroids Neil oh okay he goes back yeah we we had an experience of a of a camp run by a Columbia Professor named Joe Patterson and uh he uh just reached out to high school kids gave them this in fantastic uh experience that was formative in our careers and uh so many of those students became professors and professional astrophysicists um anyway so uh it was a super opportunity and uh and I haven't stopped since that was a research project in that camp that's right that's right okay so so I attended the same camp but not at the same time not at the same time but we didn't know each other at the time we get into graduate school and we find out that the two of us plus another person in our class in that camp all attended that camp it was an astronomy Camp called camp uraniborg Camp uraniborg do you know what uraniborg is historically I believe it's the Borg ship the Borg so when you're when you're on the Borg ship you're on a borg on a you're on a you're on a borg when you're on the Borg ship okay that's a good one that's good no but that's good uh it was the observatory of Tu bra oh Tu BR Tu bro that's your buddy that's my man you like that he got all the data on the planets and so it was a camp and we lived nocturnally we slept during the day and up during the night it was totally geeked out we're both 14 or 15 right yeah exactly so Rick one other thing about your time in graduate school which betrays some of your affection for Pluto is Rick made correct me if I got this wrong he made the first measurement of the light dimming of Pluto's moon going in front of and behind Pluto so Sharon transiting Pluto correct and that was the best evidence available at the time that the moon even existed amazing and then isn't isn't that what allowed people to calculate a true mass for Pluto and and its size and all this that's right Neil uh when you have a body in space unless you have something orbiting around it um you know you use Kepler's Third Law to to calculate the mass of the primary of the mass of the system what's Cap's Third Law please dude why do we have to explain that to you just because you know oh for other people you want other people to know about no not me I'm just saying some people might be wondering what Kepler's Third Law is all right so Kepler's thirdd Law is a relationship between the orbital period of um of an object compared to the mass or the mass of the primary the mass of the system and so if you can measure the size of the orbit and the orbital period you can calculate the mass of the system we got the mass for Pluto and was way ler than people wanted it to be confess that right now on my show the the mass of Pluto is what the mass of Pluto is let me tell you something Rick you do great in Congress or court that put you on Pluto's radar from from from Jump Street right there so that so I was not surprised that he turned out to be a staunch Pluto lover his whole life because he he birthed Pluto's mass yeah but by birthing Pluto's mass you also birth its demise but go ahead so Neil I was looked at Pluto for five years years I actually spent about 10 or 15 years total working on the Pluto system but we started looking to see if we could detect this Moon around Pluto um about 1980 and um and you know was a fiveyear search of uh looking for these transits and that didn't show up until 1985 and then they were continuing from about 1985 to 1990 uh it's the same technique that we use for looking at planets around other stars of course Transit exoplanets but this was planetary transits and we we were kind of doing it before it was popular now Rick I you just reminded me of something there was a fuzzy photo of Pluto and there was a little bump on the edge of the what is the circular outline uh just fuzzy a little bump and that that was a hint if we believe the photo and the Emulsion because back when there was authentic photographs right right if we believe that that meant maybe it has a moon and I just I was just reminded that not all transits go exactly in front of the thing you want them to Transit right so if the angle is wrong it's you're not going to see to see so that's why you were looking for it and you didn't see it for four years because our sight line to it wasn't properly oriented yet is that did you know that at the time what we yeah Neil that's right I mean what we didn't know is we didn't know what that angle is or the inclination of the orbit and so we didn't know when the earth most of the motion around um the in this case was the Earth's motion around the Sun um we just simply didn't know what the inclination of the of sheron's orbit that's what we call the moon today we didn't know the inclination of sheron's orbit so we didn't know when it would become Edge on to the Earth and um you know but going back to those bumps those were that was 1978 those were on glass plates that's when telescopes we didn't have ccds we didn't have those electronic detectors yet back in the day back in the day you had to climb uphill in the snow both ways to get to the telescope now that that's when that's when telescopes here's what you did you put your head under a hood damn this old old man hour here okay so anyway those bumps and those fuzzy images would move around and it moved around with about a 6.4 day period which we knew was the rotation period of Pluto so it all made sense but you know we really didn't know it make sure that it wasn't some funny photographic effect until we got those transits in 1985 and those first transits were just along the top edge of Pluto along the pole of Pluto and uh so it was the beginning of a long series of these transits that we actually used to make the first maps of Pluto well because you can say how it dims or brightens as Sharon moves across it so you get a blunt understanding of the reflectivity exactly exactly so if it goes across a dark spot the light doesn't change very much but suddenly as the edge of the moon goes across Pluto and you get a big light drop then you know there's really high albo spot underneath very cool high albo Alo I love that word yes it's it's almost do you albo I I albo now you just made it creepy you just made it very creepy it's it's one it's a fun word that gives no indication of what it means that's true right yeah you would never know what it was tell tell us about alido Rick albo is a fancy name for reflectivity you know something with a low albo doesn't reflect very much light and something with a high albo reflects a lot of light so ice is a very high albo a lump of coal has near zero albo a few percent yeah a few percent and and a and a mirror or just a coat of white paint but have very near 100% albo all right this is starting to sound very racist hey Star Talk fans I don't know if you know this but the audio version of the podcast actually posts a week in advance of the video version and you can get that in Spotify and apple podcast and most other podcast Outlets that are out there multiple ways to ingest all that is Cosmic on Star Talk let me ask you this a long time ago I read this article and I mean it was long ago and it talked about when cuz you just said reflectivity in albo it talked about how uh Pluto was so reflective the way it was that they were able to determine that that's because it was mostly ice which means it was a lot smaller than they actually thought because what you were seeing was more reflection than you were actual body if you don't know anything about a cosmic object orbiting the Sun you'll make an assumption of what its albo might be based on other albos that you have made measured correct that's right that's right so uh you you make when you first discover something you make a best guess that it's albo or reflectivity and um and then maybe someday you get the actual measurements and you can refine it so what was your first presumption of the alido of Pluto uh probably around 20 20% okay okay and so given its brightness you would say if if it's that bright and it's only reflecting 20% of the light it must be this side okay and so now given that it's has an icy more reflective surface than previously it's albo jumped from 20% to what into the 30s maybe up to 40% okay oh W yeah Factor two almost yeah so that's a big deal that's a that that work all right all right by the way you're in my Pluto book I mention you uh I don't know if you remember that I believe the actual words were take that Rick let's go back to asteroids uh a big part of your career has studied asteroids cool and you were at a conference in Torino Italy where you proposed a way to track how hazardous an asteroid might be and it came to be known as the Torino scale which I have a problem with uh because I understand that there's uh 2873 Benzel okay and that's an asteroid named after you yeah well why wouldn't it just be the Benzel scale since you're the guy that came up with it why so why so humble man you gota you got to take it while you can get it okay grab the Gusto and the glory like you know we live in a time of trump now man you got you know what I mean it's it's the best scale the biggest the most beautiful scale it's wonderful like you know it can measure everything it can measure everything not just asteroids it's used by plumbers it's used by Carpenters it's the best like but why why not why call it the Torino scale and not the Benzel scale well it is wonderful and it's the best I love it whoa yeah I'll just say the tro scale or how we talk about asteroids is something that we have to do very internationally and so the fact that it was adopted in at the conference in Torino uh you know gave it more of that International flavor and that my people all scientists you're all the same scientists are all always sharing sharing the glory and and and and sharing the wealth with one another and collaborating with one another don't say that like it's a bad thing do you know do you know what world you live in is what I'm saying no that's fantastic that's I'm I'm I'm so happy for that that's great last I read up on this but it's been a while so forgive me if I misremember this scale has multiple factors operating simultaneously right one of them is the risk that it will hit Earth and two is how much damage will it create if it does o those are combined into this one scale is that correct consequences versus probability uh is the basis for the scale Rick if memory serves the Torino scale there's more going on than just a number so so remind me what what you put into it first of all the trainer scale is a 10-point scale from 0 to 10 all right Z is really good and 10 is a really bad day for the dinosaurs yeah and the way you the way you calculate uh where an object falls on the Torino scale depends on the size or the consequences of what that object would be if it struck the Earth uh versus the probability the the currently current best estimate for the probability that it could impact the Earth and so it's two Dimensions consequence and impact probability and is the scale point at specific asteroids that are out there or is it just a generalization for any uh body that's that might come our way well it could apply to anything but it really only matters for objects that asteroids that have orbits that can come close to the Earth um if you're in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter you know it's you're not going to bother the Earth you're zero you're zero on the scale yeah they're zero they're zero oh how about your the asteroid your name on it what's the hazard scale for that oh man zero zero I'm afraid or I'm happy to say yeah I was going to say because that would uh you don't want asteroid binzel come and take at a eight and it's like okay this whole thing was rigged he created the scale and now the ACT he's the one that's going to take us out Tak us out that's a Lex luor move right exactly yeah yeah you know at the lowest level you know things are green you we have a green level which means oh this is normal uh we're going to find a lot of these um we're currently at that next level up which is yellow which just says um these Merit attention by astronomers so that's what level three is is merits attention by astronomers and uh if the probability gets worse we would go to Orange which means there's a possible threat here and where we want to stay out of is the red zone of 8 n and 10 which means uh we have 100% probability of hitting the Earth and and now it's a matter of what would be the consequence quences and those consequences depend on where the object lands so uh we're in the yellow zone we'd ra we'd rather be green um and if we go completely to zero that's uh that's just colorless that's just the blank zero and so we expect this object or the odds are greatly in our favor we'll get it down to zero we just have to keep watching it and refining that track and uh and get the information we need to to drive it down to zero so it's green yellow orange red Four Color mhm correct corre very simple and zero is no Hazard so that it doesn't even get a color so recently 2024 y R4 uh the two letters and then the numeral has been in the news by the way it's one of I think tens of thousands of Earth Crossing asteroids so this was one happened to be the one to talk about today okay we saw that it it had a 1.3% chance of hitting us what does that mean if that number is given when you discover an asteroid um you know you're only seeing a tiny piece of the orbit um as uh as it's moving through space and so you know we'd like to project forward uh extrapolate that position um you know for decades if not centuries into the future just to make sure that it's not going to intersect with the Earth and we do that for every asteroid that's discovered he didn't say slam into Earth and kill us all intersect right it's a very dispassionate word without a doubt yeah go on so we do it for every asteroid we you know every time we discover an asteroid we'd like to make sure that we know that one's on the good list and not on the naughty list and um you know in this case we know this asteroid in the year 2032 and in fact every four years it comes somewhere near the Earth but we uh find in 2032 um it's going to come uh close to the Earth probably about as close as the moon or closer and we simply don't have enough Precision um in terms of how well we know where that asteroid is precisely going to be in 2032 or other decades in the future to know for sure that it's going to miss the Earth and so because we know because we can't say we're certain it's going to miss it gets a probability of uh of intersecting the Earth so that's just simply where we are it's it's really that that probability number is really a measure of you know what we don't know it's not not a measure what we know it's what we don't know because we simply haven't been able to track this thing for very long here's something that might be new to Chuck were you able to get a prediscovery image of this asteroid when we discover an asteroid that has some future uh chance of intersecting with the Earth uh one of the tricks we can do is go back and see if it's shown up on uh in uh images that we've taken of asteroid searches you know many years before because if we can find it like we that was someone accidentally saw it four years ago but didn't measure it um that gives us another four years of an orbital length that we can use to calculate forward and so these are called prediscovery images and uh I know people have been searching the records for prediscovery images to get a longer track on this asteroid but those haven't shown up uh the asteroid 2024 yr4 is simply a pretty small object it's probably about 5050 meters across something like U what tunguska Siberia uh experience in 1908 and you know for the longest time we never had the capability of even seeing these objects out in space at Great distances and it's simply our capabilities have just gotten so good that we're starting to see really small objects far away and so we can you know start to make these extrapolations forward um and uh you know this is just a the first for probably many cases to come where um our capabilities exceed the uh know the Precision of computation so we'll have we'll have lots of these cases I think coming along so I posted a a short video in a series that we do called what's up with that and that's where my producers say Neil this is in the news we should what can you tell us about that I spent 5 or 10 minutes I commented that when you have an uncertainty of an asteroid risk of hitting Earth as time moves on that uncertainty goes to one of two numbers it goes to 100% or to zero once you have a Tighter and Tighter knowledge of its orbital path and so recently it jumped from 1.3% to 2.3% it's on its way towards 100 Rick what's going on protect us and when do we need Ben affle no it's Bruce Willis yeah know your Disaster Movie yes dude well Ben Affleck was in that movie yes he was but he wasn't the hero yeah but I like Ben Affleck okay fine he was Batman don't confuse him with that well Batman I wouldn't call to save me from an asteroid that is for sure that's a Superman job if ever if ever right right so so is it is this on its way to 100% yeah so so Neil as you just said ultimately when we get the final answer we'll know it's either 0% or 100% it either hits you or it misses you and the odds are greatly in our favor we're about 50 to one right now that it's going to miss so I like those odds it turns out for this asteroid the uh region of uncertainty um is like this long spaghetti string that stretches um from Beyond the moon all basically all the way across the moon's orbit um and it happens to part of the string happens to lie on top of the earth and so that spaghetti string and we use Italian pasta because it's the Torino scale that spaghetti string um will shrink as we get more and more data that that improv the track of the asteroid orbit but until that spaghetti string shrinks and doesn't have the Earth underneath a piece of it um we can see that probability number bounce bounce around it's there's really no surprise there um and I'll just say that ultimately we'll get to the the final answer and that uncertainty will shrink to the size of a grain basically a tiny grain and so the the chances are that when we shrink that uncertainty region or that spaghetti string down to a single grain um that single grain could be further than the moon it could be somewhere between the Earth and the moon but the chances of that grain being on the Earth are just that few percent okay but if it is on Earth it the grain could be on top of hackin sack New Jersey or Hoboken where you live Hoboken Hoboken and I um thank you for destroying where I live often when we think of an uncertainty I I think of a circle and there most likely to hit in the middle of the circle and less likely toward the edge but what you're saying is given it orbit and the orientations the circle is now elongated maybe to an ellipse but this is a severe ellipse it's so elliptical that it's a spaghetti strand that's what you're telling me that's right what we call the uncertainty ellipse is really just sort of flattened out into this very long string it's like you take pasta and you keep stretching it and stretching it and this uh this uncertainty region has just stretched out into this long spaghetti string yeah but is is it Linguini or fetuccini no I thought it was Linguini to start but it's now getting so thinly stretched out it's definitely spaghetti um and I don't think it's quite angel hair past pasta yet but definitely a spaghetti okay Torino strikes again yes and and what sauce is with this I need to know I need to know what sauce we're putting with this meal that's a personal choice okay okay all right so this is 50 meters across Tusa scale and by the way we didn't have telescopes monitoring for killer asteroids in 1908 so this just hit the atmosphere and exploded on impact with our air given how fast it's going right so without these telescopes if this hit us it would be just another surprise Air Blast all right but we are wise astronomers today so my question is if it does hit Earth is there an easy rule of thumb for how big a crater a 50 meter asteroid would make yeah it's it's 10 to 20 to one so an object uh that say one kilometer across would make a crater about 10 or 20 times that size fortunately for 2024 y4 it's about 50 meters across and that's right at the size limit where the atmosphere most likely will protect us from it ever reaching the ground it depends on the entry angle into the atmosphere um you know as to uh how much resistance the atmosphere puts up and so in all likelihood uh this thing will break apart uh in the atmosphere the pressure wave will still hit the ground and that's what causes the the damage and and what kind of shock wave are we looking at from you know it's like you slap the atmosphere and what would kind of be the result on I'll say a metropolis but by the way in tunguska it it incinerated 10,000 square kilometers of forest oh my so so that was so that was not just the blast wave that was the the pulse of of of energy that showed up as as as photons as light nice right am am I remembering this correctly Rick um no mostly it was wasn't so much heat uh it was mostly the pressure wave what we call an over pressure um that would have knocked down the trees so it was really a flattened forest for a few few hundred square miles why am I remembering fire maybe right at the center but that was fairly localized most of the damage was just trees knocked over for a few hundred square miles I'm going to say that's um pretty impressive of in terms of a disaster for a pressure wave to uh take out how many kilometers of trees I mean yeah well few 200 square miles few hundred square miles that's insane because that's insane you guys wait you're you're both so C about this is that's small compared with the surface area of the earth oh yeah it's not small compared to Northeast Philadelphia we had one plane crash and it took out like three blocks of people I remember that yeah that was just a couple a little while ago and I'm just saying like you're talking about miles and miles of trees being knocked oh it is hard flat it's hard to flatten a tree that is difficult that that's no small thing well you have to remember most of the Earth surface is water so this could uh in in all likelihood if it came to pass it would be overwater um and they're very poor coupling between that pressure wave and the water you wouldn't want to be in a in a ship underneath that but that would be prettyy pretty easy to evacuate so Chuck I'm pretty sure right my good fellow here yes once you once the spaghetti uncertainty shrinks down to a DOT if it's going to hit Earth we'll know exactly where on Earth it's going to hit correct recently our capabilities have become good enough that you know a small object the size of a compact car uh can be discovered a few days or hours before you know if it's on Terminal approach and you know those predictions get very well find that they basically can tell people when to go out hold your cell phone camera up and see a streak in the sky and then meteorite Hunters can again then descend on the area to try to pick up pieces so uh when we get you know a precise orbit uh we can be very specific about where these things are going to arrive so so that's a scientist talking there he says when you know where it's going to arrive get your camera's ready rather than get your ass Leave Get out no no we're we're going to run to you know we these are the sort of things we run towards you know we want to get data man we want to pick up pieces sence this is free stuff this is free stuff from space free stuff from space that's great Mana from heaven right there you go so Rick where is 2024 y R4 on the trino scale so 2024 yr4 ranks a three on the Torino scale which means um if it were to strike the Earth it would be a localized event and I think the important thing about a three on the tro scale is it we like to emphasize that most likely when we get more data um we'll be able to reduce it to zero and three is also sort of a of an alert to astronomers to say let's pay attention to this object we're not worried about it no one has panicked about it but let's get the data and make sure that it's going to miss and maybe fund a deflection program I was about to say I don't want to be M but uh what what what point on the scale do we have to do something and what I mean what's the number where it's just like hey guys uh we go to we got to get up there and fix this eight nine and 10 are the numbers you don't want on the tro scale because those are the levels where you are certain of an impact and yr4 if it uh if it misbehaves uh it would go all the way up to eight on the trino scale that would be its maximum oh because it's not massive enough to render anybody extinct and your scale sounds like it's logarithmic or something right or exponential the higher the number the much higher damage it would do right that's correct which is true that's the same true with the earthquake scale r scale exactly you ever wanted one of your questions on the universe answered we all have questions about the universe black holes to quazars quantum entanglement wormholes there is no end to the depths of cosmic curiosity well the entry level of patreon membership with Star Talk gets you just that I think it starts at $5 a month you have 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looking up tell us what's the latest about a apus uh isn't Osiris Rex visiting apus yes so apus ties into our current asteroid story because back in 2004 it was the kind of the same thing apus got all the way up to four on the trino scale and uh in this case we were able to find earlier images of that asteroid and refine its orbit and rather quickly um have it go down to zero so uh so that was the apus was the winner in terms of the highest ever recorded value on the trino scale but what that means or what we found when we pinned down the or orbit of apus is that on April 13th of 2029 the asteroid apus is going to come very close to the Earth but it's going to safely pass the Earth and um that safe passage of the earth is at a distance closer than some of our orbiting satellites the one out at out at G geosynchronous distances and so um this this Stadium siiz asteroid hopus is going to make a very close approach on Friday April 13 2029 that Friday means Nature has a sense of humor and um I've been uh leading a lot of efforts to try to figure out how can we scientifically study the asterid hopus because the Earth's gravity and the tides that the Earth exhibits on the moon are going to tug on that asteroid too and if we can see how the as responds to the way the Earth tugs on it we'll be able to understand how that asteroid is put together and that's Terra incognita we've never uh been able to discern how the inside of an asteroid is put together what about a giant net is that like a butterfly net you just go up there no no no no we we want it to go past we want it go past so um yeah so we'll let it go past and we just simply want to get the most science the most knowledge we can out of this object you know you know someday the knowledge of how these things are put together could be some of the important most important knowledge that we've ever uh you know extracted from uh from a space program and so uh we we just want to we just want to get smart so as you monitor the tital forces on it which would serve to break it apart right if it stays together in spite of those title forces that tells you one thing a lot more solid and if starts breaking apart it didn't have much of a matrix to hold it together it's a crumbly collection of cookie crumbles cookie crumbles that's right and if it doesn't care umus has been around for probably thousands if not maybe a million years occasionally whizzing past the Earth um it's probably come closer than this in some previous Millennium and uh you know it it may say oh this Rodeo is not really that tough of a rodeo and uh it may just pass by and apus itself may not care uh too much are they still naming are you guys still naming Earth Crossing asteroids that are newly discovered after gods that are uh impart death and destruction on the world because apus is the Egyptian god of death and darkness I right so is that still The Habit the tradition uh there's a lot of different mythical Traditions but you know for apus it kind of shows that astronomers have a sense of humor too okay yeah any any plans to name one Trump trump probably has a plan to name one Trump exactly Osiris Rex went on a trajectory after the sample return to intersect apus is that correct that's right so NASA has approved uh that the next mission for this Osirus re spacecraft which is be renamed as Osiris apex apex is a pus Explorer Wow and so uh we're repurposing this spacecraft to go visit apus um the laws of orbital mechanics and how much propulsion we have on the spacecraft don't allow us to get to apus until after it's gone by the Earth so we're going to kind of get a sort of an aftershot of apus um after the Earth does whatever it might do to the uh to the asteroid you're not going to touch and go on this one right no we we'll leave it alone um except maybe at the very end oh you might crash into it yeah well after we made sure where it's going to go for a long period of time we may uh kind of touch down let our thrusters blast the surface to kind of create a little crater that we can then look into um but we won't physically touch the asteroid um but I just want to say that you know there's really been this fantastic cooperation with European Space Agency where they're working on a mission called ramsis um which would go to Aus and get there before the asteroid reaches the Earth and so it could be the European Space Agency uh giving us a before look and then NASA's spacecraft ayus Apex will give us the after look because there's still a few years in there the sample that did come back from the asteroid benu yes what did that reveal so the reason we went to benu is it looked like it was a very dark low albo carbon Rich asteroid and we're interested in carbon because the stuff we're made of is you know Carbon we're all carbon based units and so this was a chance to go back and look at some of the original carbon chemistry that made the planets and ultimately made life and we have found um that very primitive carbon chemistry even down to some basic amino acids that make up the the structure of proteins and you know essential for life so so we really have found sort of the Holy Grail ingredients of um uh the origins of or the chemistry that can make life part of that was even expected though right yes I mean that that that's what we wanted to find um and the important thing about bringing the sample is it was collected in space it was stored in the vacuum of the capsule and then you know un retrieved in pristine laboratory conditions so we knew everything uh organic that we're measuring in this sample was intrinsic to the asteroid to the space material itself and not something introduced because it you know the asteroid meteorite landed in a pond or in the mud and to pick pick it up out of the mud and get it to a lab things like that how does that compare to any other samples that we have from space it turns out that um this kind of early carbon chemistry is extremely rare in the meteorites that we have on Earth because most of those it's not very strong material and the Earth's atmosphere breaks it apart and incinerates it on the way down and so it's very hard to collect this these kind of samples in a free sample from space and a meteorite and that's why going and get this getting this kind of sample was really a scientific breakthrough so it's implicit in what you said but I want to make it explicit these asteroids hearken from the beginning of the solar system undisturbed by weather erosion contamination so they're perfectly preserved perfectly preserved is that Fair way to say that Rick yeah I I like to call asteroids the building blocks of the planets uh it's the their leftover Rubble they're leftover pieces of all the material that went in to make the planets to make the Earth it's like Ikea like Ikea furniture that's the stuff that's left over the building blocks it's not Furniture it's the building blocks for furniture it's been a a bit disassembled over time because it Clash crashes into each other out there over millions and millions of years but the fundamental pieces are still there so we are all of a particular handedness of these molecules for life on Earth but some of those molecules in a mirror are perfectly legitimate molecules we just don't use that version of them right so but space if there's not something to pre-select a handedness of the molecule you might expect it to be 50/50 I mean and if it's not somebody's got a answer to that there's something doing some filtering there something doing something right something's doing something so that'd be fun to see that's pretty cool where the future of this goes yeah all right so Rick take us out with Planet 9 what the hell is planet 9 it's a place where I'm doing fine no it's Cloud n that's Cloud n okay Pluto is the ninth planet because dwarf planets are planets too and so got out that we he got out of that I'm fine I'm fine with the you know um something else being out there but the thing that's called Planet N9 um is uh just some indications in the data that there may be something even further out in our solar system that's been tugging on some of these other asteroids out there there's a region out there called the Kyper belt uh there's lots more asteroids out Beyond Pluto and um some irregularities in the distribution of where all those objects are suggest there's something out there tugging on them um it's a little speculative it could be right it could be wrong but uh you know when you have an idea you go out and search and and see if you're right or wrong you know what would make better data than that what's that the object itself right I mean you're what you're saying you're seeing all the objects that it's gravit it's supposed gravitational field would have influenced and you're triangulating back on where this object must be and maybe how much mass it has and but no one has spotted the object yet if it's if it's real right and I think the indication are it will be something very far away a little difficult to detect so uh so you know the jury's set definitely out but uh you know when you get these ideas you you put forward forward a hypothesis and you go out and test it so so that's how science works in the interest of getting clicks I'm going to say it's a massive alien ship he's not going to agree with that I'm for sure that's a zero I'm afraid okay so Rick I think we're we're done here go it's been really I'm amazed I had we haven't done this before uh our show's been on for quite some time yeah and uh you demand oh by the way I don't know if anybody knows when I get a call from CNN right about something in the solar system I call Rick I say Rick this is what I know is it is it enough what do you know what can I bring to this conversation super cool so he's my go-to Planet man I love cuz I was a Galaxy guy speed dial [Laughter] cuz I'm I'm a Galaxy guy a large scale Universe guy and planets was like a whole other that's a different species of astrop that what you know what makes them different they get to go there nice right I we don't V you know we're not going to a black hole or the center of a galaxy or anything right they get to oh I wonder what that object is send a probe it's like so that's that's that's damn near experimental science nice yeah and it's a planetary science scientist you really put yourself on the line because you can have a hypothesis and idea and you send the probe there and you find out you were wrong um but that's pretty exciting when you're wrong actually because you have to relearn you you've gained really great insight for the things that uh that don't prove to be uh what you might have expected so but I love the challenge of being able to study things that you can go there and and uh find out if you're right or wrong for today's Cosmic perspective it's clear that among other interesting points of knowledge wisdom and insight we've also learned that as a scientist discovering How the Universe isn't can be just as valuable to the researcher as discovering how the universe is it also works when you're looking for a [Music] job and that is a cosmic perspective Rick thanks for being on the show man my pleasure great to be with love to the family and and uh Chuck yeah always good to have you man always a pleasure all right all right this has been Star Talk the Hazardous asteroid Edition Neil degrass Tyson your personal astrophysicist keep looking [Music] [Music] up all [Music] [Music]