Speaker 1: Imagine you found an ancient recipe book, not just you know,
a few centuries old, but a book written in a
language older than time itself, and it details the literal
ingredients that went into creating well everything, including us.
Speaker 2: That's a powerful thought because.
Speaker 1: That is fundamentally what scientists are doing right now. They're
reading these profound secrets trapped inside space rocks, asteroids.
Speaker 2: And the things they're finding are just their game change.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, we're talking about discoveries that suggest life might be
incredibly common throughout the universe.
Speaker 2: And this is the other side of the coin. They're
also this stark, perpetual reminder that our entire existence is,
you know, always one tiny cosmic nudge away from catastrophe.
Speaker 1: That's the ultimate cosmic pimodox it is.
Speaker 2: And our mission today is to really unpack that. We've
got a massive stack of sources detailing these recent stunning findings.
Speaker 1: Right we're doing a deep dive into the actual physical
samples returned to.
Speaker 2: Earth, like Japan's Hyabusa two, which went to asteroid for Yugu,
and of course NASA's Osiris rex, which brought back that
pristine material from asteroid Binu.
Speaker 1: And we're pairing those miraculous findings with the latest and
I have to say often terrifying tracking data on near
Earth objects.
Speaker 2: The NEOs, and specifically the ones they classify as potentially
hazardous asteroids or PHAs.
Speaker 1: So we're going to try and understand the two faces
of asteroids, first as the potential source of the very foundation.
Speaker 2: Of life on Earth, the cosmic factory that made.
Speaker 1: Us, and second as the civilization level hazards that threatened
to well undo all of it in a flash.
Speaker 2: We're really going from the microscopic ingredients of life to
the astronomical scale of destruction.
Speaker 1: Prepare for some genuine aha moments, the kind where you
realize just how complex your own history.
Speaker 2: Is, followed immediately by moments that make you look up
at the night sky and genuinely wonder what gigantic, invisible
rock is flying past us right now, and just how
close is it.
Speaker 1: Let's unpack this incredible story of cosmic creation. I want
to start with the samples from Reugu.
Speaker 2: The Hyabusatwu mission returned in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: When scientists opened those canisters, I mean they were expecting
inert dust, right, but what they got was evidence of
this this chemical revolution happening constantly in deep space.
Speaker 2: And the most compelling find the one that really changes
the whole conversation about the origin of.
Speaker 1: Life, the foundation of all life exactly.
Speaker 2: And what's fascinating here is the sheer ease with which
these components seem to form. Sentences that were just stunned
to find multiple types of amino.
Speaker 1: Acids, the building blocks of proteins.
Speaker 2: Which are the bedrock of all known life. They found
them right there inside the Reugu dust. This basically confirms
a hypothesis biologists have held.
Speaker 1: For decades that life's ingredients were seeded.
Speaker 2: From space precisely.
Speaker 1: But the shock factor wasn't just that they found them,
because we have seen amino acids and meteorites before.
Speaker 2: Haven't we We have, Yes, The shock was the sheer
variety of them and the realization of how they.
Speaker 1: Were formed naturally in space, with no biology involved, no
planet required, just.
Speaker 2: Raw ingredients of vacuum and cosmic radiation, sturing the pod
for billions of years.
Speaker 1: It fundamentally changes the implications for a biogenesis, the origin
of life.
Speaker 2: It does the source material really emphasizes this point. If
amino acids are so easily made in these harsh conditions.
They're not rare.
Speaker 1: They could be scattered all over the universe.
Speaker 2: But wait, if the recipe is so common, if the
building blocks are literally everywhere, then why is life on
Earth so unique or at least as far as we know.
Doesn't that sort of go against the whole cosmic inevitability idea.
Speaker 1: That's the critical difference. Asteroids provide the first step, the ingredients, So.
Speaker 2: They're suggesting the recipe for life isn't some complex planet specific.
Speaker 1: Miracle, right, It's more like a common chemical inevitability. But
the step from chemistry to biology, from a.
Speaker 2: Proto cell to a functioning, replicating.
Speaker 1: Organism, that must still be the difficult. Evolutionary asteroids are
just delivering the raw materials, lowering the barrier to entry
for life wherever the right conditions pop up.
Speaker 2: That makes perfect sense. It's like finding out that flour
and sugar are everywhere, but you still need the right
oven and the right instructions to bake the cake.
Speaker 1: So what does this raw chemistry in space actually look like.
We're not talking about a warm primordial soup.
Speaker 2: No, not at all. We're talking about conditions that seem
totally hostile to complex chemistry. Ultra cold vacuum.
Speaker 1: But radiation is the key.
Speaker 2: That's it. In the deep cold of space, simple carbon
and nitrogen compounds, they just freeze onto.
Speaker 1: Dust grains and then high energy radiation cosmic rays, solar radiation.
It just bombards these frozen grains and that energy.
Speaker 2: Acts as a catalyst. It drives these complex chemical reactions
that wouldn't happen otherwise. It's essentially forcing simple molecules to
link up into complicated structures.
Speaker 1: Like hydrocarbons and critically, amino acids.
Speaker 2: The sources suggest this mechanism is incredibly efficient. It turns
intercellar clouds into amino acid factories, which then get baked
into forming asteroids.
Speaker 1: So humbling. You look at Erth, this vibrant oasis and
you think life is this unique special event.
Speaker 2: But the evidence from Yugo suggests the ingredients were just waiting,
waiting for a suitable vessel to land on.
Speaker 1: It really raises the stakes for exoplanet research, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: It has to. If we find a planet with liquid water,
we now have much stronger evidence that the ingredients for
life probably got there long long ago.
Speaker 1: Okay, speaking of liquid water, the Reugo samples brought us
something even more vital than amino acids, and.
Speaker 2: Not just frozen water. This tells a much more dramatic
story about Earth's own history.
Speaker 1: This is where it gets really interesting and really relevant
to us.
Speaker 2: While they were examining these particles under incredibly advanced microscopes,
researchers saw something amazing. Droplets droplets of liquid water trapped
inside mineral grains, not ice, which is common. Will fluid
water preserve for billions of years inside these rocks?
Speaker 1: So if this water is trapped inside the mineral grains,
does that change the timeline of when Earth got its water?
Could it have survived the early hot period better than ice?
Speaker 2: It absolutely changes the timeline and the survivability model. Ice
is volatile, it would have been vaporized instantly in the
early Earth's atmosphere.
Speaker 1: But water truck deep inside the mineral structure.
Speaker 2: What the sources call hydrous silicates that could survive an impact.
It would release the water slowly, either within the Earth's
crust or as the rock broke up.
Speaker 1: So this is direct, undeniable proof that asteroids may have
been the primary delivery system for Earth's oceans.
Speaker 2: It's a profound thought. The idea that our oceans owe
their existence to this massive, prolonged bombardment of rocks like
Rugu slamming into a dry early Earth.
Speaker 1: It's incredible. But the twist, as you mentioned, is that
this water wasn't just regular water. It had this alien
cocktail quality.
Speaker 2: Right. The source material says its isotopic signature was slightly off.
Speaker 1: What does that isotopic signature actually tell us? Is it
like a chemical fingerprint.
Speaker 2: That's a perfect way to put it. It's a figerprint
determined by the ratio of deuterium. It's heavy hydrogen to
standard hydrogen DH ratio, and that ratio is like a
cosmic marker. It tells you where and when in the
Solar system. The water formed Earth's ocean water has a
very specific.
Speaker 1: DA ratio, and the water in Reyugu.
Speaker 2: It had a slightly different signature, a bit lighter than Earth's.
Speaker 1: So it's like an ocean where every wave is made
of a slightly different kind of salt from a different sea.
Our oceans are like that.
Speaker 2: Precisely, it suggests that early Earth didn't get one single
homogeneous delivery of water.
Speaker 1: Our oceans are a strange cocktail, a mix of multiple
flavors of water from different asteroids comments.
Speaker 2: Dust, each one contributing water with a slightly different chemical makeup,
reflecting their own unique origins.
Speaker 1: And that raises this really eerie question, if life began
in this mixed cosmic ocean, are we the product of
a delicate random recipe.
Speaker 2: Or recipe that could have turned out fundamentally differently if
other slightly varied asteroids had hit us instead.
Speaker 1: It's a cosmic butterfly effect based entirely on random bombardment.
Speaker 2: It's a sobering thought. Every atom in your body, every
drop in our ocean, is the result of a specific,
randomized event four billion years ago.
Speaker 1: So we've got the water, we've got the basic amino acids.
But what happens when that chemistry gets really complicated?
Speaker 2: This is where we move beyond the basics. The complex
organic molecules they found on both Ryugu and Venu.
Speaker 1: We're talking hydrocarbons and structures that resemble nucleobases.
Speaker 2: The chemical cousins of DNA's building blocks.
Speaker 1: And the complexity is just astonishing, especially considering the environment.
Speaker 2: And again, the key is how they formed raw chemistry
freezing cold vacuum radiation, just like the amino acids.
Speaker 1: It just proves that the step just shy of life.
The creation of this highly complex organic chemistry is happening
all over space quietly constantly.
Speaker 2: It's universal chemistry at work.
Speaker 1: And the Japanese researchers in twenty twenty two took this
even further. They reported an observation that almost borders on biology.
Speaker 2: I know what you're talking about. They noted that some
of these carbon rich molecules in the Ryugu samples had
organized themselves into spherical, bubble like shapes.
Speaker 1: They literally resembled primitive cell membranes.
Speaker 2: They called them proto cells, and this is maybe the
most compelling piece of evidence we have for the ubiquity
of life's potential.
Speaker 1: They weren't alive, they weren't replicating, no, but.
Speaker 2: They were the self assembled structures that scientists believe were
the crucial stepping stone towards forming actual biological cell walls.
Speaker 1: They looked disturbingly close to what the very first living
things on Earth must have looked like.
Speaker 2: So the significance is just enormous. If these structures, the
very architecture of life, can spontaneously self assemble in the
cold vacuum.
Speaker 1: Of space, then the very first tentative stages of life
might not be rare at all.
Speaker 2: They might just be way for the right environment, but
the heavy lifting of chemical organization is already done.
Speaker 1: The sources suggest that this is a chemical inevitability driven
by physics. The surfaces of these asteroids act like a scaffold.
Speaker 2: So the leads from chemistry to biology might be happening
quietly inside asteroids all over.
Speaker 1: The universe, millions of false starts where conditions weren't quite
right for the next step, but the initial organization still happened.
Speaker 2: That initial organization is the difference between having all the
raw materials for a house and having the blueprint automatically
assemble the walls. That is a massive headstart for life.
Speaker 1: Okay, we've established that asteroids are cosmic chemistry sets, but
they are also these ultimate time capsules, right.
Speaker 2: They contain records of events far far older than Earth itself.
Speaker 1: Which brings us to section two. We're getting into the
geological and physical anomalies found in these samples that are
genuinely challenging our entire understanding of the Solar System's formation.
Speaker 2: And we have to start with something truly mind bending.
The discovery of dust grains that are literally older than
the Sun.
Speaker 1: The sources called them presolar grains found in meteorites and
these new asteroid samples. I read one scientist describe holding
that dust as like touching the ghost of an ancient galaxy.
Speaker 2: It's a perfect description.
Speaker 1: Conceptually, how is that even possible? Shouldn't everything in our
Solar system have formed at the same time.
Speaker 2: This is where we have to confront deep time, the
cycle of stellar death and rebirth. Okay, our Solar system
formed from a huge nebula, a cloud of gas and dust.
But that cloud wasn't created fresh, It was polluted by
the debris of previous stellar generations.
Speaker 1: Yes, so these presolar grains.
Speaker 2: Be formed in the violent outflows of ancient dying stars
supernova's giant stars, billions of years before the specific event
that created our sun in our planets.
Speaker 1: So holding these grains means you're holding time itself, a
piece of something literally older than the star that lights
our sky, a relic of alien stars.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and miss Tree isn't just their origin, it's their survival.
Speaker 1: We're talking about tiny particles right fractions.
Speaker 2: Of a millimeter, and these tiny specs endured immense cosmic radiation,
violent collisions, the chaotic, high energy birth of our Solar system,
and somehow made it intact into the asteroid material that
eventually reached us.
Speaker 1: That survival story is just extraordinary. It tells us that
the processes that build planetary systems aren't as efficient at
mixing everything up as we thought.
Speaker 2: It leads these pockets of primordial ancient material untouched. It
challenges our fundamental models, suggesting the early solar nebula was patchy,
allowing these ancient remnants to be incorporated into the parent
bodies of Benu and Rugu.
Speaker 1: Okay, from the very oldest things to the very strangest.
Let's talk about the magnetic signatures and the osiris REX
samples from Benu.
Speaker 2: The was it returned in twenty twenty three. This is
an anomaly that genuinely shocked researchers because it seems to
defy the known physics of small bodies.
Speaker 1: The shock was profound. Some of the minerals they looked
at contained magnetic scins signatures that were frozen in place
billions of years ago.
Speaker 2: And they just didn't match Earth, the Moon, or the
expected weak magnetic fields of the early Solar System.
Speaker 1: Why is that so shocking. Benu is a small asteroid,
a rubble pile. It shouldn't have a magnetic field strong
enough to do that.
Speaker 2: Right Exactly, For a body to generate a strong, lasting
magnetic field, it needs an internal dynamo, a molten convecting
core like Earth has. Benu is way too small and
his long since cooled.
Speaker 1: Down, so its own magnetic field should be negligible. The
presence of these strong, frozen signatures is a complete puzzle.
It is, so what's the consensus? What are the potential
origins of that ancient field.
Speaker 2: The scientific community has a couple of primary options. Option
one is that Benu was once part of a much
larger parent body.
Speaker 1: A proto planet, maybe hundreds of miles wide.
Speaker 2: One that did have an active, churning magnetic core. Benu
is just a fragment that retains that ancient signature.
Speaker 1: Which reinforces that idea of violent destruction and reassembling. An
option too, that Benu traveled through regions of space where powerful,
strange magnetic fields existed that we just don't understand.
Speaker 2: Yet, or fields generated by some specific astronomical event near
the asteroid build.
Speaker 1: So external forces affecting the rocks, not internal ones.
Speaker 2: Right, But the parent body hypothesis is the most popular one.
It connects directly to that robo pile structure we keep
talking about.
Speaker 1: It paints a picture of a Solar System history that's
far more violent in structure than we had imagined.
Speaker 2: It does. It suggests that when we study Beenu and Riugu,
we're actually studying the broken pieces of a failed planetary core.
Speaker 1: Okay, now, let's get into the preserved atmospheres and miniature
oceans locked inside these samples.
Speaker 2: When they opened the sealed Benu canister, it revealed these
tiny pockets of trapped.
Speaker 1: Gases carbon dioxide and nitrogen that pre date Earth.
Speaker 2: These are gases that have been locked away inside mineral
pores for over four billion years, untouched, pristine ancient atmosphere
exam and.
Speaker 1: Their ratios, their signatures were completely alien. They didn't match
Earth's atmosphere, or Mars or the Sun.
Speaker 2: It's like getting a historical sample of the cosmic environment
that existed before the planet's truly solidified, a sniff of
the early Solar System's.
Speaker 1: Breath, and that ties right into the findings from Yugo
Dust about the salty pockets.
Speaker 2: Yes, Regu contained salt crystals, sodium and chlorine compounds that
look suspiciously like the salts dissolved in Earth's oceans.
Speaker 1: Which suggests liquid water once flow through Rhyugu's parent body.
Speaker 2: Dissolving these salts and trapping them in mineral veins.
Speaker 1: This is a major finding. It raises the haunting possibility
that asteroid fragments may have once hosted miniature alien erceans
deep inside.
Speaker 2: Them, wet pockets inside dry rocks, laughing for millions of years.
Speaker 1: It's a powerful visualization. A rock drifting through the void
and deep inside thermal decay provides enough heat to melt ice.
Speaker 2: You get these salty pockets of water slashing around, maybe
from millions of years, providing conditions ripe for complex organic
chemistry to evolve.
Speaker 1: The idea that these dry, dusty objects were once small,
wet worlds, but definitely unsettled scientists.
Speaker 2: It confirms that water is far more pervasive in the
asteroid built than we thought.
Speaker 1: And here is where the awe starts to transition directly
into hazard. The discovery of radioactive isotopes in the Benu samples.
Speaker 2: The ones that seemed far too fresh to be billions
of years old.
Speaker 1: Normally, these isotopes decay relatively quickly on a cosmological timescale.
Speaker 2: So their presence suggested ongoing processes were either renewing or
preserving them, which means the rock itself is actively generating
or accumulating dangerous energy.
Speaker 1: That's a genuinely disturbing find, it is, So what are
the primary explanations for this fresh radioactivity?
Speaker 2: The source material focuses on two possibilities. The first, and
most likely is that Benu is constantly being bombarded by
high energy cosmic rays.
Speaker 1: And when those rays strike, the atoms in the rock.
Speaker 2: Trigger a nuclear reaction that creates new, fresh, short lived
isotopes right on the spot.
Speaker 1: So the sheer violence of its existence in space is
what keeps it radioactive exactly.
Speaker 2: The second explanation is much stranger and harder to prove.
It's that these isotopes are leftovers from violent nuclear processes
in the earliest days of the Solar System, processes we
don't fully understand.
Speaker 1: But either way, it means these rocks are not inert.
Speaker 2: And that's a clear shift from inert rocks to active
records of violent radioactive processes.
Speaker 1: So what's the hazard implication?
Speaker 2: The source material connects this directly to threat assessment. If
these asteroids are filled with unstable.
Speaker 1: Isotopes and they're constantly producing new ones, then.
Speaker 2: They aren't just massive inert projectiles. If they hit Earth,
they could release bursts of radiation or heat when they
enter the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: Or explode, adding another unknown layer of danger to the
kinetic impact.
Speaker 2: They are active records of violence that shape the early universe,
and they are still carrying that energy.
Speaker 1: If the first half of this deep dive was about
the genesis of life, the second half has to be
about the perpetual threat of well, the termination of civilization.
Speaker 2: We have to confront the reality that the objects that
deliver the water and amino acids are also the objects
that could wipe us out.
Speaker 1: Let's start with how scientists even quantify this danger.
Speaker 2: Since the early two thousands, we've had a systematic approach
using two primary scales. It's not just about spotting them,
it's about translating that data into actionable risk.
Speaker 1: Give us the technical scale first.
Speaker 2: That would be the Palermo Technical Impact Scale. It's used
by astronomers and government agencies.
Speaker 1: It's technical because it combines two critical pieces of data.
Speaker 2: The precise probability of impact and the estimated kinetic yield
basically how much energy would be released if it hit,
measured in megatons.
Speaker 1: So it's the how likely and how badly scale all
in one number for the professional exactly.
Speaker 2: And the second one is the Terno scale.
Speaker 1: Which is simpler, color coded and intended for the public.
It goes from zero no hazard to ten suating global catastrophe.
Speaker 2: And it was the Terino skull that was famously used
when the asteroid Ofpofue was first discovered.
Speaker 1: Right Apoffus was the first asteroid ever given a level
one rating back in two thousand and four. Even at
the lowest risk level, that was enough to send a
clear message pay attention.
Speaker 2: It was a massive wake up call, forcing us to
standardize how we talk about planetary defense.
Speaker 1: Okay, now let's connect the life giving aspect back to
the threat Benuz structure.
Speaker 2: We learned that the samples from Yugu and Benu revealed
shock veins, fractures, impact scars.
Speaker 1: They're largely rubble piles, shattered, reassembled, and shattered again.
Speaker 2: And this is perhaps the profound worry for deflection technology.
Speaker 1: Because missions like Dart, which showed we can hit an
asteroid to change its trajectory. Are based on the idea
of pushing a solid object.
Speaker 2: But because asteroids like Benu are these fractured, loose collections
of debris held together by weak gravity, deflecting them becomes
ex ponentially more difficult.
Speaker 1: So what are the implications. If you hit a solid rock,
you change its course. If you hit a pile of rubble.
Speaker 2: If you push a pile of rubble too hard, it
could simply break apart.
Speaker 1: And instead of one impactor that you nudged away, you.
Speaker 2: Get a shotgun blast of civilization ending debris, potentially scattering
the threat across a wider area of Earth.
Speaker 1: So a planetary defense isn't just about finding them, it's
about knowing what they're made of.
Speaker 2: The composition dictates the strategy. The structural integrity is the
real complexity.
Speaker 1: So, speaking of Venue, even though we got the samples,
it remains firmly on the hazardous list.
Speaker 2: It does a s AB one nine GUY five. Venu
remains a potentially hazardous object with a calculated one in
twenty and seven hundred chance of impacting Earth between twenty
one seventy eight and twenty two.
Speaker 1: Ninety and there's a specific day that has the highest probability.
Speaker 2: September twenty fourth, twenty one eighty two. If it did hit,
the force would be measured in billions of tons of
TNT equivalent, enough to wipe out a continent and cause
catastrophic global climate effects.
Speaker 1: And while that deed is outside our lifetime, the monitoring
is constant because any small gravitational nudge over the next
century could shift that likelihood dramatically. Exactly all right, Let's
move to the most alarming data in the sources. The
catalog of close calls the sheer number and scale of
these objects.
Speaker 2: We need to slow down here and let the scale
really register.
Speaker 1: Let's start with the giants, the extinction level.
Speaker 2: Threats, the ones that are a kilometer or more in size.
The statistics on these are hard to grasp, but they
are the reason planetary defense exists.
Speaker 1: We have to start with nineteen fifty DA. The sources
call it the Monster.
Speaker 2: It's about a kilometer wide. It's firmly in the category
of objects that could cause a global.
Speaker 1: Catastrophe, a kin to what ended the dinosaurs, maybe worse.
Speaker 2: It has a slim but real chance about one in
four thousand of impacting Earth in the future.
Speaker 1: And the power calculation for that size is just staggering.
Speaker 2: An impact from nineteen fifty DA would release the energy
of forty four eight hundred megatons of TNT.
Speaker 1: For a perspective, the largest nuke weapon ever tested was
around fifty mega tons.
Speaker 2: Is nearly a thousand times that the Source material says.
It would make the demise of the dinosaurs seem like
a picnic. It would plunge the Earth into a nuclear winter.
Speaker 1: And we've been tracking this monster since nineteen fifty we have.
Speaker 2: Then there's one that just went missing for four decades,
nineteen seventy nine XP.
Speaker 1: The fact that a half mile wide rock just got
lost is profoundly unsettling to me.
Speaker 2: It's nearly twenty three hundred feet across. If nineteen fifty
DA is a monster, this is a true end of
the world asteroid, capable.
Speaker 1: Of massive climate change, continent scale destruction.
Speaker 2: Its calculated impact energy would be thirty billion tons of TNT.
Speaker 1: Thirty billion tons. That's an unimaginable force. Why do we
lose it?
Speaker 2: Well, it was lost in space for four decades because
early telescopes couldn't maintain a solid lock on its orbit.
Speaker 1: It's highly elliptical, but newer systems have founded Again they have.
Speaker 2: But the lack of recent precise data makes its path
a little murkier than for other objects we've watched consistently.
Speaker 1: We also have nineteen ninety seven x F eleven, another
dinosaur killer a mile wide, and it's coming extremely close
in twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 2: This is one of the most frightening large objects we track.
An impact would be like a one million megaton.
Speaker 1: Bomb, almost certainly wiping out most life on Earth.
Speaker 2: Fortunately, calculations show will miss in twenty twenty eight, but
its sheer size and proximity drive home the constant danger,
and we have.
Speaker 1: To mention forty one to eighty three Kuno. This one
is about four kilometers in diameter, significantly larger Kuno is gargantuan.
Speaker 2: It poses no imminent threat, but it's made close approaches
six times in this century alone. These larger objects require
constant vigilance because they're absolute civilizational threats.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's move to the city killers and regional hazards.
These are the ones that remind us we don't need
a dinosaur killer to have a catastrophe.
Speaker 2: It's exactly take one, five, three, eight one two, two
thousand and one WN five. It's classified as a small asteroid,
but that term is so misleading.
Speaker 1: At point nine kilometers in diameter, it's larger than ninety
seven percent of other small asteroids, about the size of
the Golden gate Bridge.
Speaker 2: It's the regional thread parks lawns, and its close approach
is soon.
Speaker 1: This is a real world near term close call.
Speaker 2: On June twenty sixth, twenty twenty eight, it will pass
at a distance of two hundred and forty eight thousand,
seven hundred kilometers.
Speaker 1: That is significantly closer than the Moon, and it will
be visible with just binoculars, highlighting just how close.
Speaker 2: This potential disastrous.
Speaker 1: So why are scientists watching this flyby so intently even
if it's projected to miss, Because.
Speaker 2: Earth's gravity could subtly change its orbit, a phenomenon called
the Yarkowski.
Speaker 1: Effect, and that slight nudge could line it up for
a much worse scenario on a future pass fifty or
sixty years from now.
Speaker 2: Every close encounter is a moment of orbital recalculation.
Speaker 1: Then there are the immediate threats that caused recent alarm
twenty twenty one Q one only fifty meters, which sounds small.
Speaker 2: Until you hear the projected impact for US. Should it hit,
it would be about six megatons of TNT.
Speaker 1: That's four hundred times the strength of the bomb dropped
on Hiroshimo.
Speaker 2: It would flatten a major city. And this asteroid actually
disappeared behind the sun shortly after discovery, so scientists lost
track of it.
Speaker 1: They lost sight of a city killer. What happened.
Speaker 2: They had to use the European Southern Observatory's very large
telescope and managed to capture an image of the faintest
asteroid ever observed to get its trajectory.
Speaker 1: Back, and thankfully it's not on a collision course for.
Speaker 2: The foreseeable future. No, but it shows how hard these
things are to track.
Speaker 1: And the newest scare twenty twenty three DW.
Speaker 2: Spotted in February twenty twenty three Olympic swimming pool, sized
about fifty meters at one point. NASA flagged March fourteenth,
twenty forty six as a potential impact date with a
one in five hundred and sixty chance.
Speaker 1: The odds have dropped, but it's still classified as a
city killer.
Speaker 2: Absolutely not a planet killer, but enough to take out
a city.
Speaker 1: And Finally, the true Tunguska twin two thousand, SG three
forty four.
Speaker 2: School bus sized with a one in three hundred and
sixty chance of collision in twenty seventy one, An impact
could release one mega ton of.
Speaker 1: TNT, similar to the nineteen oh eight Tenguska event, which
flattened over two thousand square kilometers of forest in Siberia.
Speaker 2: Right, And the truly odd thing about this.
Speaker 1: One is that some scientists think it might not even
be an asteroid.
Speaker 2: That's the fascinating detail. Its path is so similar to
Earth's orbit that it could actually be a leftover Apollo
rocket booster that was discarded decades ago.
Speaker 1: Is it a threat or just space jump coming home?
Speaker 2: We'll get another chance to see when it passes close
again in twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 1: Okay, we have to dedicate a full segment to the
asteroid that has become the definitive test run for planetary
defense A Office.
Speaker 2: Nine nine nine four to two a P Office. It
frightened the world in two thousand and four, YEA with
a one in sixty chance of hitting Earth on Friday
the thirteenth May twenty twenty nine.
Speaker 1: That risk has been ruled out thankfully, But the close
pass is still happening and it's going to be monumental.
Speaker 2: The pass is on April thirteenth, twenty twenty nine, and
how close.
Speaker 1: Just nineteen thousand miles from Earth.
Speaker 2: To put that in perspective, the Moon is about two
hundred and forty thousand miles away. Our geosynchron satellites orbit
at greater distances.
Speaker 1: So it will be closer than many of our own satellites.
Speaker 2: People in parts of Europe, Africa and Asia will actually
be able to see it with the naked eye. It's
a literal cosmic flyby.
Speaker 1: It's the ultimate close call for a non impact scenario,
and scientists are using it as a test run.
Speaker 2: They need to monitor any tiny subtle changes in its
orbit caused by Earth's gravity that you're Kofski effect again, And.
Speaker 1: What's the worst case future scenario that this flyby could
set up?
Speaker 2: A slight nudge could line apophys up precisely for what's
called a keyhole, a tiny area of space that would
guarantee an impact on a future.
Speaker 1: Pass, specifically in twenty thirty six or twenty sixty nine.
Speaker 2: So even though we're safe in twenty twenty nine, the
future danger depends entirely on how our gravity affects it.
Speaker 1: The cosmic neighborhood is perpetually busy. We even have objects
that temporarily become our own mini moons.
Speaker 2: Yes twenty twenty CD three is a perfect example, a
tiny asteroid captured by Earth's gravity around twenty sixteen or
twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: It orbited us for a while before escaping in May
twenty twenty, and they'll.
Speaker 2: Make another close pass in twenty forty four. These temporary
satellites just show how easily small objects can get snare
by our gravity.
Speaker 1: And finally, the small frequent visitors that still pack a punch.
Speaker 2: We have twenty ten RF twelve. It has thirteen upcoming
close approaches until twenty ninety five. The final one will
be at just forty seven thousand kilometers.
Speaker 1: A fraction of the distance to the Moon.
Speaker 2: It's small, only about seven meters, but if it hits,
it's excected to cause an explosion, similar to the Cheliabinsk
media event in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1: That blast shattered windows and injured over one thousand people
just from the shockwave.
Speaker 2: Small size does not equal harmlessness.
Speaker 1: Exactly, And then you have other school bus size objects
like two thousand and eight dB and twenty fourteen HB
one seventy seven, both with multiple close approaches forecasted.
Speaker 2: The sources make it clear the close calls are frequent,
the destructive power is high, and the need for constant monitoring,
even for the smallest objects is critical because those are
the ones we're most likely to miss.
Speaker 1: It is truly stunning to synthesize all this data into
one narrative. We've explored this profound duality.
Speaker 2: They air timecap carrying the deepest secrets of creation, amino acids,
alien water, ancient stellar.
Speaker 1: Dust, defining the origins of our planet, and maybe even
life itself. Yet there are also these ticking time bombs
carrying the scars of angel disasters that could bring catastrophe
to us.
Speaker 2: The very objects that may have seated life are also
the greatest threat to it.
Speaker 1: The data compels us to confront several difficult realities. First,
cosmic violence isn't just a historical event, it's ongoing.
Speaker 2: Second, life isn't necessarily a rare miracle, but maybe a
cosmic inevitability driven by this pervasive chemistry.
Speaker 1: And third, the close calls are frequent and the rubble
pile nature of these threats complicates everything.
Speaker 2: The knowledge we gain from Benu and Riugu, the knowledge
that our oceans might be an alien cocktail, that a
golden gate bridge sized rock will pass closer than the
Moon in just a few years.
Speaker 1: That knowledge demands an immediate, focused and persistent response. These
asteroids force us to look outward and realize how fragile
our position is.
Speaker 2: It moves the discussion of planetary defense from science fiction
to critical infrastructure necessary not just for our safety, but
for understanding the fundamental processes of the universe.
Speaker 1: So we'll leave you with this final thought. Considering these
terrifying discoveries, the fact that life's ingredients are scattered everywhere,
yet civilization could be undone by a shifting orbit.
Speaker 2: What stands out to you is the single most compelling
reason for humanity to invest heavily in planetary defense? And
what single question about the origin of life do these
pervasive cosmic ingredients raise for you?
Speaker 1: We really want to know what you think.