Should We Nuke An Asteroid? | Cosmic Queries with Neil deGrasse Tyson & Marina Brozovic

Neil has his own asteroid?! On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host
Marcia Belsky answer fan questions about different types of asteroids with Marina
Brozovic, orbital dynamicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

How do we know the precise location of asteroids? Learn about radio telescopes, the
origin of the word asteroid, and the DART mission. How solid is an asteroid? Does it
have to be one rock or can it be many? Can asteroids have their own moons? Are
asteroids always grey? Find out about the color of asteroids and more.

If the definition of a planet is that it clears its orbit, what about the asteroids in Jupiter’s
orbit? Discover the Trojan and Greek asteroids as well as the asteroid belt. You will
learn about Carolyn and Gene Shoemaker and David Levy and their work cataloging
asteroids. Discover Neil’s own asteroid, 13123 Tyson. If Neil’s asteroid ever got
knocked out of place and headed towards Earth, would it be an extinction event? How
many asteroids are binary or have their own moonlet? Can a moon have a moon? Is
everything a moon?

We discuss asteroid apocalypse movies like Don’t Look Up and Armageddon. Would
launching nuclear weapons at an Earth-bound asteroid be feasible or even useful? We
learn about the difference between deflection and disruption. Discover Shoemaker-Levy
9 and its impact with Jupiter in 1994. What was it like to see? All that, plus, we ponder
geopolitical questions on asteroid deflection.

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Science meets pop culture on StarTalk! Astrophysicist & Hayden Planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson, his comic co-hosts, guest celebrities & scientists discuss astronomy, physics, and everything else about life in the universe. Keep Looking Up!

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00:00 - Introduction: Discovering Asteroids
06:30 - Is an asteroid one rock or many?
09:10 - What color are asteroids?
17:20 - Jupiter’s Trojan Asteroids & Pluto
22:30 - Neil’s Asteroid
28:26 - Do asteroids have moons?
35:10 - Exploding asteroids with nuclear weapons
41:10 - Shoemaker-Levy 9: The comet that slammed into Jupiter
44:26 - What can we do about asteroid impacts?