Tonight, a
4.5 billion year old cosmic rock
about to land back on earth.
This spacecraft you see there
is carrying a sample of rocks
and dust from an asteroid named Bennu.
It's entering
Earth's atmosphere
at velocity of 36 times
the speed of sound.
The sample is going to land
in this desolate section
of the Utah desert.
That's important
because Bennu
overall is an asteroid
the size of the Empire State Building.
There's a real chance
of smashing into Earth in 159 years.
If that actually happens,
it would hit Earth
with the force of 22 atomic bombs.
So NASA's hoping that this sample
that they've obtained
could help them figure out a way
to prevent an impact
and learn a lot more obviously
about asteroids.
OUTFRONT now,
astrophysicist Neil
deGrasse Tyson
is the head of the Hayden Planetarium.
The host of StarTalk
and he just wrote his latest book,
To Infinity
and Beyond A Journey of Cosmic Discovery.
So, Neil,
obviously,
I relish all of our conversations So
you've got this asteroid and,
you know, it's incredible.
All the mass of it.
We get on there.
You get a little piece of rock
all by Robert,
and they brought it home
So what can scientists actually learn
from this 4.5 billion year old rock
that's about to land in Utah?
Well, what we don't know for sure
when you'd think we would,
but we just don't is
what's the structural integrity
of asteroids?
Only recently,
in recent decades, did we learn.
Some of them might just be rubble piles
gathered together
that are masquerading as a solid object.
Others are sort of loosely held together.
This matters
because if you want to deflect
an asteroid,
there might be headed your way.
And you nudge one part of it,
and it doesn't have
the structural integrity
to stay together.
You can end up breaking off a piece
and and your mission would then fail.
So by looking at what
the material contents of Bennu
is through this sample return,
which, by the way, we just have to
just just praise
that this is working, okay?
I mean, just look,
I got to say, we launched
OSIRIS-REx this mission seven years ago
from a moving platform.
Earth intersected a moving target.
Bennu an asteroid.
It did a touch and go
grab the material, came back to earth,
deployed that that capsule,
and it keeps going.
It's going to visit more asteroids.
And then people are saying,
oh, I don't trust science and science.
It's like, you know what we do?
You have any idea?
I mean, it is pretty incredible.
And then there's also the,
oh, my gosh, we can do that.
And what a mess
we make of
so many
much more simple things
here at home, right?
Yeah. Okay.
So if Bennu does hit Earth,
and I know that you know,
obviously we can talk about odds,
but if it were to you
talk about something
22 times,
that what I said 22 times, 22 times
the size of our 22 atomic bombs, me
make sure I say it exactly correctly.
What would something like that
do to earth?
Well, it's not an extinction level.
I think it's a city that's really bad,
but we would have some good idea of that
well in advance.
Right.
By the way, as we get closer to 21 82.
These odds will improve,
improve in the sense
that it'll either go to zero
or go to certainty.
It's not going to still dangle in.
Is it or is it not.
And that's important first point.
So if we know that it's going to hit,
then we don't know where it's
going to hit.
If it hits a city,
it takes out the city completely.
But most of earth is not city
and most of land is not occupied.
So my fear is that if
it hits
the ocean,
then you've got a tsunami
that could take out an entire coastline.
Right.
But otherwise
it would destroy a county's
worth of land.
That's about it.
So, you know,
I hope everyone will get your new book.
You talk about parallel
words, worlds, black holes, wormholes,
time travel, all these questions.
People have. One thing
that a lot of people
are talking about lately, NASA
even now has ahead of you of UFOs. Right.
Congress has a hearing on UFOs.
And so people
are talking about UFOs and aliens
in a more serious way
than than
being on the front
of the National Enquirer,
the way it used to be.
So a Mexican journalist
displayed bodies of two supposed non
human beings in in Mexico
in front of the Congress in Mexico. Okay.
Each with three fingered
hands and elongated heads.
Now, before we all mark the video, right,
it is because it's got a lot of mocking.
It looks a lot like E.T.
But as I said,
NASA's just announced for the first time
a director of research on UFOs.
So they are taking this overall topic
more seriously.
What's your take on this?
Well,
first of all,
I like what they did in Mexico.
They had
what they claimed are alien bodies,
and they brought it out
in front of their Congress.
That's better than leaving them
in a lock box
and saying you
and no one else can get to see them.
That's a start.
But in science, a new truth
an objective truth is only established
when multiple labs can analyze whatever
your claim is.
When we weren't rocks back from the moon,
we distributed them
to all the labs of the world.
So everybody participated
in that discovery.
So here I bring up samples to others
and let other people skeptical people
in other labs.
Yes. This all and verified or falsified.
And then we move on.
What was your reaction
when you saw the images?
I was surprised
because if they're from another planet,
why do they look so human?
They have two eyes
and nose and mouth, shoulders,
hips, femur.
Why most life on Earth shares
DNA in common with us.
Looks nothing like us.
So how could it somebody.
So. So that was my first thought. Second,
if any corpses or mummified remains.
There is no bone in your nose.
It's an open hole into your skull.
These aliens have intact noses.
Okay.
If indeed, that is their nose.
Okay. Sure.
So? Well, so that's odd.
After 2000 years
to still have a nose with two
with two cavities in it.
So that's odd, but they should share it.
That's how.
That's how we determine what is true
and what is not.
All right.
Neil, thanks so much.
Great to talk to you.
Thanks for having me.