Here's something you may or may not have thought about.
What would be better for us life here on earth,
an asteroid hitting the ground or an asteroid hitting water?
I know the obvious answer is,
''No asteroids,'' but let's look at it.
If it was to hit the land,
it would send debris into the atmosphere causing global cooling.
Meanwhile in the water,
the thought is that it could send towering tsunamis in every direction.
So let's find out. Hey guys,
I'm Patrick Jones and welcome to Cheddar Explores.
The earth is constantly being peppered by space debris,
most of it is dust,
thinner than sand at the beach.
But once in a while,
we're hit by something that alters the entire planet.
The last giant asteroid collision with our home was a
7.5 mile monster that landed on what's now the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.
According to a paper published by scientific reports,
this was the worst spot to hit.
You see it crashed into an oil heavy area
causing the thick debris to fill the atmosphere blocking out
the sun and leading to a global cooling event that killed
75 percent of all living species.
To get some answers, I spoke with NASA's Lindley Johnson.
It's his job to lead a team that scans for
potentially hazardous space material coming our way so we all don't die.
On top of having a vastly more meaningful gig,
Lindley also has arguably the best job title I've ever heard of.
I'm Lindley Johnson. I'm the planetary defense officer in NASA.
Planetary defense officer, that's just amazing.
Now, of course, I'm going to talk about asteroids hitting the Earth,
we have to state the obvious.
An asteroid hitting a major metropolitan area would result in the biggest loss of life.
The other thing is that if it's big enough,
it's not going to matter where it is.
For starters, even if you survive the initial blast,
large impact could set off global volcanoes.
We've got large asteroids in our vicinity.
For example, the biggest asteroid in the asteroid belt is 625 miles across.
If that hits the earth, don't worry about paying rent next month.
I spoke earlier about what an asteroid hitting land can do.
Giant plumes of debris could jump up into
the upper atmosphere blocking the sun from getting in,
chilling things down and killing the food chain from the bottom up.
Then for water, just like 1998 disaster movie, Deep Impact, explained.
So that in every direction,
but does that actually what would happen?
That's where Lindley comes in.
We once thought that an object hitting in the middle of
the ocean would cause a big tsunami wave,
but come to find out that the energy released is
significantly different than waves that are caused by earthquakes.
You have this point source energy releases,
as this linear waves that is caused by an earthquake.
So deep ocean would actually dissipate the wave pretty
quickly as like putting a rock down in a pond.
So as long as the object is no more than a couple hundred meters in size,
we don't have to worry too much about
tsunami waves and unless we're really close to shore.
Basically, if the asteroid isn't the size of a mountain,
the answer is clearly the water.
So let's all vote that if an asteroid is going to
hit Earth that it smacks into the deep ocean, but we're not done.
Does an asteroid have to hit the Earth?
Can we just Bruce Willis the hell out of here?
You only have to change the speed of an asteroid,
just a fraction, a percentage of its overall speed.
Something like couple of kilometers per second is
enough that if you do that several years in advance,
it will not arrive at the same point at the Earth.
So as taking your spacecraft and running into it.
If let's say, smaller than asteroid,
100 meter or so in size.
That is enough for us to change its velocity
by necessary to make it a miss instead of a hit.
That doesn't save us from potentially earth ending asteroids,
but that's a pretty sunny outlook on
city ending asteroids as long as we have enough time.
So if you're at a restaurant,
you see Lindley Johnson looking for a phone charger, give him yours.
He may be going to put an important phone call about asteroids, killing us.
Hey guys, thank you so much for watching.
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