on a star-lit night an old man looks up to the sky
mesmerized by the beauty of the stars and fluffy looking galaxies that can be seen with a naked eye
the dinosaurs were doing a similar thing millions of years ago as they
were basking in the wilderness grazing on ferns cycads and palms
but then they heard the sound of the asteroids streak across the sky
and it was too late nothing could have prepared them for their fate
what would happen to humanity should another chick salute size asteroid head straight for earth could
we stop it questions like these have led us to create artificial intelligence systems that would
be able to spot these wayward sky skaters long before they get close today we're going to take a
look at the ai systems that have helped save earth by detecting these planet killing monstrosities
at first we had space watch founded in 1980 by dutch american astronomer tom garros and
robert s mcmillan also an astronomer from the university of arizona at the kitt peak
observatory using the nicholas you may all telescope and the steward observatory's bach
telescope they were able to spot objects on trajectory with earth or merely floating by
through a 1.8 meter telescope however being just a telescope it is still marginally limited
in its capacity and can only see to a certain distance we cannot make use of one telescope
only we have to make use of many to get the true picture in 1990 the us congress asked nasa to do
whatever is necessary to be able to detect objects in space that pose a threat to our planet
workshops by nasa led to the century earth impact monitoring system essentially this system observes
various potentially hazardous asteroids that could pose a catastrophic threat within the
next 100 years these observations take place a number of times which result in an observation arc
indeed this system has worked and some of the more random space rocks were eliminated from the list
of threats allowing century to focus its surveys more closely on those that might need to one day
be blown to bits or urged off course away from us however due to the shape of our planet detecting
systems are only able to map a certain portion of the sky at any given time this of course made it
necessary for different countries to take part in the monitoring hence we find a number of systems
at different locations across our planet's surface let's take a look at some of these survey systems
the asteroid terrestrial impact last alert system simply known as atlas uses 2.5 meter telescopes
found at haleakala and mauna loa on two of the hawaiian islands each has a field of view of
30 square degrees these telescopes have been operational since 2017 with nasa obtaining
funding for two or more to be positioned in the southern hemisphere namely in south africa and
in chile the catalina sky survey or css also uses two telescopes a 1.5 meter casa grain reflector
telescope at mount lemon arizona and a 0.7 meter schmidt telescope at mount bigelow also in arizona
both sites use the same cameras that show a field of view of five square degrees
the casa grain reflector telescope takes three to four weeks to survey the sky while the schmidt
telescope takes just one week the kiso observatory at mount on taki near tokyo also uses a 1.05 meter
schmidt telescope in 2019 a new instrument was included in the telescope known as atomo goes
in with the ability to detect fast moving and rapidly changing objects boasting a wide field
of view of 20 square degrees it now scans the sky in two short hours several times a night
and is considered the fastest survey at present which makes it one of our leading warning systems
the large sibnatic survey telescope or lsst is currently under construction at cerro pachon
in chile this wide field survey reflecting telescope with an 8.4 meter primary mirror
will survey all available sky in its view every third night it aims to be operational by 2022
and will detect both nearby fast-moving objects as well as larger and slower objects further away
the near-earth object survey telescope or neo-stell is the most recently designed
telescope with nasa having approved of its design and implementation mid-2021
equivalent to a one meter telescope it's something completely new with a fly eye design that includes
a single reflector with multiple sets of optics and charge coupled devices sensitive photon
detectors that produce images with the widest field of view of 45 square degrees it will be able
to survey the majority of available visible sky in one night if the first prototype is successful
three more will be installed around the planet the wide field infrared survey explorer
or wise is a 0.4 meter infrared wavelength space telescope that searches for near-earth
objects under the neowise mission this system is not found on planet itself instead it's a
spacecraft the asteroid spotter works in the sky sending imagery back to our planet the craft
initially experienced a few hiccups but since all four of its sensors became operational again
wise has made 2.28 million asteroid observations approximately 0.15 million asteroid observations
per year the panoramic survey telescope and rapid response system or pan stars includes two 1.8
meter rich accretion telescopes and is located at haleakala in hawaii the panstar's neo survey
searches the entire sky north of the celestial equator taking three to four weeks to map the area
the space surveillance telescope or sst originally from mexico but now installed in western australia
is a 3.5 meter telescope that can detect discern and track small objects in deep space with its
wide field of view of six square degrees using advanced speed regulator servo control technology
it is one of the fastest and most agile telescopes of its size able to scan all visible sky over six
clear nights the zwicky transient facility or ztf was designed to detect transient objects
that change or very quickly in brightness as well as fast-moving objects these include supernovae
gamma-ray bursts collisions between neutron stars comets and asteroids with a 1.2 meter
telescope boasting a field of view of 47 square degrees it can scour and collect images from the
entire northern sky in three nights not only that it also scans the milky way plane twice a night
doing the dinosaurs to extinction the first massive space rock to reach earth known
as chiksulub hit down in the area of mexico some 66 million years ago the second known as
boltish which has been considered the cause of our warming climate hit 000 years later in the ukraine
asteroids are essentially considered minor planets astronomical objects that orbit
the sun that cannot quite be classified as planets or comets due to their composition
as a huge lump of space rock they contain some elements that existing planets do
but not all they are hard heavy and as we learn from the jurassic era can hit with enough weight
to obliterate nothing in our galaxy and those beyond stand still everything moves
constantly seemingly heading towards some point in the universe with no known direction
while it can feel choreographed and predictable it is not like ice skating among first timers with
the amount of planetary debris and space rock out there it sure will be bumped again sooner or later
do you remember the 2013 chilliambits meteor in russia hundreds of people saw it with a naked
eye as clear as daylight yet it all happened so quickly would we be able to stop a similar event
according to the united states congress we would need at least five years to prepare any attempt
to deflect an asteroid we cannot simply lift the earth's skirt and quick step to the side
which leaves us with only one option we would need to blow it up or veer it off course with
nuclear explosives or an intense laser pulse before it does the same to us although that's
way easier said than done it is also yet to be proven possible but there's a first time for
everything and we've not yet made our first time in truth that's a good thing because while we
have the technology to spot an object on course to earth we still have the time to improve our
technology to deflect one we kind of only get one shot at it with limited resources to test various
deflection systems we seem to be waiting for that one shot a make or break moment for humanity
these detection systems are ultimately managed and controlled by artificial intelligence
computer systems able to perform tasks that would normally be tackled by humans but at a much faster
and more in-depth rate ai itself is used across various boards and industries for various results
and works by combining large amounts of data with faster than human processing and intelligent
algorithms allowing the specifically designed software to learn automatically through patterns
and features from the data it is fed much like a child learning at school but faster and far more
absorbent the entire process involves multiple data inputs in the case of searching the skies
it will identify and review tens of thousands of images of our heavens to find connections between
them and then compare that with the information from any previously or currently undefined
data with the new ai systems found in more technologically advanced telescopes images are
captured of asteroids heated by the sun as these space rocks warm up they release heat which is
then detected as faint infrared radiation through studying these infrared signatures scientists are
able to determine the size of an asteroid and then compare it to previous observations made
by optical telescopes on the ground similar to the way an x-ray generator can see our bones through
our skin muscle and tissue artificial intelligence asteroid detecting systems can see through the
humongous mass of space matter to spot a moving object it is the same principle but obviously on
an unfathomable scale as far as warning systems go and we've only mentioned a few in this video
it seems that every inch of our sky certainly is covered fortunately this means that should
any asteroid or moving object pose a threat to earth and humanity we will discover it long before
it results in any kind of catastrophic extinction event here on earth however suggested systems and
craft that will intercept divert or destroy these wayward planet destroying space rocks
namely laser and nuclear weaponry are still to be tested for now we'll have to wait to
cross that bridge when we get to it so what do you think should we look at ai technology more often
tell us in the comments if you enjoyed the video be sure to give it a like and subscribe
to our channel for more amazing space videos as always thanks for watching fact nominal