the speed of these things just a few millimeters a second, just a few millimeters. so if you can find it, say, ten years in advance before it was going to cross the earth s orbit when we are there, then you would just give it a little nudge. the planetary society made the grant to the astronomers in spain who found asteroid 2012 da 14. so it s a niche business of finding these fast moving, relatively small objects. still tremendous destructive power. anyway, what we want to do is get these spacecraft with silver panels that would pump lasers and shoot the lasers at the rock and inject the stuff that s burning off, evaporating would give it a little tiny rocket motor nudge. so it would miss the earth when it comes around. yet, is it true, as i have read, that this meteor, which
joining me now, bill nye the science guy. bill, an honor to see you. ezra, it is great to see you. and the answer to your question, are we perfectly safe? is the universe out to kill us? is somewhere between well there is no evidence say again. that is not all that comforting, i wanted to be perfectly safe. oh, but here is the deal. we humans, through the process of science, the best idea humans have ever had, we can do something about it. so here is the idea. the by the way, asteroid 2012 da-14 was discovered by a grant from the planetary society of i admit, i m biased, i m the ceo. astronomers have developed these
science guy. bill, an honor to see you. ezra, it is great to see you. and the answer to your question, are we perfectly safe? is the universe out to kill us? is somewhere between well there is no evidence say again. that is not all that comforting, i wanted to be perfectly safe. oh, but here is the deal. we humans, through the process of science, the best idea humans have ever had, we can do something about it. so here is the idea. the by the way, asteroid 2012 da-14 was discovered by a grant from the planetary society of i admit, i m biased, i m the ceo. astronomers have developed these areas. it represents the number that we have catalogued represents about 1% of the asteroids that are out
can i get guidance from the control room? yes, it is, let s listen. 46 it cannot hit. its orbit is known so accurately we can project through most of the 21st century and right now looking at the possibility, very tiny possibility that it could hit the earth in the year 2080. i expect that will go away and know we re safe from this asteroid for a long time. how would you use the information that matt was talking about. the information that the radar can give us. lance s information is helpful in computing the orbit. we will have essentially nailed the orbit of this, one of the best in our catalog, it s that accurate. all right. we are 50 seconds away, 49, the clock is counting down, and at that point in just a few seconds, that is the closest point that the da-14 will be to our planet. to our planet in centuries
the scary news is, the 130,000 metric ton astroid called da-14 is the size of half a football field, and it will be much closer than the moon. in fact, it will thread the needle between earth and the roughly 600 satellites around us. the ones that your cell phone relies on, possibly even smashing one on its way by. but if that s why you re thinking this is a long way from all of us way down here walking the streets, you may want to think again. the last close call turned out to be a direct hit. it was 1908, and luckily it hit the middle of nowhere, siberia, decimating 1,000 miles of trees but no people. if a very large astroid hit, it would probably create the same kind of disaster that wiped out the dinosaurs. reporter: amazingly, no one knew it was headed our way until a spanish dentist and amateur astronomer randomly discovered it a year ago. nasa doesn t have the resources to look for astroids, which is