The Science in _Don_t Look Up_ with Adam McKay and Dr. Amy Mainzer

0:04 This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, personal astrophysicist. Today, we're going to talk about protecting Earth from space. Chuck, always good to have you, man. Always a pleasure to be here, man. Yeah.

0:22 Honestly, I think today's show should be called Destroying Earth from Space.

0:27 From Space.

0:28 Or from within.

0:30 Or from within.

0:33 Ooh.

0:34 Because we seem to be doing our damnedest to get it done, don't we?

0:39 I try to turn a blind eye to that, but I shouldn't. What we have to help us put some of that content on the table is writer, producer, director, Adam McKay. Adam, welcome to StarTalk, dude.

0:54 Hello.

0:55 Thanks for having me. Adam gets an applause. Now, you know, we don't applaud our guests here. You have never applauded anyone ever, Chuck. You know I have never applauded a guest, Neil.

1:05 That is true.

1:06 But I'm just so impressed with what he has just accomplished.

1:11 Well, let me put some of his resume out there. So you're a former head writer for SNL. All right. And you're co-founder of Upright Citizens Brigade. Very cool. I love their work. And you're also a co-writer, along with Will Ferrell, with Anchorman. That was cool. Talladega Nights. Stepbrothers. Okay.

1:31 Co-founder of Funny or Die. All right. That's a production company, if I remember correctly. Is that right? I think so.

1:37 That's right.

1:38 And wrote and directed The Big Short. I distinctly remember that movie.

1:44 Yes.

1:44 It was like, oh, my gosh, this has happened. And we lived through it. But that's not why we have you on the show right now. That's right, because quite.

1:51 Frankly, all of that is gold-plated dross in comparison to why we have Adam on the show.

2:00 Which is because of my workout routine, which I'm going to share with you today.

2:05 Exactly.

2:06 My diet, my weight program.

2:08 That's exactly not the reason.

2:11 You look like a 50-year-old.

2:14 Adam has a new Peloton class he wants to... He wants to promote... He's trying to plug his new Peloton class.

2:26 So, Adam, you wrote, directed, and produced the Netflix hit Don't Look Up. It's a movie.

2:36 That is correct.

2:37 Yes.

2:38 It is star-studded, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence. There's a dozen. Famous people who have each starred in their own films, you manage to collab them together for this script. And it's about an asteroid, a comet, that's discovered to be headed towards Earth, putting all of life on Earth at risk.

3:06 And the travails and challenges and troubles of the scientists trying to alert the public, and everyone ignores them or discounts it. What the hell were you thinking?

3:19 I love it.

3:22 What?

3:23 Who told you to make this?

3:24 Why?

3:25 Who?

3:26 Why? Did your mama tell you? Explain yourself, please.

3:30 You know, like a lot of ideas, it came from Stark Terror, which is the last 5, 10, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, back to 1965. of just our culture and our leaders and our industry and our media ignoring that we're flooding the, you know, atmosphere, the climate with CO2 and we are on a bad, bad path. And, you know, I had the fortunate, unfortunate experience of colliding with a lot of this information from reading scientific reports And reading a great book by David Wallace Wells called uninhabitable earth, which if you haven't read it, read it and it will wake you up when it comes to the climate. And I really started like my wife can tell you at a certain point, I was losing sleep and I kept kind of looking at our

4:30 world and going, what am I missing here? And rather than do, you know, my initial idea was, oh, do a big, dramatic, dystopic, serious movie. But then a friend of mine who's a journalist made an offhanded joke, David Sirota, where he just said, it's like it's Armageddon, but the asteroid is coming and no one cares. And I was like, that's it. And then I thought if we could laugh, you know, if we could have some laughter about the crazy world we live in, as well as some big emotions, that maybe that's something that could go out into the world.

5:07 and hit millions of people and maybe jar some feelings loose. So that was it.

5:13 It was definitely- You were born to make this movie. That's what you're telling me.

5:17 I am telling you that, that I was plucked from the Schuylkill River outside Philadelphia, where I'm from. And they said, this child shall make a movie for Netflix.

5:30 Like Dirty Moses pulled from the river. His child shall save us. We've got to clean him up first. Well, he said school kill. That's why I called him Dirty Moses.

5:44 School kill's dirty.

5:46 Yeah, I'm from Philly too, so I can say that. I'm also from Philly, so I can say that.

5:50 Where are you from in Philly?

5:52 I grew up in, well, I was in West Philadelphia. I was born and raised.

5:56 I know, West Philly.

5:57 The Speed Boys, the basketball team. Yeah, but I actually, when I was six years old, my parents looked at me and they said, Oh, we got to move because this boy, he can never make it here. So then we moved to very waspy Chestnut Hill where I fit in just perfectly.

6:15 Oh, Chestnut. That explains everything, Chuck. There it is right there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

6:21 Okay.

6:22 So, Adam, what enabled you to amass this level of talent? I'm presuming, I mean, these are people who are well paid in their own movies. So is there some kind of social cause that they get to justify doing this without having to get their normal paycheck?

6:42 No, no. I mean, you know, the cool thing is I got to give a lot of credit to Netflix. You know, Netflix read this crazy script and was just like, yep, we'll roll with this. And, you know, the whole kind of emotional impetus for the project was the idea that there's hundreds of millions of us out there that are freaking out, even though if you flip through the TV channels or you look on, you know, parts of social media, people seem like they're freaking out about other things or they're, you know, they don't care or it's about the stock market or it's about, you know, politicians' legacies. And the idea was there's a lot of us out there that can feel what's going on. And that played out with the actors. All the actors we went to were like, yup,

7:33 I want to laugh about this.

7:35 I want a piece of this. Yeah, but Adam, you started describing your concerns based on climate change, but you didn't make a movie about climate change. Maybe it's allegorical, but you had to come into my place, into my universe, and tell a Tell a climate change story where you don't even mention climate change? Why are you coming in my space to do this? Because your space and your people have been trying to kill us since the inception of your whole science. It's always about us. The universe is trying to kill us. That's true.

8:13 I get that.

8:15 So at what point did you say, maybe if I told it about climate, no one would pay attention? So let me tell it about asteroids. So this is a storyteller's ruse, right?

8:25 Yeah, yeah, in a way, because I think one of the tricky things with the climate crisis, which you gentlemen I'm sure know, is that it's slow and creeping, even though now it's getting much faster and much more overt. But I think one of the tricky things is, you know, the way we're wired as humans is we know how to freak out and run from a bear or we know how to like deal with a serial killer. Like we all get that. But the idea that these gases, you know, this carbon that we're burning is creating.

8:59 That you can't see. Yeah.

9:01 That you can't see. And you have to go to climate scientists who God bless them. Aren't really, you know, built to like be the PR front for this story. I think it just falls in a tricky area. And. So I thought by replacing the climate crisis with a comet, which is something we all sort of mostly get, like that's scary, would put the spotlight on our messed up human reaction. And that's really what the movie's about. I mean, the movie's really about how we've, you know, befouled, twisted, and mutated the very ways that we talk to each other through social media, through media, through career, through money.

9:50 And that's really ultimately what the movie's about.

9:53 Chuck, did you hear how politely he referenced the media ineptitude of scientists?

9:59 Right.

10:00 What phrase did you use?

10:01 Not just that, but the way he basically cajoled the public in their response. Because this movie could have just as easily been called, hey, dumbass, that could have been the name of the movie.

10:16 Right.

10:19 I mean, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

10:21 I didn't say you said that, Adam.

10:24 Let me defend that point.

10:25 He didn't put those words in your mouth.

10:27 I didn't put those words in your mouth, Adam.

10:29 I mean, the people at large have been, you know, chest deep in BS spin and marketing for decades. And I think it's tricky. I mean, you look at like the resistance to the vaccine and Well, like, you know, for decades, people have been getting sold, you know, crazy drugs like Oxycontin. Their doctors are telling them, oh, yeah, take this. And then we're surprised when like a vaccine comes out and people are like, I don't know about that.

10:59 So there's been a lot of like marketing, PR, twisting, turning about science, which is crazy. And it kind of makes people have to like figure out how science works and what real science is versus science. marketing pr science so we're in a tricky spot and and uh so no you know it was cool to see people's reactions for for the movie because you know it went worldwide and everyone was kind of like oh yeah i get that.

11:30 So let me ask and i gotta i gotta i gotta read my tweet i gotta read my tweet okay i i don't know if you saw my tweet adam but i'm gonna read it right now.

11:37 I did I think I repeated it. I love some love from Neil. I took it.

11:45 Some Twitter love. I said, finally saw the Netflix film Don't Look Up, a fictional tale of a nation distracted by pop culture and divided on whether to heed dire warnings of scientists. Everything I know about news cycles, talk shows, social media, and politics tells me the film was instead a documentary.

12:09 That's great.

12:11 That's fantastic. I stood there flat-footed and put it out there.

12:17 Before you go any further, since you said that, Neil, since you just said that, the fact that it's a documentary, what was the pushback, if any, Adam, from what community or any community that saw this and said, what the hell are you doing? Or That's a bunch of BS or, oh, look at you, you, whatever. Was there any of that?

12:42 Oh yeah, yeah, we got some of that. I mean, anytime you do a comedy, you know certain people are gonna be with it or not with it. And so that's a given, but then yeah, there was.

12:51 Some- He means, Chuck, anytime you offend people, people are going to be, that's what he means. Anytime you do a comedy, right? Well, it ain't comedy unless somebody's offended.

13:04 I mean, we've definitely had certain quarters of the media.

13:08 We're not too happy with the movie. I mean, we go pretty hard at the collective media. There was one paper that's pretty famous for climate denial where, you know, their critic did not care for the movie. So you got some of that, um, But for the most part, once the movie premiered on Netflix, no, it was a great universal response of, we know what that's saying. It was really heartening, actually, because I think there's this idea that people don't get it, that people are bored, they want entertainment, and it was like, no people actually know what's going on and they're frustrated with the BS so it was a cool moment to see that to see that people across the political divide I mean the weird thing about this movie is it got some great responses

13:58 across the red blue political divide which you know I didn't know what to expect but when I saw that it was it was actually hopeful cool cool.

14:13 Okay So at this point, we're going to reveal some of the things that happened at the end of the movie. Spoiler alert! So you can sort of fast forward to the next segment if you'd like to right now. So I was particularly intrigued by Meryl Streep's character playing the President of the United States. And there's a... Is she based on some amalgam of personalities out there that you thought would do just right as president?

14:46 No, no, just one. Sorry, sorry.

14:52 No, I mean, there's definitely a big old tablespoon of the last president in there, that sort of blinding narcissism, only responding to the moment, no foresight, no question that's in there. But, you know, hey, I talked to Meryl about it, and you know, there's also a little bit of Bill Clinton in there. There's some, you know, the used car salesman, kind of slick, you know, sort of nefarious Bill Clinton. There's also, you know, half a tablespoon of George W. Bush, dangerously unqualified. So unfortunately- Well.

15:28 Plus it was the announcement on the battleship. The announcement on the ship was part of that, right?

15:33 Exactly.

15:34 So that's why I didn't, so Chuck, I didn't, uniquely identify any one actor with any one real other person. There was enough of an amalgam there that I saw all of society, all of American society, folded into practically all of those characters. From the talk show host. I'm not as smart as either one of you, so.

16:04 What I saw was what I wanted to see. I saw what I wanted to see.

16:11 I was wondering, Adam, up to that point, are people just a lens? Not a lens. Are they their own filter? And they will then see in this, like what Chuck said, what they want to see without really grasping the fuller storytelling that you imbued it with.

16:27 I mean, I was really happy with how people got it. I mean, people... got the idea, you know, there's jokes in the movies about super donors being allowed in the White House. Clearly the media is just concerned with good cheer and keeping the ratings up. And it was pretty amazing to see those reactions. And even the ending of the movie where, you know, once all the white noise of our kind of for-profit kind of jumble of media goes away, how things got real and got about family and, Faith, like people really got into it. I was like really happy with that part of the response, even though there was certainly an element that was like didn't dig it.

17:13 For the most part, though, the public at large was was dialing into it. So, you know, you never know. You have these feelings. You make a movie. Kind of seems like how the world is now. I mean, you even look at the White House now. which is, you know, the opposition party. And then the Congress is owned by the opposition party. Well, what's going on with them? They're stuck in the mud because of dirty money and they're not doing anything. So, you know, these problems, I think we've been scammed in some ways with this red blue game.

17:45 Yes.

17:46 I think it's all about dirty money, big money. And if we could just get that out, things would start moving a lot better. So, It was cool to see people around the world identify with that and know that was the case.

18:00 So let me ask you this. Did you do this on purpose or was it just a byproduct of or a natural outworking of what you just mentioned? At the end, there was kind of a admirable nod to A.I., in a very humorous way where the technology and the prediction or the predictive analytics of technology came true, but at the same time, the reliance upon the people who run technology effed everything up. Was that purposeful?

18:36 Wow.

18:36 Chuck went deep. Chuck went like three layers into the moussaka, into the lasagna with that one. I like it. Yeah, I mean, like, you know, it's incredible, these algorithms that they use for social media.

18:51 Wait, wait, wait, wait. Chuck, it sounded like he didn't intend any of that at all. Yeah, I did that on purpose. Adam, that's what you sounded like just then. I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah, I was that brilliant when I wrote that part.

19:07 By the way, that's a much better answer. I should have been mysterious and just said, Chuck, you got to find your own meaning in it. We just make what we do. That would have been a much cooler... If I had a pipe, I would have taken a hit off a pipe. Like, find your own meaning.

19:24 No, but you're right, though.

19:25 I mean, God, you guys know these algorithms they have for search engines and for social media and the way they corral us and get emotions out of us. We were definitely playing around with that. But I like that Leo's character was told what his death was going to be, and then it wasn't that death. Even though you're right, the president did have her death that was predicted. So as much as the algorithms try and corral us, I guess we were trying to make a point, like, you can still stop it.

19:57 You know? Right, right, right. Without that kind of message, you know, then you're just pissing people off, depressing people. So, let me, it's a rare moment. I have two sort of comedic people in front of me.

20:12 I love that I'm the sorta.

20:14 No, no.

20:14 That was hurtful.

20:17 No, no. Did I say sort of? I didn't mean that. Okay. Given that I have two comedic talents in front of me, I'd like to ask, do you think comedy is the best way to change someone's heart? Wow.

20:35 Wow. I have my, but I'll let Adam do this one.

20:41 Well, see what you think, Chuck. I mean, here's the funny thing is, you know, the reason we chose comedy with this is comedy is great in the sense that it's kind of a truth detector. Like if you wanted to go on stage and do a standup routine about how billionaires are taxed too much, I dare you to get a laugh off of that. Like, An audience will know that's bogus. And people have tried. They had a Fox News comedy show about 15 years ago they tried to do, and it just bombed.

21:16 True.

21:17 And so I think comedy is great. And I also think comedy, you have to have a perspective. You can't laugh at something if you're in the middle of being traumatized by it. Like, it's hard to laugh about a crazed... you know, monkey attacking you. But like, if you can look from a distance at a crazed monkey, you can laugh at it. So I think comedy does a lot of things. I think it's a truth detector. I think it also means you have to have some perspective. You have to have a little bit of a view of the world, which I, you know, personally, I think that's exactly what we need right now. The world is so overwhelming and confusing and ridiculous and traumatizing that for us to be able to step back just feels good right away. Chuck,

22:05 what do you think?

22:06 I mean, I agree with everything you just said. And I also think that unlike, you know, any other didactic message, which immediately puts people in the defensive and immediately causes them to withdraw in whatever thought pattern that.

22:23 They have already. If they disagree. If they disagree.

22:27 Comedy disarms you because you're laughing first as an impulse to And then you go, hey, which is always my favorite humor when, you know, whether I'm doing it or somebody else is. My favorite thing to happen on stage is when I tell a joke and people laugh and then they groan.

22:48 I love that.

22:50 I love that. And my answer to that every time is too late, bitches. I already got you.

22:59 It's too late.

23:01 You laughed. It's already funny.

23:03 You can't come back and groan.

23:05 I think that's spot on because it's like you laugh and then you realize in laughing the world is not black and white.

23:13 Exactly.

23:14 All contradictions. Like I always say with this movie, people are like, oh, you're trying to warn people about climate and you're doing all this. Well, what are you doing? I'm like, don't get me wrong. I'm a moron. Like if there's a new ad for like a Taco Bell combo burrito filled with mini tacos, I'm like, I want to eat that. And like, I'm way too invested in is Affleck and Jennifer Lopez happy together? Like, I'm way too invested in that. So it's like we're all like this.

23:48 I mean, we're all animals that love like great smells and bright colors. But, you know, there's a little part of us, too, that can do something like step back and take a look at stuff. So that combo is kind of the whole game, which I think is what Chuck's talking about.

24:03 It is, and by the way, Adam, let me just say this. I'm stealing your idea of the taco stuffed burrito, which I'm going to try and sell to Taco Bell and call it the pregnant burrito.

24:16 By the way, wouldn't you order that in a heartbeat?

24:19 Without a doubt, a taco stuffed burrito?

24:22 My God.

24:23 A burrito that has many tacos inside of it?

24:25 Yes.

24:26 There's like 20 little tacos inside a burrito.

24:29 It's a burrito made of tacos.

24:31 Neil, I mean, I get that you're a scientist.

24:33 No, that's too meta for me. That's too meta.

24:35 You're a profession the scientific community never could have thought of what Chuck and I have been around here.

24:41 Yeah, the burrito turducken. Come on. Oh, I love it.

24:46 I love it. So what do you know about, the movie's been out for several months now, Don't Look Up on Netflix. What do you know about what impact it has had? You know, some of it's anecdotal.

24:59 In some cases, Netflix gives you all these crazy statistics. But, I mean, it's been really cool. I've just seen some stories where an opposition leader in the French government the other day referred to Macron's inaction over the climate as he's like Janie Orlean from Don't Look Up. I saw the organizer of COP in Glasgow refer to Don't Look Up.

25:25 I've seen... It's been mentioned in articles about leaders that are denying science. Extinction Rebellion in the UK has rallied around the film and has been mentioning it. So that's really cool. And then they show you the stats where it's like, you know, by some estimates, 250 to 300 million people have seen the movie. And then they show you the social media responses and they're, showing you that it's four to one positive. So, you know, there's a lot of stats, there's a lot of anecdotal, but I can just say.

26:01 But I like the fact that if reference to the movie and its characters becomes part of pop culture, then I don't know what more you could ever hope a movie to do. 100%, yep. Right, right. There are movies that are in our common parlance that, you know, say, oh, let's go to Oz. Right. We know what that means.

26:23 It's part of our it's part of our lexicon, our cinematic literacy. So that's I think that's an excellent measure. And there's perhaps no better measure of the influence of a movie than people absorbing it.

26:36 The idea that there's now a phrase for self-interested leaders and media and conglomerates ignoring science and it's don't look up. And it seems to kind of be catching. I mean, it's still a little early, but if that was the result, we're doing backflips. I mean, we just tried to get something out there to kind of jar some people. And it's just a movie, so your hopes are fairly modest.

27:05 But it succeeded all of our.

27:08 Of course, the tagline of this show is the opposite of that. I end every show with, keep looking up. And so to watch the movie... to hear me say, don't look up. It's like each one of those was like a dagger to my heart.

27:23 You know what? Adam, you should have named your show F U Neil Tyson.

27:29 I felt that every time someone said, don't look up.

27:32 We were really close. We tested it. We printed up posters.

27:39 Adam, you didn't leave the viewer any hope at the end, except for the infinitely rich who went on the ship. And we didn't like any of them anyway. So what does it mean to offer no hope? This is America. We like some hope.

27:57 Well, you know, I mean, here's the thing. It's just a movie.

28:00 We like happy endings.

28:02 Yeah, it's a fictional outcome. But we definitely were very conscious of the fact that we have seen thousands of movies for decades. that have the guaranteed happy ending. And we were trying to say, we're not audience members, we're part of this. And unless you do something, there's not a guaranteed happy ending. So it was amazing to see how much that ending really hit people just because it broke the kind of routine that we're used to. But make no mistake about it, science is powerful. Science is the Excalibur on the wall. If we take it down and use it, Uh, we can deal with this, this urgent, urgent climate crisis. I mean, we have renewable energy.

28:48 It's already what you could have had. No, Adam, what you could have had was a small faction of people in your movie who watched star talk. Okay. They band together and then they figure out how to convince everybody how to properly deflect the asteroid and earth is saved. See, you could have had that.

29:11 That could have been the ending. Maybe we'll release that version. The director's cut. We could have had a bunch of people laughing at Chuck's stand-up, and then through the joy of their laughter, they see the world clearly, and they get the governments to do it. It could have been either one of those.

29:28 Or we could have had the reality of that same scenario where they're actually egging on the end of the world because they're watching my stand-up.

29:38 Um, no, but.

29:42 Rather than sit through Chuck's routine, they'd rather the world end? Is that what you're saying, Chuck?

29:46 Even so, come asteroid now!

29:51 So Adam, you probably got this in your stream. When I posted my Twitter comment about the film, the response was wide and varied and many were humorous. One of them said, by the end of the film, I was rooting for the comet. They didn't care about anybody. So Adam, let me get at least a little half serious here.

30:12 If a movie has the power to move people intellectually, emotionally, what you have done with Don't Look Up is hold up a mirror to us all. But a movie also has the power to offer a solution. And you didn't offer a solution. A solution to cut through the brush and bramble and the muck and mire of social media and political idiocy. So you could have, and you didn't.

30:48 So what do you want people to do?

30:54 Yeah, I mean, I think this movie was a kick in the pants. I mean, this movie was, you know, what we're missing when it comes to the climate crisis is will in action, right? Those two things. And that a lot of people don't feel the urgency in their bones. And I'm not saying they're at fault. It just is what it is. So this movie was designed to be a big old kick in the pants. And what I hope is I hope other people, and certainly our production companies doing it, I want to see other movies, other TV shows. I want to see, you know, the news start to cover, the media start to cover the different ways we can deal with this because there are a lot of ways we can. I mean, we have the renewable energy. Of course we do. There's some early research

31:43 going on with carbon removal that's really exciting.

31:46 Carbon sequestration, yeah.

31:48 Yeah, but the fossil fuel companies... will come in and use those solutions as a way to slow us down. So you've got to kind of distinguish between the good faith and bad faith solutions. But yeah, it is ultimately one movie. And we could only tell so much of a story. And the goal of it was a kick in the pants, a moment of identification for people that have felt gaslit, and a chance for people to have a little perspective on how, you know, I was going to say, am I allowed to curse?

32:20 No, who cares?

32:21 Oh, I was going to say bat shit crazy our world is. I was going to say guano crazy our world is.

32:28 I like that.

32:29 Yeah, guano is worth more money anyway on the open market. So that was.

32:35 The goal of the movie.

32:36 That was the goal of the movie. And yeah, you're 100% right, Neil.

32:41 Well, let me just dovetail on that for, you know, being serious, which I try not to do.

32:45 He just gave us a beautiful ending to the segment.

32:47 Yeah, but I gotta do this. I have to do this, Neil. And that is when you talk about the solution. So Yale and George Mason have a study. And in that study, one of the things that was most prominent is the fact that one of the biggest problems with climate is that people do not talk about it. So when you talk about the impact of movies having a shockwave impact The fallout is if people talk about it, that is part of the solution.

33:18 You just gave my answer in your question. Yeah, that's it. I don't think people realize how much power they have in just the people they talk to, the way they behave. feeling and emotion i mean you know advertising companies are trying to replicate word of mouth that's what they're trying to replicate but every study shows like nothing's more powerful than people just talking to each other so that was it that was the goal of this one let's get a little spark going and uh.

33:48 I'm going to summarize what both of you just said by quoting ray bradbury and so ray bradbury will take us out of this segment he said when asked by a fan Because Ray Bradbury, the science fiction writer, said, why do you always portray these apocalyptic futures for humanity? Is that the future you think we're going to have?

34:10 And he says, no. I show you those futures so you know to avoid them. Ooh, very nice.

34:17 That's good.

34:18 That is good stuff.

34:19 That's good.

34:20 You know it's not a competition, Neil.

34:26 I'll do the plug, guys.

34:28 And as always.

34:29 This segment is brought to you by Exxon. Exxon, doing all your oil and gas needs. Exxon, care for you and your family.

34:39 Exxon, don't look up.

34:41 Oh, don't look up. Adam, great to have you. Keep being crazy out there and doing things that no one else would even think of doing and thereby changing the world for the better. When we come back, we're going to invite in my friend and colleague, Amy Mainzer. who's an astrophysicist, who's one of the world's experts on planetary protection, protecting Earth from asteroids. And she's going to talk about a recent mission launched by NASA to test whether we have the power to deflect asteroids when StarTalk returns. We're back, StarTalk.

35:19 We're talking about cosmic things that can harm humans on Earth. Coming off a great interview with Adam McKay, writer, producer, director, of Don't Look Up, the Netflix hit movie. And now we bring in a friend and colleague, Amy Mainzer. Amy, welcome back to StarTalk.

35:38 Hey, thanks.

35:39 It's great to be back.

35:40 The last I checked in on you, you were at the Jet Propulsion Labs in Pasadena, California. And where are you now?

35:48 Well, I have since moved, and now I'm at the University of Arizona in the Department of Planetary Science.

35:53 Very cool. One of the jewels in the crown of that institution. Whenever they look up, they find something good at the University of Arizona. So that's one of the finest departments around. So great to have you back on StarTalk. Now, why do we have you here? We could have had you anyway, just because of your expertise thinking about stuff that can harm us. But you doubled down on that as being like the science astro advisor to the film, Don't Look Up. And so what we're going to do is we solicited questions from our audience and a zillion of them came in. But just before we go to those, Chuck, you're loaded up with those questions?

36:36 I am.

36:37 Yeah, we're all good to go. We're good to go. So before we do that, let me just ask you, Amy, what did they want you to do for the film?

36:45 Well, you know, I think the role of science advisor probably is different for every movie or TV show. But for this one, there was quite a bit to do. There was basically advising people Adam and the rest of the cast and the crew on the actual asteroid and comet science, but kind of even more basically, there was a kind of a task of advising them on what it means to be a scientist and how do scientists think, and what do we do when we have bad news to tell everybody based on what we're learning.

37:13 So it's interesting, I implicated you, I think probably correctly, because they wouldn't have known this otherwise in the scripting. I was interviewed by MSNBC, And they played a scene about Don't Look Up. And they played a scene where I forgot which character asserts it. It might have been Leonardo DiCaprio. He says, a comet the size of Mount Everest is going to hit Earth. And I say, well, you don't get that size just by accident, because that was the size of the comet that took out the dinosaurs.

37:45 And so a real astronomer had to be in there infusing these reference frames. for them. So did I correctly credit you for telling them that?

37:56 Oh yeah. Thank you.

37:56 Yes.

37:57 My people, my people, our people, we all know how we got to talk.

38:04 See, just so you know.

38:07 The dinosaurs died and so are you.

38:10 So will you? That's all. Will you? Yeah.

38:12 Well, hopefully not. Hopefully not this time.

38:16 Did you also coach them on the behavior? of scientists as scientists rather than just script points?

38:23 Yeah, we really talked about a lot of different aspects of what it means to be a scientist. Just, you know, how do scientists think? What are the things that sort of frustrate us? And how do we, you know, how do we succeed? And sometimes how do we fail when we try to communicate with the public and with people who are in power to make decisions about what's going to happen to all of us?

38:41 Yeah, but OK, but wait a minute, though. You are very good at communicating with the public. How do you train actors to be bad at communicating with the public? If you told them all you knew, they would have been much better at it. So how do you tell them what you don't know and have them be bad at it?

38:58 Well, it's funny because Leonardo and I especially talk a lot about this part that there's a tendency in science to use a lot of jargon.

39:06 I just love that you can say that. First name basis.

39:09 First of all, don't even try to just... bury that lead, Amy.

39:16 Don't even try. Let the woman be first name basis with all these people, dude.

39:21 Wait a minute, no.

39:22 You know, she didn't call him Leo.

39:24 Wait a minute. Leonardo and I, we talk a lot about it. It's like, and we know that you're not doing a seance. with Da Vinci.

39:32 Right, okay.

39:35 Go ahead, I'm sorry.

39:36 Which would have been very cool.

39:37 That would have been even cooler.

39:38 If that's possible, that would have been very cool.

39:41 Even more cool.

39:42 We talked a lot about just, you know, what is it that's so confusing sometimes? Obviously, we use a ton of jargon, and we do it sometimes without even meaning to. I mean, you guys encounter this all the time, right? I mean, we use words in a scientific context, same word, use it in everyday life, and it takes on a totally different meaning sometimes. The word uncertainty, for example, in science, that has a very specific definition. We use it in almost a mathematical context. But if you say in everyday life, well, I'm uncertain as to whether there is a rattlesnake in my backyard, that means you don't know, right? But to a scientist, that word is used in a very different way.

40:20 So we talk a lot about that.

40:21 So people don't know that we can quantify our ignorance. And that's actually a profound place to be in a world of uncertainties.

40:29 That's very scientist of you. We can quantify our ignorance.

40:36 Yeah, well, science deals in probabilities all the time, right? I mean, that's just part of what we do as scientists is we are trying to quantify how likely it is something's going to happen.

40:45 Or not happen, yeah.

40:46 Or not happen, yeah. And that's sometimes kind of a hard thing to get across. But I think also, too, just generally, you know, more basically, can we agree that there are facts that are supported by scientific data that are true? And that's a big theme of the movie. Can we have something that we all agree on that is true?

41:05 So you weren't just a random astrophysicist to advise them. You actually have expertise in asteroid risks. So what can you tell us? Give us just some numbers. How many asteroids have us in their path? Just so we can freak everybody out before we start the Q & A.

41:22 Well, the very good news is, okay, full stop, the movie is pure science fiction. Okay, we don't know of a giant comet.

41:27 No, it's not. You're lying. That was a documentary. I told everybody that. Okay, go on.

41:33 We're very lucky. There is no comet that we know about that is about to smack into the Earth in six months. Full stop. We don't know of any such object.

41:40 Seven months, yes, but six months, we're safe. Okay, let's point there and let's go straight to questions. Chuck, what do you have?

41:46 I don't know what you're doing in six months and two days, but... Wouldn't make any plans. Live it up for now. Yep, live it up for now.

41:56 Give me some questions.

41:57 Go for it.

41:58 Here we go.

41:58 Alex Reynoso, who kind of dovetails on Dr. Tyson's questions, says, Hello, Alex from Mexico here. My question for Dr. Mainzer is, were you asked for any new ideas for the movie, or did they just ask you to fact-check the ideas they already had?

42:16 I love that question.

42:17 If so, what was the craziest idea that you fact-checked?

42:22 Well, I would say, yeah, we had a lot of back and forth about the script. And it was, you know, we started working on it more than two years ago now. So it's been a while. First off, I had to work with Adam to figure out the size of the comet, actually. Well, first of all, we had to establish that it was a comet and not an asteroid. So that was number one.

42:40 Number two, he wanted it to be a lot bigger than I thought was a good idea for the script. So I had him kind of downsize it a little bit. And I told him at a certain point, if the thing is too big, there is no movie, right? There's no hope at all. So we wanted to try to size it to something that is large enough that it would have caused a lot of damage in the movie. Obviously, that's part of the plot, but not so large that everybody would just give up. and stop trying right off the bat. So that was number one. So getting the size of the comet right was kind of one of the first orders of business.

43:14 Interesting.

43:15 That's really cool.

43:16 All right.

43:16 But how about weird, but was there something you added other than the size of the comet that they already knew was going to hit? Was there some extra plot line you said, you know, you got to add this to the storytelling, otherwise it's not real?

43:28 Yeah. Yeah, so there's a there's kind of a key. I'm assuming this is spoilers are okay here. I'm hoping everybody's seen the movie at this point. But yeah, one of the things that we talked a lot about that is is features pretty heavily in the plot is the concept that somebody is going to want to come along and instead of just deflecting the comments. they're going to want to try to mine the comet instead.

43:49 Yes, I was very impressed with that turn of the plot line.

43:53 Yeah, so basically there's sort of a key moment when it looks like everybody, in spite of all their differences, has kind of gotten all their stuff together and we're going to deflect the comet and everything is going according to plan. And then all of a sudden there's a wrench in the works.

44:06 A plot twist. Very good. And we're reminded that indeed comets and asteroids are very rich in minerals and natural resources. So That factual dimension of it made it comedically authentic for someone to say, let's exploit this for economic gain.

44:24 Yeah, Jeff Bezos comes in and says, hey. I got a trillion dollars up there coming at us.

44:31 Okay.

44:34 Well, in this case.

44:35 You want to blow it up?

44:36 What are you doing?

44:38 We can ship that overnight. Oh, gosh.

44:42 Yeah, no, we got to. I mean, this was something we talked a lot about in the movie because, you know, there's been a lot of talk about asteroid mining. We do have asteroid sample return missions. In fact, there's two of them. One has already brought a sample back from an asteroid, that's Hayabusa 2, and there's another that's on its way back to Earth right now, and that's Osiris-Rex.

45:00 But both of these missions are bringing back kind of the equivalent of about a baseball-sized worth of material, maybe a coffee can's worth, but that's it. We're not talking tons and tons and tons of minerals here. We're talking a baseball.

45:12 Okay, so this sample return, Amy, so we'll get to this later, maybe in the next segment, but That means you're bringing space stuff back to Earth that can't always be good, even if it did have economic value, thinking of like space viruses or something. Nice. We'll get to that. Just want to tease what could happen later. All right, Chuck, give me another one.

45:36 All right.

45:37 Let's see if we can mine these questions. I see what you did there. You see what I did there.

45:42 Yeah, well, this one's about space herpes, so no.

45:45 Chuck.

45:46 You said space virus, so anyway, here we go. Hello, Dr. Mainzer, Dr. Tyson, and Lord Nice.

45:53 Oh, please.

45:56 Since DART's counterpart, AIM, was canceled, and thus we're relying on ground-based telescopes to observe the effects of DART, will the mission still provide us with enough data to determine if a kinetic impactor could counter the scenario like the one depicted in Don't Look Up? Or will further tests be necessary? Uh, by the way, I appreciate your work on neo wise greetings from Germany. The place where we like to show off how much we know about everything. Okay, Patrick.

46:35 You could have just asked a question, Patrick. You didn't have to give us a dissertation on how you yourself are an astrophysicist. And let me ask Amy all about it. Come on, man. Okay.

46:50 Okay, so DART. Amy, quick. What's DART?

46:53 So DART is the double asteroid redirection test, first of all. And it is a mission that is going to a double asteroid. So it's an asteroid that's got a moon going around it. And the idea is to bump into the moon. So the idea is to take the spacecraft and just crash it into the moon and bump the moon a little bit so that you can see the moon's orbit change. So the idea is to test this so-called kinetic impactor technique. In other words, the energy of motion can we change the orbit of this asteroid's moon in a way that is detectable?

47:23 So what is AIM then? What happened to AIM?

47:26 So there was a proposal to have another mission that would watch the impact in real time. So basically just watch the impact happen and see whether or not there was a big explosion off the asteroid or what have you. Now, there's a couple of things. So the AIM mission didn't end up happening as proposed.

47:44 And was that an acronym? And was that an acronym?

47:46 Oh, yes. And it, I'm going to have to look it up.

47:48 Asteroid... Imaging, let me make this up. Right now, let's just do it now.

47:54 Yeah, Asteroid Imaging Commission.

47:57 Okay.

47:58 Yeah.

47:58 Maneuver, maneuver, yeah, okay.

48:00 Good question. I don't actually remember the name. I was going to go with murder.

48:03 I was going to go with murder.

48:05 Murder?

48:06 That's true. Okay, so AIM did not make it. However, they are going to watch it with the ground-based telescopes, as the questioner noted, and... And there is a CubeSat that's been provided by the Italian Space Agency that is going to be watching the impact as well. So there's that. The other thing is the Europeans have a mission that is going to go there eventually in a couple of years after the impact, and it will come back to the asteroid's moon and it's going to do a very careful mapping of the system. So hopefully between all of that, we can piece it all together.

48:36 What are these videos I've seen where it's some part of DART detaches while the rest of it collides?

48:43 Yeah, I think this is the CubeSat with the observer, the camera.

48:47 Okay, because they were together, and then they separated, and one went in for the collision.

48:51 Yeah, so I believe it's got a little friend that's going to drop off and take a look at things.

48:56 We've got to take a quick break. When we come back, more cosmic queries with a collision, end of Earth, end of all civilization expert, Amy Mainzer, advisor to the Netflix hit film Don't Look Up, when we return. We're back with Amy Mainzer. Amy, friend and colleague, planetary scientist. Amy, how do we find you on social media? Where do you hang out?

49:22 I'm on Twitter, so I'm at Amy Mainzer on Twitter.

49:26 I'm mispronouncing your last name. Shame on me.

49:28 It's either way.

49:31 M-A-I-N-Z-E-R.

49:33 You're feeling particularly German. You can say Mainzer. Mainzer.

49:37 Exactly. Don't get Chuck Starr on his accent.

49:41 Mainzer, do you have some papers?

49:44 Chuck Starr.

49:48 Your peer-reviewed papers?

49:51 I did say the American pronunciation one time in front of my German grandfather, and boy, did I get an earful.

49:59 I bet you did.

50:02 We want some more of that chuckle to fill in for him.

50:06 Say, Chuck, you're bringing back memories.

50:08 All right, let's get another question, Chuck. See how maybe we can squeeze into this final segment.

50:13 This is Dylan. He says, greeting doctors and comedians from Albuquerque, New Mexico. I was wondering what size do asteroids become dangerous? Not just Mount Everest size. I know that Earth pounds through millions of particles from space that they do nothing wrong. In other words, we get bombarded all the time. What can we expect when an asteroid that could potentially kill all life, what's the smallest that it could be?

50:43 Well, so we do have some good information about this. And the question is absolutely correct, or the questioner is absolutely correct. We do get pelted with all kinds of little particles all the time every day, about 100 tons. And we mostly see those, if we see them at all, as shooting stars. because they're tiny. These things are like sand grains or maybe the size of a grain of rice or a pea, something like that. But we know that if an object gets to be bigger, say about maybe 20 meters across, so about 60 feet, 50, 60 feet across, at that point, it can start to make it through the Earth's atmosphere more or less intact. Now, we know this is a reasonable lower limit because we have a really recent event, well, recent on astronomer timescales

51:24 in 2013, there was an object that hit over Russia and it exploded. Remember that? It exploded in the upper atmosphere and there was a shower fragments, it broke a bunch of windows, but there wasn't a big hole in the ground, right? It was mostly just an airburst explosion. And that's because the object was small enough that the atmosphere was effectively like a brick wall and really just shredded it. But if the object's closer to say 50 meters across, then what happens is you get what we have here in Arizona, which is a mile-wide hole in the ground, more or less. So very small differences in the size, relatively speaking, can make a really big difference.

52:02 Okay, for those who have never been to Arizona, she referenced a practically mile-diameter meteor crater sitting there near Winslow, Arizona. Isn't that right?

52:12 That's right, yeah.

52:13 One of the closest towns, a town that showed up in a song. I've been to Winslow, Arizona. What's that song?

52:21 It's a... I don't know.

52:22 I think it's called Mile-Wide Crater.

52:26 A really large crater.

52:30 Okay, so the takeaway from that answer, Amy, is that occasionally rice and peas falls from the sky. You said that.

52:39 Rice and peas.

52:40 We heard you say that.

52:41 Space material.

52:43 It's like Earth sweating.

52:45 It's like Earth sweating. Rice and peas.

52:47 Rice and peas.

52:48 I heard her say that. She's on the record. Rice and peas.

52:51 That's it.

52:51 The comets are helping us celebrate every day.

52:54 That's it.

52:55 That's it. Hey, so it just occurred to me because you said about the shock wave in 2013. So that was not a very big object that impacted the atmosphere to create this shock wave. So. would something decide, what would it take to actually just blow the atmosphere off? Because the first thing that it would hit would be, it would make the air like an ocean. Our atmosphere would be like an ocean, right? Because it hits it.

53:24 Wait, wait, Chuck, are you asking this question or is this a Patreon question that you're supposed to be reading from?

53:28 Oh, wait, that's from Buck Rice. Buck Rice from Rice and Peas, Arizona would like to know.

53:39 All right, let me tighten up Chuck's question for you, Amy. So at what size asteroid is unfazed by moving through the atmosphere? And then it just hits the ground as though there was no atmosphere at all. That's what you were trying to ask.

53:50 That's what I was trying to say, but I don't know what I'm talking about.

53:54 No, no, this is exactly the question. If it's a little bit bigger than 20 meters, it's going to make it to the ground mostly intact. And by the time you get to about 50 meters across, now it can blow a pretty big hole in the ground. So now the thing that hit in Meteor Crater, there's a caveat. It's made of mostly nickel iron because we found some pieces of it that didn't get completely vaporized.

54:15 But Chuck, she meant nickel plus iron when she said nickel iron, just so you know. There's not some new element that only.

54:21 She knows about nickel iron.

54:24 All over.

54:25 They're commonly found together in the universe. Supernova make them. And so they're everywhere together. So it's not a surprise we find them together in chunks of things in the solar system. So, Amy, if I remember correctly, the one that hit over Russia was a rocky, a stony meteorite, but that's not what fell in Arizona.

54:43 That's correct. Yeah, the one that hit over Russia was a kind of a common type of stony asteroid, so sort of average in its properties. But the one that impacted in Arizona about 50,000 years ago, that was made of mostly nickel and iron, so a much higher density material. It wasn't a whole lot bigger. It was about 50 meters across instead of 20 meters across, but probably a pretty high density compared to the stony object that exploded over Russia.

55:09 Wow.

55:10 And that crater, by the way, can sink a 62-story building. I've been there several times. It's great. If you ever go to Arizona, put that on your list. If you're a fan of this podcast and you go to Arizona... Wave to Amy as you go by Tucson, but then go to this crater and.

55:27 Check it out. Yeah, I definitely recommend it. It is impressive.

55:30 And I think there's a Subway concession stand up at the top. You can eat a sandwich while you're there.

55:37 I thought you were going to say the Subway stop.

55:38 I was going to say.

55:41 I was like, when did the MTA get that much? Wow. I thought Coney Island was fun.

55:50 It was.

55:52 Next up, Meteor Crater. All right, Chuck, go for it.

55:55 All right, here we go. This is, whoo. I'm going to say, haya buena cosa.

56:04 Okay?

56:05 Whatever. Haya buena cosa says, hi. Haya from the Philippines here. What would be the place where humans could possibly survive Earth's destruction? Would you still want to live after that?

56:20 Ooh.

56:21 Is there any place you can hide from a extinction level impact?

56:27 Well, let's put it this way. We know a lot about what happens because we can look back at the event that wiped out the dinosaurs, right? And in fact, Neil's home institution there at AMNH does a lot of research on this.

56:40 American Museum of Natural History, yeah.

56:42 Yeah, American Museum of Natural History has done a lot of work on this. But basically, we know from studying the fossil records that pretty much any form of life that was bigger than about 50 pounds went extinct. And that's because the food webs really collapsed. There wasn't a lot to eat for a very long time. Life did eventually come back and re-diversify after that impact event, but it took millions of years for that to happen. So it was not a fast process on our timescales. So I would say that, you know, it's bad. We definitely don't want this to happen. And we can learn about present day climate change that we're causing as human beings by looking back at that event and seeing exactly how

57:20 things unfolded. In fact, I would say the obvious conclusion from that event is that doing large uncontrolled experiments on our atmosphere is a really bad idea and we shouldn't be doing it.

57:31 Well, plus Amy, I think that there's an important point that you're making there, which is many people think that when the asteroid hits, That's what kills you, an extinction-level asteroid. No, it's because it takes out the food chain, right? It takes out the base of the food chain, and everything that eats that goes extinct, and everything that eats the animals that eat the food go extinct. And so it's this wave of extinction percolating across the tree of life that can take about how long? How long did it take all those animals to die, do we know?

58:00 Well, we know from the fossil record that it was pretty fast, but on geological timescale. So in other words, that could have been thousands of years or something like that.

58:09 Thousands of years. So we lose most of the species over thousands of years, not because they were hit by the asteroid itself, which is how you get a small asteroid, the size of Mount Everest, affecting life everywhere on Earth. And you made such an important point, Amy, that the only way that can kill life around the other side of the Earth is if it affected the climate. And then we learn what we're doing. Are we, Amy, are we an Everest scale collision?

58:40 Well, let's put it this way. We should do everything in our power to make sure that we're not the asteroid or the comet.

58:47 Our conduct is not, yeah.

58:49 Well, at least we got the first part of it right. Ass.

58:54 As an asteroid? Yes, exactly. Don't be an asteroid. Don't be an asteroid. Next question, Chuck.

59:02 Hello, everyone. My name is pronounced Bridge. Really?

59:07 Okay.

59:08 All right.

59:13 Would it be possible to eventually put a detection system at points in space like the moon or Mars, and would it even be necessary?

59:23 Wait, detection or deflection?

59:26 Oh, good thing. No, he says detection, but I like your question, too. Detection and deflection.

59:31 Yeah, let's do it.

59:32 All right. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, of course, we've got ground-based telescopes. We even have a space-based telescope right now. We have NEOWISE, the Near Earth Object Wide Field Inference Survey Explorer. NEOWISE is the project I work on. And we're building a new one that's going to go in space that will eventually replace NEOWISE because NEOWISE is now very old. That's called the Near Earth Object Surveyor.

59:52 And it's not going to go on the moon, but it's going to go just past the orbit of the moon. So not too much further away. In principle, if we have these telescopes, plus we've got the Rubin Observatory that's going to be coming online in Chile pretty soon, hopefully. And so with all of those expanded capabilities, we should be in pretty good shape. We should be able to map out where most of the really big stuff is at that point. Now, could we look at other options? Absolutely.

1:00:16 And one of the things we'll do as we start to get data from the more advanced surveys is we'll look at the population models and figure out, OK, what do we do about the rest of the objects? What's the best way to search for them? We could try building observatories on the moon and on Mars, but it's hard to do that, of course. So if we could.

1:00:34 Build observatories- Amy, I have to stop you. Everything you just said is just so that we know when to kiss our ass goodbye. Yeah. You haven't said anything about deflection. You're just talking about, oh, now we have a catalog of all the things that will kill us and the date and time. So I need more than that from you, Amy. Yes.

1:00:53 Well, well, well, okay.

1:00:54 I am hoping full stop. I am hoping that when we make our big catalog, we find nothing. And that's a great, that would be the best possible answer.

1:01:01 Good point. Okay.

1:01:02 Right.

1:01:02 We could look out there and we could see that, you know what?

1:01:05 Nothing for 10,000 years. We're good.

1:01:06 Just fine. We're good. We're fine. We're all fine here to quote from Star Wars a little bit. But you know, we could find that and that would be the best case. Of course, we don't want to, we don't want to just assume the best case though. We do want to make plans for deflection and that's, That's where the DART mission comes in. That was a test of that kinetic impactor technology, which is kind of the easiest thing you can imagine, where you just bump into the asteroid with the spacecraft. There are other technologies, though, that we could look at, like something called the Bruce Willis. Yes, yes, the Bruce Willis technology, which I'm always in favor of, but you can always send Bruce Willis. That's probably going

1:01:43 to help. But if you want to do something else, you can look at something called the gravity tractor. And I'm not talking about a John Deere tractor. I'm talking about a mass in space. So in other words, you build a really big spacecraft, something very big and heavy, and you park it next to the asteroid. And then you just sort of let the gravity of the spacecraft pull on the asteroid and try to tow it out of the way. Of course, that only works if you have a pretty long time.

1:02:11 So that's a gravitational tractor beam. I love the concept of that. Yeah. That's super cool. Chuck, I think we might have time for only one more question. This is sad. Because we're talking about the future of life on Earth. And we've got to fit it into our time slots. That's wrong. That's just wrong. Well, yeah. I mean, honestly, it makes sense, too.

1:02:30 Because we're sad. And the way we're responding.

1:02:34 To everything is sad. Yes, yes. All right.

1:02:38 I'm sorry.

1:02:39 I shouldn't be a downer on humankind.

1:02:40 I'm sure we'll get it together. Okay, here we go. This is... Daniel Kolakowski. And Daniel says, first, Dr. Tyson, were you consulted on the movie title? That's pretty funny.

1:02:57 That's good. That's good. The answer is no. But as I watched the movie, I felt each of those don't look ups as like a dagger into my heart. Because every day I tell people to look up. And they're saying, don't look up. And a movie is way more powerful than I am in messaging the public. So I, it was like tiny that, you know, the death of a thousand cuts. That's how I felt. Nice.

1:03:21 So then he says, uh, second, uh, Chuck, just take a deep breath and then pronounce my name exactly as it looks.

1:03:27 You'll get it right.

1:03:28 Okay.

1:03:28 Well, thank you for your very, thank you for your very Zen, your very Zen instructions. I hope, I hope I should have read that first because now I don't know.

1:03:39 All right.

1:03:42 And then third, Dr. Meinzer, in the opening scene where Leo is calculating the trajectory of the asteroid, how is he able to do that accurately in discrete steps rather than using a method to calculate the trajectory with calculus or a computer model? Could he really be that smart?

1:04:05 Well, what happens in the movie is we're kind of condensing a few things down, but the upshot is, is that Leo is not an expert in comet discovery. So he's going back to grad school and he's got a bunch of students with him. So I kind of thought, you know, if I were a professor in that situation, I probably would want to try to actually work out the math if I could to show the students how it's done. So in other words, use it as a teachable moment. So in the movie, he's kind of using it as a teachable moment. He's looking at a textbook.

1:04:34 He's trying to figure out the math for himself rather than just going right to the computer. He's actually trying to kind of work it out. If you look carefully, you will see that they are using their laptops and he is actually writing stuff down on the board that they're getting off of a computer. So they are actually using the computer, but there's kind of a scene in the beginning where he's he's going to try and figure it out for himself a little bit just to make sure he understands it. And I think that's what a good scientist will try to do.

1:04:57 But I think the question was, he's showing discrete steps of the location of the comet. And then one step, the separation between earth and the comet is zero. Wouldn't that happen as a continuous calculation or, or a mathematical function? Like the guy said, whose name is, we didn't pronounce, would he use calculus, which then gets you the continuous solution.

1:05:18 Oh, absolutely.

1:05:19 Yeah.

1:05:19 So you do use calculus, although the method that he's using, it's referred to as Gauss's method. And this is a sort of a classical method of orbit determination. The idea is you actually iterate. So in other words, you make an initial guess and then you kind of refine the guess based on an estimate of how far off you are.

1:05:36 And then you do it again and again and again. And after that, then you can start looking at discrete steps in time. Once you have a pretty good idea of what the orbit is, the next step is to figure out where's the object going at these specific points in time. And so that's kind of what's shown. There's sort of a two-step process there.

1:05:51 Now, Gauss is my man. Gauss is my man.

1:05:54 Gauss is the Google Maps of orbit plotting.

1:05:58 Did you know Gauss invented the method of least squares in statistics to solve the orbit of the first asteroid ever discovered? So this is deep. The asteroid Ceres was in space moving, and then it got lost in the sun's glare.

1:06:16 And it said, where do we go now? Where are we going to look?

1:06:18 Gus, I got this.

1:06:19 Okay?

1:06:20 So he used the previous measures, extrapolated into the future using the single best method possible. And to do that, he invented the method of least squares. On asteroids. I'm just saying. We got people everywhere working on stuff.

1:06:38 What a slouch he was. God, if only that gauss had tried harder.

1:06:47 What he could have made of himself, yes.

1:06:52 So let's try to slip in one more question, Chuck. See what you got.

1:06:56 Okay.

1:06:57 And Amy, you got to answer quick on this. Pretend you're on the evening news and you got to give me a sound bite. Okay, go.

1:07:02 You got it. You got it.

1:07:03 All right, here we go, guys. This will be an easy one because we almost got to it. But Michaela Negus says, what valuable resources exist in asteroids and how much money could be made by mining them? Directly related to the movie.

1:07:23 Now, I have said, Amy, that the world's first trillionaire will be the person who exploits the natural resources on asteroids. So am I right or am I wrong? Tell me here.

1:07:33 Boy, I tell you what, it's a science fiction question in a lot of ways because it's really hard to do stuff in space. We can bring back kind of baseball size or copy can size bunches of material. Bringing back a lot more than that so far has been really challenging for us. Maybe we will get there someday, but right now we're still talking baseball size amounts of material.

1:07:51 So we're still in the, I don't know, maybe we'll get there someday, but we need some Star Trek to happen first.

1:07:58 Yeah, but in 1902, before the airplane was invented, if you said in 67 years, you're going to be walking on the moon, they would have committed you. So how far off are you thinking? I mean, that can't be more far off than walking on the moon before the Wright brothers flew.

1:08:14 It can't be. It's hard to say, you know, I mean, gosh, so many people have tried to predict the future and have been way, way wrong. So, I mean, you know, who knows? But I will say.

1:08:22 We want you on record so we can embarrass you in 10 years, okay?

1:08:25 There we go. There we go. I think it... It's probably the case that in 10 years, we're not going to be towing back whole big chunks of asteroid. Probably about 10 years is too soon. But, you know, after that, who knows? It's very appealing to try to do it because we all know that, you know, there's a lot of limited resources on Earth. So we would love to get that yucky mining stuff off the planet if we can.

1:08:47 But your sentence was there's a lot of limited resources. Is that what you just said?

1:08:50 Well, I say there's... Oh, gosh.

1:08:52 It's been a long day.

1:08:54 Was that your sentence? Was that actually your sentence?

1:08:57 Can we edit that part out? Might have to.

1:09:01 Oh, gosh.

1:09:02 Yeah, no, I mean, there's limited resources on Earth, right, of all these rare materials, right? And we do use them to make things like cell phones and computer screens and all this stuff. So we definitely want to find more sources of them. But it's just really hard to do stuff in space right now. And it's hard to bring material back. Hopefully someday we can figure all this stuff out so that we can tow asteroids back in ways that are safe and then chop them up and extract the minerals without having.

1:09:26 To do it on the ground.

1:09:27 Especially asteroids that might have taken us out. Then we say, so there, we're going to eat you.

1:09:33 That's it. Revenge on those asteroids.

1:09:35 Yes.

1:09:36 All right. Last one word question, Amy. Are we all going to die?

1:09:41 Not from an asteroid.

1:09:43 Oh!

1:09:44 There you go.

1:09:45 All right.

1:09:45 You heard it here.

1:09:46 There you go, America. It's still heart disease.

1:09:49 It's still heart disease.

1:09:51 So eat your broccoli.

1:09:53 We will die if we behave the way they did in the movie you advised. So they made that clear. We've got to end it there. Amy, a delight to have you back on StarTalk. We're going to do this again. Maybe we'll talk about infestations from space and planetary protections. because I know you've got some thinking on that as well. Chuck, always good to have you, man. Always a pleasure. All right, this has been StarTalk Cosmic Queries, everything that might kill us from space. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist.

1:10:22 Keep looking up.

1:10:24 Don't look up!