The Most Important Question #66: So We Can’t Just Blow Up Asteroids, Then?
In Episode 66, Quinn & Brian want to know why the hell we can't -- and further -- shouldn’t just blow up asteroids.
Our guest is the incredible Professor K.T. Ramesh, professor of mechanical engineering at John Hopkins, founding director of the Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute (HEMI), and our new hero.
You can think of HEMI as a real-life Avengers (no, we’re not just stuck on Endgame), except every member is like Bruce Banner without all the Hulk-iness or Tony Stark if he was never kidnapped by terrorists. Every day, they’re working to protect people, structures, and the planet, exploring a number of topics that are both critically important and impenetrably complicated.
One of their newest studies reveals that Hollywood and Atari may, in fact, have been incorrect when they repeatedly suggested that one viable way to defend the planet from an incoming asteroid would be blowing it up. We don’t know about you, but we certainly feel lied to – so it’s refreshing to have this conversation with Professor Ramesh to set the record straight.
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Important, Not Important Book Club: These Truths by Jill Lepore
Links:
- Learn more about Professor Ramesh & HEMI
- “If We Blow Up an Asteroid, It Might Put Itself Back Together”
- Listen to Radiolab’s Dinopocalypse ep
- Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) Mission
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- Intro/outro by Tim Blane: timblane.com
- Artwork by Amrit Pal