Episode 44: Asteroids

Last week’s episode covered a man-made existential risk to humanity—nuclear war. But what about natural risks? Could there, right now, be a vast asteroid sailing through space that’ll collide with Earth, sending us go the way of the dinosaurs?

In this rocky episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart look at the data on how often we should expect civilisation-destroying asteroids to hit Earth - and what if anything we can do about it if one is approaching.

The Studies Show is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine, the best place on the internet to find mind-changing essays on science, technology, and human progress. We’ve both written for WiP—one of Tom’s articles there is the basis for this episode. You can find all their issues for free at worksinprogress.co.

Show notes

* Tom’s Works in Progress article on the threat from asteroids, on which this episode is based

* Toby Ord’s book The Precipice, on existential risk (including discussion of asteroids)

* Article from Finn Moorhouse on risks from asteroids

* Analysis of moon craters to work out how often asteroids hit

* And an equation to calculate the impact power of an asteroid hit, from the characteristics of the asteroid

* Report from the 2013 US Congressional hearing on threats from outer space

* NASA’s explanation of how it scans space for asteroids

* Carl Sagan’s 1994 article on the “dual-use” propensity of asteroid-deflection technology

* 2015 article on mining asteroids, and how nudging them closer could help

* Just one example of a recent article (2024) on asteroid deflection techniques

* 2023 Nature article about the successful DART mission to nudge an asteroid with kinetic force

* NASA’s DART page with extra news and info

Credits

The Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.