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.
Episode 44: Asteroids