Phil Plait: How to defend Earth from asteroids

http://www.ted.com What's six miles wide and can end civilization in an instant? An asteroid - and there are lots of them out there. With humor and great visuals, Phil Plait enthralls the TEDxBoulder audience with all the ways asteroids can kill, and what we must do to avoid them.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the "Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Phil Plait
• Astronomy
• Science
• Technology
• TEDxFeatured
• TED
• TEDTalks
• TEDxBoulder
• asteroid
• earth

[ABitOfTheUniverse]

When a hurricane crashes into the coast of America who gets blamed?

Meteorologists.

When an asteroid crashes off the coast of America who gets blamed?

Astronomers.

When the economy crashes in America who gets blamed?

Unemployed people who have degrees in fields like Meteorology and Astronomy who weren't greedy enough to become corporate bankers.

[khaluathegreat]

I fucking love this guy. Where do I sign. I'll invest my 500 bucks. :D I"LL BE RIIICH.

[ISMOPANAMA]

How to defend Earth from asteroids???

Simple. Why not use the 40,000 NUCLEAR weapons we have at our disposal!

[UrbanSkaternotreally]

such great minds work at NASA.I wish I was in their offices and labs for one day to see how they work and explore our universe

[edbstrung]

Build a few HAARP satellites that orbits Earth. Then blast the shit out of that asteroid. Yup, that should kill it. HAARP is Tesla technology that he split the patents up as he gave each of the world's super powers pieces of the patents. Tesla did not want give the complete patent to any one country because he says that it is a technology that can literally crack the Earth. Well, go HAARP!

[asymmetrisch]

We could redirect it to hit planets that we don't like. Like Mercury. Fuck Mercury!

[roshankumar999]

Bring that thing down into earth and mine it..Metal prices will go down..

[dustdust7]

The "if" in "if we detect them" if quite a big one.

[usmc5131]

So the asteroid ain't gonna hit us ?

[Remmy14]

@Seannyskillz I'm sorry this was too sophisticated for you. Go watch Austin Powers if you want "Lasers."

[gnomechomskylives]

@batbawls I bet it was PETA: People for the Ethical Treatment of Asteroids.

(Sorry I couldn't resist...:)