(This was originally published on August 3, 2022).
These days, it’s hard to tell which headlines are freaking us out for nothing and which headlines we should really should give half a sideways fuck about.
So let’s talk about some shit that’s absofuckinglutely going to be a problem.
Well, one day.
Maybe.
Today’s Moment of Science… Ze end of ze world.
Long ago in a time that the kids are calling “the late 1900s” (pass the ibuprofen), so many “incoming asteroid grab yer ankles” movies dropped that I imagined the sky falling would be a bigger problem. Along with some even more forgettable TV movies, Doomsday Rock, Asteroid, Deep Impact, and Armageddon all came out from 1997-1998. Which is, statistically, a bit much for fiery-death-from-space content for two years.
The films are all variations on “our hero is gonna nuke an asteroid to save humanity.” It works out with varying degrees of success depending on how Bruce Willis-y the hero is.
Life goes through a fucker of a time sustaining itself on this planet. In the last half billion years or so, there have been five major mass extinction events (along with an extensive list of “well fuck those species too” smaller extinction events). These are defined by a fast and sharp decrease in biodiversity. The most recent of these, the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction, was almost certainly caused by an asteroid impact 65 million years ago. Because once or twice an eon, flying dragons and shit start roaming creation, and the universe brings fiery death to reset evolution to chickens.
There haven’t been any ‘change the course of history’ sized rocks spotted heading towards us recently. But it’s not entirely uncommon that astronomers go all “oh fuck where did that come from” an alarmingly large near-miss at the last minute. So if one happens to show up after it was inexplicably the only thing we were worried about in 1998, I will expect we have a plan to yeet that shit on over to Uranus.
So, DART.
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) was launched last November towards the asteroid system of Didymos and its orbiting moonlet, Dimorphos (also referred to as Didymos A and Didymos B respectively). The plan is, simply, to ram the bejeesus out of Dimorphos with a spaceship.
This won’t blow it up or break it into smaller fragments. There will be no spectacular fireworks show from space. It will hopefully change the orbit of Dimorphos by a smidge. How much exactly? I’m not engaging in speculative astrophysics here, kids, but if it works? It doesn’t have to be much over the course of a few million miles to add up to “fuck that asteroid, I’m gonna live to see the next season of Succession.”
It’s way less sexy than a montage of Steve Buscemi learning astronaut shit, but it benefits from maybe saving the planet one day.
DART is scheduled for impact next month onto the surface of a tiny moon.
This has been your Moment of Science, saying damn, that is a sweet Earth. You might say, round.
UPDATE! Big success. Huge.
Excerpt from Space.com’s article:
“DART’s impact reduced the time it takes Dimorphos to orbit its larger asteroid companion, Didymos, by 33 minutes, to 11 hours and 23 minutes. To arrive at that number, scientists studied the binary Didymos system using telescopes located on all seven continents.”
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