1 00:00:04,137 --> 00:00:08,039 "Asteroid: Deadly Impact" 2 00:00:08,174 --> 00:00:10,074 When he first came to the high desert, 3 00:00:10,210 --> 00:00:12,906 Gene Shoemaker wondered if he was too late. 4 00:00:14,447 --> 00:00:18,406 Was the West all explored, the battles fought, 5 00:00:18,685 --> 00:00:20,550 mysteries solved? 6 00:00:21,187 --> 00:00:25,749 But geologists are taught that truth lies in the rocks and dirt underfoot. 7 00:00:26,426 --> 00:00:29,361 Step by step he pressed the Earth for its secrets. 8 00:00:31,398 --> 00:00:35,391 What Gene Shoemaker found has made the ground itself less firm 9 00:00:36,169 --> 00:00:39,263 planet Earth not nearly as safe as we always assumed. 10 00:01:07,200 --> 00:01:11,000 It's like being in a hail of bullets going by all the time. 11 00:01:29,823 --> 00:01:32,690 They are bullets. They're bullets out there in space. 12 00:01:46,272 --> 00:01:48,001 These things have hit the Earth in the past; 13 00:01:49,843 --> 00:01:51,435 they will hit the Earth in the future. 14 00:01:54,013 --> 00:01:55,981 It will produce a catastrophe that exceeds 15 00:01:56,382 --> 00:01:59,579 all other Known natural disasters by a large measure. 16 00:02:00,987 --> 00:02:04,047 Before Gene Shoemaker, few people gave it much thought 17 00:02:05,792 --> 00:02:09,284 one of the most powerful forces in the making of our planet, 18 00:02:09,429 --> 00:02:11,897 and perhaps the deadliest hazard we face 19 00:02:13,399 --> 00:02:16,095 This is the story of impact! 20 00:03:13,193 --> 00:03:16,094 March 23, 1993: 21 00:03:18,498 --> 00:03:22,229 Great telescopes around the world aimed their sights deep into the night 22 00:03:26,739 --> 00:03:29,708 They were peering far into space searching for traces 23 00:03:29,842 --> 00:03:33,300 of the Big Bang at the outermost reaches of the universe. 24 00:03:41,988 --> 00:03:46,391 But at one tiny telescope on a lonesome peak in California, 25 00:03:46,526 --> 00:03:50,758 three old friends were rummaging in a part of space much closer to home. 26 00:03:51,764 --> 00:03:58,260 Five, four, three, two, one, I'm on... 27 00:04:02,775 --> 00:04:05,039 Gene Shoemaker, geologist, 28 00:04:05,745 --> 00:04:09,738 was looking for rocks not on the ground but in the sky. 29 00:04:11,751 --> 00:04:15,278 That night he and his team found something astounding 30 00:04:15,421 --> 00:04:18,049 a portent of another kind of Big Bang. 31 00:04:20,526 --> 00:04:25,395 Comet Shoemaker Levy 9 first appeared as a faint smudge in space. 32 00:04:26,466 --> 00:04:28,593 It grew into a blazing streak of light 33 00:04:29,869 --> 00:04:31,166 By the time it smashed into Jupiter 34 00:04:31,971 --> 00:04:34,633 every major telescope in the world was watching. 35 00:04:38,578 --> 00:04:43,515 The impact unleashed fiery plumes large enough to incinerate the Earth. 36 00:04:43,650 --> 00:04:47,552 And it raised a terrifying question could it happen here? 37 00:04:49,689 --> 00:04:50,553 And what if it did? 38 00:04:51,090 --> 00:04:54,116 When we get to something in the ballpark of a mile in diameter 39 00:04:54,527 --> 00:04:57,928 hitting the Earth, it'll produce a catastrophe that exceeds all other 40 00:04:58,064 --> 00:05:01,124 Known natural disasters, by a large measure. 41 00:05:02,201 --> 00:05:02,826 In fact, the energy delivered 42 00:05:02,969 --> 00:05:07,997 would be like taking all of the world's nuclear weapons, 43 00:05:08,441 --> 00:05:11,604 putting them all in one pile and setting them all off at once 44 00:05:11,744 --> 00:05:14,042 actually, it'd be a little bit more energy than that. 45 00:05:17,884 --> 00:05:20,580 Once, scientists had said it could never happen. 46 00:05:21,587 --> 00:05:25,717 Now many were shocked; some talked about the end of the world. 47 00:05:30,930 --> 00:05:34,127 If something sneaks up on us then there's very little we can do. 48 00:05:34,600 --> 00:05:38,661 In fact, today, the most likely situation is zero warning. 49 00:05:39,572 --> 00:05:41,597 The next impact of a mile-sized object 50 00:05:41,741 --> 00:05:46,110 will probably happen without any prior discovery of it at all. 51 00:05:46,479 --> 00:05:49,414 The first thing you will Know is when you feel the ground shake 52 00:05:49,549 --> 00:05:52,143 and see the plume of fire coming up over the horizon. 53 00:06:06,833 --> 00:06:10,098 He'd been taught cosmic collisions are inconceivable. 54 00:06:13,373 --> 00:06:16,433 But Gene Shoemaker likes to make up his mind for himself. 55 00:06:18,044 --> 00:06:22,003 It was a path that I personally travelled in small steps. 56 00:06:22,248 --> 00:06:24,614 I had to teach myself that the, the fact, 57 00:06:25,284 --> 00:06:27,479 if, if one really pursues the observations, 58 00:06:27,620 --> 00:06:30,145 the world is telling us that big things do fall out of the sky. 59 00:06:33,626 --> 00:06:37,562 What the world told Gene it said most eloquently at Meteor Crater. 60 00:06:45,705 --> 00:06:48,173 The gaping hole in the Arizona desert, 61 00:06:48,307 --> 00:06:52,073 nearly a mile wide, spoke of sudden disaster 62 00:06:52,545 --> 00:06:56,413 catastrophe falling from the sky with deadly impact. 63 00:07:02,221 --> 00:07:04,519 There were similar craters in other places. 64 00:07:05,057 --> 00:07:08,993 But most geologists said they were the remnants of ancient volcanos, 65 00:07:09,462 --> 00:07:13,091 formed over eons of time by constant, predictable forces. 66 00:07:16,569 --> 00:07:18,935 Nothing this big happened quickly or suddenly. 67 00:07:24,577 --> 00:07:26,772 Fiery rocks falling from the sky have 68 00:07:26,913 --> 00:07:30,349 long been believed to predict disaster not cause it. 69 00:07:32,785 --> 00:07:34,548 Meteorites have been feared as omens 70 00:07:34,687 --> 00:07:37,121 and cherished as relics around the world. 71 00:07:39,325 --> 00:07:43,284 For thousands of years they were our only way of touching the sky 72 00:07:43,763 --> 00:07:45,993 mysterious messengers from space. 73 00:07:56,876 --> 00:07:58,969 The intrigue they held for ancient oracles 74 00:07:59,412 --> 00:08:02,006 still captivates modern scientists. 75 00:08:02,949 --> 00:08:06,885 It was inside a meteorite - a Martian rock that landed in Antarctica 76 00:08:07,653 --> 00:08:11,282 that researchers discovered the most compelling intimation ever 77 00:08:11,424 --> 00:08:13,289 of life beyond the Earth. 78 00:08:19,599 --> 00:08:22,966 Meteorites are chunks broken off larger celestial bodies. 79 00:08:23,503 --> 00:08:27,701 When they crash through Earth's atmosphere, most lose speed and power. 80 00:08:27,840 --> 00:08:30,866 So even big ones, measuring up to 10 feet across, 81 00:08:31,110 --> 00:08:33,840 usually don't cause damage on a large scale. 82 00:08:39,252 --> 00:08:43,916 Still, if you or your house happen to stand in the path of a stone from space 83 00:08:44,056 --> 00:08:45,751 repairs will be necessary. 84 00:08:56,869 --> 00:08:59,702 Tons of meteorites rain on the Earth every day 85 00:08:59,839 --> 00:09:04,208 most smaller than a pea but that's enough to light up the night. 86 00:09:06,779 --> 00:09:08,041 This fireball was seen 87 00:09:08,180 --> 00:09:12,276 by thousands of people along the eastern seaboard in 1992. 88 00:09:12,785 --> 00:09:15,253 Many were attending high school football games, 89 00:09:15,388 --> 00:09:17,083 and some had brought their video cameras. 90 00:09:20,960 --> 00:09:23,827 A piece of the meteorite touched down in peekskill, New York 91 00:09:24,463 --> 00:09:27,523 and cratered Michelle Knapp's 1980 Chevy Malibu. 92 00:09:28,968 --> 00:09:31,994 I was sitting in my house watching TV and the next thing you Know, 93 00:09:32,138 --> 00:09:34,732 I heard this loud noise, sounded like a car accident. 94 00:09:34,874 --> 00:09:36,842 It was a chunk of stone speckled with iron, 95 00:09:37,710 --> 00:09:38,870 about the size of a football. 96 00:09:40,046 --> 00:09:43,140 They told me the rock was estimated at 4 billion years old which is 97 00:09:43,282 --> 00:09:47,150 about as old as the Earth itself and that's exciting. 98 00:09:48,821 --> 00:09:51,847 The peekskill meteorite did make the local news, 99 00:09:51,991 --> 00:09:54,755 but like most meteorites, its impact was minimal. 100 00:09:56,963 --> 00:10:02,833 In 1972, a rock the size of a bus blazed so brightly it was seen 101 00:10:02,969 --> 00:10:06,029 in daylight and was filmed by a tourist near the Grand Tetons. 102 00:10:07,807 --> 00:10:11,402 There was no impact, confirming what most scientists thought 103 00:10:11,777 --> 00:10:15,076 that Earth's atmosphere would incinerate even giant boulders, 104 00:10:15,214 --> 00:10:17,614 or break them into relatively harmless pieces. 105 00:10:19,752 --> 00:10:25,850 What was it, then, that violently shook the Earth on June 30th, 1908? 106 00:10:26,559 --> 00:10:31,087 A blinding fireball exploded over a remote part of Siberia. 107 00:10:31,464 --> 00:10:35,298 As far away as England an eerie glow lit up the sky. 108 00:10:37,637 --> 00:10:41,266 Two decades passed before scientists could mount an expedition 109 00:10:41,407 --> 00:10:43,238 to find the site where the blast occurred. 110 00:10:46,479 --> 00:10:49,880 It was an arduous trip to an uncertain destination; 111 00:10:50,316 --> 00:10:53,217 but the scientists Knew they had arrived when they saw 112 00:10:53,352 --> 00:10:56,913 the staggering devastation on the banks of the Tunguska River. 113 00:10:58,424 --> 00:10:59,914 Over hundreds of square miles 114 00:11:01,060 --> 00:11:04,223 the forest lay flattened in vast concentric circles. 115 00:11:05,364 --> 00:11:08,492 The scientists suspected the destruction had been caused 116 00:11:08,634 --> 00:11:11,364 by a huge meteorite, an asteroid. 117 00:11:12,271 --> 00:11:13,602 They set out to unearth it. 118 00:11:14,907 --> 00:11:17,375 Long months spent draining the swamps 119 00:11:17,510 --> 00:11:20,638 and digging into the wasted land yielded nothing. 120 00:11:22,381 --> 00:11:23,075 For years to come, 121 00:11:23,716 --> 00:11:27,049 Tunguska would remain one of the great mysteries of the Earth. 122 00:11:28,721 --> 00:11:32,680 At about the same time, on the other side of the globe, 123 00:11:32,825 --> 00:11:37,023 a similar mystery haunted this giant bowl in the Arizona desert. 124 00:11:38,297 --> 00:11:42,927 In the early 1900s Daniel Barringer, a mining engineer, 125 00:11:43,069 --> 00:11:45,731 found little chunks of meteorite around the crater. 126 00:11:46,639 --> 00:11:49,369 He drilled the crater floor in search of an asteroid 127 00:11:50,242 --> 00:11:53,336 but came up empty handed and deeply disappointed. 128 00:11:54,647 --> 00:11:57,445 Geologists weren't surprised, but years later, 129 00:11:57,583 --> 00:12:02,782 a young Gene Shoemaker was intrigued: What had happened here? 130 00:12:04,090 --> 00:12:06,285 It did seem like a giant wound in the Earth. 131 00:12:09,962 --> 00:12:13,420 It appeared as though the ground had been dealt a devastating blow. 132 00:12:15,234 --> 00:12:18,567 Massive beds of rock that once lay flat were broken 133 00:12:18,704 --> 00:12:20,467 and thrust violently into the air. 134 00:12:25,544 --> 00:12:28,479 The rim was strewn with giant limestone boulders 135 00:12:28,614 --> 00:12:30,980 that could only have come from deep beneath the surface, 136 00:12:31,550 --> 00:12:33,313 flying hundreds of feet in the air. 137 00:12:36,021 --> 00:12:39,388 But like all geologists, Gene had been taught that even 138 00:12:39,525 --> 00:12:42,926 the most dramatic landscapes took shape at a creeping pace 139 00:12:43,829 --> 00:12:47,959 Meteor Crater could not in fact be a meteor crater. 140 00:12:53,105 --> 00:12:55,335 People say, Ah, yes, meteorites fall out of the sky. 141 00:12:55,474 --> 00:12:56,304 We accept that. 142 00:12:56,442 --> 00:12:59,036 A chunk that big - I accept that that falls out of the sky. 143 00:12:59,178 --> 00:13:02,238 But it was a, it was a, an intellectual leap to go from a 144 00:13:02,381 --> 00:13:04,406 fist-sized stone to a mountain, 145 00:13:05,317 --> 00:13:08,684 and, and have a mountain come down out of the sky. 146 00:13:09,588 --> 00:13:12,682 As an undergraduate student, I didn't learn anything about impact. 147 00:13:13,092 --> 00:13:15,390 It wasn't part of geology at that time 148 00:13:17,296 --> 00:13:18,957 Geologists are the kind of folk that like to say, 149 00:13:19,098 --> 00:13:21,066 I'd like to see what the process is. 150 00:13:21,200 --> 00:13:25,068 I'd like to see it happen then I'd believe that it's happened in the past. 151 00:13:26,438 --> 00:13:30,340 Gene Shoemaker was one geologist who saw something happen that would 152 00:13:30,476 --> 00:13:34,105 lead him to question the fundamental principles of his profession. 153 00:13:35,447 --> 00:13:37,608 He was in his twenties when he took on a job 154 00:13:37,750 --> 00:13:39,615 at the top secret Nevada test site. 155 00:13:41,387 --> 00:13:45,653 Here he witnessed a new mechanism by which craters could be made... 156 00:13:53,165 --> 00:13:59,764 It all takes place in utter silence, until finally, the shockwave... 157 00:14:04,677 --> 00:14:10,047 BAM... and then it's followed with, with roiling thunder. 158 00:14:17,656 --> 00:14:21,148 It's throbbing, I mean, you can feel the sound in your whole body, 159 00:14:21,293 --> 00:14:24,854 uh, and, and it's, that's a very dramatic thing to watch, too. 160 00:14:27,800 --> 00:14:31,236 Never before had so much energy been harnessed or released. 161 00:14:34,340 --> 00:14:35,500 Could nature do the same? 162 00:14:39,178 --> 00:14:41,908 This crater had not taken shape over thousands of years. 163 00:14:42,481 --> 00:14:44,312 It was created in an instant. 164 00:14:44,884 --> 00:14:47,717 And it reminded Gene of another place he'd seen. 165 00:14:48,487 --> 00:14:50,819 It was the largest crater, at the time 166 00:14:50,956 --> 00:14:54,448 formed by a shallow, underground explosion 167 00:14:55,394 --> 00:15:01,355 and so, I could go directly from this to Mother Nature's crater. 168 00:15:03,102 --> 00:15:06,503 My hunch was that I would go have a look at Meteor Crater 169 00:15:06,639 --> 00:15:09,301 and see what the structure was because it had never been 170 00:15:10,175 --> 00:15:11,836 thoroughly mapped and described. 171 00:15:12,478 --> 00:15:14,844 And so I didn't Know what the structure was until I went. 172 00:15:15,114 --> 00:15:21,314 By having mapped this first, I went to Meteor Crater and, voila. 173 00:15:29,228 --> 00:15:32,823 I was astounded that all of those parts of the crater that I could see 174 00:15:32,965 --> 00:15:37,459 in the little nuclear crater were reproduced here on a giant scale, 175 00:15:37,603 --> 00:15:40,367 including, right down to the pieces of melted material. 176 00:15:42,408 --> 00:15:46,401 Around the crater Gene found tiny beads of glass 177 00:15:46,545 --> 00:15:49,139 rock that had been melted and sprayed out; 178 00:15:49,281 --> 00:15:51,249 he'd seen these too in Nevada. 179 00:15:52,785 --> 00:15:56,812 Some rocks would reveal a newly discovered mineral... coesite 180 00:15:57,256 --> 00:15:59,315 An intensely squeezed form of quartz 181 00:15:59,725 --> 00:16:02,193 that no volcano is powerful enough to produce. 182 00:16:04,330 --> 00:16:09,131 In this microscopic sample was encoded a story of violent devastation 183 00:16:09,268 --> 00:16:11,236 wrought by a 100-foot asteroid, 184 00:16:11,537 --> 00:16:15,303 hurtling so fast the atmosphere could not slow it down. 185 00:16:17,509 --> 00:16:21,275 Gene Shoemaker had found the fingerprint of impact. 186 00:16:23,816 --> 00:16:28,651 It was the first conclusive proof of an impact crater on Earth; 187 00:16:32,491 --> 00:16:35,517 an affront to centuries of scientific conviction, 188 00:16:36,095 --> 00:16:38,859 and a challenge even to the professor's devoted students. 189 00:16:40,165 --> 00:16:43,601 Dr. Susan Kieffer once studied with Gene in graduate school. 190 00:16:44,003 --> 00:16:46,699 One day, Gene said I'm going to show you what an impact is. 191 00:16:46,839 --> 00:16:50,434 So, he grabbed a, a fairly large rifle and we... 192 00:16:50,576 --> 00:16:53,204 This is my favorite rifle This is it? 193 00:16:53,345 --> 00:16:55,813 I don't want to see this rifle again, after what happened that day. 194 00:16:55,948 --> 00:16:59,145 Do you recognize this, Sue? 195 00:16:59,284 --> 00:17:02,617 And then Gene told me to shoot the, the rock... which I did. 196 00:17:02,755 --> 00:17:04,382 What happened is it just kicked... 197 00:17:04,523 --> 00:17:06,252 The rifle came back and hit me in the nose, 198 00:17:06,392 --> 00:17:09,156 and broke my glasses and he looked at me and said, 199 00:17:09,294 --> 00:17:10,852 Haven't you ever fired a gun before? 200 00:17:10,996 --> 00:17:13,260 And I said, No! It's all right. 201 00:17:13,999 --> 00:17:17,730 Here's Annie oakley... with her nemesis 202 00:17:19,304 --> 00:17:22,239 The ideas that Gene was proposing not only made 203 00:17:22,374 --> 00:17:24,069 individual people uncomfortable, 204 00:17:24,643 --> 00:17:28,943 but, at a gut level, whole schools of academic thinking. 205 00:17:29,882 --> 00:17:32,077 That was the battle that had to be fought against. 206 00:17:32,918 --> 00:17:36,354 And he, I feel, really did it almost single-handedly. 207 00:17:49,568 --> 00:17:51,433 That's a nice lookin' crater. 208 00:17:56,108 --> 00:17:58,201 Sue's lesson was simple but revolutionary 209 00:17:59,111 --> 00:18:02,808 a relatively small object travelling at great speed will blast 210 00:18:02,948 --> 00:18:05,849 a huge hole upon impact, and, at the same time, 211 00:18:05,984 --> 00:18:08,782 almost completely disintegrate. 212 00:18:09,755 --> 00:18:13,486 The mysteries of Tunguska and Meteor Crater were solved. 213 00:18:18,730 --> 00:18:20,994 It came from over there, from that direction. 214 00:18:23,936 --> 00:18:27,303 You look up in the sky and we see a brilliant fireball, 215 00:18:28,107 --> 00:18:31,634 that's being made by the asteroid or meteorite as it's coming in, 216 00:18:31,777 --> 00:18:34,678 and it gets brighter and brighter and brighter. 217 00:19:04,510 --> 00:19:08,139 Gene's explanation of Meteor Crater was controversial; 218 00:19:08,280 --> 00:19:10,805 but the reason he studied craters in the first place 219 00:19:11,450 --> 00:19:12,849 seemed down right crazy. 220 00:19:14,653 --> 00:19:18,953 When he was 20 years old, more than a decade before the space program 221 00:19:19,558 --> 00:19:22,891 Gene had a hunch America would soon go to the moon. 222 00:19:26,064 --> 00:19:28,362 And why would you go to the Moon? To study the Moon. 223 00:19:29,301 --> 00:19:32,702 And who do you send to study the Moon? You send a geologist. Right? 224 00:19:35,440 --> 00:19:39,001 I was going to do whatever I could do to stand at the head of the line 225 00:19:39,344 --> 00:19:43,246 when the time came to be the geologist chosen to go to the Moon. 226 00:19:46,118 --> 00:19:48,985 Can you imagine any greater adventure? I couldn't. 227 00:19:50,489 --> 00:19:53,117 I thought, well, I better learn something about craters. 228 00:19:58,030 --> 00:20:00,396 Oh, Gene, look, that's good. 229 00:20:00,832 --> 00:20:03,665 Uh, I, uh, oh, look at that, I'm ready. That looks so nice and slimming... 230 00:20:03,802 --> 00:20:06,430 Gene dared confide his dream only to one person 231 00:20:06,838 --> 00:20:09,432 This was, uh, 1951. 232 00:20:10,375 --> 00:20:15,438 When we first met, I just thought that she was the neatest gal I had ever met. 233 00:20:17,182 --> 00:20:20,242 That's it. His wife Caroline would become his lifelong accomplice 234 00:20:20,385 --> 00:20:21,647 in dreaming and scheming. 235 00:20:22,254 --> 00:20:24,222 What attracted me to you... What's that? 236 00:20:25,057 --> 00:20:26,615 I think it's your enthusiasm about things. 237 00:20:27,092 --> 00:20:29,060 He gets this big smile and, 238 00:20:29,561 --> 00:20:35,522 and you Know he's just full ofjoy and enthusiasm for what he's talking about. 239 00:20:37,836 --> 00:20:39,997 Gene has a way of getting what he wants. 240 00:20:43,342 --> 00:20:47,836 We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon... 241 00:20:48,747 --> 00:20:49,441 In the early sixties, 242 00:20:49,982 --> 00:20:52,951 it seemed Gene might actually get what he wanted most. 243 00:20:54,152 --> 00:20:58,589 We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things 244 00:20:58,724 --> 00:21:00,021 not because they are easy, 245 00:21:00,158 --> 00:21:02,183 America was going to the moon, 246 00:21:02,327 --> 00:21:04,795 and he was already an expert on craters. 247 00:21:07,065 --> 00:21:09,898 There were many thousands of them on the near side of the moon alone. 248 00:21:10,969 --> 00:21:14,427 Gene believed they could yield tremendous Knowledge about the role 249 00:21:14,573 --> 00:21:18,009 of impact in shaping not only the moon but the Earth, as well. 250 00:21:20,112 --> 00:21:23,445 The Moon is this slate that nobody's been erasing. 251 00:21:23,682 --> 00:21:25,445 The record that we're seeing of bombardment, 252 00:21:25,584 --> 00:21:27,484 all of those craters that we see on the Moon, 253 00:21:27,619 --> 00:21:31,214 are a record of the, of the flux, 254 00:21:31,356 --> 00:21:33,847 uh, of the hail of bullets coming by that's hitting 255 00:21:33,992 --> 00:21:35,687 both the Earth and the Moon. 256 00:21:36,495 --> 00:21:41,432 If we want to see what a very fresh, big impact crater looks like 257 00:21:41,566 --> 00:21:45,229 when it's first formed, you look at the Moon. 258 00:21:46,004 --> 00:21:49,531 That guy up there. The people who ran the space program 259 00:21:49,875 --> 00:21:52,571 didn't look at the moon that way. 260 00:21:52,711 --> 00:21:54,201 They were pitted in a furious race; 261 00:21:54,946 --> 00:21:56,880 what mattered to them was getting there, 262 00:21:57,015 --> 00:21:58,915 not what could be learned once we arrived. 263 00:22:01,386 --> 00:22:04,685 There's no question that NASA managers, NASA engineers and, 264 00:22:04,823 --> 00:22:06,154 indeed the astronauts themselves, 265 00:22:06,358 --> 00:22:09,555 were not particularly interested in doing science in space. 266 00:22:09,695 --> 00:22:12,391 Uh, that was not their mission, they had signed up to, to, 267 00:22:12,531 --> 00:22:14,158 uh, beat the Russians to the Moon 268 00:22:14,299 --> 00:22:17,700 and the farthest thing from anybody's mind was actually doing 269 00:22:17,836 --> 00:22:19,895 some science and collecting some samples. 270 00:22:21,073 --> 00:22:23,371 But, nevertheless, eh, even though he was considered, 271 00:22:23,508 --> 00:22:28,275 uh, probably a weirdo by, by some in the engineering community, 272 00:22:28,413 --> 00:22:32,110 Gene did not give up in trying to, uh, push this idea, 273 00:22:32,250 --> 00:22:35,981 uh, that doing geology on the Moon was important. 274 00:22:36,355 --> 00:22:38,550 But geology on the moon was a hard sell. 275 00:22:39,291 --> 00:22:42,055 Few scientists thought Gene was right about the effect 276 00:22:42,194 --> 00:22:44,924 of impact on the Earth, much less the moon. 277 00:22:45,263 --> 00:22:49,029 Many believed lunar craters too were old volcanos. 278 00:22:49,167 --> 00:22:51,294 Before Gene got to ride a rocket, 279 00:22:51,737 --> 00:22:54,968 he took a fateful trip in a more modest vehicle. 280 00:22:56,908 --> 00:22:59,536 The Shoemakers were on vacation in Southern Germany. 281 00:23:00,078 --> 00:23:03,070 Gene was eager to come here to visit the Ries Basin 282 00:23:03,682 --> 00:23:06,947 a 15-mile wide depression that was universally believed 283 00:23:07,085 --> 00:23:08,552 to be an ancient volcano. 284 00:23:11,890 --> 00:23:13,653 Gene and Carolyn went strolling through the 285 00:23:13,792 --> 00:23:16,727 medieval town of Nordlingen in the heart of the crater. 286 00:23:18,663 --> 00:23:22,895 And there Gene came upon the largest geologic sample he'd ever found: 287 00:23:30,342 --> 00:23:35,006 St. George's Church, 500 years old, was built of local stone. 288 00:23:36,515 --> 00:23:38,949 Just looking at the rock made me stop and say, 289 00:23:39,084 --> 00:23:41,644 Whoa! Wait a minute. What's this? 290 00:23:42,287 --> 00:23:44,255 I think I Know what this is because 291 00:23:44,389 --> 00:23:46,220 I've seen something like that before. 292 00:23:48,960 --> 00:23:52,293 The walls were riddled with glass formed from shocked and melted rock 293 00:23:54,032 --> 00:23:56,865 Gene didn't need a microscope to Know they contained coesite. 294 00:23:58,770 --> 00:24:03,434 He was, was thrilled beyond words and, and I was for him. 295 00:24:03,809 --> 00:24:09,975 Just to go along and just admire all, all of this evidence for impact and, 296 00:24:10,115 --> 00:24:13,278 and the formation of a giant crater and here it is in, 297 00:24:13,418 --> 00:24:16,080 incorporated into the cathedral and it was just, 298 00:24:16,221 --> 00:24:19,281 just a very strange and interesting feeling and, 299 00:24:19,424 --> 00:24:24,157 and saying, Ah, yes, you Know, we Know what this is now! 300 00:24:33,905 --> 00:24:36,931 The Ries is nearly 20 times as big as Meteor Crater. 301 00:24:37,809 --> 00:24:41,142 It was the first big impact crater on the Earth 302 00:24:41,279 --> 00:24:44,407 which we could prove was an impact crater 303 00:24:44,549 --> 00:24:46,744 and that just changed the whole ball game. 304 00:24:48,553 --> 00:24:51,613 This was impact on an entirely different scale 305 00:24:52,090 --> 00:24:55,321 brought on by a mile-wide boulder that drastically changed 306 00:24:55,460 --> 00:24:57,758 the landscape 15 million years ago. 307 00:25:07,239 --> 00:25:12,040 Suddenly, giant circular scars of impact were recognized all over the globe 308 00:25:16,181 --> 00:25:17,614 some were 200 miles wide. 309 00:25:26,324 --> 00:25:29,225 Now we really understood there were big craters made on the Earth and, 310 00:25:29,361 --> 00:25:32,455 of course, that meant those big craters we saw on the Moon 311 00:25:32,597 --> 00:25:34,963 which I was also pretty sure were of impact origin 312 00:25:35,100 --> 00:25:37,694 now we had a way of saying, yes, it's happened on the Earth, 313 00:25:37,836 --> 00:25:39,895 the proof is here, but they're also on the Moon. 314 00:25:40,805 --> 00:25:42,705 Gene had finally earned the credibility 315 00:25:42,841 --> 00:25:46,072 to convince NASA and the United States Geological Survey 316 00:25:46,211 --> 00:25:49,738 to establish a program aimed at doing geology on the moon. 317 00:25:50,715 --> 00:25:52,239 Gene was appointed to run it. 318 00:25:53,652 --> 00:25:57,486 Dr. Shoemaker, as the man in charge of the Astrogeology program, 319 00:25:57,889 --> 00:25:59,686 what are you telling the astronauts 320 00:25:59,824 --> 00:26:01,951 to look for when they start exploring the Moon? 321 00:26:02,594 --> 00:26:06,724 Small features of the Moon that will be close by around the landing site. 322 00:26:07,766 --> 00:26:11,702 And, of course, we also want them to bring back a large number of samples. 323 00:26:12,537 --> 00:26:16,132 Gene brought the Apollo astronauts to his favorite hole in the ground 324 00:26:16,575 --> 00:26:17,701 to teach them geology. 325 00:26:18,743 --> 00:26:21,337 This seemed to me like a natural place to train astronauts 326 00:26:21,479 --> 00:26:23,811 who were gonna go to the Moon and look at craters. 327 00:26:24,149 --> 00:26:25,639 In fact, the best place in the world for it. 328 00:26:26,117 --> 00:26:28,278 You really get a feel of what a crater's like, 329 00:26:28,420 --> 00:26:30,650 and everyone of them wanted to get on the Moon, 330 00:26:30,789 --> 00:26:33,257 so they wanted to have a good idea of what they were gonna get into. 331 00:26:38,330 --> 00:26:43,063 For added realism, Gene's team blasted a replica of a lunar crater field 332 00:26:43,201 --> 00:26:44,293 not far from his home. 333 00:26:47,072 --> 00:26:50,667 There, he participated in the design and testing of many of the vehicles 334 00:26:50,809 --> 00:26:51,867 and tools used on the moon. 335 00:26:53,878 --> 00:26:56,176 Gene's youthful dream was becoming a reality. 336 00:26:58,383 --> 00:27:02,547 His vindication as a scientist and his greatest adventure would soon be won. 337 00:27:25,977 --> 00:27:28,343 17 seconds and counting... guidance internal 338 00:27:28,680 --> 00:27:34,016 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9... 339 00:27:36,855 --> 00:27:42,851 Engines on, 5, 4, 3, 2, all engines running. 340 00:27:44,162 --> 00:27:44,628 Launch commit. 341 00:27:45,397 --> 00:27:49,697 Lift off, we have lift off 49 minutes past the hour. 342 00:27:57,676 --> 00:28:00,304 17, Houston, you are go for orbit, go for orbit. 343 00:28:04,182 --> 00:28:06,946 Uh, no, I've, I, I'm not going to make it to the Moon. 344 00:28:10,021 --> 00:28:11,215 Just at the critical time 345 00:28:11,356 --> 00:28:14,450 when I could have been standing at the head of the line to go to the Moon, 346 00:28:14,592 --> 00:28:18,392 my adrenal cortex quit, my adrenal glands stopped functioning 347 00:28:18,530 --> 00:28:21,522 and I Knew that that would, uh, uh, 348 00:28:21,666 --> 00:28:24,032 that would just Knock me out of the running - medically. 349 00:28:25,336 --> 00:28:29,170 When you had that idea in your head for 15 years, 350 00:28:29,307 --> 00:28:31,207 it doesn't go away right away. 351 00:28:32,010 --> 00:28:35,571 Gene remained with the lunar program as one of its chief scientists. 352 00:28:37,182 --> 00:28:41,482 His dream of doing geology on the moon came true vicariously; 353 00:28:42,087 --> 00:28:43,714 his friend and protege, 354 00:28:43,855 --> 00:28:46,949 Dr. Jack Schmitt, flew aboard Apollo 17. 355 00:28:48,593 --> 00:28:52,029 As Gene watched, his theories about the effects of 356 00:28:52,163 --> 00:28:55,929 impact on the moon were confirmed live on TV. 357 00:28:56,534 --> 00:28:57,523 ...job to get down and back up. 358 00:28:57,669 --> 00:28:58,761 They just hit rocks, so they'll come out easy... 359 00:28:58,903 --> 00:29:00,336 Every rock you looked at. 360 00:29:00,405 --> 00:29:03,397 You pick up a, a rock or look at a, at a large boulder and there's a little pit, 361 00:29:03,541 --> 00:29:07,204 uh, there that's caused by a micrometeor impact. 362 00:29:07,846 --> 00:29:12,476 It became clear that the dominant geological process on the Moon was, 363 00:29:15,153 --> 00:29:18,452 if I go down there, that thing's about 15 feet deep... 364 00:29:18,590 --> 00:29:21,957 I was immensely pleased and proud of Jack, 365 00:29:22,393 --> 00:29:27,330 but of course, I was wistful, too. I couldn't help feeling that there, 366 00:29:27,799 --> 00:29:31,735 but for that failed adrenal gland, go I. 367 00:29:33,505 --> 00:29:36,963 I'm getting in your back here. Got it? 368 00:29:37,308 --> 00:29:40,277 I used to have dreams that I, that I got there. 369 00:29:40,712 --> 00:29:44,170 You Know, I got to the Moon. I was there doing geology. 370 00:29:44,916 --> 00:29:46,781 Even after, you Know, for a long time. 371 00:29:51,589 --> 00:29:53,489 I had to go do other things. 372 00:30:11,109 --> 00:30:12,633 His feet would never leave the ground, 373 00:30:13,278 --> 00:30:16,475 but Gene was intent on making his own way into space. 374 00:30:18,750 --> 00:30:22,186 He'd found the scars of impacts that happened in the distant past. 375 00:30:22,821 --> 00:30:26,621 Now, he'd be one of the very first to find out if there were bullets 376 00:30:26,758 --> 00:30:30,694 out there that might strike the Earth in the future. 377 00:30:31,062 --> 00:30:34,589 It was an obscure, lonesome effort and involved frequent 378 00:30:34,732 --> 00:30:37,667 nightlong drives to an observatory far from home. 379 00:30:39,704 --> 00:30:42,195 But, in time Gene found a new collaborator 380 00:30:42,607 --> 00:30:44,074 and companion for the road 381 00:30:45,176 --> 00:30:48,475 a housewife who decided she, too, would become an astronomer. 382 00:31:03,595 --> 00:31:07,087 For Gene, it was a journey from deep disappointment 383 00:31:07,232 --> 00:31:09,223 to new dreams and adventures. 384 00:31:14,072 --> 00:31:18,634 I had some real misgivings because I thought this means 385 00:31:18,776 --> 00:31:21,836 that I'm going to go to palomar and I'll have to stay awake 386 00:31:21,980 --> 00:31:24,972 all night long and observe. 387 00:31:26,050 --> 00:31:28,848 Because I'd never stayed awake all night in my life. 388 00:31:29,220 --> 00:31:32,246 It was kind of a surprise to me to discover 389 00:31:32,390 --> 00:31:35,553 that I really loved the observing. 390 00:31:36,561 --> 00:31:40,327 I could, if I was very busy, stay awake all night. 391 00:31:42,300 --> 00:31:43,824 In the early morning hours 392 00:31:43,968 --> 00:31:46,869 the Shoemakers would wend their way up palomar Mountain, 393 00:31:47,238 --> 00:31:49,968 home to what was then the most powerful telescope in the world. 394 00:31:51,075 --> 00:31:54,636 The 200 inch Hale was the temple of deep space astronomy 395 00:31:55,046 --> 00:31:56,411 it was called the Big Eye, 396 00:31:56,714 --> 00:31:58,978 and was not designed for observing asteroids. 397 00:32:00,551 --> 00:32:02,075 In fact, before Gene came along, 398 00:32:02,487 --> 00:32:05,718 no one here or anywhere else had ever systematically searched for 399 00:32:05,857 --> 00:32:07,484 asteroids that could hit the Earth. 400 00:32:09,894 --> 00:32:12,761 Down the slope from the Big Eye was a tiny telescope 401 00:32:13,131 --> 00:32:14,723 that was virtually unused. 402 00:32:15,133 --> 00:32:17,192 The Little Eye was just what Gene needed. 403 00:32:19,938 --> 00:32:22,168 This is kind of suited to our, our style, 404 00:32:22,307 --> 00:32:25,799 a level that we, we call it our Mom and pop operation 405 00:32:25,944 --> 00:32:27,741 and that's basically the way we've done it. 406 00:32:30,214 --> 00:32:32,876 It turned out to be a perfect instrument for our purposes. 407 00:32:38,423 --> 00:32:40,414 Compared with the giant up the slope, 408 00:32:40,825 --> 00:32:44,420 the Little Eye did not look far but it looked very wide. 409 00:32:45,797 --> 00:32:49,494 It was ideal for patrolling the inner solar system for stray bullets. 410 00:32:52,370 --> 00:32:55,771 Most astronomers saw the solar system as a harmonious arrangement 411 00:32:55,907 --> 00:32:57,602 of planets orbiting the sun. 412 00:32:58,676 --> 00:33:02,271 They paid little attention to the hundreds of thousands of asteroids 413 00:33:02,647 --> 00:33:07,016 chunks of iron and rock left over from the formation of the major planets. 414 00:33:08,219 --> 00:33:12,713 Most of them orbit harmlessly between Mars and Jupiter the Asteroid Belt. 415 00:33:14,125 --> 00:33:16,457 But if an asteroid veered out of its normal orbit 416 00:33:16,594 --> 00:33:19,586 into one that cuts across the path of the Earth, 417 00:33:20,164 --> 00:33:22,496 it would be anything but harmless. 418 00:33:26,537 --> 00:33:27,731 Most scientists believed that 419 00:33:27,872 --> 00:33:31,273 asteroids almost never became Earth-crossers. 420 00:33:32,210 --> 00:33:34,940 Were the Shoemakers searching for something that wasn't even there? 421 00:33:36,848 --> 00:33:38,577 The answer would not come easily. 422 00:33:41,519 --> 00:33:43,146 Asteroids look so small on film 423 00:33:43,287 --> 00:33:45,755 that Carolyn had to look for them with a microscope. 424 00:33:46,557 --> 00:33:50,084 Even then, they would be almost invisible amid the stars. 425 00:33:55,333 --> 00:33:59,497 But slowly, they emerged from the dark tiny dim blurs. 426 00:33:59,837 --> 00:34:02,305 Since they're so much closer to Earth than the stars, 427 00:34:02,440 --> 00:34:04,169 they seemed to streak through the sky. 428 00:34:07,745 --> 00:34:12,079 In 1989, other astronomers captured the first ever close-up of an 429 00:34:12,216 --> 00:34:14,741 asteroid using a giant radar dish. 430 00:34:17,688 --> 00:34:20,589 This huge rock was more than a mile across. 431 00:34:25,396 --> 00:34:29,492 Later radar images showed even more ominous asteroids 432 00:34:29,867 --> 00:34:31,767 mountains tumbling through space. 433 00:34:34,405 --> 00:34:39,104 Toutatis... a giant boulder doing 70,000 miles an hour 434 00:34:39,477 --> 00:34:41,342 regularly cuts across the path of the Earth. 435 00:34:44,649 --> 00:34:46,310 951 Gaspara 436 00:34:46,451 --> 00:34:50,114 first of only two asteroids ever to be actually photographed 437 00:34:50,254 --> 00:34:52,518 is as large as the island of Manhattan. 438 00:34:58,563 --> 00:35:01,760 243 ID A is more than twice as large. 439 00:35:02,166 --> 00:35:04,657 Like Gaspara, it isn't an Earth-crosser. 440 00:35:05,470 --> 00:35:09,600 But if it were, it could blast a hole as wide as the state of Texas. 441 00:35:13,211 --> 00:35:16,772 Gene didn't make it to the moon, but together with Carolyn 442 00:35:16,914 --> 00:35:19,883 he's discovered scores of new celestial bodies. 443 00:35:26,390 --> 00:35:29,791 Between them they've found hundreds of asteroids and dozens of comets, 444 00:35:29,927 --> 00:35:32,452 and helped transform the map of the sky. 445 00:35:34,298 --> 00:35:38,462 The solar system would never again seem stable or predictable. 446 00:35:39,303 --> 00:35:42,795 The harmony of the planets turned into a threatening cacophony. 447 00:35:45,243 --> 00:35:47,370 What we've been able to show, 448 00:35:47,512 --> 00:35:50,913 using this good old telescope right here, 449 00:35:51,048 --> 00:35:52,879 and by seh, concentrating on, 450 00:35:53,518 --> 00:35:56,146 uh, surveying a near region around the Earth, 451 00:35:56,287 --> 00:35:59,154 we've been able to show that the Earth revolves around the sun 452 00:35:59,724 --> 00:36:01,715 in its own swarm of asteroids. 453 00:36:02,260 --> 00:36:04,922 These things will hit the Earth in the future, 454 00:36:05,062 --> 00:36:06,962 they have hit the Earth in the past. 455 00:36:07,532 --> 00:36:09,625 These are the Earth-crossing asteroids. 456 00:36:20,678 --> 00:36:23,476 In the 1980s, new evidence emerged 457 00:36:23,614 --> 00:36:26,082 of the terrible threat impact poses to life on Earth. 458 00:36:29,453 --> 00:36:34,390 Deep beneath Mexico's Yucatan peninsula is a 190- mile-wide crater, 459 00:36:34,792 --> 00:36:37,454 made by a 100 million megaton impact. 460 00:36:43,301 --> 00:36:46,270 It dates to the time, 65 million years ago, 461 00:36:46,771 --> 00:36:48,602 when two thirds of all living species, 462 00:36:48,739 --> 00:36:49,603 including the dinosaurs, 463 00:36:50,141 --> 00:36:52,234 disappeared from the face of the planet. 464 00:36:53,878 --> 00:36:56,346 On March 22nd, 1989, 465 00:36:56,480 --> 00:36:59,881 an asteroid came within six hours of striking the Earth, 466 00:37:00,017 --> 00:37:01,746 but was not detected until much later. 467 00:37:03,454 --> 00:37:05,319 Other asteroids have come even closer. 468 00:37:06,490 --> 00:37:10,119 One would have hit the Earth if it had come just four hours sooner. 469 00:37:15,833 --> 00:37:18,893 I don't think that people took the notion of a, a, of the hazard of, 470 00:37:19,036 --> 00:37:23,996 of impact seriously, uh, in the early days of our, of our work here. 471 00:37:24,141 --> 00:37:27,110 Uh, first of all, it took a while for the news to get out. 472 00:37:39,323 --> 00:37:40,950 The news that would change everything 473 00:37:41,325 --> 00:37:45,352 began to break on the night of March 23rd, 1993. 474 00:37:46,964 --> 00:37:48,932 The Shoemakers and their collaborator, 475 00:37:49,066 --> 00:37:52,331 David Levy, decided to take some pictures of the sky 476 00:37:52,470 --> 00:37:54,131 despite persistent clouds. 477 00:37:55,172 --> 00:37:57,265 This was not a good night for observing, 478 00:37:57,775 --> 00:38:00,243 much less for making historic discoveries. 479 00:38:03,147 --> 00:38:07,777 Five, four, three, two, one, open. 480 00:38:08,586 --> 00:38:10,554 Open. I'm on. Okay, you're on it. 481 00:38:10,688 --> 00:38:14,215 I could hardly see the star I was supposed to be following, 482 00:38:14,358 --> 00:38:17,486 because Jupiter was so close that the glare of the big planet was, 483 00:38:17,628 --> 00:38:20,358 was swamping the eye piece. 484 00:38:21,032 --> 00:38:25,867 45... plus 37, 59... okay. 485 00:38:26,003 --> 00:38:32,806 Plus 37, 59... okay. 486 00:38:34,145 --> 00:38:36,443 I started to examine the film, 487 00:38:37,048 --> 00:38:39,380 looking at all the things that I Knew would be there, 488 00:38:39,517 --> 00:38:44,682 the ghost image of Jupiter, and the spikes from, that we see on the films 489 00:38:44,822 --> 00:38:48,223 when we've got a very bright star or a bright planet. 490 00:38:48,993 --> 00:38:53,521 And then I started to go by something and I thought, 491 00:38:54,231 --> 00:38:57,758 That's a galaxy? No, that's not a galaxy. 492 00:38:58,336 --> 00:39:02,102 And here was this most unusual looking object. 493 00:39:02,239 --> 00:39:04,901 And I thought, It looks like a comet. 494 00:39:05,042 --> 00:39:06,600 It looked like a comet all right, 495 00:39:06,744 --> 00:39:08,803 except it was a comet that was stretched out. 496 00:39:09,747 --> 00:39:12,978 Our films don't have enough resolution to really see what the details 497 00:39:13,117 --> 00:39:16,086 are because we're covering a big area of the sky and so the comet's 498 00:39:16,220 --> 00:39:16,811 actually quite tiny. 499 00:39:16,954 --> 00:39:19,582 The team called their friend, astronomer Jim Scotti, 500 00:39:19,724 --> 00:39:22,318 who was manning a more powerful telescope, 501 00:39:22,460 --> 00:39:24,325 and asked him to check their finding. 502 00:39:25,663 --> 00:39:29,155 He promised to call back as soon as his telescope could be repositioned. 503 00:39:34,839 --> 00:39:37,831 Well, by now, it's about two hours that has gone by and then 504 00:39:37,975 --> 00:39:39,602 I decided the time had come, 505 00:39:40,144 --> 00:39:43,170 Jim had had enough time to take a look and I called Jim Scotti 506 00:39:43,314 --> 00:39:47,683 and he answered the phone in a voice that I had never heard before 507 00:39:47,818 --> 00:39:50,912 and I said, Jim, are you okay? And he says, 508 00:39:51,055 --> 00:39:53,615 Uhhh, yes. David, 509 00:39:53,758 --> 00:39:58,218 the sound you heard is me trying to pick my jaw off the floor. 510 00:39:59,397 --> 00:40:01,888 And I said, Do we have a comet? And he said, 511 00:40:02,633 --> 00:40:04,533 Boy, do you have a comet. 512 00:40:04,802 --> 00:40:10,035 And he started describing what he saw and I was repeating everything 513 00:40:10,174 --> 00:40:12,199 to the two of you and every sentence: 514 00:40:12,343 --> 00:40:16,780 It had these five tails, at least five discrete nuclei, 515 00:40:16,914 --> 00:40:18,279 but, he said, I think there's more. 516 00:40:18,783 --> 00:40:21,183 And, meantime, that music, we had, 517 00:40:21,318 --> 00:40:24,310 we had just had Beethoven's First Symphony, 518 00:40:24,455 --> 00:40:26,446 it was playing in in our room, just happened to be on, 519 00:40:26,590 --> 00:40:29,991 and the Fourth Movement started and it starts with this very 520 00:40:30,127 --> 00:40:32,595 slow little introduction. 521 00:40:37,935 --> 00:40:41,871 As, just as, as Jim said, Boy, do you have a comet, 522 00:40:42,006 --> 00:40:44,566 then the symphony went into its full motion, 523 00:40:52,049 --> 00:40:55,712 And then, right at that point, Jim says, Boy do you have a comet. 524 00:40:59,323 --> 00:41:03,726 The comet essentially an asteroid with a long tail of dust and gas 525 00:41:03,861 --> 00:41:06,591 had been torn into several pieces by Jupiter's gravity. 526 00:41:09,700 --> 00:41:14,467 Of course the big kicker, the, the big news that it was going to hit Jupiter, 527 00:41:15,072 --> 00:41:17,097 didn't arrive until about six weeks later. 528 00:41:25,483 --> 00:41:29,886 Here is this man looking at a computer screen and it's saying, 529 00:41:30,020 --> 00:41:32,454 Your comet, with your name on it, 530 00:41:33,023 --> 00:41:35,321 is going to collide with Jupiter in 14 months, 531 00:41:35,459 --> 00:41:39,657 and Gene was sitting there and he was looking at it, and his, 532 00:41:39,797 --> 00:41:42,630 he was shaking his head and he said, I don't believe it, 533 00:41:43,133 --> 00:41:45,795 I'm going to see an impact in my lifetime, 534 00:41:46,437 --> 00:41:48,029 I just don't believe this. 535 00:41:48,606 --> 00:41:51,370 Now the question is what would, what was going to happen, 536 00:41:51,509 --> 00:41:53,204 were we going to have a big show 537 00:41:53,344 --> 00:41:56,006 or was it going to be something that no one could see? 538 00:41:56,981 --> 00:41:59,882 Even as Shoemaker Levy 9 approached Jupiter, 539 00:42:00,017 --> 00:42:01,917 some eminent scientists remained 540 00:42:02,052 --> 00:42:04,782 skeptical it would make much of an impact. 541 00:42:06,090 --> 00:42:09,582 Many astronomers believed the giant planet would swallow 542 00:42:09,727 --> 00:42:11,991 the comet into its vaporous depths. 543 00:42:16,934 --> 00:42:21,098 On July 16th, 1994, when the comet's leading fragment 544 00:42:21,238 --> 00:42:23,001 was due to cross Jupiter's path, 545 00:42:23,507 --> 00:42:26,499 scientists and reporters gathered at the headquarters 546 00:42:26,644 --> 00:42:27,838 of the Hubble Space Telescope. 547 00:42:29,079 --> 00:42:32,014 Gene found an empty office to call for news from 548 00:42:32,149 --> 00:42:33,582 distant ground-based telescopes. 549 00:42:35,686 --> 00:42:39,281 We have heard that there have been some observations from Spain... 550 00:42:39,423 --> 00:42:41,448 Dan? Gene Shoemaker here... fine. 551 00:42:41,592 --> 00:42:43,526 In which a... I want to hear this... 552 00:42:43,661 --> 00:42:48,598 uh, what we're, the question is, uh, how soon will Brian be... 553 00:42:48,732 --> 00:42:50,290 There would be no reliable data until 554 00:42:50,434 --> 00:42:53,870 the Hubble Team downloaded the day's first images of Jupiter. 555 00:42:54,905 --> 00:42:58,033 See, there's nothing in the sky... 556 00:43:01,679 --> 00:43:03,647 And they did, in fact, detect the plume... 557 00:43:03,781 --> 00:43:04,611 In the auditorium, 558 00:43:04,748 --> 00:43:07,615 Gene had little more information than the gathered reporters. 559 00:43:08,852 --> 00:43:12,049 We should all take these reports very carefully and cautiouslyat this time, 560 00:43:12,189 --> 00:43:13,622 they need to be confirmed. 561 00:43:14,024 --> 00:43:18,427 Look! Oh, my God! Look at that! 562 00:43:18,929 --> 00:43:22,888 The tiny spot on Jupiter was in fact a fiery plume about half 563 00:43:23,033 --> 00:43:24,193 the size of the Earth. 564 00:43:39,383 --> 00:43:41,613 Whoa! Whoa! Look! I'd like to introduce Dr. Heidi Hammel 565 00:43:41,719 --> 00:43:43,949 We just downloaded the first two orbits 566 00:43:44,088 --> 00:43:48,252 which I have a raw laser printer output, this is as raw as it gets. 567 00:43:49,126 --> 00:43:52,186 Um, we can actually see the impact site itself. 568 00:43:52,329 --> 00:43:55,787 And I'll remind you, this is for "A" the first one, 569 00:43:55,933 --> 00:43:57,025 not the brightest one, 570 00:43:57,935 --> 00:44:00,369 so we're gonna to have a really exciting week 571 00:44:18,122 --> 00:44:20,647 I think we're very, very privileged tonight 572 00:44:21,659 --> 00:44:25,220 to see an event that's, that's not once in a lifetime, 573 00:44:25,362 --> 00:44:26,624 it's, it's once in a millennium. 574 00:44:31,135 --> 00:44:33,501 Gene's vindication was a long time coming 575 00:44:34,304 --> 00:44:37,705 now it arrived with a million megaton bang. 576 00:44:38,976 --> 00:44:43,606 Few scientists have seen their ideas demonstrated on this magnificent scale. 577 00:44:46,884 --> 00:44:49,853 That was one great moment in our lives. 578 00:44:49,987 --> 00:44:52,046 And it vindicated what Gene had been trying to tell everybody 579 00:44:52,189 --> 00:44:55,886 all these years and, that it, eh, the, eh, 580 00:44:56,026 --> 00:44:59,291 the SL 9 impacts spelled it out in black and white that: 581 00:44:59,430 --> 00:45:01,261 Gene, ya got it right. 582 00:45:02,399 --> 00:45:06,267 Over the next week, some 20 separate pieces of the comet 583 00:45:06,403 --> 00:45:09,167 rained spectacular devastation on Jupiter. 584 00:45:20,050 --> 00:45:23,508 If anyone had any lingering doubts that collisions take place 585 00:45:23,654 --> 00:45:26,248 and that they can have frightening consequences, 586 00:45:26,390 --> 00:45:29,359 watching those events on Jupiter convinced us. 587 00:45:50,013 --> 00:45:54,074 To actually finally see an impact on a planet was a, was crossing a threshold. 588 00:45:54,985 --> 00:45:59,445 That event finally convinced most of my geological colleagues that, 589 00:45:59,590 --> 00:46:03,253 yes, there really are large impacts, not just on Jupiter, 590 00:46:03,393 --> 00:46:04,985 but on, on the Earth, as well. 591 00:46:05,429 --> 00:46:08,557 Could you imagine what SL 9 would have looked like, 592 00:46:08,699 --> 00:46:10,997 in its 21 pieces, if they had been near the Earth? 593 00:46:11,535 --> 00:46:14,834 Had any one of the fragments of SL 9 hit the Earth, 594 00:46:15,405 --> 00:46:17,566 uh, one of the bigger fragments, 595 00:46:17,708 --> 00:46:22,236 we, we probably would have had a dark cloud covering the whole Earth 596 00:46:22,379 --> 00:46:24,074 in the time of an order of an hour and a half. 597 00:46:24,715 --> 00:46:28,981 And we saw that the clouds on Jupiter lasted for months, 598 00:46:29,119 --> 00:46:29,813 as fairly dark clouds. 599 00:46:29,953 --> 00:46:31,318 What about even before the cloud, 600 00:46:32,022 --> 00:46:35,219 what about the rising temperatures with the in-falling material? 601 00:46:35,359 --> 00:46:36,792 What about before that? 602 00:46:36,927 --> 00:46:40,829 If people Knew that a fragment was going to hit the Earth, 603 00:46:40,964 --> 00:46:44,422 I wonder about the mass hysteria that could have resulted. 604 00:46:45,202 --> 00:46:46,464 Where would you go? 605 00:46:46,603 --> 00:46:47,695 People would say, Where can we hide? 606 00:46:48,639 --> 00:46:49,606 What can we do? 607 00:47:19,269 --> 00:47:23,729 You would feel as though you were in an oven turned on to broil. 608 00:47:32,516 --> 00:47:34,950 An enormous hole has been gouged in the Earth, 609 00:47:36,486 --> 00:47:40,115 then finally the sky will just turn black, absolutely, 610 00:47:40,257 --> 00:47:43,385 completely black, everywhere, all over the world. 611 00:48:04,748 --> 00:48:08,081 Impacts today are a risk, they're a hazard, 612 00:48:08,752 --> 00:48:11,346 they're something we need to protect ourselves against. 613 00:48:11,488 --> 00:48:15,424 If we don't learn how to protect ourselves against impacts 614 00:48:15,559 --> 00:48:19,461 then on the long term, we are likely to be wiped out by impacts. 615 00:48:20,130 --> 00:48:22,257 If it happened to the dinosaurs, it could happen to us. 616 00:48:32,676 --> 00:48:36,510 In SL 9's wake, scientists and weapons experts 617 00:48:36,647 --> 00:48:37,841 from Russia and the United States 618 00:48:38,882 --> 00:48:41,146 met at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. 619 00:48:41,685 --> 00:48:44,984 You've got fires. You've got massive tidal waves. 620 00:48:45,455 --> 00:48:47,514 The topic was the end of the world. 621 00:48:49,192 --> 00:48:51,683 Multiple mechanisms to produce extinction. 622 00:48:51,828 --> 00:48:55,525 You're gonna have everything burned down around you... 623 00:48:56,133 --> 00:48:58,294 Asteroids big enough to kill a quarter of the world's 624 00:48:58,435 --> 00:49:02,929 human population collide with the Earth about twice in a million years. 625 00:49:03,874 --> 00:49:06,502 Smaller bodies, capable of wiping out a major city, 626 00:49:06,643 --> 00:49:09,612 could hit once every two to three centuries. 627 00:49:10,314 --> 00:49:12,043 It's going to glow for about a half an hour 628 00:49:12,182 --> 00:49:13,706 and set everything on fire around you. 629 00:49:14,751 --> 00:49:16,218 Then it's going to be pitch black 630 00:49:16,653 --> 00:49:21,420 one thing that makes the comet and asteroid impact hazard so important, 631 00:49:21,558 --> 00:49:22,718 relative to other hazards, 632 00:49:23,327 --> 00:49:28,629 is that it is the one hazard that is capable of killing billions of people, 633 00:49:28,765 --> 00:49:31,529 of putting at risk our entire civilization. 634 00:49:32,235 --> 00:49:35,762 We could have any number of storms or earthquakes or volcanos 635 00:49:35,906 --> 00:49:37,669 and they can do terrible damage locally, 636 00:49:38,141 --> 00:49:42,475 but they do not put the entire planet at risk the way an impact does. 637 00:49:43,013 --> 00:49:46,642 Incredibly, impact is the one great natural disaster 638 00:49:47,084 --> 00:49:48,608 which we may be able to prevent. 639 00:49:48,986 --> 00:49:51,284 Many of those gathered at Lawrence Livermore 640 00:49:51,421 --> 00:49:53,286 were veterans of the Cold War, 641 00:49:53,423 --> 00:49:56,586 and already Knew something about confronting assault from the sky. 642 00:49:57,027 --> 00:50:00,463 These bombs obviously, of course, characteristically of about a 643 00:50:00,597 --> 00:50:07,901 hundred times their mass in a, in chemical high explosive. 644 00:50:08,038 --> 00:50:13,374 In this case, a nuclear explosion, you blow off some material, 645 00:50:13,510 --> 00:50:22,077 you get a reaction... 646 00:50:22,219 --> 00:50:26,246 If an approaching asteroid or comet is detected in the near future, 647 00:50:26,390 --> 00:50:29,518 the scenario might involve the most powerful long 648 00:50:29,659 --> 00:50:32,526 range rocket in the world the Russian Energia. 649 00:50:36,166 --> 00:50:38,634 Tipped with an accurate American warhead, 650 00:50:38,769 --> 00:50:42,068 the rocket would be detonated off the surface of the asteroid, 651 00:50:42,472 --> 00:50:44,702 nudging it out of its Earth-approaching orbit. 652 00:51:04,294 --> 00:51:07,752 But before you launch a missile, you need to Know where to aim. 653 00:51:08,398 --> 00:51:11,993 Only a fraction of large Earth-crossing asteroids have been located. 654 00:51:13,603 --> 00:51:17,300 This may prove to be the greatest oversight in human history. 655 00:51:23,346 --> 00:51:25,940 I can tell you with confidence that for the 10% of the big ones 656 00:51:26,083 --> 00:51:28,574 that have been discovered, there is no danger, 657 00:51:28,718 --> 00:51:32,848 but I can tell you nothing about the 90% that we have not yet discovered. 658 00:51:33,123 --> 00:51:37,150 So, yes, we understand the general nature of the risk, 659 00:51:37,594 --> 00:51:41,257 but we have not yet taken any real concrete efforts 660 00:51:41,398 --> 00:51:43,161 to protect ourselves or even to look 661 00:51:43,300 --> 00:51:45,097 and see if there's anything headed our way. 662 00:51:50,040 --> 00:51:51,974 More telescopes have joined the search 663 00:51:52,342 --> 00:51:56,176 Even the U.S. Air Force has contributed technology and expertise. 664 00:51:57,013 --> 00:51:59,709 Big science has taken up the hunt for asteroids. 665 00:52:02,819 --> 00:52:06,721 Still, the most experienced team in the business is leading 666 00:52:06,857 --> 00:52:09,951 the charge from a tiny new telescope in their backyard. 667 00:52:22,305 --> 00:52:24,865 Both Carolyn and I, we're eyeball scientists. 668 00:52:25,275 --> 00:52:26,264 We like to look at the sky. 669 00:52:30,714 --> 00:52:33,410 It's kind of an old fashioned brand of science - eyeball science 670 00:52:34,284 --> 00:52:37,481 uh, eyeball observations but there's still, 671 00:52:37,621 --> 00:52:40,488 there's still a window there for the eyeball scientist 672 00:52:40,624 --> 00:52:42,353 who's got the right idea, 673 00:52:42,926 --> 00:52:45,258 uh, to go and make wonderful discoveries. 674 00:52:47,764 --> 00:52:51,791 Gene and Carolyn Shoemaker should Know it's the story of their lives. 675 00:52:56,740 --> 00:53:00,471 Now, they await with all of us the next messenger from the stars. 676 00:53:05,582 --> 00:53:07,550 The question is not if, but when...