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Plan to protect Earth from meteors inspired by 'Star Wars'

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    Physicist propose building a 'Death Star'

  • Duration 3:59
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All right love this amazing story on Friday a major meteor strike.

We believe at this point if you actually had some -- like that hit it really could end of life on earth as we know it says scientists are trying to figure out.

How they could prevent that from happening.

And what we saw last week was a ten ton rock.

That slammed into the atmosphere over Russia and it injured more than a thousand people look at this -- Yeah.

I've ever -- -- -- and wowed by that video just hours later.

An asteroid.

Half the size of a football field came between the earth.

And some of our communication satellites now some scientists say that the best way to protect our planet may look like something.

From the movie Star Wars and it was start with building a real light.

Death star to fend of these things off in the skies from slamming into us okay that's where we are -- about dining out.

Editor at large to Discover Magazine you know the amazing to always -- -- discussion in the past about sort of what could happen what might happen.

Afternoon was -- Believe a ball.

And they -- this conversations and it all seems abstract and it seems a little bit unreal because.

We don't see these things will experience and very often but you know that the human brain is a hard time processing.

Catastrophic events that happen rarely and that's what we side is yet to -- things that happened.

Almost at the same time one hit Russia one that nearly missed us as a reminder that just because they don't happen all the time doesn't mean they can't.

And let's let's take -- -- NASA has there video.

Of this huge 190000.

Times half the size of -- -- field this is what it looks like.

As it was hurdling.

Toward -- Is incredible -- person like you Corey who looks at images -- always have what -- what do you think of that.

Right so this is actually this is a radar tracking station there actually bouncing radar that.

Part of the problem is we don't have very many good ways of tracking these things.

We know that there are at least 320000.

-- city killer asteroids out there and probably.

20000 city killer asteroids and that's exactly and the one that hit Russia -- it was actually a smaller when the -- there may be a million like that.

And when radio was gonna rebuild highs or something and it can -- is that this guy I mean if it's on this incredible -- Well so -- of these two California -- server are proposing is.

Basic building a laser -- in space and -- you know it didn't depend on how big you build it it could it could not an -- away or -- -- a really big version it even vaporize an asteroid.

Is it worth it to build something like that because what you know they would it work and be.

Are these things so random and and happens so infrequently that it would be a huge you know we expense and and not necessarily protect us.

Well -- -- a death stars kind of getting ahead of ourselves here you know make it makes great headlines but the really scary thing is.

There's a lot out there and we don't even know where it is like that that Russian media or if we had a slightly better telescope network we -- given people saved six hours or.

-- -- you know a day's worth of warning.

It wouldn't stop the damage but it could have saved a lot of injuries say -- -- -- -- -- and the amount of money that we spend just looking.

Is unbelievably small let me tell you an amazing statistic.

We spend five times as much on free postage for congress as we do searching for asteroids.

For that for all the -- protecting the planet.

Five times as much -- free postage for congress.

As we do on.

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