It’s shows like Bad that make me miss having cable television. Dr. Plait definitely has a good presence for hosting.
Even though the first episode was a live demonstration of his latest book, it still rocked to see a scale demonstration on what a meteor impact would be like and how ineffective nuclear weapons are against roaming asteroids. In short, we’re screwed especially if the object is made out of solid metal. What he left out from the book was the wiser solution, sending a probe or astronauts to install a rocket to nudge it a bit, then it’ll miss the Earth.
Comets? I thought they’d be easier. It turns out they’re worse since the Sun’s heat could cause a random jet of gas to go off, thus making it unpredictably change direction. So much the certainty of Haley’s Comet.
Hopefully he will be on next week to discuss the other topics: Gamma-Ray bursts, black holes, alien invasions and the heat death of the universe. Plus, he’ll stop picking on the Aussie metropolis of Sydney as the theoretical victim.