Will a mile-wide asteroid hit the earth in 2028? Last week, scientists scurried to determine the answer, and
came back with a pretty clear no. But the scare renewed debate over the likelihood of an
asteroid's collision with earth -- and whether we should be doing more to plan for such a disaster. Of course,
the news hit Hollywood -- with two movies about asteroids in the works -- like a gift from heaven. On its weekly
forum on Yahoo! Chat, TIME and the National Space Society brought together
scientists and creators of the Paramount/DreamWorks film Deep Impact to discuss
the how the worlds of science and fiction collide.
Timehost: Hi everyone - I'm Patrizia DiLucchio. This is Time Online
on Yahoo! Chat. Our guests tonight are: Richard D. Zanuck, co-producer of
Deep Impact, Jon Favreau, who plays Gus Partenza in Deep Impact, Gerry Griffin who was the science consultant on
the film, and Dr. Pete Worden member of the National Space Society
Board of Directors and a government expert on asteroids and space defense. I have to ask -- and this is a question
for all four of you
-- how accurate is the scenario depicted in this film. Could it really
happen? Mr. Zanuck first?
Richard Zanuck: Absolutely, we read all last week how
there is in fact a comet heading towards earth. So this is very much steeped
in real possibility.
Jon Favreau: One of the reasons guessed at for the
extinction of the dinosaurs was a comet millions of years ago.
Richard Zanuck: In fact, we are hit all the time with small fragments from outer space.
Richard Zanuck: The danger is that an enormous piece might be headed our
direction.
Gerry Griffin: The fact that an impact of this kind could
happen is a real possibility. Thank goodness there's a low probability of
occurrence. In terms of the realism of the movie, it's as real as one could
make it and try to project what such an occurrence could be like. It's very
difficult to project trajectories of these objects very much in advance.
Over the years, with improved models, we will be able to predict these more
accurately. Some scenario like the one envisioned in the movie could occur. The one that is out there which will come into our
territory in some thirty years is approximately one mile in size.
Zanuck and Favreau: : Well said, Gerry.
Timehost: Dr. Worden? Your thoughts?
Pete Worden: It's a very realistic scenario indeed. We
have very recent evidence in addition to the recent asteroid. In early
December, it appears that an asteroid or comet about 100 feet in diameter
struck southern Greenland. This was picked up by a number of satellites in
orbit and may have produced an explosion of 100 kilotons or more.
The-crow-1 asks: What exactly can be done to prevent an asteroid
from hitting the earth if it was headed for it?
Pete Worden: There are some expeditionary teams planning a
visit to Southern Greenland as soon as the weather permits. By the way, that
was 5:15 a.m. local time December 9th, 1997.
Richard Zanuck: In the movie, we send a team of
astronauts up to meet the comet and land on it in order to place atomic
bombs, which hopefully will alter the course of the comet towards earth.
Jon Favreau: And I'm on that spaceship.
Richard Zanuck: He's one of our hero astronauts. and you'll have to see the
movie to find out if he makes a safe return to Earth.
Pete Worden: If it was a small asteroid, and we knew about
it well enough in advance, we could intercept it and physically hit it with
a spacecraft. Indeed, we planned to hit it with a satellite named
Clementine, which was unfortunately line-item vetoed by the Clinton
administration. For a larger asteroid, with less notice, we would probably
have to detonate a nuclear device near the surface in order to divert it. The
key is to do comprehensive early surveillance of the problem so we have enough warning.
Gerry Griffin: To add to what Pete said, I've always
thought of it in my own mind as the ultimate anti-ballistic missile system,
like Star Wars. It is an intercept problem that has to happen with great
accuracy, great power and great velocity. I believe we have the technology
to develop this kind of system, but we have not so far had the will or means
to get it done
Kclemons_98 asks: What would be possibly the worst case scenario when
the asteroid hits.....oh, and Jon I loved Swingers!
Favreau: Thanks!
Gerry Griffin: It obviously depends on the size and where
it hits.
Richard Zanuck: It would be classified as an extinction-level event, an ELE, if
in fact the comet was as large as the one in the movie.
Gerry Griffin: If one postulated a massive asteroid or comet, say 5 or 6
miles across, it could be catastrophic. It could be on line with the asteroid that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Pete Worden: The analyses that have been done by NASA and
the Defense Department. suggest that an ocean impact is the most damaging
scenario. The reason for that is that massive tidal waves are raised. For
example, the asteroid that hit 65 million years ago that caused the
extinction of the dinosaurs caused a title wave that was probably a
mile high when it hit the coast. If an asteroid of that size hit the pacific
ocean, it could immediately inundate both North America and Asia. Tidal
waves are the danger from asteroids of the size we might expect to encounter
in the near future.
OceanicRealm asks: In the event of an asteroid striking earth like
the one of recent threat, wouldn't our technology pull the human race through
the catastrophe? Meaning, electricity to use on farms where no sun can shine
through due to dust, etc.
Richard Zanuck: And that in fact is very similar to the catastrophe posed by
our comet in Deep Impact.
Jon Favreau: That's a lot of canned peaches!
Richard Zanuck: In the movie, underground shelters are
built for large segments of the population.
Pete Worden: With an asteroid that size, it would be a
global catastrophe, but not a terminal catastrophe. There could be hundreds
of millions killed immediately and hundreds of millions starved over the
next few years of global darkness. That doesn't represent the
extinction of the human race, but it's certainly something to be avoided if possible.
Gerry Griffin: Pete is right on target with that answer. I won't give
away one of the major parts of the movie, but in the movie, they deal with how to survive such an
event. One of the solutions to be realistically applied, could be the one
shown in the movie. Whether such an event could be survived remains to be
seen, but I really do feel the movie could be a thought-provoker in this area.
Inannah asks: If a mile-wide asteroid hit earth (on land), how much
damage would it do?
Timehost: Since there are no dinosaurs today -- who would end up
extinct???
Pete Worden: A one kilometer asteroid would release have somewhere
between 1000 and a millon megatons of energy. It would immediately
create a crater some 10 to 20 miles across and destroy all life within
hundreds of miles. The most serious effect would be the material that would
be thrown into the atmosphere. It could cause a mini ice age that could last
from months to years and could cause global famine.
Oystermaster asks: If the asteroid hit at the equator, about how much
of it would be disintegrated from atmospheric pressure?
Jon Favreau: (Laughing) I'll let our producer field
that one!
Pete Worden: Typically, how much burns up depends on what
it's composed of. It it's ice, like a comet, and smaller than 200 feet in
diameter, it would totally burn up in the atmosphere. If it's iron, anything
larger than 10 feet in diameter makes it to the ground. Something the size
of the asteroid postulated in the movie or the discussion, virtually none of
it burns up to speak of.
Timehost: Well you better not let the producer field THIS one, Jon --
GoldenEyeFan asks: Was the movie fun to make, Jon?
Jon Favreau: Because there was so much attention to
detail in the astronaut portion, the film was actually quite grueling by
acting standards. We had to simulate a near weightless environment, and I had to wear a fifty pound replica of the new Mars
space suit. I was suspended high above the comet's surface by wires.
Gerry Griffin: I was out there for about six weeks, and helped with anything
technical. It was a great, fun movie to make. this was my third one. I believe the production designer, the directors and
producers did just a fantastic job doing a video and audio production that
was really fun to see. It was fun to make and it will be fun to see.
Richard Zanuck: And it will be fun to see lines in front of the theater.
Inannah asks: Is Deep Impact based on real events? (what's deep
impact, by the way?)
Richard Zanuck: Deep Impact was inspired by an old Paramount film called "When World Collide",
although in the final
analysis, there is hardly anything but the basic idea remaining
from that older film.
Shawn-L asks: Gerry, What are the chances of an asteroid hitting earth
right out of the blue?
Gerry Griffin: I think that's very unlikely. One of the problems with tracking these things is that
they're difficult to predict. Comets particularly "vent" as they get near
the sun and that adds to their speed. There's a point that needs to be made
here: The earth is a very small speck in this giant universe we live in, and
thank goodness. I really think that what NASA has done and what they have
studied in this area is important, but it needs to be studied, and the
technology development needs to continue. The likelihood that something
would come undetected is low.
Pete Worden: I have to disagree with that. The
issue is that our current search programs are based on a very small number
of individuals. Those are not very well oriented for comets, especially,
coming from the direction of the sun. Today we're pretty vulnerable. Some of the near misses
we've had in the last couple of years were not discovered until after they had
passed earth. The technology is there, but there's no will to do it.
Gerry Griffin: Pete said it better than I did. I agree. I have to hit the road now. Sorry I gotta go!!! It was fun.
Pete Worden: I'm still here though!
Fluxon asks: If a 1 km asteroid hit the Earth, what is the "worst"
place it could land?
Jon Favreau: My house!
Pete Worden: The worst place would be in the Caribbean basin, south China
Sea, or the Mediterranean. Some area where there is an enclosed sea with a large
population density. The tidal waves would kill tens of millions, if not
hundreds of millions.
Q asks: For Jon: What did you do to prepare for this role?
Jon Favreau: I rented Apollo 13 and all the recent
astronaut movies that had been done, and I watched documentaries on
astronaut training. We rehearsed the wire work with the best people in the
field, and I learned, with Gerry's help, how to simulate low gravity.
Richard Zanuck: Didn't you also watch the film, "The Boy Who Thought He Could
Fly"?
Mot_the_barber asks: What animals would survive in the event of a
massive asteroid?
Richard Zanuck: Groundhogs.
Jon Favreau: And agents.
Pete Worden: The only empirical evidence we have on that is from the asteroid that hit 65 million years ago. It appears that large land animals did not survive. But
apparently small, mousy looking things called mammals did. They could
survive as scavengers on very little food and heat. One would expect that a
future strike would have rather small animals surviving. Whatever happens,
it's almost certain that cockroaches will survive, but we won't.
Richard Zanuck: See, we said agents!
Pete Worden: One of the issues is, if it's really a big one, the
biggest problem is food. You'd want to stockpile food and get under ground
very quickly. The 65 million year old one hit near the Yucatan. A mile-high tidal wave hit the coast. Every forest on the planet burst into flames, everything
on the surface would have burned. The only things that would have survived
were things in holes in the ground. It completely disrupted the ocean
ecology, and virtually every forest on the planet burned. The only plants that would have survived would have been those with seeds that
could have survived for decades. You'd have to store enough food to last for years, and get
underground for the day or half a day of fallout meteorites, then you could
survive a few years.
NatlSpaceSoc_RZP asks: Richard, do you think this film will have as
much "impact" as your earlier films? Jaws, The Sting ...
Richard Zanuck: Wow. Yes, I do. And in many respects, I think that it may cause the same
type of worldwide interest and excitement as Jaws did when it was released
in 1975.
Soul_Master101 asks: To The Scientists: Do you think that meteors are a major threat that is very underrated or that
the odds are too high to even worry about it?
Pete Worden: If one averages all of the various threats, the threat of an asteroid impact seems to be about equal
to the threat of dying in an airplane crash. To my mind that rates it as a
serious concern. Those averages, to put it in numbers, run about 1 in
20000.
Goatwax asks: What kind of risks were involved with making this film?
Zanuck: There's always a financial risk when making a large scale
movie, and in addition there are physical risks that are taken
when you are dealing with a great deal of special effects, and great numbers
of people. Particularly in a situation that calls for panic.
Jon Favreau: I felt very safe with the professionals who were working in
the crew. They all had a lot of experience in the high wire work
and the explosives that were used on the set.
Mot_the_barber asks: Where was the movie shot?
Richard Zanuck: The movie was shot in Washington, DC, parts of the midwest,
New York City, and at Paramount Studios in Hollywood.
NatlSpaceSoc_RZP asks: If a comet, which is primarily water, was
going to hit, how big would it have to be to not burn up in atmosphere?
Timehost: That's for Dr. Worden.
Pete Worden: Again, it depends on the exact make-up. We believe that a
comet larger than a couple of hundred feet in diameter would make it to the ground. The best example we have is
the Tanguska comet which hit in 1908. That was about 300 feet in diameter.
That did not quite make it to the ground. But the fireball did, destroying
a forest 50 miles across. By the way, I'm pleased to see that my colleagues in
the National Space Society are online.
Timehost: Dr. Worden has to leave us now. We want to thank
him and Mr. Griffin for joining us this evening. We will take a couple of other questions
for Mr. Zanuck and Jon Favreau
Pete Worden: Thanks for having me here tonight on behalf of the National
Space Society!
Trina_15_fire asks: When does Deep Impact premiere?
Richard Zanuck: May 8th. The date was selected almost a year ago, so this meteor
sighting was completely coincidental.
Timehost: In a film like this, how important are the special effects
to the film's success? And what kind of special effects are in Deep Impact?
Jon Favreau: What's nice about Deep Impact is that the special effects
just help set the tone for the reality of the piece. The real strong suit of the film
is the way society as a whole reacts to the impending disaster.
Goatwax asks: If this movie is successful, do you think you could do
a sequel?
John Favreau and Richard Zanuck: : (Laughing) That would give away
the ending.
Timehost: Uh-oh!
Richard Zanuck: We're already thinking about "Deeper Impact"
Timehost: And then there's DeepEST Impact.
Richard Zanuck: And if that is a success we'll try "Deepest Impact"!
Timehost: I have to ask you both -- final question for the evening --
what projects are up next for the two of you after Deep Impact?
Richard Zanuck: I am starting a film with Clint Eastwood, entitled "True
Crime." That film starts in about five weeks.
Jon Favreau: Hopefully, Dick will offer me a role in that one.
Otherwise, I have a part in a film called "Very Bad Things" starring Christian Slater
and Cameron Diaz, which is just being completed, and I am about to play
Rocky Marciano this summer.
Timehost: Jon Favreau and Richard D. Zanuck -- thanks so much for
joining us this evening! And thanks to Gerry Griffin and Dr. Pete Worden
too. This has been a great chat -- you've been a great audience.
Jon Favreau: I would also like to congratulate Robert Duvall, who is a
big part of Deep Impact, on his Academy Award nomination and wish him the
best of luck.
Timehost: Funny -- we're just about to DO a chat with Robert Duvall in about half an hour. I'll tell him you say hi! :-)
Richard Zanuck: I echo those sentiments, and would also like to thank Morgan
Freeman for his performance in Deep Impact, as the President of the United
States.
Richard Zanuck and Jon Favreau: Send along our best!
Timehost: We will. Great chat, great guests, and GREAT audience.
Thank you all so very much for logging on! I'm sorry that we couldn't answer
all your questions -- they were really great. This is Patrizia DiLucchio for Time Online on Yahoo! Chat
bidding you all ... Good night!
