The watchlist
Disasters, documentaries and Hollywood nonsense.
24 videos about asteroids, comets and what happens when they turn up, each with our verdict, from Armageddon and Deep Impact to Don't Look Up and NASA's own footage. Films get a science score, where one is "it was never a physics film" and five is "bring a textbook". Real footage and missions get the badge that says they are real. The videos use YouTube's privacy-enhanced embeds, which do not set tracking cookies, but your browser does contact YouTube to load each player. The Privacy page has the details.
Showing 21 to 24 of 24
What you are watching. NASA's Lucy spacecraft, on its way to the Jupiter Trojans, flew past the small main-belt asteroid Dinkinesh on 1 November 2023.
Our interpretation. A small test target turned out to be a surprise: Dinkinesh is a double, with a smaller companion that is itself two objects stuck together. Asteroids, it turns out, are fussier and stranger than the films ever made them.
This one is real
The rocks keep surprising us.
What you are watching. Neil deGrasse Tyson explains the path and risk of asteroid 2024 YR4 to a news anchor, at a point when it briefly had the highest impact probability of any asteroid its size.
Our interpretation. A good case study in how the system works. The odds rose, got a lot of attention, then were revised downwards as more measurements arrived, and the Earth impact was ruled out. The system worked as designed, which is the unexciting version of the story.
This one is real
A scare, revised.
What you are watching. ESA's Hera spacecraft, launched in October 2024, is on its way to Didymos and Dimorphos to inspect what NASA's DART actually did.
Our interpretation. Experiments need a follow-up. Hera will measure the moonlet's mass and the crater DART left, so that when someone does this for real, they know how hard to hit. Arrival is expected in late 2026.
This one is real
The follow-up we need.
What you are watching. A simulation-style explainer of what a roughly kilometre-wide asteroid would do on impact.
Our interpretation. A one-kilometre rock is the sort of size NASA's survey has been aiming at, and most of the ones that big are now known and have no impact planned. It would be very bad for a very long time, though not dinosaur-level. Treat the specifics as an educated sketch, and the real point as the reason people check.
This one is real
The hypothetical we keep ruling out.