66 million years ago a giant asteroid struck Earth wiping out the dinosaurs and 75% of the other animals on Earth devastating yeah but this was millions of years ago what if this asteroid were to collide with us today is there any chance we could stop it what parts of the world would be most impacted and why might this end up being a good thing this is what if and here's what would happen if the dinosaur killing asteroids struck in 2024 okay let's see what kind of asteroid we're dealing with here known as the chickaloo impactor
this asteroid was as wide as 100 to 200 football fields that's 10 to 20 km wide and now it's coming directly toward us specifically the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico if you think you can run away from this thing yeah no chance it's hurling toward Earth at 20 km per second suddenly it crashes into the sea killing everything in the immediate vicinity but that's not all a thermal pulse radiates out from the blast site releasing the energy equivalent of 10 billion nuclear bombs cue an enormous shock wave of air that destroys everything within 15 00 km
plants and animals are shredded forests burned to the ground a magnitude 10 earthquake would crack the Earth open Quakes would radiate throughout the United States massive tsunamis would rise Mexico City Florida and Texas would all feel the effects I know Texas has talked about seceding but I don't think this is what they had in mind now although there will still be life on Earth it might not last much longer plumes of dust and sulfur in the atmosphere block the Sun for the next 15 years it's a cold dark awful winter only a few of us
will make it out alive but maybe the humans that do survive will be able to rebuild Earth and funny enough that massive asteroid that caused all the damage well it might hold the key to a stable new future if you want to see what I mean let's head to the impact site some of the most valuable materials known to humans are scattered within this massive Crater of Destruction this asteroid like many others contained one of the most Essential Elements for rebuilding our society gold now when most people think of gold they think of it as
a symbol of luxury and high status but they don't understand why it's considered to be so valuable well for starters it's a key component we can use to rebuild our Communications technology energy infrastructure and medical equipment but more importantly if traditional currency systems collapse after this disaster it would help stabilize the global economy gold has been valued as a stable medium of exchange and store of value for Millennia especially during difficult times even in today's volatile Market environment gold remains one of the safest Investments with a one-year return of 8.68% and a 5-year return of
5 4.95% gold continues to show its resilience and capacity to protect Investments against inflation currency devaluation and geopolitical risks according to experts at caliber mining a public company that produces gold listed in Canada on the TSX and in the US on the otcqx gold production remains underinvested despite its value let me explain caliber mining leverages the stability of gold with the added potential of a high Growth Company they've proven value through delivering 28% year-over-year production growth and even a 10-fold increase in the reserves since 2019 with five mines across the globe and the ability to
self-fund exploration well caliber is constantly Drilling and finding more gold they continue to grow and diversify their gold production with their new Canadian asset Valentine gearing up to come online next year now despite that success gold and gold production is a sector not getting much attention yet but the price continues to rise and well-known Banks like Goldman Sachs predict higher prices so you can see why having this giant deposit of gold in front of us is one of the most useful things we could ask for when rebuilding our society and Mining from it will continue
to provide value and wealth for future Generations but for any of that to happen we need to survive the asteroid in the first place and luckily for us it's not 66 million years ago it's 2024 and we're Homo sapiens creatures with really big brains and bright ideas no offense to the T-Rex but they definitely weren't getting whirle in too and they definitely weren't tracking the sky for asteroids but there's a team at Nasa doing just that and if we were able to spot an asteroid ahead of time could we somehow steer it off course well
it's possible to deflect an asteroid from its path here's five different options we can explore the first possibility is a kinetic impactor this is the only deflection option scientists have tested so far the idea behind it is to violently slam an object into the asteroid pushing it off its path NASA tested this technique in 2022 by slamming a spacecraft into dioros dioros is the moon of a near Earth asteroid and thanks to the force of the Collision it's now going faster so in theory we could use this option to move an asteroid off course but
there's a bit of a problem the asteroid we're dealing with is way too big in order to successfully knock it off course we'd need multiple kinetic impactors I'm not liking our chances with this one let's see what else we got okay the second option for deflection is called a gravity tractor think of this like your dog pulling on its leash taking you down a different path to smell something interesting minus the dog and the smell here a spacecraft flies next to an asteroid changing its path by the force of its gravity unfortunately there's a big
problem with this method for starters it takes a really long time and again it only works on small asteroids ones that are less than 500 m in diameter yeah this will be a nogo when it comes to the massive asteroid heading toward Earth Earth Okay the third option is something known as an ion beam Shepherd but instead of hurting goats this Shepherd is a spacecraft hurting the asteroid out of our way the spacecraft has an ion engine which generates an exhaust of accelerated Xenon ions these ions are super powerful charged particles and the force of
these charged particles deflects the asteroid but probably not powerful enough to deflect a chicka Loop repeat okay next up space lasers now if you're Imagining zapping the entire asteroid with lasers so it vaporizes no that's not it unfortunately it isn't as cool but it can be effective the laser is trained on the surface creating plumes that push the asteroid away and if we had enough lasers that were powerful enough this might be a viable method finally for a really big asteroid like the one we're dealing with here and something's got to be done there's always
nukes now this would be incredibly dangerous because there's always the possibility of fragments of the asteroid or other space debris falling on Earth not to mention launching nukes in general is a super risky Endeavor but let's be real an emergency like this probably justifies us unlocking the nuclear codes scientists tell us that sending a nuke that detonates next to an asteroid 2 months ahead of time could vaporize 99.9% of the asteroid's mass away from Earth sounds pretty good to me now all of this only works if we spot the asteroid way ahead of time if
for some reason we don't and an asteroid suddenly came out of nowhere we'd have a mass evacuation the evacuation Zone would be determined based on the size speed and angle of the impending impact since it's hitting the Yucatan Peninsula well the US Cuban and Mexican governments would be busy evacuating people in Mexico Cuba and parts of the Southern United States the three governments would have to create alternative arrangements for food and shelter for hundreds of thousands of people maybe more now Mass evacuation doesn't sound like a walk in the park so is there any upside
to having an asteroid land in our backyard well yeah there are amazing gifts the asteroid could bring us a whole host of valuable minerals due to their highly inconvenient locations in deep space like in the asteroid belt these space rocks are extremely difficult to mine but this would change if an asteroid landed on Earth just a single asteroid is estimated to contain a ridiculous amount of gold 700 quintilian that's enough zeros to give every person on Earth 93 billion and there are other elements that we might be able to extract as well Cobalt Platinum Nickel
in fact the pressure with which the asteroid crashes can transform one element into a more valuable one for instance at a meteorite crash site in Australia a rare mineral a rodite was found it was formed out of Z work on as a result of the high pressure and temperature of the impact and you know mining these elements from asteroids could free us from the human rights issues that have been part and parcel of traditional mining caliber mining follows ethical mining practices but not every mining company does in addition mining asteroids would be more environmentally friendly
free of the danger of releasing toxins like lead and arsenic into our water today large impact craters in South Africa and Canada are already being mined they're rich sources of nickel and gold the devastation from the crash of an asteroid would be horrific but if it turns out it's unavoidable that Devastation May hold the clue to new resources and New Growth but this is what would happen if the chickalo asteroid hit Earth now what would happen if an asteroid hit the Moon and cracked it in half well that sounds like a story for another what
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