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Interview With Paul Chodas

Aired September 02, 2003 - 14:48   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: And now the story, Chicken Littles, of asteroid 2003 QQ47. Why do you care about this? Well as it turns out some astronomers have been looking at this particular rock, about kilometer in diameter, three quarters of a mile. And imagine if you're God looking down here.
This particular orbit puts it as an Earth-crossing, potentially Earth-crossing asteroid, which when you do all the mathematics here and come out with what happens in 2014, apparently it will come very close to our humble perch in the solar system which is to say, Mother Earth.

The question is, should we get worried about the purple line intersecting the blue line right there in 2014? With us on the line right now is Paul Chodas, a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at NASA's facility out in Pasadena, California who studies such matters. Dr. Chodas, good to have you with us.

PAUL CHODAS, NASA: Yes, thank you.

O'BRIEN: All right. How worried should we be about QQ47?

CHODAS: Well it was of some concern over the weekend as we were tracking it and now we're not exactly sure if it's passed. There's some uncertainty. That little intersection region, we're not exactly sure. The Earth is very small in that path. So weren't sure how close the asteroid would come to the Earth.

O'BRIEN: All right let's step back for just a moment. This animation is getting way ahead of us here. We had a picture there which showed what happened 65 million years ago. Of course we don't actually have the file tape of that, Dr. Chodas. I hope you understand that.

CHODAS: Sure.

O'BRIEN: We have animation showing something that was about 10 kilometers in diameter which struck the Yucatan peninsula -- no not this. It's the next animation of the dinosaur asteroid impact. And just put that in perspective. That caused global extinctions and it was much bigger than what we're talking about right now. There we go.

CHODAS: That's right. Yes, the 10 kilometer object, or six miles across, was large enough to change the Earth's climate which caused the extinctions of the dinosaurs.

Now this one is much smaller but it's still large enough to cause a considerable damage to our climate and, therefore, it's of concern.

O'BRIEN: All right. Let's talk about how frequently something like this happens. A lot of people in the southwest or who have traveled in that area have seen a Meteor Crater in Arizona. Let's take a look at some picture we have that.

Give us a sense of what happened there. Now, this is about three quarters of a mile across, 300 feet deep. It's quite a spectacular site if you've ever seen it.

CHODAS: It is, indeed. Now the asteroid that hit Meteor Crater was much smaller, about 200 feet across. So this is considerably larger.

O'BRIEN: All right. So this puts it in perspective somewhat.

CHODAS: Yes. It would it make a large hole in the ground. It would change -- it would affect the landscape for hundreds of miles around, much farther than it did in Arizona.

O'BRIEN: All right. Now a couple years ago February, as a matter of fact, right around Valentine's Day we spent a lot of time talking about an asteroid called Eros, had a little spacecraft called MiR which orbited it and eventually landed on it.

First of all, how big was that one in the grand scheme of things?

CHODAS: Well Eros is quite a bit larger, it's about three times larger -- sorry. It's about 30 times larger than the asteroid we're taking about right now. Eros is a big one and it does not come near enough to the Earth to be of any danger.

O'BRIEN: All right. Quickly, Dr, Chodas, we are running out of time. What are the odds of one of these things hitting the planet Earth and causing planetary devastation?

CHODAS: We are continuing to watch -- this particular one, we're continuing to watch. And we think that the odds are going down that it will hit. As we observe it every night we're able to predict its path more accurately. And it's -- right now we think the odds are about one in two million for this particular asteroid.

O'BRIEN: All right. But nevertheless, there are other rocks out there, aren't there?

CHODAS: There are other rocks, indeed. And we think that once every 300,000 years or so an asteroid of this size might hit the Earth, yes.

O'BRIEN: Paul Chodas, Jet Propulsion Lab, NASA's instillation in Pasadena, along with Cal Tech. Thanks very much for being with us. We appreciate it.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired September 2, 2003 - 14:48   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: And now the story, Chicken Littles, of asteroid 2003 QQ47. Why do you care about this? Well as it turns out some astronomers have been looking at this particular rock, about kilometer in diameter, three quarters of a mile. And imagine if you're God looking down here.
This particular orbit puts it as an Earth-crossing, potentially Earth-crossing asteroid, which when you do all the mathematics here and come out with what happens in 2014, apparently it will come very close to our humble perch in the solar system which is to say, Mother Earth.

The question is, should we get worried about the purple line intersecting the blue line right there in 2014? With us on the line right now is Paul Chodas, a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at NASA's facility out in Pasadena, California who studies such matters. Dr. Chodas, good to have you with us.

PAUL CHODAS, NASA: Yes, thank you.

O'BRIEN: All right. How worried should we be about QQ47?

CHODAS: Well it was of some concern over the weekend as we were tracking it and now we're not exactly sure if it's passed. There's some uncertainty. That little intersection region, we're not exactly sure. The Earth is very small in that path. So weren't sure how close the asteroid would come to the Earth.

O'BRIEN: All right let's step back for just a moment. This animation is getting way ahead of us here. We had a picture there which showed what happened 65 million years ago. Of course we don't actually have the file tape of that, Dr. Chodas. I hope you understand that.

CHODAS: Sure.

O'BRIEN: We have animation showing something that was about 10 kilometers in diameter which struck the Yucatan peninsula -- no not this. It's the next animation of the dinosaur asteroid impact. And just put that in perspective. That caused global extinctions and it was much bigger than what we're talking about right now. There we go.

CHODAS: That's right. Yes, the 10 kilometer object, or six miles across, was large enough to change the Earth's climate which caused the extinctions of the dinosaurs.

Now this one is much smaller but it's still large enough to cause a considerable damage to our climate and, therefore, it's of concern.

O'BRIEN: All right. Let's talk about how frequently something like this happens. A lot of people in the southwest or who have traveled in that area have seen a Meteor Crater in Arizona. Let's take a look at some picture we have that.

Give us a sense of what happened there. Now, this is about three quarters of a mile across, 300 feet deep. It's quite a spectacular site if you've ever seen it.

CHODAS: It is, indeed. Now the asteroid that hit Meteor Crater was much smaller, about 200 feet across. So this is considerably larger.

O'BRIEN: All right. So this puts it in perspective somewhat.

CHODAS: Yes. It would it make a large hole in the ground. It would change -- it would affect the landscape for hundreds of miles around, much farther than it did in Arizona.

O'BRIEN: All right. Now a couple years ago February, as a matter of fact, right around Valentine's Day we spent a lot of time talking about an asteroid called Eros, had a little spacecraft called MiR which orbited it and eventually landed on it.

First of all, how big was that one in the grand scheme of things?

CHODAS: Well Eros is quite a bit larger, it's about three times larger -- sorry. It's about 30 times larger than the asteroid we're taking about right now. Eros is a big one and it does not come near enough to the Earth to be of any danger.

O'BRIEN: All right. Quickly, Dr, Chodas, we are running out of time. What are the odds of one of these things hitting the planet Earth and causing planetary devastation?

CHODAS: We are continuing to watch -- this particular one, we're continuing to watch. And we think that the odds are going down that it will hit. As we observe it every night we're able to predict its path more accurately. And it's -- right now we think the odds are about one in two million for this particular asteroid.

O'BRIEN: All right. But nevertheless, there are other rocks out there, aren't there?

CHODAS: There are other rocks, indeed. And we think that once every 300,000 years or so an asteroid of this size might hit the Earth, yes.

O'BRIEN: Paul Chodas, Jet Propulsion Lab, NASA's instillation in Pasadena, along with Cal Tech. Thanks very much for being with us. We appreciate it.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com