Hollywood has played out the disaster of an asteroid hitting Earth in films like Armageddon and Deep Impact, but is a killer asteroid really in Earth’s future?
"According to previous history, it will happen during the next 100 years," says Bong Wei, the founding director of the Asteroid Deflection Research Center. "It's time to see an impact by say, a 50 meter asteroid."
On this River to River segment, Ben Kieffer talks with Wei about the threat of asteroids and how researchers at Iowa State University are working to develop technologies to prevent asteroids from colliding with Earth. Wei recently helped conduct a three-year study on the feasibility of rapidly intercepting and nuking an incoming asteroid.
