How Far Apart Are Asteroids? 

Did Neil just ruin your favorite Sci-Fi?

Chuck needs his own asteroid. So that people can say "hey that's a nice asteroid!".

"I am gonna take a nap captain" got me😂😂😂😂😂😂. Chuck 😂

As an astronomy teacher I like to tell my students the paradox of space. Space is considered mostly empty but at the same time literally everything in the universe is in space. So simultaneously it is empty while also being full of absolutely everything that has ever existed. And congratulations on the 13123 Tyson rock!!!

"in about a month, we might hit that asteroid" i laughed so hard lol

This was so funny. Chuck was on fire on this one. I love these two guys. Intelligence and humor at their best.

When you said '600....', I thought 'Wow! 600 mile gap', then you said '...thousand miles'. Mind blown right there!

I can't express how great Chuck is to this show :)

"I'm actually gonna take a nap, captain" got me, brilliant!

We got to start a petition to demote Neil’s asteroid to a dwarf asteroid. We weren’t able to save Pluto, but we can avenge it!

Neil absolutely deserves the honor of having an asteroid named after him. He is probably the second best science communicator of all time, after Carl Sagan, and the most watchable astrophysicist on social media.

Neil’s approach at explaining his thoughts is always very graceful! 👍

I love chuck especially when he has his super fire moments 🤣

This is by far one of the funniest star talks ever. Had to hold my belly to prevent it from going into orbit… 😂

Just to put it into perspective, 600,000 miles is 2.5x the distance between Earth and the Moon.

The asteroid named "Fluffy" is probably a planet killer LOL

The comedy these guys create is worth watching even if you don't learn anything. But I often lean things too, so double win!

This was a fun video to watch! Thank you for your time explaining Neal, and chucks hilarious commentary.

lifehack: you don't need an astronomer friend, just name your kids AFTER Asteroids

I think the rule should be if you ever mention the size of space that you have to begin with, "Space, is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space." 😁 (Douglas Adams)

Doctor Tyson, I'm not sure if you are reading the comments from time to time, but your show is absolutely awesome! I simply can't wait for you to make an appearance in Montreal! What blows my mind with this explainer is the fact that these don't, over time, gravitationaly attract themselves to form just a bigass asteroids (or a new planet)... or do they? Btw, Chuck's energy is contagious. Keep up the good work, you guys are the perfect Lawn Mowing partners! Excuse the grammar, english isn't my first language.

This was one of the best explainers. No doubt.

Another great explainer. & Chuck's asteroid belt movie dialogue had me dying!

Another great video by my favorite astrophysicist and one of my favorite comedians. I love the way you guys inspire us to keep looking up.

Great edits!!! Chuck in space was pure comedy gold 😂 One question: what is the average distance between asteroids in the OORT cloud?

This is the funniest episode I’ve seen in a long time 😂 And enlightening 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

Great episode as always.

I love watching these videos while having breakfast, but today it took me longer to finish my meal because I kept laughing so hard at Chuck's jokes, especially about the space ship navigating through the Asteroid field. You guys are awesome!

I just finished reading Astrophysics for people in a hurry and it was incredible such an easy book to get into especially as someone who wasn’t big on reading anything outside of Comics, In fact it was so good I’ve already bought one of your other books Death by Black Hole because I knew I wouldn’t be able to get enough of your witty comments and expressions throughout each chapter while teaching me the wonderful wonders of the universe.

Good video keep up the good work

Great video! Thanks for all the information. ❤

C3-PO: “Sir, the probability of successfully navigating an Asteroid Field is approximately 99.9997!” 😅

One of my favorite analogies to get a sense of the scale of space is if you think of the distance between Sun and Alpha Centauri as the length of a football field then the size of Neptune's orbit is about the size of a quarter. Another is to think of distances not in abstract units like miles/kilometers, but in terms of the size of objects themselves. How many suns can you fit between the Sun and Alpha Centauri? About 30 million. The AU already does this in a way. ~270,000 AU to Alpha Centauri.

Love the show guys. Thank you. This episode brings in an interesting question. How dense are typical astroid belts in other systems? What is the average? Our solar system seems to have a few oddities that are not typical. Maybe a thin astroid belt is one of them.

This video made my day. Thanks Chuck!

Love what you guys do thanks!

If I ever discover a new asteroid, though the chances are low, I will name it Nice after you, Chuck. "Damn, that is a Nice asteroid!"

Love chuck and the star talk channel learn so much about science especially astronomy

Chuck was in fine form on this one. I laughed out loud several times. I love Startalk in general, but this one was hilarious. Thanks for this one, guys!

9:04 Chuck described the plot for Speed 3 😅

The scene from Attack of the Clones takes place in a ring (around Geonosis) not in an asteroid field...so I think the distance depicted is more realistic there. But no excuse for Empire! Lol Great video!!

Chuck at his absolute best! Without him, the whole episode could have been Neil saying, deadpan, "the average distance between asteroids id 600k miles". Interesting, no doubt, but with Lord Nice? Another level. Well done, guys!

You guys are cracking me up on this one… much needed 😂

This is one of my favorite Startalk videos. Mainly because of Chuck's hilarious dramatization of a realistic passage through the asteroid belt 😂 I keep coming back to it whenever I need a good laugh.

Gosh, I do love watching you two! Laughed a lot with this one!

This was a good one. BTW, how about discuss how to go through Saturn's disk? It's been sort of done already. There's actually an audio recording of when the satellite went through one of the layers. Turns out it was literally dust; but at that speed, the dust hitting the satellite sounds like static.

Great video as always

You are smarter than what i think about you.👍👏.. i was waiting for this kind of films and you can find so many real facts than you think..

You guys make learning, fun! 🌠

love star talk, they just make it difficult not to enjoy

I learned something new, today. Thank you.

These 2 are just awesome!!!

Thanks for the great video. This brings to mind another aspect of space that SF almost always gets wrong: Nebulae. On the screen and in print, we see ships using nebulae to hide in during conflict so they can avoid--or even ambush--an enemy. In the opening credits of "Voyager", we see Voyager dip its figurative toe into a glowing nebula, leaving behind a glowing wake as it sails by. That's not how any of that works. A typical emission nebula (one that gives off light, like the one in the "Voyager" opening credits) is as bright as a 40-watt incandescent bulb spread out over fifty cubic miles. Though when seen from light years away over a long exposure time, that can be impressive and quite beautiful, the truth is that if you were right in the middle of an emission nebula, you would have a difficult time figuring that out. (Indeed, it took astronomers quite a while to determine that Earth is not inside an emission nebula.) A typical nebula is also a better vacuum than even the best vacuums we can achieve on Earth. They are almost not even there at all. They usually span several light years in size, and only from a very great distance and long exposure times do they look like the flowing rivulets of glowing gas as depicted in science fiction.

I always thought it was because of the “hyperspeed” and folding of space that they got so close

This was so entertaining. Fair play... Laughed so much. 😊😂 Learning while laughing... Or laughing while learning 🤷🏻😊

Excellent Stuff ❤

In Star Wars defense, that was in a galaxy far, far away where asteroids may be closer together. Maybe even six feet on average:)

Chuck thanks for making my day a little bit better.you made me laugh so hard.i wounder how boring a movie like star wars would be if they made with help of Neil and his colleauges and it was made exactly what they told the director.

This is the Neil that I love. I love Astronomy and to have someone like Neil explain so much so clearly, its awesome.

OMG, this episode is super fun!😍

Let us assume that the average distance of 600K miles between asteroids is the general case in any solar system. If a spaceship can achieve significant sub-light speed, say 75% C, that's about 140,000 miles/second. So the asteroids might come by pretty quick if you couldn't navigate a path that gave them all a wide berth.

I've always heard they don't "Dodge" asteroids, they "Chevy" asteroids

Chuck, when there’s an alert however improbable, I get hooked on a feeling.

I would think your speed has a lot to do with encountering an asteroid. If you go very slowly, chances of hitting anything will be low. Move very fast and the distance between asteroids diminishes greatly. So, chance collision will be higher. Also, other solar systems will be different from our solar system. Another solar system may be more densely packed. It just happens the asteroid field the Millenium Falcon is navigating through is one of these dense fields.

In the defense of the original trilogy that asteroid field Han Solo is navigating is a recently exploded planet. If anything what is wrong in that scene is that many of thise chunks should be piles of gooey lava that didnt have ebough time to cool down yet, but their proximity is expected and given how they were formed there is even a big possibility for them to coalesce again given a few million years and reforme Alderan.

I am one of your many fans Neil, hoping you help open many minds!

Great video

Chuck is something else really!!!😂😂😂

People think space is jam packed. I try to emphasize that all the stuff out there is super far away from each other. Even if there was intelligent life somewhere it is so so so far away as to be irrelevant. They always show planets in proportion to each other but they can't ever show the relative distance since they are no where near each other.

How ironic would it be if one day Tyson's asteroid destroyed Pluto?

Pure love look up and please please please never stop ❤

Between this and Pluto, childhood totally jaded. Thanks Neil 😂

So lucky to watch the launches of Pioneer 1 and 2, and Voyager 1 and 2 from Titusville, Florida.

I was so glad to see this explainer. I'm always amused when I see things like How the Universe Works showing the solkar system crowded with rocks and protoplanets and such things when they are really huge distances apart.

Chuck’s lining is on point

You both are F* AMAZING! Thank you!

Thanks again. You guys are great 😂😂😂!

I love these guys star talking,love their knowledge and they are funny.Big Hi from southeastern europe.❤

I enjoy how you both explain the vastness of space, but in a super funny way. 😃

I was kinda relieved to hear that distance between the rocks

Droppin' 3 Score and 10, we see you Chuck ;)

This is greatest duo in history

A book with a big chunk on empty space that will be a best seller, Chuck's masterful personification of empty space with a therapist: Masterful.

Chuck was on fire today! Loved the little Star Trek sketch he just made HAHAHAHAHAhahaha

Observing asteroid Santa on Christmas is a cool way to waste a night

thank you Neil and Chuck for the laughs.

Great laughs I had thanks to you both. Question here, since it's a belt, why don't we send spacecrafts "down" or "up" to completely avoid this belt? Also great number on 13123, tip of Prime. And our cats called fluffy so very much enjoyed this episode 🤗

Great video, guys. I have a question though. Hypothetically we launch two rockets, one from the north pole and one from the south pole. What would we be able to find out by going straight up and/or straight down?

Not only are yall informative but also hilarious. I feel like Im watching the smartest guy in school next to the smart class comedian in back of the class 😂🤣

Perhaps this is why now most "asteroid dodging space dogfight" scenes in Star Wars movies and shows take place in planetary rings, where objects really ARE constantly smashing into each other.

I enjoy the info you present I'm just not a chit chat guy..

Chuck got me rollin'.

Great!

LOL, my wife hit the only lamp post in an empty parking lot when learning to drive... LOL... :D

I can listen to you two brilliant men talk for an hour.

Gracias

Watching and laughing all the time! You are the best!

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's (drug store), but that's just peanuts to space.” ― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

In Star Wars' defense, our asteroid belt isn't the same as what the Millennium Falcon went through. What the Millennium Falcon went through was a relatively recently destroyed planet. (Alderaan, IIRC.) so it's at least plausible that the planetary remnants were much closer together than they are in our asteroid belt, which is billions of years old. :)

It is nice to learn about the spacial distance between asteroids. For perspective please enlighten us what the spacial distance is for the particles in the rings of Saturn and for the dead and abandoned satellites, misplaced tools (from space walks), and other space debris orbiting the earth.