I don't know if you are going to read this Phil, but anyways I would like to thank you very much for this series. You managed to make astronomy more interesting to the masses, and you did it by not making it too hard to understand. I am a civil engineer and I love astronomy,physics and math. So I felt very happy to see this, and I hope we have more episodes of Crash Course Astronomy. (also recomended to some friends interested in astronomy to watch this ASAP!) A big fan of yours, André Gomes
i found a small iron meteorite last summer.....about the size of a prescription bottle's lid....and when i found it, i was like a little kid on Christmas!! it looks very different to the hematite we have locally. i sat here with it in my hand watching this vid, like a child. the thought of holding something so amazing is near spiritual for me.
TheMrMeff No scientist is considering *crashing* a space probe as a possibility. Instead, the space probe would attach itself to the meteor and alter its trajectory.
I've been rewatching the MST3K catalog this week since I'm between jobs for the first time in over a decade. That line before the opening hit me right in the feels. Thanks, Phil.
Thanks so much for making these! My astronomy professor at college has us watch these along with his lectures and I understand everything so much better after watching them
Very nice video! Me and my brother actually had a discussion about a year ago, while stargazing during a meteor shower. We both saw a ghostly streak after one of the bigger meteors, and wondered if it was either debris/dust or if it was just an afterglow in our eyes. Glad to get some of that clarified! :)
Back in AZ, I have a 9-pound meteorite. It is about the size of a softball. Its mostly made of iron. I'm bummed out I forgot it there. Some day I hope to go back and get it.
***** Oh, puh-lease! The relation between birds & bird-hipped dinosaurs is much closer than that between primitive bacteria & humans - well, in most cases...
***** the thing is that ***** is actually right. Birds are technically dinosaurs so they technically did not evolve from them (I'm not saying birds didn't evolve from some of the species we normally call dinosaurs). They are dinosaurs by definition, or taxonomy :P
+ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤdinosaurs were not a species. They were part of the clade dinosauria, making them dinosaurs. A clade is just a common ancestor an all of its descendants. This makes birds dinosaurs since they descend from some of the species of dinosaurs that lived millions of years ago. www.pnas.org/content/109/7/2428/F4.expansion.html
Phil was in Sydney last year and I remember going to his talk at the Observatory here, and he actually bought along a piece of Asteroid/Meteor (can't remember which one, it was so long ago) for us to hold!
I came upon Crash Course by way of SciShow. I have an unending curiosity to the extent I’m pretty sure my first word was “why”! (Granted that got me into more trouble as a kid but thankfully that trouble couldn’t kill the curiosity!) Speaking for myself, I must say there’s something addicting about learning when the person teaching truly loves their topic! Most people find it strange that I prefer videos like these but have little to no interest in watching tv. My thought... why watch fiction when reality is so much more interesting, fascinating and even frightening!? The only thing I can think of as a “tweak” to this series... I’d love for there to be ‘add ons’ as new things are discovered. Other than that, I love the series and appreciate everyone who works to make these available! Thank you!!!
I know someone who is into fossils and she's friends with a meteorite collector (he jokingly called her and said he was flying to Chelyabinsk right after it happened). She's really lucky because he lets her have some of the dust he collects whenever he cuts into one. She's made some beautiful pottery that's been finely sprayed with meteorite dust. She's also generous, so I have a couple pieces with meteorite dust them as well. :)
I rather like the idea of attaching probes onto them to push them into new orbits so you don't end up with lot's of hard to account for and harder to control pieces of exploded space rock potentially hurtling your way. Plus if they contain any useable minerals they can always be pushed into a stable orbit and exploited.
At my local(ish) planetarium, they have this shiny chunk of rock about two/three adult fists big or so, with a sign saying "This is a metallic meteorite that fell in (place) in (year). See how heavy it is!" and it's attached to this sliding rod thing so you can lift it a bit. Probably lots of planetariums/science museums have something like that, but I still think it's cool that ordinary people can just walk up and touch a chunk of outer space. :)
Any tips/thoughts on meteorite hunting? I'm talking about when you hike through the desert and find a verrry unique rock that turns out to be not of this world, not the flying to and mining gold/iron/water from them in space.
Mandlize I guess that comes down to luck. But everytime there is a farely bright meteor spotted, there is a search for a possible meteorite. Just about 2 months ago, there was a very bright bolite going (visible in daylight) and there was a huge search for it. After few days they found this tiny (about 1 cm in size) rock.
We need to go into space and mine those asteroids. Here in the US, we can pay off our debt if we just mine two one mile long asteroids. This has a great economic impact but also one of security, we would have to worry about one becoming a meteor and smacking the planet if we just mine it into none-existence up in space.
That would make the economy worse. Flood the market with RARE materials. That's the only reason they are expensive is because they are RARE. Gold would be the same price as tin. lol
Josh Hooper they would still be useful. Gold and other rare earth metals are used for all kinds of technologies. If we could get them from space instead of destroying our planet then I'd be all for it
kingofprussia17 bigger problem is the outer space treaty meaning nobody can actually OWN anything in space and that " the exploration of outer space shall be done to benefit all countries" which this doesnt do. The treaty explicitly forbids any government from claiming a celestial resource such as the Moon or a planet, claiming that they are the common heritage of mankind.
Thank you very much for making this video, Phil Plait and the others at _CrashCourse_ Astronomy! I really love this series and I really love astronomy! Meteors are also fascinating, very fascinating. I have a hard time remembering the difference between meteoroids, astroids and comets but I think it will eventually come to me. Did you say that a meteor catastrophe, when a meteor larger than 100 m in diametre hits Earth, happened every two or three CENTURIES? Oh, we better get busy finding a solution and selecting a course of action, otherwise we will be in a real mess...
Interesting watching this and hearing that we are helpless to the universe. Now in 2022 we successfully changed the period of an asteroid orbiting another asteroid with the DART program. We can fight back!
Here's an emergency plan if such meteor comes and we are still unprepared: Step 1: Open the door Step 2: Get on the floor Step 3: Everybody goes the way of dinosaur
But don't worry! They'll be stopped by a young adult who suffered extreme trauma and for awhile thought he was a completely different young adult. When they call forth Holy, summoned by a cute girl who is now all kinds of dead. Also along for the ride we have Mr T, Ninja Girl, Evil Robot Cat(tm), Mr Tea (shut up and drink it, damn it), Morgan Freebobcat, Emo Git, and Tits McGee ...it's a long story
But then the hot boy turned out to be the host of another stronger, hotter boy who swing around his very long sword against the young adult with his big sword as they talk about their past. Then the young adult get fed up with the hot boy and be like "disappear to where you belong, in my memory" while dumping him after a flashy break up.
Me and some of my buddies took a bunch of blankets, and sat out on peninsula on my lake for last years Geminids. Tea to keep us warm, and hundreds of shooting stars. I stargaze every night, but it was truly inspiring, because some of my friend nods had never seen a shooting star before, and they were Boy Scouts. XD
Could a big enough meteorite kill off fish and other sea lifeforms that we depend on if it happens to hit somewhere in the great ocean? The shock-wave i reckon would be devastating even under water.
I really wonder who would downvote a video like this. It's so weird. Almost anything else I can understand, but educational, non-annoying videos like these?
I saw a bolide meteor during the day time, I was at a campsite somewhere in South Africa and it passed over the horizon, I remember the front part being bright white with an orange tail (which I thought was fire) streaking out behind it. It left after images in my eye once it was gone. I'd love to see one again some time...
There's another type of meteor as those who pay close attention to Shakespeare will know: in A Winter's Tale, Autolycus talks about a folk song involving a fish at 40,000 fathoms in the air, meaning it's in the upper mesosphere. :P
10 years ago I was a nightwatchman at a lumber mill, so it tended to be pretty dark during my shift on the weekends... While on a patrol behind the mill I saw an extremely bright green flash in the sky. At first I thought someone was lighting off fireworks in the distance, but it was actually a meteor. That also left an afterimage with how bright it was, but it probably helps that it was quite dark to begin with heh. That's the one thing I miss from that job, it was a GREAT chance to stargaze while getting paid in the process lol.
Something very magical about Meteorite. I have an mostly Iron metorite and it's cool to think that the Iron in it destroyed a star is also the Iron in my blood making life possible.
CrashCourse Very cool episodes, I continue to enjoy the astronomy courses. One question I noticed all if your nice space toys, i.e the LM and rover. Is that LM a model or just a lego set?
If these things are interacting with the earths atmosphere this regularly, I'm very surprised we haven't had more incidents with space craft being hit etc... or unmanned missions. Anyone?
I'm watching this video with my sister across from me and when Phil says "you get meteor showers", my sister looks up and says "No thanks. I prefer baths."
