BBC’s Alex Jones was left gobsmacked during The One Show on Monday (April 14) following an unexpected comment.
While discussing a recent episode of BBC’s The Night Sky with Dame Maggie Aderin-Pocock, they talked about an asteroid that had made headlines earlier this year for its potential collision course with Earth. It aired the same day and focused on an asteroid that ended up having less than a 1% chance of impacting our planet.
As they played clips of newsreaders announcing the asteroid threat, Alex Scott queried: “Those headlines were from a few months ago with the asteroid heading towards Earth in seven years time. Just how big and dangerous was it?”
Dame Maggie explained: “Well, this asteroid, it’s not on the scale that took out the dinosaurs, but we did call it a city killer, or city crusher. It could take out a large city.
“With an asteroid like that, the size is important, but as it comes through the Earth’s atmosphere, it builds up a shock wave and that can cause much more devastation as well.”
However, it was Joel Dommett’s cheeky quip which left them al stunned. He remarked: “It’s a shame you can’t pick which city, isn’t it?”
His comment caused laughter among guests like Gareth Malone, but rendering Alex Jones slightly stunned, reports Wales Online.
Quick to sense the shift, Joel swiftly added: “Sorry, carry on!” while Gareth mentioned: “It’s not a very fluffy name, is it? City crusher.”
Dame Maggie pointed out to the BBC stars that although the asteroid could cause massive destruction, constant monitoring has shown it won’t strike Earth.
She noted: “Now, we think it’s most likely, about a four per cent likelihood of hitting the moon.”
When Alex Jones asked about potential responses to a future asteroid impact threat, Dame Maggie explained: “When we do spot something that we think is coming towards Earth we have a battalion of things we can do.”
She then described a surprising tactic involving a ‘gravity tractor’, clarifying: “One of the things is there’s something called a gravity tractor. It sounds weird, but it’s an object with a lot of mass.”
She elaborated on its function: “It’ll sit quite close to the asteroid and if we can get to the asteroid soon enough, the gravity of this gravity tractor will deflect the asteroid so rather than heading towards Earth the gravity will pull it towards the gravity tractor and it’ll miss Earth.”
The One Show is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
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