Netflix's 'Don't Look Up' Movie and Space Apocalypse Scenario

 


The film 'Don't Look Up' starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence got a lot of praise. This film is considered a success involving science that is considered real into the film, making it interesting to examine. As it turns out, there are some things in common with what is in the movies with in the real world.

NASA, as revealed by Don't Look Up, already has a Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO), whose job it is to scan the sky to find and catalog space rocks that could potentially threaten Earth. In addition, this team aims to help the government coordinate in terms of either deflecting or destroying objects.


"Our strategy is to find populations of objects out there of significant size, so we know where they all are," said NASA planetary defense officer Lindley Johnson, who reviewed an early draft of the 'Don't Look Up' scenario more than two years ago. then.


"Once we do, it will give us decades of warning and we will then have time to use whatever technology is available."


This issue is not just to scare people. In fact, in 2013, a 20-meter large asteroid exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia. The gravitational pull of the atmosphere broke the rock before it could reach the ground. The explosion damaged 7,200 buildings and injured about 1,500 people.



Even so, the asteroids that concern PDCO the most are those measuring 140 meters or more.


"You're calculating numbers from a kind of actuarial point of view," says Amy Mainzer, professor of planetary science at the University of Arizona and a film consultant.


"140 meters is a threshold that can cause a lot of damage," Mainzer continued.


It's not just the size that makes the space rock a threat, but also its location. Since 1998, when the U.S. House of Representatives began allocating funds to search for near-Earth objects (NEOs), NASA and astronomers around the world have found 90% to 95% of the 1,000 (or more) objects ranging in size from one kilometer across. thought to be out there. But only 30-40% of the estimated 25,000 asteroids glide with a size of 140 meters or greater.


Until now, many studies have been deployed to avoid the Earth from the 'doomsday' due to the collision of foreign objects from space.

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