A Quote by Neil deGrasse Tyson

On Friday the 13th, April 2029, an asteroid large enough to fill the Rose Bowl as though it were an egg cup will fly so close to Earth that it will dip below the altitude of our communication satellites. We did not name this asteroid Bambi. Instead, we named it Apophis, after the Egyptian god of darkness and death.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Quote Topics

After Altitude April Asteroid Bambi Below Bowl Close Communication Cup Darkness Death Did Dip Earth Egg Egyptian Enough Fill Fly Friday Friday The 13th God Instead Large Name Named Our Rose Satellites Though Were Will

Quote Author

Neil deGrasse Tyson
American - Scientist
Born: October 5, 1958

Changing the asteroid's velocity changes the time when the asteroid crosses Earth's orbit. After all, just because it crosses Earth's path doesn't mean there is necessarily going to be a collision. It has to cross Earth's path when the Earth is right there.

Carrie Nugent

Americans who read the papers or watch Jay Leno have been aware for some time now that there is a slim but real possibility - about 1 in 45,000 - that an 850-foot-long asteroid called Apophis could strike Earth with catastrophic consequences on April 13, 2036.

Rusty Schweickart

Bringing an asteroid back to Earth? What's that have to do with space exploration? If we were moving outward from there, and an asteroid is a good stopping point, then fine. But now it's turned into a whole planetary defense exercise at the cost of our outward exploration.

Buzz Aldrin

There is a one-in-300 chance that Earth will be struck on March 16, 2880, by an asteroid large enough to destroy civilization and possibly cause the extinction of the human race. But, on the bright side, Prince could re-release his hit song with the new refrain 'We're gonna party like its twenty-eight seventy-nine.'

Nathan Myhrvold

It's much more likely that an asteroid will strike the Earth and annihilate life as we know it than AI will turn evil.

Oren Etzioni

I've seen Australia and I've lived on an asteroid and I'd take the asteroid.

Orson Scott Card

It would take an extremely large spacecraft to deflect a large asteroid that would be headed directly for the Earth.

Rusty Schweickart

When you look at Earth from that one picture, the one from space, it's really a rather attractive thing. I have nothing against the planet per se. I root for the big comet or asteroid as a way of cleansing the planet. The comet or asteroid 65 million years ago is probably what gave us our opening to replace the reptiles. The greatest entertainment I have in my life is chronicling internally, not necessarily for the public, the slow dissolution of order.

George Carlin

What if an asteroid were to strike planet Earth? What could we possibly do to prevent it? However many guys we have working on this problem, it can't possibly be enough.

Timothy Noah

Global warming, along with the cutting and burning of forests and other critical habitats, is causing the loss of living species at a level comparable to the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. That event was believed to have been caused by a giant asteroid. This time it is not an asteroid colliding with the Earth and wreaking havoc: it is us.

Al Gore

The further conquest of space will make it possible, for example, to create systems of satellites making daily revolutions around our planet at an altitude of some 40,000 kilometers, and to assure universal communications and the relaying of radio and television transmissions. Such an arrangement might prove more useful, economically, than the construction of radio relay systems over the whole surface of the earth. The great accuracy of movement of these satellites will provide a reliable basis for solving navigational problems

Sergei Korolev

The Moon is a ball of left-over debris from a cosmic collision that took place more than four billion years ago. A Mars-sized asteroid - one of the countless planetesimals that were frantically churning our solar system into existence - hit the infant Earth, bequeathing it a very large natural satellite.

Seth Shostak

The chunks of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 were so large, and were moving so fast, that each hit Jupiter with at least the equivalent energy of the dinosaur-killing collision between Earth and an asteroid 65 million years ago. Whatever damage Jupiter sustained, one thing is for sure: it's got no dinosaurs left.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

I only hope that we shall not wait to adopt the program until after our astronomers have reported a new and unsuspected asteroid moving across their fields of vision with menacing speed. At that point it will be too late!

Wernher von Braun

What happens if a big asteroid hits Earth ? Judging from realistic simulations involving a sledge hammer and a common laboratory frog, we can assume it will be pretty bad.