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What If Every Asteroid Hit Earth at Once? (SIMULATION) — Transcript

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0:0666 million years ago, this asteroid
0:10crashed into Earth and wiped out most of
0:13the life on our planet, including the
0:16biggest, baddest things that ever roamed
0:19the Earth. Yeah, dinosaurs.
0:22If a rock this size hit us today, well,
0:26humans would be on the brink of
0:28extinction.
0:34Today we look at the five deadliest
0:37asteroids to hit Earth, either in the
0:39past or in the notsodistant future, and
0:43we slam them into Earth all at the same
0:46time. Spoiler alert, Earth does not win.
1:04We'll start with the smallest rock on
1:06our list, the Behringer asteroid, and
1:09then we'll build up to an asteroid that
1:12was much, much more massive than even
1:15the Chickixaloo that wiped out the
1:17dinosaurs. But before we get there,
1:20here's the thing about space rocks. They
1:23aren't some rare event. They barge in
1:26from space and hit Earth all the time.
1:29Most of these rocks are tiny meteoroids,
1:31just a few grams in weight, but they
1:34come in fast. These small meteorites
1:37slam into Earth at tens of kilometers
1:39per second. Lucky for you, they burn up
1:43almost instantly thanks to our planet's
1:45home security system, our atmosphere.
1:47But sometimes, Earth gets hit by a way
1:50more serious rock. But damage can be
1:53catastrophic.
1:56Let me take you back 50,000 years into
2:00the past. Earth was deep in its last ice
2:04age when suddenly a large space rock
2:08entered the atmosphere.
2:10This is the Behringer asteroid. For
2:13millions of years, it was minding its
2:15own business in outer space. And then
2:18suddenly on a perfectly ordinary day in
2:21what we now call northern Arizona in the
2:23US, this 50 m wide chunk of iron and
2:27nickel, that's 165 ft in diameter. This
2:31chunk came tearing into Earth's
2:33atmosphere at over 15 km/s, 9 m a
2:38second. And just seconds later, it
2:40slammed into the ground with a force so
2:43powerful, it was like setting off a line
2:46of nuclear bombs, the shock wave
2:48flattened everything as far as the eye
2:50could see. And the asteroid left a
2:53massive crater for us to remember it by.
2:56Now, what if this asteroid hit us today?
3:00Well, it would be just as devastating.
3:03If the Behringer asteroid hit Earth near
3:06a major city, that would be total
3:09destruction. This 300,000 ton bullet
3:13from space would explode with the energy
3:15of 10 megat tons of TNT. It would
3:18flatten skyscrapers in an instant,
3:21shattering glass for miles. Even if you
3:24weren't at ground zero, that's the exact
3:26point of impact, you'd still feel the
3:29power of its shockwave. The blast would
3:32deafen you and the heat would well fry
3:35you. The ground would shake as if a 7
3:39and a half magnitude earthquake had just
3:41hit. The Behringer wouldn't be a
3:44worldending asteroid, but it would
3:47change the world for everyone nearby.
3:50Now, since we want to keep things
3:52exactly as they happened on Earth 50,000
3:55years ago, this space rock would hit
3:57exactly where it hit then, in the middle
4:00of a desert. As long as you're not a
4:03tourist or a hiker exploring the aid
4:05expanse of Arizona, you'd be fine.
4:08Still, this new Behringer asteroid would
4:11leave a new crater. A crater that's big
4:14enough to fit the Burj Khalifa inside of
4:17it. This is what today's impact would
4:20look like.
4:24If you were watching the impact from the
4:26nearest town over, Winslow, Arizona,
4:28you'd see the kilometer high cloud of
4:31ash and fire rising from the impact
4:33site. About a minute after impact, just
4:36as you think you're safe, the sonic boom
4:39would reach you, knocking you to the
4:40ground and shattering all the windows
4:43around you. It would be huge, but still
4:46not a leveling a city to the ground kind
4:49of impact. Okay, while the Behringer
4:52asteroid is raising a plume of smoke and
4:54ash in Arizona, something bigger and
4:58deadlier is about to smash into South
5:00America.
5:02Beher asteroid demolishes Arizona.
5:05Arizona treated to brightest fireworks
5:08since the Cretaceous.
5:10If the Behringer asteroid did hit Earth
5:12today, well, those are the two fictional
5:15headlines you might see in the news. And
5:17both give a vastly different
5:19understanding of what happened. In
5:21today's landscape, finding out the truth
5:24of anything can be difficult. Well,
5:26that's where Ground News comes in. It's
5:28a website and an app that helps you cut
5:31through the noise and see how hundreds
5:33of news outlets are reporting on the
5:35same story, all in one place. One of its
5:38most useful features is the interest
5:40pages, which let you follow news stories
5:42in categories that you care about, like
5:45science, technology, or politics. And
5:48when you find a story that catches your
5:50attention, well, Ground News helps you
5:52understand the bigger picture by showing
5:54you how coverage differs across the
5:57political spectrum, how factual each
5:59source is, and what context you might be
6:02missing. The bias comparison feature
6:04summarizes the bias for left, right, and
6:08center publications. Do you remember
6:10when scientists found biomarkers for
6:12life on K218b? Well, we sure do, and we
6:15sent Chase there to find out more.
6:17Unfortunately, his results were about as
6:20varied as the news publications.
6:23More than 400 news stories were
6:25published regarding K218b.
6:27This article would have you believe that
6:29there's a 100% guarantee of life on the
6:32planet, while this article highlights
6:34that the scientists discovered hints and
6:37are still mostly skeptical at this
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6:44either a sure thing or sensationalistic
6:47journalism, but with ground news, you
6:50can filter for bias and quickly glance
6:52at a publication's factuality score.
6:55Understanding the context of who was
6:57reporting on a topic will help you
6:59understand the truth of what actually
7:01happened. If this sounds like something
7:03that would help you sort through the
7:04noise and hone in on learning about what
7:07really matters to you, well, visit
7:09ground.news/wiff.
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7:24Understanding the history, context, and
7:27factuality surrounding news events can
7:29be extremely beneficial in today's
7:32landscape. But the landscape of the
7:35ancient past had entirely different
7:38astrological problems to contend with.
7:42[Music]
7:45Astronomers first spotted asteroid YR4
7:48in December of 2024 using the Atlas
7:52system in Chile. And let me tell you,
7:55this rock almost gave us a heart attack.
7:58And by the way, Atlas stands for
8:00asteroid terrestrial impact last alert
8:03system. So that should give you an idea
8:06of why this discovery was so terrifying.
8:09At first, it looked like YR4 had a 3.1%
8:14chance of hitting Earth on December 22nd
8:17of 2032.
8:19Now, that may not sound like much, but
8:21in asteroid terms, that's alarm bells
8:24territory. Scientists worldwide
8:27scrambled to refine its orbit, and as
8:29more data came in, they were able to
8:31bring that number down first to 1% and
8:34eventually to even less than that. Now
8:38it's something like a 0.001%
8:40chance. Yeah, but that's still more of a
8:44percent chance than you ever want to
8:45hear. Of course, here on What If, we
8:48always imagine the worst case scenario.
8:49So, fast forward to 2032 and cue the
8:53impact.
8:57The thing you need to know about YR4,
9:00it's big. At a length of about 60 m,
9:03that's 200 feet. It's about the size of
9:06a jumbo jet. And this intruder from
9:09space wouldn't even need to touch the
9:11ground to cause serious damage. Yeah.
9:14Instead of directly hitting Earth, Y4
9:18would explode overhead like the Tungusa
9:21event did in 1908 in the remote area of
9:23Siberia. This rock would explode like a
9:27deadly firework and level the city
9:29beneath it. Buildings would collapse and
9:32only reinforced bridges would remain
9:34standing barely. Predicting exactly
9:38where the asteroid would hit is
9:40difficult. We have to take into account
9:42Earth's orbit, the asteroid's trajectory
9:45and speed. Just for starters, it might
9:48land somewhere in the ocean. Wouldn't it
9:50be more epic if it landed on land, say
9:54in northern South America?
9:58Yeah. Our deadly space traveler would
10:01land in Bogota, Colombia.
10:04Bogota, Colombia is a city of over 7
10:07million people tucked high in the Andes.
10:10But its elevation isn't going to save
10:12it. The skies over Bogota would light up
10:15as if the sun had suddenly moved in for
10:18its closeup. Then about 10 km above the
10:21city, that's about 6 milesi, Y4 would
10:25detonate in a massive air burst. It
10:28would release the energy of about 15
10:31megat tons of TNT. That's 1,000 times
10:34more than the bomb that was dropped on
10:36Hiroshima. The shock wave would rip
10:39across the city in seconds, flattening
10:41buildings, snapping power lines, and
10:43throwing vehicles up into the air like
10:45toys. If you were caught outside, first
10:48you'd be blinded by the flash and then
10:51knocked to the ground by the blast wave.
10:54Seconds later, fires would break out
10:56across entire neighborhoods and glass
10:59and debris would turn into deadly
11:01shrapnel. The destruction wouldn't stop
11:04at Bogota city limits. The Andes would
11:07echo with the sound of the explosion.
11:09Dozens of kilometers away, windows would
11:12shatter. Nearby towns would feel like
11:14they've been hit by a massive
11:15earthquake. Power would be out for
11:18millions of people. Communications would
11:20fail. This is where the chaos kicks in.
11:24But since the asteroid didn't actually
11:27strike the ground, well, there wouldn't
11:29be a crater. Instead, the city would be
11:32marked by a burned flattened zone where
11:35the blast hit the hardest. It wouldn't
11:37be the end of humanity, but for South
11:39America, it would be remembered as the
11:42day of the scorched Earth. Now, if
11:45something like Y4 was on a collision
11:47course with us, well, we wouldn't be
11:50completely defenseless. NASA has already
11:53tested a planetary defense strategy
11:55called DART. That's short for double
11:58asteroid redirection test. The idea
12:00isn't to destroy the asteroid, but just
12:03to redirect it while it's still in
12:05space. NASA tested it in 2022 by
12:09deliberately slamming a spacecraft into
12:11an asteroid moon called Demorphos, and
12:14it worked. When you're dealing with
12:16asteroids, even a tiny course correction
12:19years in advance can mean the difference
12:21between a harmless flyby and a direct
12:24hit. I'd still feel safer if Y4 had a 0%
12:29chance of hitting us in the first place.
12:32But it looks like it might just hit the
12:34moon instead. What a relief. And as if
12:37South America didn't have enough to deal
12:39with, another big strike is coming its
12:42way.
12:44Omuam Mua is a special rock on this list
12:47because this was the first ever
12:50interstellar object that we saw enter
12:53from interstellar space. Like it came
12:56from outside the solar system. And it
12:59was weird. Muam Mua isn't your average
13:02round asteroid. It's what scientists and
13:05I call cigar- shaped. It's 10 times
13:09longer than it is wide. We've never seen
13:12anything like it until we saw this in
13:152017.
13:18At first, it looked like a comet because
13:20it accelerated in a strange way, almost
13:22like it was being pushed. But scientists
13:25would never see a comet-like tail, which
13:28made things awkward. Now, it could be a
13:30fragment of a larger rock. It might have
13:32exotic ices in its composition, like
13:35hydrogen ice or nitrogen ice. or it may
13:39even be an alienmade object, something
13:43they've sent to explore our little
13:45planetary cluster. Either way, this
13:48elongated rock is about to slam into us.
13:52First, AmuA Mua would hit the top of the
13:54atmosphere, speeding at about 20 to 26
13:57km/ second. For a moment, it would look
14:01like there was a second sun over the
14:03Amazon. Hey, somebody give this guy a
14:05speeding ticket. But in just a moment,
14:08it'll crash into the rainforest with
14:10about 1 gigaton of energy. A new crater
14:14will be torn into the basin. A crater
14:17from this monster would be no joke.
14:19About 4 kilometers or 2 and 1/2 m across
14:23and 600 m or 2,000 ft deep. Everything
14:29inside that bowl would vaporize. The
14:32shock wave would race outward, snapping
14:34trees like matchsticks. and lighting the
14:37canopy on fire. From above, the world's
14:40green lung would turn into a ring of
14:43brown and black. Towns far beyond the
14:47horizon would feel the shock wave as a
14:50hard shove in a long roll. Ash would be
14:53falling from the sky. For days, it would
14:56be snowing charcoal. Oh, Mua Mua
14:58launching itself into Earth wouldn't
15:01cause an extinction level event, but it
15:04would definitely be a blast that the
15:06planet would remember. The Amazon River
15:08would run hot, cloudy with ash. Air
15:11travel would be diverted for weeks, and
15:14across the northern part of South
15:16America, crops would get less light
15:18under an ashy sky. We're not quite at
15:22the level of dinosaur extinction yet,
15:24but we're getting there. Over
15:30in Mexico, the big celebrity herself is
15:33about to destroy everything. This is the
15:37most famous asteroid out there. The
15:39boulder with the smolder, the
15:40worldending Chickixaloo.
15:4566 million years ago, this rock, or more
15:48like this mountain, smashed into Earth
15:51on the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula in
15:53Mexico. And I'm not exaggerating when I
15:56say it was a mountain. Chickixaloo
15:58measured at least 10 km wide. That's 6 m
16:03in diameter. That's bigger, much bigger
16:06than Mount Everest. After Chickixaloo
16:08hit, Earth was never the same. First
16:12came the fireball that ignited the
16:14forests. Then the shock wave that
16:17circled the globe. A lot of dinosaurs
16:20were killed immediately, but not all of
16:22them. After the great fireball came the
16:25great blackout. The Chickixaloo impact
16:29spewed dust and ash into the sky,
16:31blocking sunlight. For years after the
16:34impact, our planet was plunged into
16:36darkness. Many plant species died. And
16:39when the plants went, everything that
16:41fed on them went, too. This was the most
16:44recent extinction event in Earth's
16:47history. The dinosaurs never stood a
16:50chance. But now this monstrosity is
16:53coming to end you. Yeah. If this
16:56devastating rock were to hit the Yucatan
16:58Peninsula today, it wouldn't be the
17:00dinosaurs going extinct.
17:03It'll be you. At first, a bright star
17:06appears in the sky over the Gulf of
17:07Mexico. But it's it's too bright and
17:10it's moving too fast. In less than a
17:13minute, it would grow to the size of a
17:15blazing sun. Then the impact. The blast
17:19would vaporize everything in the
17:21vicinity. The ground would shake for
17:24hundreds of kilometers with the energy
17:26of a magnitude 10 earthquake. Coastal
17:30towns would turn to white hot ash and
17:33the skyscrapers of Cancun would collapse
17:36from the shock wave. Cue the massive
17:38tsunami. Within hours of the impact, not
17:41one but multiple tsunamis would be
17:44roaring across the Gulf of Mexico. Walls
17:47of water 100 m high would slam into
17:51Florida, Cuba, and Central America. Less
17:54than 48 hours later, these huge waves
17:57would reach Australia.
17:59Back in Mexico, fires would rampage.
18:02There'd be a thick choking cloud of dust
18:05and ash, sulfur everywhere.
18:10If somehow you survived the impact, you
18:13wouldn't be able to breathe. Look, the
18:15dinosaurs didn't survive this story 66
18:18million years ago. And if Chickixaloo
18:20were to strike again today, humanity
18:23wouldn't either. Not because of the
18:25first flash of fire, though that alone
18:28would cause a lot of casualties, but
18:30because of the long cold night that
18:32follows. In the weeks after
18:35Chickixaloop, the world would fall
18:37silent. Smoke and dust would block out
18:40the sun. Earth would be plunged into a
18:43cold twilight. Soon, the food chain
18:46would begin to collapse. Famine would
18:48spread faster than relief could keep up
18:50with it. In just a few months, humanity
18:53would be living in chaos, struggling to
18:56survive. Years later, if you were still
18:59around in some sort of Last of Us
19:01scenario, you'd be walking through an
19:03unrecognizable world. Forests would be
19:07gone, coastlines redrawn, and entire
19:10species would have vanished forever.
19:14Okay, that was devastating. The smaller
19:17asteroids on this list we could recover
19:19from. But this one, yeah, that's not
19:22looking good for humanity or any,
19:25animality, plant anity. But wait, that
19:28wasn't even the biggest impact.
19:31It gets worse.
19:34What's worse than that?
19:36[Music]
19:38Okay, this one is from a really, really
19:42distant past when Earth was young and
19:45very different from the Earth you know
19:46now. Let's go back 3.3 billion years
19:51ago. This is the Paleoarchian era of
19:55early Earth. This is when our planet was
19:58mostly a water world with some early
20:01continent-like land masses scattered
20:02around. There was barely any oxygen in
20:05the atmosphere. And with no ozone layer,
20:07the sun bathed Earth in lethal
20:10radiation. But that's okay because there
20:13was basically no complex life here. Only
20:16some single cellled organisms like
20:18cyanobacteria drifting in the ocean.
20:21Then came S2.
20:23[Music]
20:25This space rock was absolutely
20:28devastatingly massive. Yeah. about 200
20:32times more massive than Chickixaloo. So,
20:35if you can imagine, the impact was
20:38enormous.
20:40S2 plunged into the shallow seas near
20:43what's now called South Africa and it
20:46changed the world forever, but was
20:49actually kind of good for Earth. Sure,
20:52there were humongous tsunamis ripping
20:54apart coastlines across the planet and
20:57stripping debris from the ocean floor,
20:59tossing it into the atmosphere. The
21:01surface layers of the oceans boiled away
21:04and heated up the atmosphere. Molten
21:06rock rained down from the sky. But this
21:10was the kind of shakeup Earth needed.
21:12You see, this impact stirred up iron
21:15from the depths of the ocean. And this
21:18was a good thing because now the seas
21:21suddenly became full of nutrients. All
21:24kinds of bacteria and microorganisms
21:26went through a baby boom. After the
21:28impact, early life really started to
21:31flourish. But that doesn't mean this
21:33massive impact would be good for us
21:36today. If S2 hit near South Africa,
21:39it'll be game over for all of us. Now, I
21:43could stop right there, but let me give
21:45you some details. A fireball the size of
21:48a continent would rise into the sky as
21:51S2 violently smashed into Earth. It
21:54wouldn't just vaporize water and rock,
21:57it would tear the seafloor apart. Yeah.
22:01The impact crater would stretch for
22:03hundreds of kilometers. Earthquakes 100
22:06times stronger than anything recorded in
22:09human history would rip across the
22:11globe. After that, well, you know the
22:14drill. tsunamis, a barrage of flying
22:17molten rock, blocked sunlight, the
22:19collapse of ecosystems,
22:22followed by extinction of us, all of us.
22:27Following this, Earth would change again
22:30in ways we can't even predict. A total
22:34reset. You for sure are not surviving
22:37this one. Now, if only one or two of
22:40these asteroids hit Earth at the same
22:42time, we could still make it. But add
22:46Chickixaloo and S2 into the mix and it
22:49doesn't matter how many relatively small
22:51impacts you survive. No one survives
22:54meteorite S2.
22:56So, lucky for you that you're living
22:58today and not in prehistoric times where
23:01you'd be constantly hiding, running,
23:04being hunted down by the terrifying
23:06creatures of the past. Unless,
23:10well, that's a story for another. What
23:14if
23:22[Music]

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