0:09 okay so are you ready to be transported
0:13 out of this world yeah all right well
0:19 imagine that you were able to step into
0:22 a time machine and go back far far back
0:26 in time to a time and place where the
0:30 solar system was not even existing at
0:33 the time place in the galaxy near a
0:36 massive star that's about to go
0:39 supernova imagine if this is about five
0:42 billion years ago so you see the
0:48 supernova going off from a safe distance
0:51 of course and it releases the energy
0:55 equivalent of something like
0:56 quadrillions upon quadrillions of
0:58 nuclear bombs and the shock wave that
1:01 goes out it compresses some of the
1:04 interstellar gas and dust that's nearby
1:06 and it triggers the formation of new
1:09 stars one of these new stars is our very
1:13 own star the Sun and now imagine that
1:17 you're looking at the swirling cloud of
1:20 gas and dust around our newborn son and
1:24 you look closely and it's cooling down
1:26 slowly and you start to form the very
1:29 first solids the first millimeter
1:31 centimeter sized solids from this cloud
1:34 of gas and dust and these little pebbles
1:38 that are forming they collect together
1:40 they stick together they form these
1:42 little rocks and then those stick
1:44 together they form these boulders and
1:47 the boulder stick together to form
1:49 asteroids and the asteroids accumulate
1:51 together to form planets like the earth
1:55 so if you were to grab a little bit of
2:02 the earliest pebbles that were forming
2:06 in that environment squish them together
2:08 put them in a bag and bring them in that
2:11 time machine back to the present day
2:12 what might that look like this is
2:16 exactly what it would look like
2:19 and this is a meteorite so meteorites
2:23 really are the remnants from that
2:26 earliest phase of the earliest history
2:28 of our solar system they are in fact our
2:31 time machine to be able to go back in
2:33 time and look at that space and time
2:35 when our solar system was just starting
2:38 to form I'm going to step back just a
2:43 little bit and talk about what a
2:44 meteorite really is these are rocky or
2:48 metal rich objects that come from
2:50 elsewhere in our solar system most of
2:53 them have traveled billions of miles in
2:55 interplanetary space before they've
2:57 fallen on the earth and they've survived
2:59 passage to the Earth's atmosphere and
3:02 they fall on the surface and can be
3:04 recovered
3:06 so that's meteorites now what my goal is
3:10 in this talk is to essentially convince
3:14 you that meteorites are not just some
3:17 oddball rare phenomena they are
3:20 fundamental to our understanding of our
3:22 past and of our future my work which I'm
3:26 really passionate about basically
3:30 involves figuring out clever ways of
3:33 decoding the information that's encoded
3:36 in the chemical chemicals that make up
3:38 these rocks and we're doing that in my
3:43 laboratory by looking at the different
3:45 components that make up these materials
3:48 and trying to learn something about when
3:49 they formed and how they formed so what
3:55 I'm going to do today there's so much
3:57 wealth of information that we've
3:58 garnered from from meteorites that it
4:02 would be impossible to cover that in the
4:03 space of 15 minutes here what I'm going
4:05 to do though is to condense that down to
4:08 five essentials five things that anybody
4:12 who cares about the future of our planet
4:15 anybody who is curious about our past
4:17 should know about meteorites so the
4:20 number one thing is that meteorites tell
4:22 us that the age of our solar system is
4:24 four point five six seven nine plus
4:28 minus point zero
4:29 0:03 billion years old how do we know
4:35 that age this is actually measured in my
4:38 laboratory using radioactive elements
4:41 that we use as clocks in these
4:43 meteorites this is almost like figuring
4:46 out the age of a middle-aged man to
4:50 within a day so you can exactly
4:53 precisely determine exactly the day the
4:56 month the year that this person was born
4:58 to within a day so this is an extremely
5:00 precise age but it matters we need to
5:04 know exactly what the context is for all
5:07 of the events that happened following
5:09 the formation of our solar system and
5:11 this is the age that gives up that gives
5:12 us that context for the timeline of
5:15 everything else that's happened in our
5:17 solar system following the initial
5:18 formation like the formation of the
5:20 planets formation of the earth and the
5:22 moon the origin of life in our planet
5:25 number two there are materials preserved
5:29 in meteorites little tiny dust grains
5:32 that are older than our solar system so
5:35 this little vial that you see here
5:37 that's got this cloudy material in the
5:38 bottom these have billions upon billions
5:40 of tiny diamonds that condensed in the
5:43 atmospheres of other stars before the
5:46 Sun was even born
5:47 by looking at the chemistry of these
5:49 little tiny grains we can learn
5:51 something about the evolution of the
5:53 galaxy before the Sun was even born
5:56 very cool so you think that meteorites
6:01 are rare well think again because you're
6:05 actually standing on a planet that's a
6:08 huge in collaboration of a ton of
6:10 meteorites or more than a ton of
6:11 meteorites really meteorites you can
6:15 think of them as the LEGO building
6:17 blocks of planets like the earth and the
6:19 moon this actually is a picture of
6:21 actually multiple images that were taken
6:24 by a NASA spacecraft called a deep space
6:28 climate observatory on
6:29 of these images there's some of the best
6:31 selfies of our our home planet and you
6:35 can see the moon moving in front of the
6:38 earth here and it looks very serene but
6:41 this is nothing like what our planet
6:45 looked like four and a half billion
6:47 years ago when it was just starting to
6:49 form after the formation of our solar
6:51 system it was forming by the
6:55 agglomeration of giant meteorites coming
6:58 together to form form our planet and
7:01 this process was so energetic that the
7:04 entire surface of our planet at the time
7:06 was covered with an ocean of magma and
7:10 as the earth gradually was cooling down
7:14 there was another huge impact of a
7:18 mars-sized meteorite that crashed into
7:20 the earth ejected this debris into orbit
7:23 around the earth and we think that the
7:25 moon actually formed from a coalescence
7:28 of that debris that was surrounding the
7:30 earth and so meteorites really are
7:33 essential to understanding the origin of
7:36 the earth and the moon
7:39 number four meteorites likely brought
7:42 the raw materials for life to the early
7:44 Earth so this is not just organic
7:46 compounds like the amino acids that were
7:49 brought in by some of the types of
7:50 meteorites that we have in our
7:51 collections but also bio essential
7:55 elements like phosphorus they were
7:57 brought in by meteorites and eventually
8:00 led to the type of chemistry that was
8:02 required to take us from from the
8:05 chemistry to life and so the reason why
8:08 you and I are here today it could very
8:10 well be because of the material that was
8:12 seeded to the early Earth by meteorites
8:15 and number five meteorites have changed
8:20 the course of the evolution of life on
8:22 our own planet and as you all will most
8:26 of you probably know that 65 million
8:28 years ago there was a large bolide
8:30 something like ten kilometers or six
8:33 miles in diameter that crashed into the
8:35 Yucatan basin and resulted in the
8:40 extinction of more than three-quarters
8:41 of all
8:42 species on the earth including the
8:44 dinosaurs so that particular event that
8:47 extinction event was also important
8:51 because that's what led to the
8:53 possibility of small warm-blooded
8:56 mammals to flourish and eventually made
8:58 the way for humans to be able to exist
9:01 here and that's the reason why you and I
9:03 are are here in this place in this time
9:06 so that's that's amazing right
9:08 so meteorite five ways in which really
9:11 they define our past and the course of
9:14 evolution of life origin evolution of
9:16 life on our planet what about the future
9:18 well our cosmic neighborhood is teeming
9:23 with asteroids these red yellow and
9:27 green dots that are shown here in this
9:30 visualization they're showing all of the
9:32 known media known asteroids at the
9:35 current time and most of these are
9:38 larger than about a kilometer there are
9:42 about hundreds of thousands of other
9:44 smaller asteroids out there that we've
9:46 not even detected yet so these smaller
9:49 asteroids are probably not going to
9:52 cause the type of global catastrophe
9:54 that killed off the dinosaurs but
9:57 they're probably enough to cause a lot
10:01 of death and destruction if they were to
10:03 hit a large populated area and just to
10:06 sort of make that point what many of you
10:09 probably been up to meteor crater up in
10:11 northern Arizona and that was actually
10:13 created by an object that's about that's
10:17 estimated to be about a hundred feet in
10:18 diameter and it created a crater that's
10:21 about a mile wide so this is an event
10:23 that happened about 50,000 years ago now
10:26 and at the time when this happened the
10:29 energy that it deposited was the
10:30 equivalent to something like 150 atom
10:33 bombs and so that you can imagine the
10:36 type of destruction to plant life and
10:38 animal life that happened in this part
10:40 of the continent as a result of that
10:41 impact that could be devastating for any
10:44 large city if it would have happened
10:46 today now that event happened fifty
10:48 thousand years ago and the probability
10:51 we estimate for an impact
10:54 is 100 feet or so a diameter to happen
10:58 is it's estimated to be once every fifty
11:01 to a hundred thousand years so that's
11:03 something we're basically do for another
11:05 one
11:05 it could happen next month or it could
11:07 happen fifty thousand years from now but
11:10 it's not a question of if it's a matter
11:13 of when there's going to be a large
11:16 asteroid that's going to be on a
11:17 collision course of the earth
11:19 and so what are we going to do about it
11:22 so all of the natural hazards that we
11:25 know about asteroid collision is the one
11:30 that could essentially wipe out our
11:33 species but it's also the one that is
11:35 imminently preventable how are we going
11:38 to prevent it well there's two two ways
11:41 that we actually there are two things
11:44 that we have to do it's not one or the
11:45 other we have to be studying meteorites
11:48 we have to be studying asteroids to
11:50 understand their chemistry their
11:51 structure we have to be looking at the
11:54 how the orbits of these asteroids evolve
11:56 and all these pieces of information will
11:58 be necessary to develop the strategies
12:00 to redirect asteroids that might be
12:03 headed on collision course of the earth
12:04 and then of course we have to also
12:07 inspire the next generation of of
12:11 children of kids to be willing to invest
12:15 in the future and to be good stewards of
12:18 our home planet so we are actually doing
12:22 all of these things we're studying
12:25 meteorites we're studying asteroids
12:26 trying to understand what we can about
12:29 their composition about the structure
12:30 we're also using space rocks to inspire
12:34 kids of all ages and it's actually kind
12:38 of a wonderful thing I don't know if
12:40 you've ever experienced that when you
12:41 see a ten year old when they when they
12:44 were totally enthralled with something
12:46 I've seen these kids that when you give
12:50 them the space rock to hold in their
12:51 hand they are completely on inspire just
12:53 knowing that they're holding something
12:54 in their hand that is older than the
12:58 earth that's the oldest rock in the
13:00 solar system it's an amazing thing to
13:01 watch and I want to be able to use
13:04 that same inspiration to excite or spark
13:08 an interest in STEM fields basically
13:11 science technology engineering maths
13:14 they're using space rocks as a vehicle
13:16 for for inspiring that kind of interest
13:19 how are we going to do that well we've
13:21 been doing that locally for many many
13:24 years but what we'd like to do is to
13:26 extend that globally and we're doing
13:29 hoping to do that by taking kids on a
13:32 virtual field trip of the solar system
13:33 and how we're going to do that is we're
13:37 going to create an immersive virtual
13:39 environment and this is something that
13:41 the Center for Meteorite Studies is
13:42 collaborating with the Center for
13:44 Education through Exploration here at
13:47 ASU and we are developing this immersive
13:49 environment where you'll be able to walk
13:51 into the bulk of our meteorite
13:53 collection you'll be able to go to any
13:55 one of the drawers and open them up and
13:57 we have the 3D color laser scans of all
14:01 of our meteorites that you can basically
14:04 pick up a meteorite from a drawer and
14:06 look at it in three dimensions to
14:08 experience it as a three dimensional
14:10 object they'll be embedded videos that
14:12 will provide information about the
14:13 samples and what we're learning from
14:15 these types of materials and so we'd
14:19 like to be able to make this really
14:20 exciting for kids to be able to explore
14:22 places in the solar system where they
14:24 may some someday hope to go perhaps and
14:28 maybe they will never be able to go but
14:30 they will be able to my care as we go
14:31 there through looking at these rocks
14:33 they'll actually get to be geologists
14:35 studying rocks on other worlds they'll
14:39 be able to go to places like this
14:41 primitive asteroid like this asteroid
14:43 either kaabah and look by looking at
14:47 rocks like this one which we think come
14:49 from asteroids like this they'll be able
14:52 to visit the asteroid Vesta this is the
14:54 second largest asteroid in the asteroid
14:57 belt and we think that this is actually
14:59 a small planet which underwent complete
15:02 melting early in the history of the
15:03 solar system such that the all of the
15:06 iron nickel metal sank to the core and
15:08 you have a dense mantle on earth
15:10 lighter crusts just like the structure
15:12 of the earth and in fact we have
15:14 meteorites in our collections that come
15:16 from the crust of this very asteroid
15:17 there's a large impact Basin in the
15:20 southern part of this asteroid which was
15:23 studied quite well actually by a nasa
15:25 spacecraft called dawn and we now know
15:27 that these types of meteorites that we
15:29 have in our collections come from this
15:31 very asteroid and so we'll be able to
15:32 explore the geology of this one asteroid
15:34 by looking at these things and then of
15:36 course there are meteorites that we know
15:38 come from the moon and so we'll be able
15:40 to explore the kids we'll be able to
15:41 explore the geology of the moon by
15:42 looking at rocks like this one which we
15:45 believe comes from the Highland part
15:47 Harlan Highlands of the moon and then
15:50 finally there's not been a sample return
15:52 or spacecraft that's gone to Mars and
15:54 brought back samples but we've got these
15:56 free samples from Mars these are
15:59 meteorites that come from Mars and this
16:01 is an example of one that comes from an
16:03 area on Mars that had volcanism
16:06 happening on it about 200 million years
16:09 ago so this is a relatively young rock
16:11 that's coming from the surface of Mars
16:13 you'll be able to do geology by looking
16:16 at these these samples and trying to
16:18 understand the history of that planet
16:19 through these rocks and so the goal
16:21 really for us is to try to make it
16:23 really exciting for kids to study the
16:26 space rocks to basically learn something
16:30 about places where these rocks come from
16:32 to explore the solar system through them
16:34 to be inspired by by looking at these by
16:38 trying to understand the environments
16:39 where they form and we want to inspire
16:41 them to be curious about not just the
16:43 planet that they live on but the solar
16:46 system and the universe that they
16:48 inhabit and to recognize that for the
16:50 first time in the history of this planet
16:54 there's a species that inhabits our
16:56 planet of us human beings that have the
16:59 capacity to actually do something about
17:01 an asteroid that might be on a collision
17:04 course of the earth so I believe that we
17:09 can use space rocks as a means of
17:11 inspiring kids to recognize that the
17:15 future is what we can what we choose to
17:18 make it thank you
17:20 [Applause]