I Never Said I Was Frightened of Dying

July 17, 2016 8:41 PM

Tomislav Matecic decided the Discovery Channel's animation of an asteroid destroying the Earth needed music, so he used Pink Floyd's The Great Gig In The Sky for a soundtrack.
posted by mattdidthat (39 comments total)

I would much prefer the Benny Hill theme song. If Yakkity Sax isn't handy when we look up and see the fireball headed toward us, I'll settle for Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 8:49 PM on July 17, 2016 [6 favorites]

This new Trump ad is super weird
posted by theodolite at 8:55 PM on July 17, 2016 [51 favorites]

Why does Pink Floyd sync with everything perfectly?
posted by vorpal bunny at 9:05 PM on July 17, 2016 [5 favorites]

More like a small wandering planet destroying the Earth. That is why you always destroy the unstable planets in the system before you move in.
posted by sfenders at 9:08 PM on July 17, 2016 [5 favorites]

I've seen this clip before, but this is the first time I've wondered, 'why is the asteroid glowing red-hot?' No body that small should still be that warm after any appreciable time, from my understanding, unless under a lot of tidal stress. Perhaps someone with a better grasp of astrophysics can educate me.

Life on Earth gets destroyed, and I spend my time trying to figure out the mystery heat instead of appreciating the spectacle.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 9:26 PM on July 17, 2016 [10 favorites]

No, I thought the same thing, los pantalones del muerte. I can't think of any valid reason it's glowing red except to make it look super cool.
posted by Jimbob at 9:34 PM on July 17, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's red-hot because it's burning from the heat of the devil's furnace, the only thing that can destroy the best planet that ever was.
posted by rhizome at 9:36 PM on July 17, 2016 [10 favorites]

For a similar sequence Lars Von Trier used Wagner's prelude to 'Tristan und Isolde'.
Also a beautiful and portentous piece of music.
posted by ovvl at 9:45 PM on July 17, 2016 [1 favorite]

I think Soundgarden's "Blow Up the Outside World" might work even better.
posted by Joey Michaels at 9:55 PM on July 17, 2016

The original video is here. They still don't explain why it is glowing, possibly just from various impacts while traveling through the asteroid belt?
posted by mrzarquon at 10:53 PM on July 17, 2016

I would actually prefer some R&B-inflected vaporwave as the backing music for this clip. Hey, sweetie, at least you can stay home from work tomorrow...
posted by invitapriore at 11:13 PM on July 17, 2016

Bear's First Law of Major Projects - At some point someone will say "Hey, maybe an asteroid will strike the earth before our deadline!" and everyone will sigh and smile wistfully.
posted by fallingbadgers at 11:31 PM on July 17, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's also not moving that fast, and it's practically the size of the moon, You would have seen it coming for months.
I will have to see if my feelings about this change after watching it while listening to "Third Uncle".
posted by boilermonster at 11:37 PM on July 17, 2016 [2 favorites]

Previously on MeFi, from 2008, A massive asteroid from outer space heads straight for earth...

The clip originated with Japanese TV. It was originally seven minutes long. Among the bits cut for the video was a sequence showing the seas boiling away.
posted by ZeusHumms at 11:38 PM on July 17, 2016 [1 favorite]

Why is the asteroid a sphere? Why does the asteroid's shadow get bigger as it approaches earth?
posted by Joe in Australia at 11:49 PM on July 17, 2016 [1 favorite]

Huh, you're right. I'm beginning to think this footage may have been doctored if not faked outright.
posted by um at 12:13 AM on July 18, 2016 [14 favorites]

I find it works better with Ozark Mountain Daredevils' If You Want to Get to Heaven ...
posted by philip-random at 12:37 AM on July 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

I still prefer that we are devoured by Unicron. Somewhere in this vast universe someone HAD to have made a giant planet-devouring robot. Come to us, Unicron! We are ready for you!
posted by weretable and the undead chairs at 1:37 AM on July 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'd kind of like to see it with the rogue moon only going, like, 35 mph.

Or maybe it enters some crazy orbit where we get to watch it for two weeks, with an orbital period of like, an hour, knowing it's going to end up parked in the pacific.
posted by maxwelton at 2:55 AM on July 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

Joe in Australia: It’s a sphere because above a certain size, the self-gravity of it’s own mass is stronger than the material it’s made from and pulls it into the minimum energy configuration, ie a sphere.

The boundary size for a rocky body for this to happen is about 200km in diameter IIRC.
posted by pharm at 2:59 AM on July 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

Oh, and the shadow gets bigger because the light source is the sun, which is not a point source but a disc the same size as the moon on the sky (which is why we have total eclipses). I’d have to run the numbers to see how the size of the shadow changes over time, but if they’ve done it correctly then that will be the reason.

(Think about a total eclipse of the sun by the moon - the path of totality is only about a 100 miles wide, much smaller than the moon itself. If the moon moved closer to the earth, then the path of totality would widen, as the moon casts a larger shadow on the earth. Same thing is happening with the asteroid.)
posted by pharm at 3:16 AM on July 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

It's also not moving that fast

It doesn't *look* like it's moving that fast, but if you think about it, the time from it first touching the atmosphere to actually touching the surface is a couple of seconds. The depth of the atmosphere is, obviously, hard to define, but even if we are conservative and call it 20km deep, then we're talking like 10km/sec here. I don't know how that compares to your favourite killer asteroid, but that doesn't seem "slow" to me.
posted by Jimbob at 3:37 AM on July 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

This new Trump ad is super weird

It looks weird because it's the unedited publicly released B-roll footage that the campaign posts online in order to avoid direct collaboration with super PACs. The finished commercial is much more polished.
posted by compartment at 3:54 AM on July 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

"Aaaa! The atmosphere!"
posted by usonian at 4:22 AM on July 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

This new Trump ad is super weird

Giant Fucking Asteroid 2016
posted by Itaxpica at 4:47 AM on July 18, 2016

Why does Pink Floyd sync with everything perfectly?

Usually, it's the acid.
posted by mondo dentro at 5:30 AM on July 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

Why is the asteroid glowing red-hot? Why is the asteroid a sphere? Why does the asteroid's shadow get bigger as it approaches earth?
Why would you assume ANY scientific accuracy from The Discovery Channel, the formerly fact-based network that cancelled Mythbusters but still does "Shark Week" every year?

For appropriate music, with a slightly more optimistic POV I'd go with Super Furry Animals (which someone has already synced with something similar)

Giant Fucking AsteroidMeteor 2016
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:41 AM on July 18, 2016

My (and our?) affection for animations of the Earth blowing up is kind of weird. I remember when I saw the first Titan A. E. trailer in theatres and the Earth being destroyed caught me completely off-guard and I burst into tears.

This time, I found myself thinking, what's left of Humanity if the Earth is destroyed? A few far flung probes, Voyager with its golden record and just a bit of culture, our brave little Mars rovers, and (if the Moon survives) a few artifacts we left on the lunar surface? Those little objects, that could all together fit into a small warehouse, seem so tragic.

This video's awesome with Pink Floyd. Good post. A+ would favorite again.
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 7:28 AM on July 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

Well, I preferred this to the latest Ice Age movie, that's for sure.
posted by h00py at 7:51 AM on July 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

we're talking like 10km/sec here. I don't know how that compares to your favourite killer asteroid, but that doesn't seem "slow" to me.

Actually, that's impossibly slow for an Earth impact. Escape velocity is over 11 km/s. If our hypothetical asteroid is moving at X km/s relative to Earth on the approach, then it'll be moving at roughly sqrt(X^2+11^2) km/s at ground level.

Your point is well-made, though, and your Fermi estimate could have been consistent if it hadn't been made grossly conservative for emphasis.

must... resist... Trump joke...
posted by roystgnr at 8:06 AM on July 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

'why is the asteroid glowing red-hot?' No body that small should still be that warm after any appreciable time

But see it's a new body that was split off after an EVEN BIGGER ASTEROID destroyed Venus

no, you are correct
posted by the_blizz at 8:16 AM on July 18, 2016

Would have thought it would be a no-brainer to synchronize the entrance of the vocal with the impact, but it not being timed in any particular way certainly gets across the futility of life and creativity in a "why bother" sort of way.
posted by GriffX at 8:17 AM on July 18, 2016

Why is the asteroid a sphere?

Someone already covered "it's a sphere because it's 500 kilometers wide", but let's not forget "it's 500km wide because this is Discovery Channel's version of clickbait".

100 meter wide asteroids near Earth number in the thousands or tens of thousands, are still mostly unmapped, could destroy most of a city with an impact energy larger than the biggest nuclear bombs, and are expected to hit the planet once every few centuries (albeit most over oceans and most of the rest over other unpopulated areas). This would be a frighteningly plausible scenario to depict.

1km wide asteroids near Earth number around a thousand, and 90% of their orbits are mapped and known to be safe, but we don't think we've found them all yet, if one hit us the resulting fireball could destroy everything within a hundred kilometers, and even if it did hit somewhere remote I'm not sure whether you'd want to pray for an ocean impact (with subsequent tsunami) or a land impact (with significant global darkening and cooling and crop failures). This would be an improbable but scarier scenario to depict.

500km wide asteroids are all far from Earth, in the asteroid belt, where we mapped out the orbits of all three of them two centuries ago. There probably was a object bigger than this which hit Earth once (well, nicked Earth - most of the collision remnants are part of the Moon), but that was billions of years ago, it's not going to happen again any time soon unless there's a one-in-a-quadrillion Kuiper Belt object with our names on it, and there's a good chance that it will never happen again ever. This was a comically improbable scenario to depict.
posted by roystgnr at 9:12 AM on July 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

2016 theodolite: This new Trump ad is super weird

2008 PlusDistance: Man, the McCain campaign ads are getting weird.

Plus ça change, plus c'est le même chose.
posted by biogeo at 10:26 AM on July 18, 2016

Fermi estimate could have been consistent if it hadn't been made grossly conservative for emphasis.

Now now, by some reckoning the atmosphere extends to 300km. If I'd used that value, we'd be looking at 150km/s which would be even more emphatic.

I don't understand your mathematical reasoning - that's not a criticism, I honestly don't have an intuitive understanding of orbital/gravity calculations. I think you're saying something moving as slow as 10km/s relative to the earth would have to orbit the earth and could not crash into it, is that right?
posted by Jimbob at 5:22 PM on July 18, 2016

Oh, hey, cool, you can sorta see my house at 3:30 AMID THE APOCALYPTIC DESTRUCTION.
posted by _dario at 6:20 PM on July 18, 2016

If a 500 km planetoid hits the earth, the Parthenon is not going to be standing intact, dudes. And no one's going to be telling time from Big Ben. It's a weird mishmash, they should have picked either planetoid hits the earth (crust is totally shattered) or Chixiclub+ class (world-wide fires, most or all higher life forms die, but some human works may remain temporarily intact.)
posted by tavella at 10:05 AM on July 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

For that matter, they show the same continental/island masses that they show being ripped off in the beginning intact at the end, just with seas boiled off.
posted by tavella at 10:09 AM on July 19, 2016

I don't understand your mathematical reasoning - that's not a criticism, I honestly don't have an intuitive understanding of orbital/gravity calculations. I think you're saying something moving as slow as 10km/s relative to the earth would have to orbit the earth and could not crash into it, is that right?

Nope. Don't think about the way the orbit extends into the future, because that's not interesting (except to the people underneath the asteroid, of course). If an object moving faster than orbital speed but slower than escape velocity is going sideways, it'll basically be in a stable orbit. If an object moving at any speed is going straight down, it'll crash. Simple enough.

Think about the way the orbit extends into the past. If you ignore air resistance (which you can, in the past of an orbit that hasn't hit atmosphere yet), then the equations of orbital mechanics are time-reversible. So if something is coming down towards Earth at 10 km/s, then it must have come from somewhere that would be reachable by going up away from Earth at 10 km/s. However, getting arbitrarily far away from Earth requires an object to be moving at escape velocity, 11 km/s. So if an upward-moving object can't get to anywhere interesting by moving that slow, then a downward-moving object can't have come from anywhere interesting and still be moving that slow.

The equation I listed is just a simplified conservation of energy. The potential energy of an object far from Earth, relative to Earth's surface, is equal to the kinetic energy that would be needed to get out of that gravity well, which is one half mass times escape_velocity (11 km/s) squared. The kinetic energy (in Earth's reference frame) is one half mass times approach_velocity (what I called X above) squared. Once the object hits, all that potential energy and initial kinetic energy have been combined into final kinetic energy, so we have

1/2*m*v_e² + 1/2*m*v_a² = 1/2*m*v_f²

And you can solve that for final velocity v_f. Qualitatively the important thing is that v_a always makes a positive contribution (in the arithmetic sense, if not to the moral sense of the people underneath the asteroid), so v_f ≥ v_e no matter what.

Quantitatively... if we do get hit by a one-in-a-quadrillion minor planet from the Kuiper belt, then it'll have already fallen from nearly out of solar orbit, so v_a will be the difference between solar escape velocity at Earth's orbit and Earth's orbital velocity, which could be anywhere from 12 km/s (if it's moving the exact same direction as Earth when it hits) to 72 km/s (if it's moving the exact opposite direction); tacking on Earth's escape velocity via the above equation leaves the impact velocity anywhere from 16 km/s to 73 km/s.
posted by roystgnr at 2:50 PM on July 19, 2016 [2 favorites]