An asteroid can literally destroy 80 or 90 percent of the species that are alive on Earth. These are big events. I mean, this is called extinction.

I am interested in climate change and other topics too. But this thing is so huge, in the worst case we are talking about the end of our civilization.

We not only need to train people, we also need to develop deflection technologies.

If we do our homework right, never again should an asteroid that can do damage on the ground impact the Earth. We're living in a time-with our technology-we have the capability to eliminate that major shaper of evolution . . . the evolution of life on this planet.

In the short term, some deadly virus might be more important, but in the long run there is hardly anything more important than asteroids.

You almost wish you could turn off the COMM and just appreciate the deafening quiet.

While we didn't know the dinosaurs personally, we do know that they were wiped out by an asteroid impact.