These are the asteroids to worry about

Stephen Hawking thought an asteroid impact posed the greatest threat to life on Earth. Thanks to Kiwico for sponsoring this video. For 50% off your first month of any crate, go to https://kiwico.com/veritasium50
For other potential world ending catastrophes, check out Domain of Science: https://ve42.co/DoS

Special thanks to:
Prof. Dave Jewitt from UCLA Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences
Prof. Mark Boslough from Sandia National Labs
Scott Manley: https://www.youtube.com/user/szyzyg
Ryan Wyatt at Morrison Planetarium
Prof. Amy Mainzer
Alexandr Ivanov for the opening shot of Chelyabinsk Meteor

Maps of Asteroid Impacts —https://ve42.co/Map

Time passing animation from Universe Sandbox - http://universesandbox.com/

Opposition Effect — https://ve42.co/Belskaya2000
Belskaya, I. N., & Shevchenko, V. G. (2000). Opposition effect of asteroids. Icarus, 147(1), 94-105.

Potentially Hazardous Asteroids — https://ve42.co/Perna2013
Perna, D., Barucci, M. A., & Fulchignoni, M. (2013). The near-Earth objects and their potential threat to our planet. The Astronomy and Astrophysics Review, 21(1), 65.

Survey of Potentially Hazardous Asteroids — https://ve42.co/NEOSurvey

Population Vulnerability — https://ve42.co/Rumpf2017
Rumpf, C. M., Lewis, H. G., & Atkinson, P. M. (2017). Population vulnerability models for asteroid impact risk assessment. Meteoritics & Planetary Science, 52(6), 1082-1102.

Size distribution of NEOs — https://ve42.co/Trilling17
Trilling, D. E., Valdes, F., Allen, L., James, D., Fuentes, C., Herrera, D., ... & Rajagopal, J. (2017). The size distribution of near-earth objects larger than 10 m. The Astronomical Journal, 154(4), 170.

2020 NEOWISE Data Release — https://ve42.co/NEOWISE

National Research Council Report— https://ve42.co/Defending
Board, S. S., & National Research Council. (2010). Defending planet earth: Near-Earth-Object surveys and hazard mitigation strategies. National Academies Press.

Tug Boat — https://ve42.co/Schweickart03
Schweickart, R. L., Lu, E. T., Hut, P., & Chapman, C. R. (2003). The asteroid tugboat. Scientific American, 289(5), 54-61.

Gravity Tractor 1 — https://ve42.co/Lu05
Lu, E. T., & Love, S. G. (2005). Gravitational tractor for towing asteroids. Nature, 438(7065), 177-178.

Laser Ablation — https://ve42.co/Thiry14
Thiry, N., & Vasile, M. (2014). Recent advances in laser ablation modelling for asteroid deflection methods. SPIE Optical Engineering+ Applications, 922608-922608.

Yarakovsky Effect — https://ve42.co/Yara

DART Mission — https://ve42.co/DART

Nuclear 1 — https://ve42.co/Ahrens92
Ahrens, T. J., & Harris, A. W. (1992). Deflection and fragmentation of near-Earth asteroids. Nature, 360(6403), 429-433.

Nuclear 2 — https://ve42.co/Bradley10
Bradley, P. A., Plesko, C. S., Clement, R. R., Conlon, L. M., Weaver, R. P., Guzik, J. A., ... & Huebner, W. F. (2010, January). Challenges of deflecting an asteroid or comet nucleus with a nuclear burst. In AIP Conference Proceedings (Vol. 1208, No. 1, pp. 430-437). American Institute of Physics.

Researched and Written by Petr Lebedev, Jonny Hyman and Derek Muller
3D animations, VFX, SFX, Audio Mixing by Jonny Hyman
2D animation by Ivy Tello
Intro animation by Nicolas Pratt
With Filming by Raquel Nuno

Music from https://epidemicsound.com "Stellar Dance" "Orbit" "That Notebook" "What We Discovered" "Out of Poppies" "Handwriting"
Images and video supplied by Getty Images