There a millions of asteroids out there in the solar system, some are extremely small and some are so big that they are referred to as planetoids. These objects generally orbit the sun in an orderly fashion in-between the planets Earth, Mars and Jupiter. The reason why this documentary is called “killer asteroids” is because if one of these objects had a collision and was knocked off course it could mean that Earth is on a 30,000 mile per hour collision course with a 3 mile wide ball of rock. This is just how the dinosaurs were wiped out 66 million years ago in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. Technically speaking we are long overdue such an event but unfortunately it is very difficult for scientists to effectively track threats to planet Earth.
An asteroid with a diameter of 3 miles would be very hard to spot even at close proximity as the object reflects very little light, unlike the moon. In this documentary Bill Patterson investigates to what extent the Earth is under threat and what is being done to detect and counter-act these killer asteroids, which have left the scientific community and public in slight paranoia about our vulnerability.
