The central bank of Nigeria, Sebyan, has reported a significant increase in foreign exchange inflow into the economy in February this year. The increase is attributed to substantial remittance bailed by Nigerians overseas and purchases of now-acid by foreign portfolio investors. The APEX bank's acting director of corporate communications leases Hakama Sebyali, a neighbor's note in a statement made available to a newsman. Sebyali noted that the bank's data indicates that overseas remittance is rose to $1.3 billion in February, more than four times the U.S. $300 million received in January. She added that foreign investors purchased more than $1 billion of Nigerian assets last month with total portfolio flows of at least $2.3 billion. We call it Phosphor in 2024 compared to $3.9 billion seen in total for last year. According to Seby, higher APEX inflows continued in March 2024, driven by increased investor interest in short-term sovereign debt, following the recent adjustment to benchmark interest rates. Meanwhile, international business research from the Economist Intelligence Unit has said that the central bank of Nigeria does not have the liquidity to support the Naira as of now. It's database in its latest country report on Nigeria, which was published on Friday. We will stay on the Forex issue on this edition of the show. Welcome to Business Insight on Plus TV Africa, as we will also briefly address the issue of bad-of-pardon allegations making the rounds. Welcome on board. I am Justin. Akadonia. Welcome back away from that report, but let us talk about the Forex crisis in the country and how we can actually make it better, if I may say. Now, the central bank of Nigeria says government securities issuance had been significantly oversuscribed, but foreign investors accounting for over 75% of bids received are the auctions conducted on March the 1st and 6th, 2024, and that inflows are improving. Now, let me bring in my guests now. International Finance and Economic Analyst, Muhtar Mohamed, let me get his reactions to this development. Good morning to you, Muhtar. Thank you, Justin. Thank you for having me. Good morning. All right. Let me start this way. The seemingly oversubscription of government securities by about 75% by foreign investors, what significance does it really have, or is it really having on our Forex regime and the Naira? Is this what some sort of panacea that we're supposed to get or see, or I don't know, what are your thoughts really? I think it's good news for us. Our reserves have today reported that our reserves have gone up by 2.83%, which is good. We are beginning to gain inflows and about 2.8 billion dollars in terms of influence for me. That also is good. So now, why are investors coming, why are they oversubscribing the bond market? You remember that inflation is low in the developed economy of the world now, and so the return on investment is low, and so they are looking for other investment, other place to invest. And now we are giving a high interest rate, like it's a government security is giving up almost 22% in terms of interest rates. So definitely it looks like a good place for foreign investors to want to come in, but it's the foreign portfolio investors that are just coming in, what I call for the hot money. But now we need the hot money to stabilize our effects rate, and again, why they are coming now? They now also strongly believe that the Naira is under value, so if they are able to get it at the rates they are coming at the higher rates, they will be exiting at a lower rate, which also will also improve their own profit margin. I think that's why we are seeing that so hopefully we might be seeing a lot of these foreign investors coming into the country. I understand you, you're saying that really there is an indication of interest in our short-term security debt, or is there something else that we are not seeing, or is it just because of the under value of the Naira, or they are similarly interested in our interest security debt? No, I think when you look at investors are not looking at the long-term interest when they are coming to your country. They are looking at the short-term, what harm are they making the shortest possible time. And like I said, what they cannot get outside the short-term, remember cost of funding in their country also is very cheap. They are borrowing maybe less than 10 percent, and you are making about 22 percent here. And when you look at inflation in those places, inflation in those countries has got like a 4 percent, so those variables in foreign land, when you make a return of 10 to 15 percent in your investment, it's a very good investment. So basically that is why they are coming in, or like I said, they are the portfolio investors and they are here for the short-term, and it's now you able to balance up and make sure that for the investors that end up becoming foreign direct investors, so it's up to you, or how you finally handle them to turn the corner. My challenge in all of this is if they are bringing in the effects, you must also be able to create a window for them to exit, and so that's what the CBA is not there, because we don't have enough effects. Remember, some investors have not been able to to guard their funds to their bearers' countries, so Nagia is still not admitted into the frontier market, and I think if we are able to do what is right, we could see Nagia coming back to the frontier market, and that also will bring a boom of these foreign investors into our country. Okay, let me try and put it differently. Let me just play devil's advocate now, but the CBA and Governor Olaemi Cadoso had set out a detailed strategy to curb inflation, stabilize the exchange rate, and spur confidence in the banking system and the economy using last month's monetary policy committee meeting, and the conference call with those foreign portfolio investors that we have just mentioned. So, would you say that these strategies are working in your opinion? Is it too early to call? Too early to call, I'm just in too early to call, but it's working now, like I said, it's in the short term, but it's too early to call. You see, they are coming in now, they have not complained about exiting, like I said, if it becomes a challenge for them to exit the market, then you know what I would do again, but again, if a chance they want to repatriate their money back, I'm able to repatriate it back for them at 20. Remember the CBA and after the oil major that you cannot repatriate 100% of your phone out, you can repatriate something you have to wait for three months. That also is not a good point, but after I said that, he met with the foreign investors more assured that their phones can go in and out, and that is because the whole idea of hiking rigs was to attract these portfolio investors into our country with high returns so that we can easily stabilize the Naira. All right, the Naira is about, let's say, the second worst-performing currency in the world after the Lebanese pound. But right now, International Business Research firm, Economist Intelligence Unit is saying that the central bank of Nigeria does not have the liquidity enough to support the Naira as of now. Any of the similar good news that the CBA is making us believe, what do we make out of all of this, Mukta? Yeah, well, when it's said we are the worst-performing currency, then again, we'll cap it over and say we are the best-performing stock exchange in the world. So, it's not even there. All right. The other time that we were the worst-performing exchange, today we are the best-performing exchange. So, believe strongly that the Naira is really undervalued. I believe strongly that we'll get there as sooner than we think. Yes, you're talking about our foreign reserve and the CBA. It just tells you, I mean, sorry, Justin, it just tells you when you have a strategic government, they are able to strategize and get things done and don't get into the kind of crisis we've gotten ourselves into. Look at Egypt. Egypt did the same thing we are doing now. They used to do a managed system, but they've moved to a floating system. And what did they do? They knew that liquidity is the challenge. You can't leave your currency for market forces. So, what did the IMF World Bank, you are the one telling us that we need to we need to float our currency. We need to attract investors. We need to do this. Our currency is not right. We are going to do that. But in the interim, IMF World Bank will give us a loan facility of about eight billion dollars. And so, IMF agreed. So, immediately they float the currency on day one. The currency lost 50 percent to the dollar and the pounds. But two days later, because they have the liquidity to say, no, this is the right value of what our currency will be. The currency have just lost 30 percent because they have liquidity. And then they are not attracting investors. Stories are not coming in. And so, by virtue of this now, it's not creating it's not creating effects for them in the long run and stability to the boring form in the short term. So, that is strategic thinking. You don't just think, oh, this is gone. This is that. And you don't have a strategy.  We'll be giving them 20,000 dollars. Then the following day, you are suspending 1,430 bureau exchange. Today, you are approved to give 20,000 dollars every week at 1,300, if not done it. And the exchange rate that was stabilizing at 1,400, 1,500 at the point 1,300, is now moving back to 1,600. So, it just shows that we are not strategic in our thinking. So, we need to be strategic. And that's why I use the Egyptian example. Okay. Okay, I see others to just examine the EIU report about the foreign situation in the country. Specifically, it is suggesting that the CBN resorts to foreign borrowing to support the Naira and fulfill its effects obligations. I want to find out why you reason about this economically, because when we talk about borrowings, I just tried to be a bit careful knowing how we do with our borrowings in the country and obligations and repayment and all of that. But let me just understand what you make out of all of this borrowing in foreign currency to support the CBN's movement, of course, the effects of obligations. I said it before. I agree with that. I said, if you want to stabilize the efforts, we need to think about how we can borrow. Now, borrowing, like you said, it might be to borrow through Eurobound and all that. But unfortunately, a lot of people will not invest in your Eurobound when you don't have stability in your exchange rate. So, they will need to know that your exchange is rightly priced. As I can say, it's undervalued or good. But that could also be an example for the incentive for them to come in, because they know that they are coming in high and they may be in low. So, I think that's the right way to go, because we don't have this if you look at what we're talking about, we're talking about the auditory part of the CBN before now, which is $3 billion as a company in our foreign is that we move out all of obligation. And so, I totally agree that we should borrow, but I'm not the type of borrowing that we have done before, which is we just borrow for consumption. We just borrow without a target. I think this time we should borrow for the sake of reform. We've already done that again with the MZ Bank, Africa. Is it an African MZ Bank in Cairo? But up to this moment, the $3.3 billion has not had any impact in our currency that tells you that we need to do more in terms of bonds. So, I totally agree with us trying to borrow to stabilize our currency in the short term. But the challenge is that now, at the time we borrowed, we're saying that President Buwari, they have borrowed so much. But at the time they were borrowing, even foreign debt, they exchanged about $400, $360. And by the time they are going away, the government, as officially I just said, they left the fleet for market forces. They have gone to $1,000 and $1,500. So, our foreign debt has dramatically increased. So, the government will be in a dilemma. Do you want to continue to increase the debt burden on yourself? I don't think it's one thing the government want to do. So, it's a good thing to do, but the government will need to be strategic so that they don't have too much debt complication. All right, Mukta, let's leave the Forex issue on talk. A bit of political economics, if we may. Let's just leave Forex for a bit now. What is in the news right now is the issue of budget padding allegations here and there, about $3 trillion naira in the 2024 budget. Mukta, we've talked about budget over the years in the country. Right now, it is resurfacing. So, right now, should this allegation be anything to go by? That's on the one hand. And what are the implications if truly we're implementing a budget that is padding? What does it really mean economically? Economically, it's not good.  Again, I mean a lot of funds are not in the creative, productive sector of the energy economy. And that's why we are suffering the kind of inflation we are suffering now because of about $30 trillion that was printed through the ways and the means. So, when you have a budget like that, which provision will not be made for consumption or corrupt tendency, it tends to have an inflationary pressure on the economy and then high interest rate, high inflationary pressure, low ability for the citizen to end, to be able to end more. And the opportunity power would have gone up drastically. So, I think the presidency has come out and said there's nothing like that. But again, coming from a senator, he gave a lot of detail. So, we still need to hear more from the president. But my only complaint in all of this is that it's targeting at a particular region, trying to make it feel that a particular region is being not run in the scheme of things. And I don't think that is good for the senator to be saying that. But if he's saying that a lot of budget targeting are based on projects, it should name those projects. He didn't say we are discussing with the president, we've had consultant to analyze. So, you should have waited for your consultant to have come with the result before you come to the press. So, for me, I think everything in this country is becoming political. Even the economy is becoming political. Even in funeral service, you saw what happened in the funeral service of the late C.C. of access holding, where it became a political talk between the senate president and the governor of river state. So, we tend to politicize everything that has to do with other. I don't think it's we're talking about economy. We're talking about the livelihood of Nigerians. We've seen hunger in the land and it is not looking at only APC members are feeling hunger, only PDP. It's affecting everybody. So, economically, one thing you must give it to develop economy, especially in the United States.   It attacked everybody and it doesn't know the rich. It doesn't know the poor. It doesn't know the middle class. It just comes in and then it's attacked. So, I think the senator Nenghi should come out clear with precise information and the presidency also should come out clear in terms of defending themselves with also precise information for us to guide us. I thank you Mubta. Indeed, you mentioned about economic hardship and them hunger in the land. How have you been surviving, you know, the price of Gary and of course, and beans skyrocketed. Can you give us some survival mechanisms that you have to use it? I do it. I don't know why I'm calling you David today. Just it. I think survival mechanism is budgeting. We need to start living our life by budgeting. What you don't need, you don't need. You take away your want and deal with your need in tough times like this. We need to begin to think of budgeting. You don't just spend this on impulse. For me, that's the key. I'm smiling today because I tend to make sure that you make sure that there are some things that I need. There are things that I want. Your need is in terms of you need a house. You have to pay your house friend. You have to pay your children's school fees. But you don't have to work close. Those are needs. But even in terms of moving out, you want to go out because of energy is high. So, you need to say, okay, fine. Is it worth me working from home or going out? And if I want to go out, right drive, or is it cheaper for me to enter public transport, tango, we have BRT, we have the red line and the blue line, metro system coming into play. So, all those things are things that you need to consider. But it starts first of all by projecting. You and I have that experience. Remember, when I have to come to your studio, we have to work it out. So, this is a part of the task that we have to do. You project until you need to start and the only strategy to survive at a time like this is to make your budgeting very serious. Know what goes out. Know what comes in. Make that your budget. Look at, are there leakages that I need to control? Do I have to get data to make a call to Justin than using my direct phone night to call? So, those are literally two things, but when you calculate it, Justin, before you go, let me give you an example. Seeing these issues or for a price I have come in, I have not bought gas in any other station than NNPC. Because by buying NNPC, I'm saving myself almost like 13 lira. So, and it doesn't look much, but in a week, it doesn't look more, but in a month, it begins to grow and in a year, add up. So, budgeting is key. All right. All right. Thank you so much. Now, we now know how to budget, you know, for our daily expenses of personal financing and budgeting comes to play. Thank you so much, Mukta Mohamed, International Finance and Economic Analyst for all of your useful insights, specifically concerning the, you know, gary and bins and then budgets. We'd appreciate your time. Thank you, Justin, for having me. Always a pleasure to be on your program. Thank you. All right. That's the size of the show for today. My name is Justin Akadone. Many thanks for being there. Bye for now.


Hello, and welcome to my wall. It's very blank, very boring. We wanna add a little bit of spice.  So it's a really good start to the video. It's great. It's what we wanna see. And yeah, I'm gonna paint something on this wall because I thought it'd be a fun idea. I've seen a few YouTubers do it. So I wanted to try it myself. Just realized that I'm speaking with this and I've been waving it about, but if the audio is a little bit funky, you know it's because your girl is not a great YouTuber despite the 100th video that this is. 100 million video, it feels like. I don't think it's the 100th video. I don't know, I'm talking rubbish. We're gonna paint on this wall and it's gonna be pretty good. Side note, I don't own this house. So one day it's gonna have to be painted over. But we're gonna do it anyway because I really wanted to try it and I thought I could do some cool like studios. It's gonna be kind of art style thing on the wall. And yeah, let's go. This is happening. So in preparation for painting stuff, I got some brushes because I figured if I'm gonna be painting on the wall, I should probably get brushes that paint on walls. So yeah, and a little mini roller and a mini finger magic key and some masking tape and I'm gonna be using my acrylic yeah, mirror, my acrylic gouache because I have so much of it. It's actually acrylic, it's not gouache, I always say gouache. My acrylic's here, so let's get down to it. What do you move? What do you move? Color vibe. Maybe you can come and pour a ride. Come on. Maybe I can come and pour a ride. Is that wonky? It's gonna have to do. Look at me. I'm going forth without fear in my heart and I'm just gonna paint. Let's do it. This roller is the worst, but we're using it. Sighting, I'm also having a bit of a breakdown, but it's fine. We're just gonna breeze on through it and just keep going. Oh, this is super black. I don't know why I put a dab of black in the paint by accident because I thought it was dark blue and now it's really coming out even though I mixed it all.   Just let it be known I haven't painted in this kind of setting for like, since I was a kid, basically. I've never painted on the walls, but yeah, this is looking great. The idea of the roller was to get like this smooth colour, but no, it just hasn't helped me at all. Just a little note for anyone confused. This is an image taken from Studio Ghibli's My Neighbor Totoro and it's one of my favourite films and I really like this scene where the girls are outside in the garden at night and is it a dream? Is it not a dream? And their dad is like working away and the light's all on and it's like such a really nice mood and I thought that this would be like the perfect thing to paint on the wall.  Why am I here? Why have I done this? Why have I decided to do this? What am I thinking? I've never in my life painted on a wall and it came with a lot of ups and downs, but I think overall I kind of, I did enjoy the process so I'm really glad I did this in the end. Yeah, I'm not so good at mine. What are you doing? It looks really cool. It looks really cool. What? You need to chill. Why? What's the reasoning behind this? What are you doing? Best as a fan. Best as I want to. I'll be done. To my beautiful wall. Go to the bathroom and look out from the bathroom as you exit. That's pretty cool. I thought you meant like, there's another painting in the bathroom. I thought I wanted to laugh or cry. You can calm down now. It's not that deep, Chris. So I feel like I've been painting for about a thousand years. The sun is setting and with this light, it kind of shines too much on the wall. So we're going to leave it here for now and then finish up tomorrow. So yeah, this is where we're at. Hmm, I mean, I like it, but I think it will look better tomorrow with the details and stuff and looking in the camera. I see that like this bit is like a bit wonky. So I'm going to have to sort that out too. I really like the way the clouds look. Yeah, I think it's getting there. It's just that I need more time. Good morning. Yes, we're back for round two of day two of painting on this wall. Day one didn't quite go as planned. Chris was surprised. I spilled paint everywhere. What? What? I don't know. And now day two will continue. It's not perfect, but it's kind of like it. Chris, what do you think? Very cool. In the end, do you like it? Yeah, I love it. I think it's awesome. And that's all the approval I need. OK, thanks for watching, guys. Please like and subscribe.  But also I have a picture down below if you want to check it out. Thanks for watching and hopefully I'll see you next time. Bye.


Greetings, and welcome to the Introduction to Astronomy. In this video, we are going to talk about the asteroids, or the small objects that exist between Mars and Jupiter. And these are primarily rocky objects, similar in some ways to the terrestrial planets, but in many cases more primitive, some of them being the very early building blocks that made up eventually, that originally built up the terrestrial planets. So we'll want to look at these in a little bit more detail. So let's start off with their discovery. How were these discovered? Well, for a while it was thought that maybe there was a missing planet between Mars and Jupiter that had not been seen. And that was because of the large gap between Mars and Jupiter. Within the inner solar system, the planets are all spaced very closely, all within about one-and-a-half astronomical units, or one-and-a-half Earth-Sun distances between the Sun. And then all of a sudden you went out to Jupiter at about five astronomical units. And that meant that there was this big gap between Mars at about one-and-a-half AUs and Jupiter at five AUs. So it was thought that maybe there was some kind of missing planet there. And in 1801 Piazzi discovered Ceres, an object that orbited in between Mars and Jupiter. And it was thought maybe this was that missing planet. Maybe this was what had been missing for a long time. So maybe this was the missing planet that people had thought existed. However, very shortly thereafter several more objects were discovered that had similar properties. So Ceres, which was originally perhaps considered a new planet, had to having been discovered, and in fact not that long after the planet Uranus had been discovered. So thought maybe there was a new planet here. As we found more and more objects, they then reclassified this as the largest asteroid. And of course Ceres is now known as one of the dwarf planets in the solar system. Now we know of many thousands of objects here, and the vast majority of them orbit between Mars and Jupiter. So let's take a look at those orbits. And what we see is that there are different types of asteroids in different locations. We have the main belt asteroids, where we find most of them, and that is between Mars and Jupiter. So that would be those highlighted in the white here. So they are orbiting between Mars and Jupiter, and those are what we call the main belt asteroids. Most of them orbit in circular or slightly elliptical orbits, and travel in between those two planets. Now there are other asteroids as well. We have the Trojan asteroids, which are related to Jupiter's orbit. They're here in the green. And those are Trojan asteroids, or ones that share Jupiter's orbit. So they orbit at Jupiter's distance from the sun, five astronomical units, and with the period of Jupiter of about 12 years. So they follow Jupiter's orbit, but Jupiter is here, and they are 60 degrees either in front of or behind Jupiter. So they orbit with exactly Jupiter's period, so that as Jupiter moves, they move and stay right ahead of Jupiter, or follow right behind Jupiter. So those are a group that happen to be in this stable position. It's a stable gravity well at 60 degrees between Jupiter's gravity pulling on them, and the sun's gravity pulling on them, so it's a very stable area, and asteroids that find their way into that section will end up staying. And then finally there are the Apollo asteroids. Apollo asteroids are those that cross the orbit of the Earth. So you see, while the vast majority of them are out here by Jupiter, or between Mars and Jupiter, that there are a few in the inner part of the solar system. Only a couple shown here. But anything that crosses the orbit of the Earth is an Apollo asteroid, and that's one of the ones that we would actually have to watch out for. Those are the ones that have potential to impact us here on Earth. Now how can we classify asteroids? So we have the C-type asteroids, which are what we call carbonaceous. These are made up of silicates, or rocky material, and organic compounds. And recall that organic compounds does not mean life. That simply means that they are carbon compounds. Carbon compounds tend to be sooty, and therefore these are relatively dark objects and harder to find. So they're not reflecting a lot of light. These are important because they are primitive. And that simply means that they have not changed since they formed billions of years ago when the solar system was forming. They are essentially unchanged. And that is important because it gives us a chance to now study those objects that would have one point four and a half billion years ago been colliding together to form the Earth. So on the Earth they all got melted together and separated by densities. Here we're actually seeing those original objects, so it's a chance to be able to study those things that billions of years ago made up the Earth. Now we also see S-type asteroids. These are stony, and they are brighter, so they're easier to see. These are dark, these are bright, and they have fewer carbon compounds, so they're less sooty, they reflect more light, and they're a lot easier to see. When we look at distances, the S-type are closer to the sun. So on average when we look at the asteroid belt, the S-type asteroids are closer to the sun, and the C-type asteroids, the carbonaceous ones, are further away. Now finally we also see the M-type asteroids. These are metallic, so they are not primitive asteroids. They are things that have been differentiated because they are solid chunks of metal, which would not have normally just formed. They must have been inside a larger object, which was able to be heated up and differentiated forming a metallic core, and then likely was broken apart in collisions. So C-type, S-type, and N-type is the three classifications of asteroids. Now when we look at the orbits of the asteroids, they're not random, they're not just spread out throughout the asteroid belt, they have certain areas where they occur. So there are some regions with fewer asteroids, and some with more, and we see those gaps here and a couple others here and here where there are regions where there are no asteroids, or hardly any, and these are resonances with Jupiter's orbit. That means that if we look at what's occurring here, for example right here, we have the asteroid orbits three times every time Jupiter orbits once, and that gives us a resonance with them and that every time Jupiter is back in that same spot, then the asteroid is in the same spot and they give a tug, an extra little tug, so that over billions of years this area has been cleared out by Jupiter's gravity. There are other resonances that occur as well, and regions where there are far fewer asteroids because of Jupiter's gravity. And this is similar to the gaps that we see in the rings of Saturn, they are caused by Saturn's moons, well Jupiter does the same thing to the asteroid belt, and perhaps the asteroid belt formed because of Jupiter's gravity, keeping a planet from actually being able to become dominant there. So, how can we explore these asteroids and what do we see? Well, first of all they cannot be studied from the Earth. They are far too small to be able to see any detail. So we can detect them, we can see their light being reflected, but we can't actually study them in any detail. So two of those that were explored were Gasper and Ida, these were some of the earliest asteroids explored, and here we can see they look just like small rocks with lots of little craters on them. These were the first asteroids to be observed by a spacecraft. So the Galileo spacecraft flying on its way out to Jupiter had to go through the asteroid belt and was planned to go by a couple of these asteroids to give us some images and our first close-up images and looks at these types of objects. And we can see again that they're very irregularly shaped so that they don't look like moons or planets that we've looked at before. Everything was always spherical because they were large enough. Now we're actually looking at small objects that are not big enough to be able to pull themselves into a sphere. In fact, Ida here, down here, actually has a moon of its own, a very small object, from an impact material that was impacted off of it and then never was able to break orbit. So it remains orbiting around dactyl. So they're small, they're irregularly shaped, and they are heavily cratered. They have not had any kind of geological activity going on on these. Now we've continued to explore asteroids and we've looked at a few others and we see here the Vesta, Vesta as seen by the Dawn spacecraft, which orbit, it was an orbit of Vesta for a year. So for a year it went into orbit, orbited around Vesta and explored it. We see lots of large impacts, so several very good-sized impacts. Not bad considering the size of this object. There are a lot of good-sized impacts that have occurred. So we've now had some up-close looks at not only Vesta, but also one of the dwarf planets and that would be Ceres. Ceres has also been explored by the Dawn spacecraft, so it observed Vesta. Then it went to Ceres, it had enough fuel to break orbit of Vesta and head to Ceres. So it went into orbit there in 2015 and studied again. This object, looking at craters and the different structures and one of the things that was interesting that we found as it was heading there was noted some of these lighter colored areas and it was wondered what kind of things these might be and it looks to be that they are possible deposits of salts, maybe possibly from an impact or churned up from an impact or things that formed long ago. So something different. You can see they very much stand out from what we see as the rest of the surface of this dwarf planet. Now one of the other things that we want to look at here is the possibility of asteroid impacts. So what kind of impacts can we get for an asteroid? Well, the Apollo asteroids are the ones to look at, especially for the Earth. They cross the Earth's orbit and that makes them a collision hazard, that they have the possibility of colliding into Earth. Sometimes we call these, also call them near-Earth asteroids. So a few of these have been explored and in fact Eros was explored by the near-shoemaker spacecraft and that was looking at one of these near-Earth asteroids. However, there are many, many of these, we've catalogued many of them, but there are far more including many that are just a kilometer or so in size and these still remain undetected. So there are many of them that could cause significant damage on the Earth that have yet to be detected. So what kind of impacts and results can we get? Well, here's an example of one of these. This is the Tunguska event from 1908 and this is an object exploded in the atmosphere over Siberia and laid down the trees. So the massive explosion laid down trees flat over an area similar to the size of a good sized city. So a major city would essentially have been flattened by this impact. Were that to have occurred over a city? Fortunately, it occurred over a relatively deserted area and did not cause much damage. But these impacts do occur and have occurred here in the early 20th century and have also occurred more recently in Shalabinsk and there in that case a 20 meter object exploded in the atmosphere and that was essentially 30 times larger, 30 times more energy than the nuclear warheads that were used on Japan in World War II. The difference would be of course that there was no nuclear radiation or fallout but the amount of energy released was much larger than even those. So these impacts have occurred, major ones even within 100, 150 years, smaller ones that can still cause some significant damage even within a decade or so. Now one of the major impacts that we look at is the extinction of the dinosaurs. So what is the evidence that an impact caused the dinosaurs to become extinct? And we've put this back to an impact 65 million years ago and that changed the climate of the earth. When you crash something into the earth you can throw so much material into the atmosphere that you can significantly cool off the earth. And this caused an extinction of 75% of the species that existed at the time. So we see some evidence for this and in fact here we see off the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. We can see the crater remnants of this through a gravity map where we can see where the gravitational field is a little bit different where there is material still stuck below that. So we're seeing evidence of the crater remnant still present there and you can see the coastline here sketched in white of Mexico there and then the impact partially on land, partially under the sea in this case. The other thing that we see is a layer of an element called iridium. And when we look at that, iridium is something that is very rare on the surface of the earth but is more common in meteorites. And when we look at that layer we see that here there is that layer right in between. Below this layer are the dinosaur fossils. Above that we see no dinosaur fossils. So there's a big difference in what we see above and below this layer. This layer dates to about 65 million years ago. So those are a couple of the pieces of evidence that really convince us that it was a large impact that was responsible for causing the dinosaur extinction. Now how often did these impacts occur? Well it really depends on the size of the asteroid. So a bigger object is going to hit us much less often than a smaller object. So things like annual events which can still be pretty big can actually cause pretty big damage that do happen on an annual yearly basis, some place over earth. Something several meters in size will strike the earth on an annual basis. But as you get larger and larger things like the Tunguska event here occur only every couple hundred years. So doesn't mean we're safe since one occurred in 1908 but does mean that they only occur every few hundred years on average. So doesn't mean we could get another one but on average that's when they would form. Now when you get to the catastrophic events those are over in this level things that are a couple kilometers in size and those occur on the million year time scale. Those are where you could actually get global events that would cause significant damage. So when you get something that large they only occur on the million year or so stage. So not as common but those are the ones that could cause significant damage and it doesn't matter where on earth they hit there you're getting actual things that are global. So if they occur in one continent still they will have global effects maybe not directly from the impact itself damage but from areas that where material is thrown up into the atmosphere and making significant changes to the climate. On the other hand the extinction events the most largest those happen on average every couple of hundred million years. They've occurred in the past it's not that this one here where we talk about that that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs is the only one that ever occurred and caused extinctions. They have occurred a number of times in the past and there have been some that have been more intense than the dinosaur extinction that caused an extinction of ninety percent of the species that existed at the time. So there have been some that have occurred even just over the last few hundred of millions of years we've seen a number of these massive impacts and that does mean of course that they will happen again in the future we just don't know we may not even know that that object that's coming before it actually gets close. So what can we do about this? Well not necessarily a whole lot there are some surveys the space guard survey is one of these that is trying to detect ninety percent of the near earth asteroids that are at least a kilometer in size so things that could cause some very significant damage and an idea is to give some advanced warning to what is going on. Of course if we look at that that is ninety percent of these objects that means there's about ten percent of them that would not have been detected by this. So what are the problems with this? Will we sketch in a lot of the orbits are sketched in here and the problem is that it's difficult to determine the orbit accurately because these are small objects when they pass close to another object whether it be earth or Mars or Venus or Jupiter their orbits can be deviated so you have to try to take everything into account and they can even pass close to each other and change their orbits a little bit so it's very difficult to know exactly where they're going to be coming and it is difficult to detect and track all of these objects because of the constant changes and because of the existence of other objects that we do not even know about. So what happens if we find something you know what can we actually do about it if we detect some object on a collision course with earth well the one thing you really can't do it's unlikely to be able to destroy the object even a large enough one a nuclear warhead is unlikely to destroy it completely and really would just split it into a number of objects so instead of a single impact you'd end up getting a lot of slightly smaller impacts which could be just as devastating to life on the earth. The best bet is what we call deflection which just gently nudges the object doesn't take a lot of energy but the problem is you have to know about it in advance so as long as you have years of notice that this object is coming you can plan a mission to change the orbit of this asteroid and you don't have to change it very much it has to be precisely aligned to strike the earth and if you straight change it off course even by a very small amount then you can have it avoid hitting the earth now it does depend on how far away it is the closer it gets to earth the harder it is to change that orbit the further away it is the easier it is to change but of course the question is will we know of it long enough in advance to be able to plan anything and to be able to launch something and will we be able to change the orbit will we know the orbit accurately enough to know how we should change that so let's finish up as we do with our summary here and what we found is first of all asteroids exist in different parts of the inner solar system that we saw that there were three classes of asteroids C M and S type based on their compositions what they're made up of we've looked at several missions that have actually looked at these asteroids up close and studied them giving us our first good images of asteroids in the last few decades and finally we talked about asteroid impacts these have occurred in the past and will occur in the future and there are a few things that we can do to try to minimize the effects of those impacts so that concludes our lecture on the asteroids we'll be back again next time for another topic in astronomy so until then have a great day everyone and I will see you in class


Most patients are pretty willing to share their information, particularly when it comes to research type questions and things where you say, we're really trying to do something better for the group as a whole. Do you mind if we include your information with it? Very rarely do I encounter anybody who says, no, I have a real problem with that. So I think the HIPAA privacy rules are well-meaning, well-intentioned, because the idea is you don't want your personal health information floating around. But I think we have to make it a little bit easier for people who want to share their data to do so without having to jump through a lot of hoops.