I'm John Betzer with Bob Zimmerman. He keeps the website behind the black. Space engineering

and space exploration. And then there's scienceman. He keeps the website behind the black. Space engineering and space

exploration. And then there's science fiction. One of the great movies of the 20th century. I recommend

to everybody is when worlds collide. Yes, it's a science movie, kind of. But it's also spectacular

in what panic does to those who have access to low Earth orbit and beyond.

When a planet is headed to destroy Earth, well, two planets actually, what do they think?

They don't think, dig down deep.

They think, get off the planet.

It's spectacular.

Bob, worlds are going to collide.

Where?

Yes, astronomers think they have spotted the collision of two exoplanets around a sun-like star. Now, there's a lot of uncertainty in this,

but the data showed a lot of variability in the star that didn't make sense. It's a sun-like star.

The variability was not the kind of thing

you normally see from these kind of stars. And after doing a lot of analysis, their theory is that what

they were really seeing was the debris left over from a collision of two exoplanets, which happened to

also be in an orbit comparable to the earth.

So, yes, this is literally an example of when worlds colline, John, in a sense.

It took about 200 days for the debris to dissipate, and that's when the variability was occurring.

There's a lot of uncertainty there, but my gosh, science fiction sometimes is real.

My favorite part of that movie is when they draw lots to who gets to escape and who has to stay on Earth and die.

And the hero has favorites among the young people who have been working on the rocket.

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