Dean sets the record straight on Asteroid 2024 YR4 and chats with Pranvera Hyseni, a PhD student at the University of California Santa Cruz, and the Founder and Director of Astronomy Outreach of Kosovo.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Looking Up is transcribed using a combination of AI speech recognition and human editors. It may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.
Dean Regas: All right. Think about this number. It's a 3.2% chance. That was the highest likelihood that an asteroid ever detected by astronomers has had of hitting the earth. Now, you may have been following along with this story about an asteroid named 2024 YR four. You weren't following along Well, I was because every time a story comes across social media about a potentially hazardous asteroid, you know, these reports will get y all worked up, all scared.
And in the end, buried at the very bottom of the scroll. Some NASA astronomer, someone highly credentialed, says the asteroid will pass within 500,000 miles of us, and there is a one in like 3 million chance of hitting the earth. I mean like reading through this, I'm like, I'm holding my breath the whole time I'm reading the article.
Oh my gosh. We're gonna get hit. We're gonna hit, and then, oh yeah. So, stop scaring me for no reason with these articles. I mean, come on, one in 3 million. I'm not scared by those odds, but 3.2%. Hmm. I guess I better scroll further from the studios of º£½ÇÉçÇø. I'm your host, Dean Regas, and this is looking up
the show that takes you deep into the cosmos or just to the telescope in your backyard to learn more about what makes this amazing universe of ours so great. My guest today is Pranvera Hasani, a PhD student and researcher at the University of California Santa Cruz. And the founder and director of astronomy, outreach of Kosovo.
[Archival Audio]: Welcome back, so the chance of a newly discovered asteroid hitting the earth has doubled according to NASA.
Dean Regas: Yeah, man. I'm telling you. Asteroids and asteroid detection, this is gonna be like a stressful job. You know, you're looking for things coming at the earth and just hoping. The more you look at it, the more you look at it that it's not gonna hit the earth.
Come on, it's not gonna hit the earth. This is the whole idea of asteroid detection. There is a whole planetary defense. System out there. There's a bunch of astronomers and a bunch of, uh, telescopes and a bunch of satellites that are watching for asteroids coming at us. So how do you know which ones are like real dangerous and which ones are not?
It's pretty tough to tell. I. There are lots of asteroids out there. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of 'em that have been found that circle around the sun. All the ones that we've seen have a 0% chance of hitting the earth, but then you have potentially hazardous asteroids. That sounds even worse, doesn't it?
And also, we know of none of them that are going to hit the earth of these potentially hazardous ones, but we still watch 'em. And that's the part that gets me is like. We think we know where everything is. We think we know where the planets are gonna go, and we do. But asteroids are a whole different kind of thing because any little bit could throw them off of their game.
The more you watch the asteroid, the more you can narrow down exactly where it's gonna go. So, it goes from like a one and, a hundred chance down to a one and a trillion chance because we know that it's not gonna hit us. So, enter asteroid 2024 YR four. This thing's about 130 to 300 feet wide, but I'm not gonna tell you if it's gonna hit the earth yet.
Maybe we'll learn about some asteroids before that.
Pranvera Hyseni: My name is Pranvera Husseini. I am originally from the Republic of Kosovo, but I live here in California pursuing a PhD in planetary astronomy at uc, Santa Cruz. I'm also the founder of the Astronomy Outreach of Kosovo, which is the only nonprofit program about astronomy in our country.
Dean Regas: Well, PRANVERA, thanks so much for joining me today.
Pranvera Hyseni: It's my pleasure. Thank you so much, Dean, for having me.
Dean Regas: So, I think that you're one of the, prime examples of how the field of astronomy can take people places, like you seem to always be traveling to different observatories around the world. And so how did you get started in astronomy and where did your passion for the subject come from?
Pranvera Hyseni: When I was very young, when I was a child, I grew up in Kosovo and. A lot of people know of my country because of the war that we had 25 years ago. I was three and four years old at that time, and it was 1999. We had a solar eclipse that happened, and it was visible from Europe. It was a total solar eclipse.
[Archival Audio]: The darkness caused by the eclipse traveled at 1500 miles an hour. It began its journey off the coast of Canada, ending three hours later. When the sunset over the Bay of Bengal,
Pranvera Hyseni: So, for me, I wanted to learn more about science and get access to literature. So that's why I learned English, and I was trying to make friends internationally who share the same passion.
Dean Regas: Well, and then, you came to UC Santa Cruz and the United States, but, you really felt this need to give back to Kosovo. And like you said, there weren't astronomers. So what did you do? It sounded like, you founded your own astronomy organization called Astronomy, outreach of Kosovo.
Pranvera Hyseni: That’s true. I was in high school when I first started developing a network of people internationally, and I could barely speak English back then, but I was talking to these folks from Australia, from United States, and I could see them. They would set up their telescopes and they would look at the sky and this cool equipment, and they also saw me as.
Someone who's so young and who wanted astronomy and liked astronomy and wanted to do something about it, but didn't have anything. So these people decided to send me, some telescopes and can you imagine how that felt? Like people you've never met, and you don't even know and they're just sending you equipment.
I was like, what, 15, 16, something like that. And I could see how much impact it was making. Like people, even if they did not look through the telescope, just looking at the telescope, it was an impressive instrument. I. As I was finishing my bachelor's, that's when I also founded Astronomy, outreach of Kosovo in 2018, and the goal was for me to try to find other students who had the same passion as me in Kosovo, and we would do these events together because it was not easy as a young girl to just grab my equipment and go out there in different cities.
In Kosovo. I figured there must be other passionate folks who might. Wanna join this mission? I remember coming here in the States for the first time in 2017. I was invited at Texas Star Party as a keynote speaker and oh my God, going to Texas Star party, just, I. Walking from someone like me who never experienced astronomy firsthand to three football fields full of telescopes.
It was a blast, that's when I started realizing that wow, like we are so far behind, like we have work to do. And I was going. From place to place, meeting more astronomers, , going to universities, observatories all over the United States, the largest observatories, and then seeing the serious science that was being accomplished.
, I got to think about it, and I was like, why can't Kosovo have something like this?
I am Premier 24 years old from Republic of Kosovo after founding a OK. , I met a lot of other students who had the same passion as I do about, , cosmos, about exploring the skies. We managed to go to so many schools in public squares and give the opportunity to every kid, to every family to view the planets, to view the sky, which they never did before.
No one ever got a telescope in our country to show us the skies. And for the very first time something like that was happening and we were very proud of that. Something new we started.
And in 2022, we had the first foundation, started and it was so nice to finally see pictures of the actual building starting by the end of 2023. The entire building completed. I went to Kosovo several times during that year and just going there and walking and seeing the walls and the dome take the shape and everything.
And then we had the grand opening, and it was the greatest I. Moment of my life, just experiencing that with so many people, so many astronomers traveled internationally to be there for that day. And I will never forget how special it was and how proud I was that because of a dream that I had, and I stick to it.
We were going to have something that Kosovo never had, and the kids that are now going to grow up. That like me, I did not have anything or anybody to go to. Now they have a door, they can go knock and they can get started and they can learn about astronomy.
Dean Regas: Well, to, to bring you back to the United States, what's your main areas of research right now?
Pranvera Hyseni: Yeah, so now I am in my third year of PhD, and I specialize in understanding the composition of hydrated asteroids and trying to learn a little bit more about the aqueous alteration processes. So, these hydrated asteroids, we call them hydrated because at some point in time they had a lot of. Water in them.
So, they had ice that melted in the interior and then the water was changing the chemistry of these planetesimals. So, water usually, either it is static or it will start floating and moving around, and then it will alter the planetesimal and it will. Impact the chemistry and the composition. So, I tried to specialize in trying to understand the composition of these hydrated asteroids and how did the flowing of the water and the water itself change the chemistry of it, but also how did it redistribute the organics and how did it impact on the organics?
Dean Regas: I use a lot of data from other sky surveys, you know, like pan stars and that kind of thing. But is, there's also. Some real, you know, you get some telescope time, like recently you were at the, on Montea, the big island of Hawaii. What was that like?
Pranvera Hyseni: So, because I have to study these, I also have to get my data from one of the telescopes. There are so many telescopes around the world that gather data, but a lot of these observatories, the data that they get is. In the optical, in the visible light, and a lot of them just do tracking or other stuff. But in Mauna Kea, they have several telescopes that actually have the capability of looking at these objects.
In the infrared CAC telescope for instance, has that capability and the NASA infrared telescope facility also has that, and it’s, very much used to study these asteroids for hydration features and for organics and all of that. So, I have used this telescope several times and I can just access it from my computer here and operate it from here.
But this year I got my proposal. Approved again, and then they gave me two back to back nights in February and I was like, I am going to use this in person, because I really wanted to have the experience of going to the observatory and just being in the control room and gathering all that data and have that experience.
So, I wanted to go there, but not only use the telescope, but I also wanted to be there during the day because it's so amazing to be there. There are. 13 observatories, most of the powerful telescopes in the world. And just being surrounded by all of that. It's mind blowing. And I went there. I spent so much time, I saw so many sunsets and sunrises, and I got to see the skies at night.
It was so dark. The zodiac light was almost. Causing light pollution. That's how strong it was. It was surreal to be in that place.
Dean Regas: Well, I'm glad to hear it because we've been talking, in previous episodes about what it's like being an astronomer in the 21st century. And so often the astronomers are so remote from the telescopes, and you were up there on the mountain.
That must have just been amazing, thanks for sharing that and, and thanks so much for joining us today to talk about all your projects going on, but we'll definitely be keeping up and, and watching what's coming next.
Pranvera Hyseni: Thank you, Dean. Yeah, and I keep following your adventures. It's always nice to see you doing all this cool stuff. I'm very much inspired by you, so thank you so much for having me here. It was nice to share my story.
Dean Regas: All right, so back to our cliffhanger. Here is asteroid 2024. Why are four gonna hit us or not?
[Archival Audio]: The asteroids 2024 YR four was first detected as having an earth impact risk in December last year.
Dean Regas: This was the thing that really was a cliffhanger because this asteroid swings around every so many years. And, well the preliminary results said, alright, it has a 1% chance of hitting the earth. Nah, let's look at it again. Oh, now it's 2%. Now it's 3% and it peaked out at about 3.2% chance of hitting the earth. Now, generally when we watch asteroids longer, that number goes down, that percentage goes down.
This one just kept going up, and that what reached the highest percentage.
[Archival Audio]: Ever over the next few months, we used telescopic observations of the asteroid to refine its orbit and assess the potential hazard. In this time, it briefly became the riskiest asteroid ever detected,
Dean Regas: and the problem was. We didn't know any better than that.
We, you know, I would like to know if it's a hundred percent chance of hitting us or not hitting us. I would like to know because we wouldn't be able to see it on another close approach for about four more years. So, astronomers scrambled to get as many measurements as possible. Big telescopes were employed.
I was even having some discussions with other astronomers too, and we were like, well, if we don't get the data for another four years, what do we do? In the next four years, this was like an existential crisis. Do we save the earth, or do we wait to see if we don't have to save the earth?
[Archival Audio]: But in just a few days, this number rapidly dropped to just 0.001%.
Dean Regas: And thankfully, just as this asteroid is leaving our vicinity and these giant telescopes were pointed at it, they're now able to say. That there is no chance of it hitting us.
[Archival Audio]: This drop in number means almost all of the asteroids remaining orbits that could have led to an earth impact have been ruled out, and we can confidently remove the asteroids from the top of our risk list
Dean Regas: Phew! Saved.
Looking up with Dean Regas is a production of º£½ÇÉçÇø. Kevin Reynolds and I created the podcast in 2017. Ella Rowen and Marshall Verbsky produce and edit our show and give me a 3.2% chance of getting a big raise this year. I like those odds. Jenell Walton is our Vice President of content, and Ronny Salerno is our digital platforms manager.
Our theme song is Possible Light by Ziv Moran. Our social media coordinator is Hannah McFarland, and our cover art is by Nicole Tiffany, I'm Dean Regas. Keep looking up.
