The Ben Mulroney Show - There's a chance an Asteroid will hit our moon... which could be disastrous

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

Guests and Topics: -There's a chance an Asteroid will hit our moon... which could be disastrous with Guest: Dr. Gordon Osinski, Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Western Ontario, Expertise in Planetary geology and impact cratering -Taking a historical look at the Dawson City Nuggets with Guest: Craig Baird, Host of Canadian History Ehx If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

🎵 I don't wanna close my eyes 🎵 🎵 I don't wanna fall asleep 🎵 🎵 Cause I miss you baby 🎵 🎵 And I don't wanna miss a thing 🎵 🎵 Cause even when I dream again 🎵 🎵 The sweetest dream will never do 🎵 🎵 I still miss you baby 🎵 🎵 And I don't wanna miss a thing 🎵

You're listening to the Ben Mulroney Show. Ladies and gentlemen, can I please have your attention? I have just been handed an urgent and horrifying news story. I need you all to stop what you're doing and listen. Armageddon is upon us. Well not really. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. I don't know if you noticed there, but I'm combining two of my favorite movies, Anchorman and Armageddon in like one minute radio.

This is a high point for me. You know two things about me. One, I love the stories of extinction level events. That's why Armageddon is one of my favorite movies, even though it's terrible. And I love talking about them. And I said, there has been a story that has consumed us here at the Ben Mulroney Show

for a very long time. There was an asteroid that was, the closer it was getting to earth, the higher the chance was that it was going to collide with earth. And so we talked about that. Did we need to start an Armageddon program and send Roughnecks up into space and save us all?

Turns out it changed its path. We're safe. Or are we? Because now we're hearing that there's a chance that it could hit the moon. And what could that mean? And so to discuss this, we're joined by Dr. Gordon Osinski, professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Western Ontario.

And he's got an expertise in planetary geology and impact cratering. This is the guy, folks. Dr, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me back on the show, Ben. All right, so let's talk about this. What are the chances that this asteroid hits the moon? Yes, so this is new news out this week.

As you mentioned, this asteroid hit the news back in February when there was about a 1. It was 3.1%. So that's kind of like a 1 in 30 or so chance of it hitting the Earth. That fell to about 0. But based on new telescope measurements, it looks like a 3.8% chance.

So that's actually 1 in 25, which you know, if you're a betting person, that's pretty high odds of this asteroid hitting the moon in about just under a decade's time. Okay, okay. All right. So we got to deal with it as if it's a possibility. How big is this thing? Do we know at this point? So there's still some uncertainty, we think it's something between like 50 and 100 meters. And so you know, it's not true. It's not, you know, the the extinction level

events by any chance, by any stretch of the imagination, but it would form a pretty sizable impact crater on the moon, if it does indeed strike. Okay, let's let's play these scenarios out because I love disaster movies and I love I love the unpredictable happening I don't want this to necessarily happen but is this thing big enough could it be big enough to do something like I don't know alter our relationship the earth's relationship to the moon thankfully no okay you know we would be we need to have an asteroid or comment you know in the several kilometers size range to really do anything to change Moon's orbit. But I guess maybe it depends on what your

perspective is in terms of our relationship with the Moon. We've never witnessed anything like this. And I mean, what if we're all kind of just looking up at the moon on a clear night and suddenly we see this giant plume of material coming up for it. I think it was a new perspective that things are floating around in the solar system. They can occasionally hit the moon and that also means they could hit the earth too. Oh, that would be a sight to behold. One thing that our listeners probably know about me is I talk a mean game, but when it comes to science, I don't know that much. That's why I love talking to people like you, Doctor. What do we need the moon for?

I mean, it's a good question. Do we, you know, we take it for granted. And you know, the biggest thing, right, is tides. You know, we, if you live anywhere near an ocean, if you've ever been to the beach, you know, And the biggest thing is tides. If you live anywhere near an ocean, if you've ever been to the beach, we only have tides here on Earth because we have a moon. We have an object that large in close proximity that exerts gravitational influence and literally pulls the water towards it as the Earth rotates.

And so the tides would disappear. That would cause some pretty significant changes to all coastal ecosystems and erosion and things. You know, could we live on earth without a moon? I think we could, but there'd be, you know, there'd be some pretty big changes for sure. And the night sky, I have to assume, would become a heck of a lot less bright.

Exactly. Yep. I mean, we'd see a lot more stars, I'm guessing, but we wouldn't see a whole lot more. Yeah, no, absolutely. And what would happen if, I mean, what would happen if there was an impact that was large enough to significantly alter the shape of the moon? Like what if it cracked into? I mean, I think if we're getting up to that kind of stage, you know, we would be looking at those, you know, Armageddon like scenarios, right? The most recent movie, which I haven't yet, you know, sat down and watched, I think it's moonfall. Oh, yes. But no, I should have asked you off the top doc. You have seen Armageddon. I have actually that you know that was a year because I was maybe about

the right age and just in university and things there was you know the year of deep impact. Yes, not nearly as good. And on a scale of one to ten one being you love it a lot, 10 being you love it with all your heart, where do you land on that scale? Oh, maybe somewhere in the middle, six, five or six. I must say, and I hope this doesn't change our relationship, that I think Deep Impact was maybe more scientifically accurate. I'm not watching it for scientific accuracy, Doc. I'm watching it because I want to see, I want to see Roughnecks save the world. I want to see Bruce Willis saving the world. I told you one of my favorite lines ever

is right at the end of the movie when Bruce Willis does not come home because he gave the ultimate sacrifice, his life for everybody on earth and the Air Force pilot who did not like him in the beginning, but ended up loving him at the end, goes up to his daughter, Liv Tyler, and says, Lieutenant Commander Willie Sharp, United States Air Force, requesting to shake the hand of the daughter of the bravest man I've ever met. And then the F-15s fly overhead and the music swells.

And if you do not feel something in that moment, then you are dead inside. I'm not asking you to comment, Doc. I'm just letting you know where I'm coming from. I'm being vulnerable with you, Doc. That's awesome. But okay, in a situation where we see this thing coming, we realize that maybe it is bigger than we anticipated and the chance of it hitting the moon is significant.

Do we have the technology today to do something about that? I'd say on paper, yes. There's been quite a lot of development done, lots of speculation, but this is a serious area of research. And as you can perhaps imagine, a lot of this research happens in the military, even here in Canada, but you know, particularly in the US, there's a big, you know, they have

a space force in the US, and the militaries around the world are interested in this topic and have, you know, have thrown out the ideas of, you know, sending up nukes and trying to blow asteroids apart. We do think that's probably actually the worst thing you can do. Well, yeah, and I learned that from our Mageddon. You can't, you gotta drill down. You gotta put the nuke at the heart of the beast. If you don't, it's just gonna bounce right off.

Or you'll, well, it depends, you know, again, on the perspective, or you'll change one very large object into a whole bunch more smaller objects that would then strike all over the Earth's surface. And we saw the impact of that foolhardy policy again in Armageddon. Yep.

Absolutely. New York said Manhattan suffered the greatest damage because of that foolishness, shall we call it. Yes. Yeah, for sure. Fool me once. But NASA did demonstrate this. It was a couple of years ago now through this DART mission. And so this was a proof of concept, essentially,

where they were able to fly a spacecraft close to an asteroid and just change its trajectory. And so that, you know, I think has been proven, but it's not like we have a bunch of spacecraft sat on a shelf ready to go. Or do we? Or do we, Doc? For all we know, NASA has a secret shuttle just like an Armageddon. There's no limit to how far criminals will go to cover their tracks. But investigators will go even further to uncover the truth.

I'm Nancy Hicks, a senior crime reporter for Global News. This season on Crime Beat, I'll take you from the crime scene to the courtroom and inside some of Canada's most high-profile cases and some you've likely never heard of before. Search for and listen to Crime Beat on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Listen, I can I can hope as it gets closer. I'm going to have you back on the show and

we're going to pick the right team to send up there and save the earth. Doctor, thank you so much for joining us. You're welcome. Thanks for having me on the show. Welcome back to the Ben Mulrooney show. And this is the time in the show where we grow our brains by learning something we didn't know. And so I want to jump right in with the host of Canadian History X, one of the most valued, treasured and trusted guests we've got on this show, Craig Baird. Craig, welcome back.

Thanks for having me. And because we're in an election campaign, it's almost a regular thing that we look back at previous elections and learn a little bit about our history by way of example. Today we're talking about the 1926 election and I was surprised to learn that it came less than a year after the previous election. Yeah the the story of the 1926 election is really the story of the 1925 election because in that election, the conservatives actually won 116 seats while the liberals under William Lye Mackenzie King won 100 seats. But because William Lye Mackenzie King had been prime minister before the election, he

was actually able to hold onto power by having an alliance with the progressive party. So what people think that if you win the most seats, you're automatically the winning party, but it's really whatever party is able to control the most seats. So that's why the liberals, even though they lost the election, stayed in power. But it was a minority government. It was not very strong. And a collection or a custom scandal actually erupted soon after. Is that the King-Bing affair? Yeah. So King went to Lord Bing, who is our governor general, and said, I'd like to call an election. And Lord Bing said no.

So King resigned. And then Lord Bing put Arthur Meehan, the leader of the conservatives, into power and asked him to form government. He did, but it only lasted a few months. And then it fell, which brought us to the 1926 election, which the liberals won with the most seats this time. And so this custom scandal, which is sound, it sounds very dry, but it's actually kind of exciting.

It is the, the minister of customs at the time, what was happening was he was accused of actually profiting off the illegal trade of alcohol because at the time prohibition was going on in the United States, he was shielding people from prosecution. So it was actually a major scandal and King knew that he would actually probably, his government would fall over it. So he hoped to kind of stay ahead of things by calling an election. But unfortunately, Bing said no. And it's one of those rare instances where the governor general actually refused something like that. Usually it's a ceremonial thing. And then afterwards, because of what Lord Bing did,

the governor general's powers were actually scaled back a little bit because a lot of people felt that it was the British government interfering with Canadian affairs by refusing to call an election. Okay, so then we find ourselves in an election in August of 1926. Talk to me about what happened on the campaign trail. Well, more or less the conservatives were campaigning

on having high tariffs and things like that. They'd won the previous election, so they more or less tried to do the same thing to win the next election. But King actually, he campaigned on the whole King-Bing affair and saying that it was a constitutional crisis and how Meehan wasn't actually supposed to be governing and all of this. So he actually ended up winning the election.

He won 116 seats while the conservatives won 91 seats, but it was a minority government. So once again, he needed the support of the Progressive Party to stay in power, which he did until 1930. Yeah, I mean, I just find it all this stuff so fascinating. Thank you for that history lesson, my friend. How long did this campaign or how long did this government last for? That government lasted from 1926 till 1930, and then King lost the election

because of the Great Depression was starting. All right, well now we're gonna turn our attention to the most bananas hockey story I could possibly, can't even imagine this. I cannot wait for you to tell us about the Dawson City Nuggets. This is definitely probably my favorite hockey story because we think of, you know,

hockey players traveling today, they travel in private planes, slap of luxury, but there was in 1905, this team from Dawson City who traveled about 6,400 kilometers by dog sled, bicycle, foot, train and ship, just to compete for the Stanley Cup against the Ottawa hockey club or the Ottawa Silver Seven. So hold on, we need to, you just glossed over some stuff

that I think bears repeating. A hockey team traveled for two days, it took them, so they left Dawson city to get to Ottawa. They walked, they took bicycles, they took a dog sled, they took boats and trains. This is how bad they want to compete in the Stanley Cup. Yeah, exactly. And a lot of the trustees of the Stanley Cup are very worried about this, because if Dawson City won the Stanley Cup, under the rules, any team that wanted to play for the Stanley Cup would then have to travel to Dawson City to compete for it, which would

meant that Dawson City would probably hold the cup for years. It took them two weeks to get there. So at that point, there was no, like there was no direct route. There was no road that they could take. No, they pretty much had to walk or take bicycle from Dawson City to Whitehorse. From Whitehorse to Skagway, there was a train,

but it was delayed. And then from Skagway, they would have to take a ship, and they got down to Vancouver, and it was a whole thing. Like, it was definitely not a good trip for them. How did it, did anyone get injured on this trip? No, they did get severely seasick, though. That was probably the worst thing that happened. Okay, so they get there two days before the first game.

Takes them two weeks to get there, and they've got two days to prepare. Uh, I'm imagining it was not a best of seven series. No, at the time what they would compete in is two game series and it was the most goals. And they actually did ask Ottawa, you know, can we just delay the game just a few days to rest? And Ottawa said, Nope, that's not happening. So yeah, they more or less had to like get right into hockey and it didn't go well. I got to say is we the Dawson City Nuggets and the Ottawa Silver 7. How many teams were competing at that time for the Stanley Cup?

Oh, it was pretty much any team that wanted to compete for the Stanley Cup could compete for the Stanley Cup. All you had to do was challenge for it. So that's how they were able to. How long were the seasons? Well, every team kind of had its own league and everything. You know, you had the Eastern Leagues, Maritime Leagues, you know, Western Canada. And so whoever was the champion in those various leagues would then be able to say to Ottawa or Montreal or whoever held the Stanley Cup that I want to

compete for it. And so places like Ottawa would actually have, you know, they'd have to hold on to the cup through like three or four challenges per year because people were trying to get it. It's like a lawless thunder dome. I love it. We should remind people that the Dawson City Nuggets lost the first game 9-2 and the second game 23-2. Here's a snippet of Dawson City Nuggets on Canadian History X. The first part of the journey took the team to Whitehorse and they had to cover a distance

of 500 kilometers with no train service. So the players traveled by dog sled first with some on bicycles. And at first they made good progress, but then the weather turned warm and their route became slushy and muddy. The bicycles and dog sleds became useless, then players were forced to walk the last stretch into Whitehorse. Along the way, they slept in northwest mounted police sheds. Upon reaching Whitehorse, the weather turned bad and the trains could not run for three

days so the team had to wait as their steamer in Skagway, on the coast of Alaska, left without them. When the weather cleared, the players boarded the train to Skagway but their bad luck continued to follow them because as soon as they stepped off the train in Skagway, they were met with a buildup of ice at the harbor which prevented the steamer coming to pick them up to take them to Vancouver from approaching. The Nuggets would have to wait another three days. By now they were a week behind schedule but the team was finally able to leave Skagway

on a steamer and it wasn't really smooth sailing. On the journey south along the British Columbia coast the players becameick, which made an arduous journey even worse. I mean, Craig, this is this feels to me like it should be a buddy road trip comedy movie akin to planes, trains and automobiles. More or less. Yeah, I mean, this would make a great movie. Just these these, you know, few players from Dawson City trying to go up probably against one of the biggest teams in history, stacked with Hall of Famers, hoping to win the Stanley Cup. It makes it even funnier that they failed so miserably. I mean, the tagline, well, that

didn't work out. This is amazing. What was the fate of the Dawson City Nuggets? I mean, I'd never heard of them until you brought them into my life. Well, after they lost the Stanley Cup Challenge, they actually toured around Eastern Canada and played against a lot of teams. They're kind of the toast of Eastern Canada for quite a while. And then they just kind of went back to Dawson City and everybody went back to their lives. And that was the last time they ever really competed for any major championship because in Dawson City, there were only like two teams so there wasn't much to compete for because the league was so small. I would just I would love to see them

repeat the the route back. That would be incredible. As I've always said and I will continue to say I love these segments. I love that you share information and about our history that it just adds it adds to that connective tissue that binds us all together so thank you very much really appreciate Craig Baird thanks for having me