How Can We Stop An Asteroid?

"It's like looking for a charcoal briquette in the dark," says Bill Nye

the Science Guy

in this new video from

AsapSCIENCE

... except he's talking about briquettes hundreds of meters wide whizzing past our planet upwards of 8, 9, 10, even 20 kilometers per second -- and much, much denser than charcoal.

Near-Earth asteroids

are out there (and on occasion they even come

in here

) and, as the planet's only technologically advanced spacefaring species, you could say the onus is on us to prevent a major asteroid impact from occurring, if at all possible -- whether to avoid damage in a populated area or the next mass extinction event. But how can we even find all these sooty space rocks and, once we do, what can be done to stop any headed our way?

Watch the video (and then when you're done, go visit the

B612 Foundation's

Sentinel

page to learn more about an upcoming mission to bag some of those space briquettes.)