it is as much or more energy that was in the combined arsenals of the united states d the soviet unionseight of the cold war. that could plausibly end civilization. nobody has the mod to tell you exactly what the threshold is. when you're talking about tens of millions of mega tons you're putting civilization at risk. >> i'm hearing that we're relatively optimistic that we can develop systems at the right price points to detect asteroids of this size with a sufficient amount of lead to to be able to do something about its. >> that is size range that we've lready detected 93%-94% of asteroids of that size range that could come close to the earth. in that size range, we can be reasonable -- reasonablely assured to go forward and be able to detect them with right a bit of notice. > let's scale it down to medium-large size asteroid, what cities would that be? >> it could be in a range of 50 meter diameter with energy in the range of 5-50 mega tons. >> what kind of systems could detect that? you're talking about more assets in our orbits, telescopes of that kind, including those this could g