Real astrophysicist reacts to Netflix’s Don’t Look Up

Visit to get started learning STEM for free, and the first 200 people will get 20% off their annual premium subscription. In this video: how realistic is a giant comet impacting with Earth in just 6 months? Don’t Look Up is available to watch on Netflix: For more information on NASA’s DART mission to redirect an asteroid see: and this NASA page: Watch more astrophysicist reacts videos with this playlist: 00:00 - Mining a comet 37:30 - Introduction 01:39 - Control desk in the telescope dome 02:43 - Lasers and adaptive optics 03:44 - Subaru Telescope & Planet 9 04:49 - Discovery using blink vs static images 05:43 - Display screens and FITS images 07:16 - What would Carl Sagan do? 08:32 - Planetary Defence Coordination Office 09:10 - Sizes of dangerous asteroids/comets 09:43 - Is 6 months warning realistic? 11:05 - Can this information be “classified“? 12:14 - Science is a different language 12:57 - Could the government hide something like this? 14:57 - Supernova searches 16:46 - The nuclear option for destroying dangerous comets 18:34 - “Don’t Look Up“ frustration boils over 20:20 - A comet with two tails 21:51 - It actually happened?! 22:19 - THAT ending 23:02 - Final thoughts 25:10 - Bloopers --- 👕 Check out my merch here: --- 📚 “Space: 10 Things You Should Know“ - UK Edition: 📚 US & Canada version: “Space at the speed of light“ (same book, different title, with some beautiful illustrations): 📚 German translation “Das kleine Buch vom großen Knall“ : --- 🎧 Royal Astronomical Society Podcast that I co-host: --- 🔔 Don’t forget to subscribe and click the little bell icon to be notified when I post a new video! --- 👩🏽‍💻 I’m Dr Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at University of Oxford (Christ Church). I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on *how* we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don’t know. If you’ve ever wondered about something in space and couldn’t find an answer online - you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars.