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As Russian scientists gather fragments of the 10-ton meteor that streaked across the sky on Friday at 33,000 miles per hour, TED Fellow Hakeem Oluseyi took to the airwaves to weigh in on the event.

Oluseyi is an astrophysicist and teacher determined to bring science to poor classrooms across the world. His work has spanned cosmology, astronomical observation and exoplanets – all of which he shares in the classroom. Oluseyi has also pioneered the One Telescope Project, which aims to bring a telescope to each nation, driven by the idea that space is for everyone — and that understanding it is an endeavor that must be undertaken together, as one earth, rather than nation-by-nation.

On Friday, Oluseyi was invited on NBC’s The Ed Show to discuss the meteor that exploded over the Chelyabinsk region. In the clip above, he explained the sonic boom as well as the fact that another asteroid — one the size of a football field — just missed our planet.

Oluseyi also appeared on the National Geographic show Top Secrets: Doomsday and, last December, was interviewed on Evacuate Earth. Look for him next on the Science Channel’s series Alien Encounters: Are We Alone? which will be broadcast on March 5.

It’s a humbling day to be an Earthling. Just sixteen hours before the highly-anticipated flyby of the asteroid 2012 DA14, the skies above the Chelyabinsk region of Russia were shattered by the explosion of an incoming meteor. Although fortunately nobody appears to have been killed by the blast, more than 1,000 people reported injuries, mostly from flying glass and debris.

We know that these objects are out there, but what are scientists doing to locate them? And how would we respond if one were found to be on a collision course with our planet?

At TEDxMarin, Dr. Ed Lu gave a fascinating talk highlighting the efforts that scientists like himself are making to detect and deflect near-Earth objects.

“You don’t need oil miners and Bruce Willis” to push an asteroid off course, says Dr. Lu. “Deflecting asteroids is not that hard. We have the technology to do something like this.”

Phil Plait: How to defend Earth from asteroids The bad news? We can’t deflect an asteroid we don’t know is coming. And there are a lot of asteroids out there (check out the jaw-dropping graphics at about 6:00). That’s why Dr. Lu and his team are working on satellites to detect them from space — before it’s too late.

Also of interest today: Phil Plait’s “How to defend the earth from asteroids.”

This post originally appeared on the TEDx blog. Check out more »