Christmas Surprise
Astronomers have spotted a space rock, an estimated 200 feet in length, that they say just may be headed for Earth.
As the New York Times reports, the rock, dubbed 2024 YR4, has a 1.3 percent chance of putting us all out of our misery on December 22, 2032 — a fate we just might deserve, considering our incredibly careless stewardship of the planet.
“Odds have slightly increased to 1 in 83,” University of Arizona researcher David Rankin wrote in a post on Bluesky. “This is one of the highest probabilities of an impact from a significantly sized rock ever.”
“Most likely outcome is still a near miss,” he added. “We continue to track it!”
On a serious note, that potential collision course probably shouldn’t keep us up at night, Rankin assured the NYT.
If it were to collide with our planet, it wouldn’t threaten the entire thing, but it could wipe out an entire city. An asteroid roughly similar in size impacted a remote region of Siberia in 1908, obliterating 800 square miles of forest.
Dat Asteriod
2024 YT4 comes in at a three on the Torino Impact Hazard scale, which measures the probability of an asteroid striking the Earth. A three, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, means that it’s an “encounter, meriting attention by astronomers,” plus attention “by public and by public officials is merited if the encounter is less than a decade away.”
It’s the second-highest rating astronomers have ever given an asteroid, following 1300-feet-across space rock Apophis, which previously reached a record of four in December 2004, but has since been demoted to level one.
Rankin has also argued that 2024 YR4 could similarly be ruled out in future observations.
Some experts celebrated the most recent finding, arguing it highlights our improving ability to predict an incoming threat.
“The international systems we’re putting in place to find, track and characterize — and, if it comes to it, mitigate the impacts of — hazardous asteroids and comets are working as intended,” Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory planetary defense researcher Andy Rivkin told the NYT.
More on near-Earth asteroids: Mysterious “Fifth Force” of Physics Could Be Influencing Asteroids Near Earth
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