A newly released animation reveals a brand new look at a very large asteroid that has a small, but still rather significant chance of impacting Earth seven years from now. As if the rampant bird flu, earthquakes, rumbling volcanoes, and threat of global war weren’t enough to keep us all up at night, we now have to deal with asteroids. Well, that’s just perfect.
The animation, which was provided by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, otherwise known as ATLAS, shows the path of the gigantic space rock — we’re talking 130-300 foot wide asteroid — that was named YR4 in 2024 has about a 1 percent chance of colliding with Earth on Dec. 22, 2032.
Wow. Three days before Christmas? Bummer.
“ Currently, no other known large asteroids have an impact probability above 1%,” NASA said in a statement.
“While there’s still a nearly 99 percent chance that 2024 YR4 won’t impact Earth, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said this rare asteroid poses a significant risk — rating it at Torino Scale 3, which is uncommon,” The Hill reported. “NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) said this object is on the risk list because ATLAS scientists have observed a gradual increase in the impact probability in the month since discovering the asteroid’s existence.”
“On January 27 it surpassed 1%, an important threshold,” JPL went on to say in a news release. “In the unlikely event that 2024 YR4 is on an impact trajectory, the impact would occur somewhere along a risk corridor which extends across the eastern Pacific Ocean, northern South America, the Atlantic Ocean, Africa, the Arabian Sea, and South Asia.”
“The images in the animation were captured by an ATLAS telescope in Rio Hurtado, Chile, on Christmas Day 2024, when the asteroid had ‘a close approach with Earth,’ becoming bright enough to be detected in asteroid surveys, according to JPL,” the report continued.
So how does one measure the size of an asteroid? JPL explained that they come to the measurements for these space rocks based on brightness.
“The size cannot be further constrained without thermal infrared observations, radar observations, or imagery from a spacecraft that could closely approach the asteroid,” the release further explained. “These analyses will change from day to day as more observations are gathered,” JPL then said.
Data culled from NASA says there’s currently a 0 percent chance that 2024 YR4 will slam into our planet in 2028, however it could potentially bring it closer to the planet for better observation.
Okay, so it seems we have seven years before the threat gets super real. However, it’s important to keep in mind that there’s still a 99 percent chance it won’t hit the planet and that’s significant. Maybe things will be a-okay and there’s nothing really to worry about.
But it’s better to be safe than sorry, right?
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