Odds of asteroid YR4 hitting Earth just went up again, reaching new high
The asteroid, big enough to wipe out an entire city, now has a higher chance of smashing into our home planet in 2032, according to NASA.
This is the expected path the probability is going to take. Scott Manley made a great video on that.
Basically the area in which the asteroid is going to be includes the earth. When you shrink this area earth is going to take up more space, unless it left the cone. I.e. measurements increase the likelihood until they don't.
Scott Manley... Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time
Fly safe!
I don't subscribe to your death cult.
Where do I donate to help the asteroid?
As if fascists and climate change wheren't enough. Here, have an asteroid!
What if it lands an the fascists and dust in the atmosphere cancels climate change for a couple of decades. Could that work?
Good.
Up those numbers.
We're awful.
Is there any way we can speed it up?
A large enough impulse could knock it onto an impact trajectory in 2028. "Large enough" would be absolutely gigantic though, and we have to catch up with it, making it quite impractical. It would be cheaper to just build some more multi-megaton nukes for the same effect.
The one mentioned above is 2024 YR and is slated to pay a visit in 2032. The 2028 one is 1997 XF11, and poses no risk.
(But I was confused, too - I only looked up because of the 2028/2032 discrepancy. I made a joke to my wife about emailing a state senator and suggesting they fund a mission to knock the asteroid into earth, so that they can help their constituents by ensuring that they no longer have a state to be a senator over. 2028 is during their term, and god willing, 2032 won’t be.)
What's up with the school shooter mentality? You know that if you want to die you can just kill yourself and don't need to take bunch on innocent people with you?
This has been a good test of our planetary defense procedures, and will be an even better test on the off chance the probability resolves to 100%. I'm rooting for an impact trajectory, since we'd either get to see humanity's first real asteroid deflection or witness the largest asteroid impact in over a century. (Hopefully in the ocean or a sparsely populated area!)
Unfortunately, I half expect that if we get a 100% chance, governments are going to see where it's going to land (sea/Africa) and decide it's not worth the spend/let's see what happens if we let it hit.
Really hope I'm wrong, but I don't have a lot of faith in humanity anymore.
And hopefully it can be highly rich in rare minerals, so that when the ashes of WW3 finally settle down, at least the future generations of humans or not-human sapient entities will at least get something good out of the whole ridiculous mess we're currently in lol
Unfortunately, at the speed they travel, an asteroid will be vaporised in the impact. Whatever rare earths there are will be scatter as a fine powder over a large area.
The problem is that countries east of the projected impact will say that a deflection attempt will be viewed as a nuclear attack. Shit will get messy real quick.
is this the aliens going "welp they elected Trump again time to press the reset button"
Hit Washington DC please.
It will be in 2032, so near the end of Trump's third term.
first hit moscow and take an insane bounce and hit washington DC please. that's all I'm asking.
Mar-a-Lago would be a great choice.
Bring it
A direct hit would be about the size of a fission nuclear bomb. Devastating for a city, but no regional or country-wide impacts, let alone globally
It's already been broughten :(
From the article
In a new update, the space agency has increased the chances of asteroid 2024 YR4 colliding with Earth, with the probability of impact rising to 3.1 per cent or one-in-32 odds of impact — the highest probability of a collision yet.
IE - 3%.
3% events happen all of the time!
The article stresses that this probability has been going up over the past year or so, which is likely neither here nor there, but I can totally understand how it’s alarming in a post-COVID world.
Slightly more likely than rolling two sixes.
Statistics isn't my strong suit. What's the probability of the probability increasing given that it has been increasing over time? Should we project the future probability to include this growth?
Scott Manley said in his video that it would almost certainly increase right up to a point where it would (probably) drop to 0.
Imagine the asteroid position is going to be in a range 1 to 100. Earth will be at position 31 when passes. That's a 1% chance.
Now I tell you that it's actually a 10 to 90 range ( like they predict the asteroid a bit more precisely).
The chance is now 1 in 80 or 1.25% It went up!
Now I say I've got more info, the number is 30 to 70. The chance is 1/40, 2.5% time to panic, it's getting worse!
Next it's 40 to 70. That doesn't include 31. The chance just dropped to 0.
So the increase is showing a more accurate prediction still includes hitting earth, but at some point that prediction might show that it will miss.
Really no idea personally. My hunch would be that it’s technically a fuzzy problem (what’s the system being measured here exactly?) but also one around which we have some experience and wisdom established by now. Otherwise, the probability has changed like twice or three times, so any statistical inference would likely be close to meaningless with that little data.
But mar el lago is not in the impact corridor
Don't threaten me with a good time
Don’t look up
How many people need to die before someone hits the Earth with a rock ?
I just hope it’s bigger then they think.
Thoughts and prayers
Would asking for it to both hit the Earth and for me to be right below the impact zone be asking too much?
Unless you are a terrible person, yes.
If it falls on a joint meeting of Trump and Putin who once again decided to have a meeting to discuss Ukraine without Ukraine that should be fantastic, and not at all asking too much. Hopeful musk is hanging out with bezos and Netanyahu and Xi are talking too. Really not asking enough if you think about it
I mean honestly if the asteroid decided to wipeout out northern Florida, of probably wouldn't feel too bad.
