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Asteroid Impact on Earth 2032 with Probability 1% and 8Mt Energy
- 2-3-7-43-1807 2y agoFull link: https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/details.html#?des=2024%20YR4 https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/details.html#?des=2024%20Y...
- perihelions 2y agoYou can email hn@ to ask them to fix a link. The title bot likes to strip URL parameters.
- dang 2y agoIn this case it changed the link because https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/details.html https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/details.html was listed as the canonical URL on the page. We've reverted that now.
- dang 2y agoFixed now. Thanks!
- lambdadelirium 2y agoWhat can be done to increase the asteroid impact probability?
- gear54rus 2y ago[flagged]
- jakeinspace 2y agoDon't become the very thing you claim to hate!
- jdmoreira 2y agoWe can land on it, drill and plant nukes inside to shatter it
- chrsw 2y agoThat's not what they asked
- littlestymaar 2y agoIt would definitely increase impact probability though.
- chrsw 2y agoNot necessarily. See my new comment above. In addition, depending on how far out you do it, gravity will allow it to reform. And if it never reforms because you blew it to dust headed out to interstellar space you wont get an impact either. It's not at all a simple problem.
- ta1243 2y agoThat would create far more objects, many on the same rough direction, thus increasing the chance of an impact
- chrsw 2y agoOnly if you managed to leave the trajectory the same if it was already on a collision course or change the direction to a collision course. Do you think you can control that with a nuclear explosion? You probably don't know enough about to the system to make a high confidence prediction of the new outcome.
- echoangle 2y agoNot really, blowing it up is going to create a lot of fragments with slightly different orbits, and some are going to have practically the same as the whole Asteroid had before. So the chance of anything at all hitting earth will increase, but the parts will be smaller. It would be like a bullet turning into buckshot during flight.
- vasco 2y agoGet a lot of people to jump at the same time to nudge us into the path.
- 2-3-7-43-1807 2y agothat's a beautiful idea. it will only work if we act together as one human race. this is the moment where we have to put political conflicts aside and commit collective suicide.
- skykooler 2y agoThis would move the Earth by less than the width of an atom: https://what-if.xkcd.com/8/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/8/
- devsda 2y agoSo, we all have to just skip for a while ? There's a Sci-Fi Plot in there somewhere: A hero tries to and succeeds in persuading govts to organize a planet scale skipping effort to get earth closer to a passing by rock and escape an impending disaster on earth.
- vardump 2y agoGP didn’t specify Earth.
- mherrmann 2y agoGod I love HN.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Timwi 2y agoWe're gonna need a bigger rock.
- Malcolmlisk 2y agoMonke, smash!!
- Trasmatta 2y agoAnd can we speed up the timeline? 2032 is too far away.
- chrisshroba 2y agoCan we also add mass to the asteroid?
- tungah 2y agoAnd speed
- Qem 2y agoWaiting. In general the probability increases as more data is gathered, and the error ellipse shrinks with the Earth still inside. Then is suddenly drops to zero in the overwhelming majority of cases, when the Earth finally gets out of this shrinking error ellipse.
- dguest 2y agoThe precision (of the observed trajectory) increases. If the probability increased in general we should recalibrate our probability estimates.
- halfmatthalfcat 2y agoBeen rooting for Asteroid/Meteor in the recent presidential elections.
- chrsw 2y agoThe best way I can think of is similar to what I heard from Jaron Lanier (he may not be the first person to explain this). Basically what you do is send something massive out there that will gravitationally tug it into a collision course with Earth. Obviously this will take quite a bit of time but if your calculations are correct it will pretty much guarantee impact.
- arto 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_YR4#2032_potential_impact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_YR4#2032_potential_impact
- jonstewart 2y agoIf Mt of asteroid impact roughly equates to a nuclear weapon, then this is pretty bad for a metropolitan area but not enough to put a big dent in humanity.
- chrsw 2y agoI think it if it's far enough out you only need to change it's trajectory only very slightly to reduce to the probably of impact to something much less
- ta1243 2y agoThere's a 3 in 4 chance an asteroid hitting the earth will hit water, and of the remaining change about 50/50 it hits a desert or ice sheet (Antarctica, Greenland).
- jonstewart 2y agoHitting an ice sheet might be worst case scenario for global impact.
- pfdietz 2y agoThe stripe where this object could hit is mostly at low latitude.
- wing-_-nuts 2y agoSorry could you expand / clarify this comment? What would make this more likely to hit near the tropics?
- adzm 2y agoThe risk corridor calculated here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2024_YR4_risk_corridor.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2024_YR4_risk_corridor.pn...
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- speps 2y agoTwo terms I never heard in the table for the asteroid: Parlermo Scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palermo_Technical_Impact_Hazard_Scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palermo_Technical_Impact_Hazar... Torino Scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torino_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torino_scale
- perihelions 2y agoThis is not an increase over baseline risk (as its Palermo scale[0] indicates, being a negative number, -0.56). I think there's going to be a crisis of media going forwards, because with the very awesome new telescope[1] that's going online this year, the number of these detections is going to drastically go up. The number of objects isn't going up—they've always been there, we just didn't know—but I think the media coverage is not going to absorb that nuance very well. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palermo_Technical_Impact_Hazard_Scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palermo_Technical_Impact_Hazar... ("A rating of 0 means the hazard is equivalent to the background hazard (defined as the average risk posed by objects of the same size or larger over the years until the date of the potential impact)") [1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/01/01/1108643/vera-c-rubin-observatory-telescope-cosmos-universe-space-digital-camera/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/01/01/1108643/vera-c-r... ("With its capacity to detect faint objects, [Vera] Rubin is expected to increase the number of known asteroids and comets by a factor of 10 to 100")
- 2-3-7-43-1807 2y ago[flagged]
- readyplayernull 2y agoLet's not observe false vacuum.
- netsharc 2y agoWhat is it with people like you's selective memory? People were dying in droves in places like India or China, scroll down about halfway to see the funeral pyres: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/piapeterson/covid-pandemic-india-photos https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/piapeterson/covid-pande... They were even just dumping bodies in their holy river because they couldn't afford proper funerals. Congrats for living (I assume) in a modern world with good health and clean air where you were just "inconvenienced" by shut restaurants and having to wear a mask, but hey, MAGA is fixing that too, let them "doge" your life into poorer air quality and less health protections! Winning!
- yread 2y ago> Uncertainty region (3 sigma): 1.65 million km
- redeux 2y agoFor reference the Tunguska event, which was projected to be a 5MT explosion on the low end, flattened about 2000 square kilometers when it airburst. If this hits the ocean it would no doubt cause some large tsunamis. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event
- teepo 2y agoThis one could be like Tunguska, an air bust maybe around 10km high. Would that cause a large tsunami?
- simne 2y agoIt depends, on where exactly will hit. Similar to nuclear explosions, if one happen over sea or ocean near coast, it will cause extremely large wave, which will be similar to tsunami. If it will hit land, will be small earthquake. This is why nearly all nuclear explosions was over land or far from coast. Few experiments near some coast or island, created tsunami-like wave on those coast (island), which considerable widen polluted territory (ocean is usually considered as self-cleaning).
- thot_experiment 2y agoOnly very locally, the Japan tsunami was an order of magnitude more energy and aiui earthquake tsunamis happen particularly with certain kinds of seafloor displacement. It's not just about the amount of energy but how that energy is applied, impact energies dissipate quickly with distance.
- teepo 2y agoI used genAI to help me understand the Palermo scale number seeming low. The 2032 asteroid does warrant tracking, but the Palermo Scale remains below a critical level because: The impact probability (1.2%) is not high enough to trigger a stronger alarm. The background frequency of 8 Mt impacts is relatively high, making this event less statistically exceptional. The event is still 8 years away, so uncertainties in orbital prediction remain.
- littlestymaar 2y agoI find it fascinating that some people may brag about not using their brain like that… Asking a LLM about topics you have no idea about it a great way to be misled by hallucinations, don't do that.
- davidmurdoch 2y agoIt's actually a great way to find concepts to verify and ask questions about. You will often find out about tangential topics you otherwise would not have. I find it fascinating that people brag about refusing to even try to learn to use new tools just because they don't know how to use them effectively.
- littlestymaar 2y ago> I find it fascinating that people brag about refusing to even try to learn to use new tools just because they don't know how to use them effectively Interesting how you jump to conclusion based on nothing. Had you checked my profile (even though it's even more obvious from my Reddit one) you'd have seen that I'm actually pretty savvy when of comes to language models. But knowing your tools also implies knowing their limits.
- davidmurdoch 2y ago[flagged]
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- layer8 2y agoWorking link: https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/details.html#?des=2024%20YR4 https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/details.html#?des=2024%20Y... 8.1 megatons of kinetic energy. According to the Torino rating, only risk of “localized destruction” (less than “regional devastation”): https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/torino_scale.html https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/torino_scale.html
- beastman82 2y ago*megatons of TNT. 1 MT of TNT = 4.14*10^15 joules
- kristjansson 2y agoSo you wouldn't want to be under it, but a good-sized hill would be enough cover?
- simne 2y agoYes, deep underground shelter planned for nuclear attack will be enough to survive, as damaging mechanisms, are mostly same - short but very powerful infrared flash and deadly shockwave (better to consider it as very fast pressure grow and then pressure drop). Just staying behind hill, will be not enough cover from shockwave, so people will suffer from fast pressure changes. But shockwave quickly weakened as square of distance, and hill will make it's path longer. So, something like 100m hill could be considered as moving border of deadly zone 100m closer to epicenter.
- ortusdux 2y agoComparable in energy to a B-53 nuclear bomb, minus the radiation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B53_nuclear_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B53_nuclear_bomb
- layer8 2y agoSo a 14 km blast radius it seems.
- barbegal 2y agoI guess the probability of impact won't reach the >50% level until a few months before impact due to variations in earth's orbit and by that point the ability to do anything about it is limited.
- pfdietz 2y ago> due to variations in earth's orbit I don't see how this could possibly be correct. Earth's orbit is very precisely known.
- hermitcrab 2y agoI think the uncertainties are down to not precisely knowing: -the size of the object -the orbit of the object -the velocity of the object -effect of outgassing and solar wind on the object (as mentioned in the top comment) Rather than uncertainties in the earth's orbit.
- hidelooktropic 2y agoSo is anyone working on increasing those odds?
- belter 2y ago[flagged]
- scrumper 2y agoCome friendly bombs and fall on Slough
- varelse 2y ago[dead]
- DonHopkins 2y agoThey're already workshopping how to blame the impact on DEI.
- Gibbon1 2y agoSince it's now okay to discriminate based on race and sex companies can put in their jobs ads 'no white men or Irish need apply'
- skykooler 2y agoGiven the predicted time, could we calculate which hemisphere is most likely for it to impact?
- jcims 2y agoAbout 16x the energy of the Chelyabinsk meteor.
- 34679 2y agoIt's 1.2% cumulative over 6 passes that begin in 2032.
- NooneAtAll3 2y ago1.3e-2 on the first pass, e-6 range and smaller on the following ones
- pella 2y ago2032 Mayan prophecy + 2024 YR4 = prime fuel for internet-born doomsday cults. "The final katun in the sequence that must happen before the new cycle of the katuns begins again is 13 Ahau. This starts in 2032 and ends in 2052. It is the time from 2032 to 2052, that great earth changes may take place. The translation from the codices about 13 Ahau that starts in 2032 is ‘Famine, plagues of locusts, and loss of rulers. The judgment of God’ Mr. Scofield goes on to elaborate on this katun. ‘This is a time of total collapse where everything is lost. It is the time of the judgment of God. There will be epidemics and plagues and then famine. Governments will be lost to foreigners and wise men and prophets will be lost.‘ It is my perception that the great crisis that many fear in 2012 may well start after 2032. An interesting note to this time period is that it did bring great revolution and change during the time period from 1776 to 1796." https://www.tokenrock.com/mayan-astrology/2012-mayan-prophecy/ https://www.tokenrock.com/mayan-astrology/2012-mayan-prophec...
- lou1306 2y agoLess exceptionalist American: the Maya predicted the Declaration of Independence
- IAmGraydon 2y agoHilarious. That article was written in 2021. We call that moving the goalposts.
- xbmcuser 2y agoMayans did not follow the Gregorian Calendar so our yearly dates don't match they already had their apocalypse in 1500s " This is a time of total collapse where everything is lost. It is the time of the judgment of God. There will be epidemics and plagues and then famine. Governments will be lost to foreigners and wise men and prophets will be lost.‘"
- jackcviers3 2y agoWith the size of the asteroid, is this one where we could use the gravity tractor[1] or the Yarovsky Effect[2] techniques for deflection, or is there not enough lead time? 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_tractor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_tractor 2. http://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2021plde.confE.119A/abstract http://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2021plde.confE.119A/abstrac...
- simne 2y agoTo change orbit of so large asteroid, need huge amount of energy. Unfortunately, humanity now have only small power ready, for such far things just about 50kW, it will need decades to transfer so large energy. Russians claimed to create nuclear reactor for space with somewhere near 200kW, but unfortunately, now these are just words, very far from real hardware.
- ddahlen 2y agoI work on the Near Earth Object Surveyor space telescope (NEO Surveyor) writing simulation code which predicts which objects we will see. This one has drummed up a bit of interest due to its (relatively) high chance of impact. I actually spent quite a bit of time yesterday digging through archive images trying trying to see if it was spotted on some previous times it came by the Earth (no luck unfortunately). Since we saw it so briefly, our knowledge of its orbit is not that great, and running the clock back to 2016 for example ended up with a large chunk of sky where it could have been, and it is quite small. We will almost certainly see it again with NEO Surveyor years before its 2032 close encounter. I have not run a simulation for it, but I would not be surprised if LSST (a large ground telescope survey which is currently coming online) to catch it around the same time NEO Surveyor does. Our knowledge of the diameter of this object is a bit fuzzy, because of surface reflectivity, small shiny things can appear as bright as dark large things. This is one of the motivations of making the NEO Surveyor an IR telescope, since IR we see black body emission off of the objects, which is mostly size dependent, and only weakly albedo dependent. There is an even tinier chance that if it misses the Earth in 2032, it could hit the moon. I haven't run the numbers precisely for that one, but it impacted a few times in some monte-carlo simulations. If anyone is interested in orbit dynamics, I have open sourced some of the engine we are using for observation predictions: https://github.com/Caltech-IPAC/kete https://github.com/Caltech-IPAC/kete It is relatively high precision, though JPL Horizons has more accurate gravitational models and is far better suited for impact studies. My code is primarily for predicting when objects will be seen in telescopes.
- formerphotoj 2y agoThank you. Why I read HN!
- SubiculumCode 2y agoIf in 2032 an impact did occur, how much time before that impact would be able to ascertain over 50% probability of impact? hypothetically. That is, does the certainty increase steadily or non-linearly over time? Does near certainty of an impact occur from measurements taken just minutes before the impact, or hours, days, years?
- twism 2y agoDon't Look Up Vibes
- graycat 2y agoIs that probability of an impact 1% or 1 = 100%????
- qnleigh 2y ago1%
- NooneAtAll3 2y agoit says 1% in the title, what's there to misunderstand?
- graycat 2y ago1% is tiny, really small. In my experience, commonly orbits in the solar system are astoundingly accurate over centuries. This prediction is relatively soon, 2032. So, we have (A) a crude orbit and only 1% prediction of hitting Earth or (B) an accurate prediction of 100% = 1. Between these two, (A) seemed too small and (B) too large. So, I asked. This question seemed appropriate enough. Reading the paper, sure, they have a lot of predictions for several decades to come with all the probabilities close to 1% and far from 100%. The paper gives some details on the difficulty of getting a very accurate orbit for the object. So, apparently the 1% is what they have in mind and their title, accurate. So, if it hits, what might be the damage? And it it does hit, what would be the probability of it hitting a densely populated area instead of ocean, desert, mountains, ...? Net, with the 1%, the risk of major damage seems quite small. Hmm, what would the insurance industry think? Vegas?
- XorNot 2y ago1% is 1 in 100. If you detected 100 objects with a 1% chance to hit, you're actually very likely to be hit by more the 1. There's a lot of objects up there, fortunately the chances they hit us are a lot lower then that so far.
- Willingham 2y agoThe impact to society would be much greater on a sociological scale then on a physical scale, many nukes are more than 8Mt, the likelihood of it hitting a highly populated area is lower still.
- elric 2y agoI don't think I understand your comment. The yield of nukes is of no consequence if they're not being used, so I don't think the comparison stands?
- Willingham 2y agoMy point is, we have used nukes, so we know exactly what the worst case scenario is, and that’s about 20-50 million lives(hitting Tokyo or NYC). Equal to the number of deaths during the Spanish flu or half of world war 2. I think the comparison helps us understand what the risk truly is. I think the world would panic and likely loose more lives through chaos than the actual impact.
- bunabhucan 2y ago3.8m for NYC , 3.1m for Tokyo https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=8000&lat=40.72422&lng=-73.99611&hob_psi=5&hob_ft=20490&crater=1&casualties=1&psi=20,5,1&zm=9 https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=8000&lat=40.72422&ln... https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=8000&lat=35.6889853&lng=139.6929116&airburst=0&hob_ft=0&crater=1&casualties=1&psi=20,5,1&zm=10 https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=8000&lat=35.6889853&...
- elric 2y agoLosing 20-50 million lives through "panic" seems like a crazy estimate. What are you basing this on?
- jjk166 2y ago20-50 million is an extremely high worst case scenario estimate. An 8 Mt explosion detonated at a random point on earth would most likely not kill anyone.
- NunoSempere 2y agoI have an article looking at similar probabilities here: <https://blog.sentinel-team.org/p/how-likely-are-various-precursors https://blog.sentinel-team.org/p/how-likely-are-various-prec...>; for asteroids we gave 0.02% per decade of killing >= 1M people. One thing to consider is that for a 55m asteroid like this one to do a lot of harm, it not only has to hit the earth, it has to hit it somewhere very populated. (only about 0.3% of the earth is very urban https://nunosempere.com/blog/2024/10/16/urban-share/ https://nunosempere.com/blog/2024/10/16/urban-share/)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hermitcrab 2y agoOr hit the sea, which covers ~70% of the earth?
- defrost 2y agoThat's an interesting one, from the comment above yours linked article The Tugunska event of 1908 instead had 50-60m, but caused only three deaths because it was over a sparsely populated area; it still affected 2.1K km2 (or about two NYCs worth). which raises questions about what kind of wave such an impact could create and what are the odds of that hitting a populated coastal town (or three) might be.
- cyanydeez 2y agoThatll be dpn jrs first term so expect a "dont look up" sequel
- billiam 2y agofingers crossed!
- joeevans1000 2y agoWill the guess of an outcome improve over time?
- hermitcrab 2y agoIt will converge to 0% or 100% with more observations. With 0% more likely.
- m3kw9 2y agoIt would have been scary even 2 years ago but by that time AI would solve that, maybe even turn it into some sort of mining operation
- hermitcrab 2y agoBy 'solve' do you mean 'write a limerick about'?
- m3kw9 2y agoYou don’t think we will have AGI or even ASI by then to have significantly improved tech? I would be we will
- hermitcrab 2y agoAn AI that can save us from an asteroid hitting earth in 2032? I think that is highly unlikely.
- xanderlewis 2y agoI need this on a T-shirt.
- breaker-kind 2y agowhat the fuck are you fucking talking about
- neilv 2y agoMaybe it will start climbing in probability, giving us a chance to reflect, and to improve our ways. Since, if we're already doing Nazi salutes at a US Presidential inauguration, less than 100 years after we'd learned that Nazis are pure evil, then I'd understand if some higher power was ready to hit the reset button. Maybe tardigrades would evolve better. (ProTip: Be sure to send a second asteroid, to Mars, ahead of the Nazi escape ship.)
- FredPret 2y agoYou just Godwin'ed the crap out of this thing. Congratulations, I guess. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law#:~:text=Godwin's%20law%20(or%20Godwin's%20rule,Nazis%20or%20Hitler%20approaches%201.%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law#:~:text=Godwin'...
- neilv 2y agoIn a time when, apparently, it needs to be said that "Nazis are bad", that's the best way I can imagine to spend hard-earned HN Internet Points.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- thg123712 2y agoThat salute stuff is just to distract people, maybe it was even carefully planned. I'd rather focus on Bitcoin, AI and Blockchain scams as well as nepotism. The official excuse for Ramaswamy's DOGE exit is that Musk has a tech approach to solving (?) the efficiency problems: https://www.newsweek.com/vivek-ramaswamy-asked-if-elon-musk-fired-him-2021857 https://www.newsweek.com/vivek-ramaswamy-asked-if-elon-musk-... Expect a lot of blockchain nonsense infiltrating the government, perhaps even a digital currency. That must be avoided at all costs.
- mrguyorama 2y agoDoing nazi shit as a distraction is, and let me be clear, not less bad than just being a fucking nazi I know they are looting the nation. I know they are trying to create their techno-fuedal crypto shithole empire where only Musk and Thiel get to choose who knows and does what. But they are STILL building internment camps and already have had planeloads of brown people flown to random countries. Another reminder that Nazis and Facists are utterly inefficient at anything because of their incompetence and stupidity. The price we paid to fly those brown people out of our country could have bought them all first class tickets on civilian planes in the fucking free market. Nazi Germany and Facist Italy were both staggeringly stupid, incompetent, inefficient, and run by people who spent every day insisting they knew better than anyone around them, and literally criminalized proving them wrong. "At least Mussolini made the trains run on time" was always false. Empirically, the trains didn't run very well.
- idunnoman1222 2y agoProbability 1% percent with a 50% margin of error
- kaikai 2y ago8 megatons is like the Tunguska impact, so not planet-destroying.
- bagels 2y agoIt needs a pictogram to help understand how destructive 8Mt of energy is. Is this a cool light show? Worldwide extinction?
- indigodaddy 2y agoIf it is determined years ahead that it will hit, will there be a months to years ahead period where we will know the exact target/landing spot, eg so we can have evacuations of the impacted area and surrounding areas?
- dylan604 2y agoat those scales, the off by a degree type errors make a huge difference. if you're off by a small margin so that a direct impact to NYC is off to the east, then you still have tsunami issues coming to NYC. so that might not be a direct hit, it's still within blast radius. with the earth's surface being 70% water, that means a greater chance of a water impact. so there's hope there, except that damn tsunamis again. maybe we can convince the asteroids to hit the spacecraft cemetery
- energy123 2y agoThe errors should be a function of time until impact. I'd like to know what that error variance vs time plot looks like.
- K0balt 2y agoAny idea which hemisphere is going to be exposed to the (low) risk of impact?
- i_am_a_squirrel 2y agoIs there a "sweet spot" for asteroids where they don't impact the earth, but come within like 20 meters of it? Like is it possible for an asteroid to give a city a "buzz cut" and then continue on into outer space?
- Vampiero 2y agorealistically any scenario is possible if the asteroid is going fast enough
- pbmonster 2y ago...and dense enough and with enough shear strength and yield strength. Air blast disintegration is making a lot of scenarios impossible.
- dylan604 2y ago> but come within like 20 meters of it? like is doing some heavy lifting here. We have had asteroids pass by at a distance closer than the moon. That's pretty damn close in my book relative to the size of the cosmos. At that scale, that's pretty much a ringer in horse shoes. The buzzcut is a very strange question though. If the thing enters the atmosphere and does not burn up, it is hitting the ground.
- ahazred8ta 2y agoYou are slightly mistaken. There have been hit-and-run asteroids that entered the upper atmosphere and skipped through. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Great_Daylight_Fireball https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Great_Daylight_Fireball The Grand Teton Meteor / The Great Daylight Fireball of 1972 came within 35 miles of the surface. A huge iron meteor might survive a low pass but this would be a very rare event. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Earth-grazing_fireballs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Earth-grazing_firebal...
- potamic 2y ago
- le-mark 2y agoWith the cheap kg to orbit heavy lift systems coming online, these near misses are becoming opportunities for vast riches if they can be captured and mined. Less massive making the orbit easier to change.
- dylan604 2y agoWhy change the orbit? Just lift off way in advance, land on it, mine it, then when the orbit is close just lift off at closest approach
- le-mark 2y agoThe mined material (ie the entire asteroid depending on its composition) would still require delta v to a suitable orbit.
- dylan604 2y agoyou have to have delta v regardless. enough for your mined material, or the entire mass of the asteroid. i seriously doubt we'd ever approach ability of completely mining the whole of the asteroid. however, if you removed enough mass from the asteroid, would you end up screwing yourself by now changing the orbit so that the next time it swings by it's more of a direct trajectory?
- cyberax 2y agoGiant meteor for President! Finally!
- eddieh 2y agoBasically the same odds of dying in a car crash over your lifetime. So unless you give up on driving or being a passenger of a car—this is a meaningless risk, and besides that, it is even less likely to hit land, let alone a populated area. The chance that this will impact you is unbelievably low. This is so below the threshold of worry, I’m shocked by the points and comments. Schedule a colonoscopy, quit drinking, resign from your high stress job, drive less, get your moles checked; all better mitigation for prolonging you life than worrying about this.
- insane_dreamer 2y agoWoah. A 1% probability is a lot higher than I expected and am comfortable with (not that I can do anything about it)
- jampekka 2y agoUrban areas are only about 0.5% of earth surface, so rough approximation of a catastrophic hit chance is around 0.005%. The chance of you specifically being affected by this asteroid is vanishingly small. You should personally be more worried about crossing a road or plugging in an electric appliance or being hit by a lightning. For others there's a lot more devastation going on globally that you could even do something about.
- thebruce87m 2y agoDepends if it causes tsunamis
- jampekka 2y agoAn asteroid that size doesn't cause a very far reaching tsunami.
- insane_dreamer 2y agoNot really worried that it'll impact me directly, but rather the damage that it could cause if an urban area anywhere in the world.
- maxglute 2y agoThat risk corridor covers the many of the highest populated areas of Africa... and ends in India.
- hermitcrab 2y agoThis article (despite the click-bait headline) has some interesting background on asteroid risk in general and 2024 YR4 in particular: https://starwalk.space/en/news/should-you-worry-about-an-asteroid-hitting-earth https://starwalk.space/en/news/should-you-worry-about-an-ast...
- ingohelpinger 2y ago[flagged]
- seydor 2y agoI don't know, i think we needed some precious minerals
- anshumankmr 2y ago8Mt would be on par with a major nuke, right? Or will it become more energetic? or did I get it wrong?
- vixen99 2y agoIn terms of the general topic of asteroid impact and risk, here is a highly informative reference. https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/pd/cs/pdc25/ImpactRiskIntro-ATAP-2023.pdf https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/pd/cs/pdc25/ImpactRiskIntro-ATAP-...
- DrNosferatu 2y agoWouldn’t blowing it up into smaller pieces reduce the overall risk by having more of the bolide’s original mass consumed in the atmosphere?
- elif 2y agoCompletely out of my domain and seat of pants rationing here, but although the impact probability is 1%, aren't we far far more certain about the /time/ at which it would strike earth? Could humanity collectively just migrate to the side of the world that will be shielded for a day?
- openrisk 2y agoKnowing humanity and its ability for planetary level solidarity, its more likely that the most powerful nations would simply displace the weaker ones. "No offence bro, but we are the salt of the Earth, so get out of here and good luck". What about empty places? Luckily for Greenland, the calculations predict that the flux of impacts to the poles for Earth is 22% greater than the flux at the equator [1]. So nobody (in their right mind) would want to annex it as an asteroid survival backup site. [1] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/PSJ/abefda/pdf https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/PSJ/abefda/pdf
- crazygringo 2y agoThe bad news is no, we have nothing even remotely close to the infrastructure necessary to move half the world's population. We don't have the transport, being limited to planes and boats mostly. The good news is that, worst-case scenario, this is going to wipe out a city. And cities and their surrounding areas can absolutely be evacuated. We definitely have the cars and buses necessary for that.
- elif 2y agoMy mistake, my understanding was that an event of this magnitude could cause seismic/volcanic activity. Didn't realize it was so localized
- elif 2y agoBut in any case, we certainly have the logistics to move populations given the timeline. Not everyone has to evacuate and return within a 3 day window. Even without incentives, in all likelihood, those who can will evacuate early for peace of mind, and as the prediction becomes more certain on its approach through measurement, individuals will I'm sure even start to return /before/ the pass. You know everyone has their own set of 9s to chase
- ainiriand 2y agoDo not panic, I've rolled a 1d100 and got a 42, we are safe.
- giantg2 2y agoI suppose the dust cloud from impact could take care of global warming for us, assuming it impacts land.
- colonial 2y agoPerhaps this would be a good opportunity to test out asteroid deflection technologies? We've got multiple orbital refueling architectures (New Glenn, Starship...) slated to come online in the next few years, so it should be easier to pack more oomph.
- jjk166 2y agoYou don't want to test one on something that's likely to pass close but unlikely to hit. If you might do it wrong, which is presumably the point of a test run, then that could cause it to be more likely to hit. You want to test on asteroids that are so far off from colliding that you couldn't push them onto a collision path even if you wanted to. You only mess with an asteroid that's a potential collision hazard when you have to.
- FooBarBizBazz 2y agoJust over half of Castle Bravo. Not the end of the world. And the Earth's surface is 71% water.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoDoesn't sound like a huge problem unless we get the size of the asteroid wrong. Won't we have a year or more of notice on where and when it will impact? Plenty of time to evacuate in a worst case scenario. When there are hurricanes there are often holdouts that don't abide by the evacuation order. I wonder if there would be holdouts if an asteroid were coming.
- retrocryptid 2y ago2024 YR4 isn't that great of a name. I'm guessing the discoverer gets to name it. Is there a more human-friendly name?
- jebarker 2y agoBookmarked - I don't want to miss a thing.
- Valakas_ 2y agoBy then the singularity will have been achieved.
- AreYouElite 2y agoSo long and thanks for all the fish! Isn't it basically a matter of time until we encounter an asteroid the size of the one that hit earth 6.5·10⁷ years ago?
- gdubs 2y agoI've mentioned it everywhere I post recently, but I just read Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan as a bedtime book with my kids and it's phenomenal. One of the central themes is his belief that we should someday become world movers, given the eventual asteroid that will likely do significant damage to Earth. But, the argument is much more nuanced and wouldn't be able to do it justice here. It's a great read — even if it's a little dated. If anything, you get to see how much we achieved that in the early 90s was still hypothetical, and what things we haven't quite pulled off yet.