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NASA Downgrades the Risk of 2024 YR4 to Below 1%
- renegade-otter 2y agoSo you are saying there IS a chance?
- black_puppydog 2y agoIn a convergence of "Don't look up" and whatever the f*k weird movie we're in right now, I now ask myself whether Elon found some interesting metal he wants to mine off of that asteroid...
- retrocryptid 2y agoApropos of Don't Look Up, 2024 YR4 doesn't yet have an official name (or at least I haven't heard it if it does.) So my friends have started calling it "2024 Dibiasky" as a joke.
- renegade-otter 2y agoOutside of Ariana Grande's grotesquely long musical number (they had to get their money's worth), Don't Look Up will age well. It's a classier, subtler version of Idiocracy.
- Macha 2y agoIt's subtler compared to Idiocracy (most things are), but in the scale of movies, it's still pretty blunt.
- black_puppydog 2y agoHad to be... a lot of people still didn't get the point, or even noticed that there was one.
- renegade-otter 2y agoSort of like Homelander in The Boys became a MAGA darling, even though he was obviously a Donald Trump satire. The show-runners had to get so explicit in the later seasons (Pizzagate), that it effectively ruined the show.
- pintxo 2y ago[flagged]
- landosaari 2y agoHere is ESA information regarding the asteroid [0] [0] https://blogs.esa.int/rocketscience/2025/02/04/asteroid-2024-yr4-latest-updates/ https://blogs.esa.int/rocketscience/2025/02/04/asteroid-2024...
- renegade-otter 2y agoOh boy, I think a sharpie is about to come out.
- delichon 2y agoIt's nice not to be finding out now, but I wonder if we could estimate a city killer's track well enough to make it worthwhile to evacuate a major city like Mumbai, and if it could be done if needed. And how certain we would have to be to justify an evacuation that would itself be deadly. I'm glad it wouldn't be my call. I've argued here about the importance of becoming multiplanetary and had many people disagree. Even at just a .28% risk of possibly getting hit with a little rock like this, it's a great argument for building a space faring civilization.
- BriggyDwiggs42 2y agoWe need much better tech; it’d be borderline useless right now cause any colony would be dependent for the foreseeable future.
- ericd 2y agoNo better way to quickly develop the myriad tech we need for a colony than making a colony.
- dartos 2y agoYes there is a better way to develop tech without knowingly sending a group of people to their deaths. We could throw 100s of billions of dollars into it. But it’s harder to sell to investors than language models
- ericd 2y agoWays that have no realistic way of happening aren’t better ways. Obviously we don’t send a group without making it not certain death first. But the person I was responding to said that it would be reliant on Earth, which, yeah, you can’t realistically develop a fully self reliant economy without making a reliant economy first.
- BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
- retrocryptid 2y agoI was sort of pulling for the asteroid and got depressed when I heard this, but then realized... 0.28 percent is not zero. There's still enough of a chance it'll hit that we're going to be forced to take it seriously. In the states we're dismantiling our research and development infrastructure (will the last person at Stennis or JPL please turn out the lights) but China has been making strides and the ESA has a pretty decent record of launching things, so maybe there's enough time for them to plan, launch and execute a DART-like impact mission on 2024 YR4. We will know we're living in a simulation if North Korea puts a nuke on a large rocket and successfully deflects it.
- rafram 2y agoAFAIK JPL has not actually been affected by the current turmoil. JPL employees technically work for Caltech, not the federal government, so they’re pretty well insulated. They did a layoff (5%) in November but haven’t done anything since.
- genter 2y agoBut government grants are being rescinded, and I'd assume Caltech depends on those.
- lblume 2y ago> These percentages are of course tiny and pose no cause for alarm Do people really think like this? Fairly small probabilities of catastrophic events don't generally result in a negligible expected value.
- jetrink 2y agoThis is not the type of asteroid that would end all life on earth. It has the ability to destroy a city, but even if it hit the earth, it would probably land in the ocean or a remote area where few people would be harmed. We should not be alarmed about a 2% x 0.28% probability that a city or town is destroyed in ten years.
- muzani 2y agoYeah, even if it hits, chances are it'll end up in the ocean, and the predicted area of impact isn't anywhere near my home. I still think the odds of something more destructive happening is higher - earthquake-tsunamis, hurricanes, nuclear warfare, large volcanoes, covid25, etc.
- lubujackson 2y agoLet's also note we are aware of the possible corridor of impact, so if you don't live near the equator in Central America or Africa the chance of hitting YOUR city is 0%. News articles conveniently leave out this detail so they can continue to spike fear and clicks with every micro-refinement.
- whycome 2y agoIt’s been as high as 3.1% No one would be cool if I pointed a gun at them and said there was only a 1 in 32 chance that I’d hit them.
- adastra22 2y agoThat’s not even remotely comparable. This wouldn’t have been an extinction level event.
- _7acn 2y agoSince most objects are getting a downgrade, can we take this into account next time when estimating the probability?
- ema 2y agoNo, if you start out with 5% probability it means that you have a 95% probability that further information will eventually downgrade it to 0% and 5% probability that it will eventually upgrade to 100%. So further information making a low probability event even less probable is expected.
- trebligdivad 2y agoDamn, I guess we do have to fix 2038 then...
- bdhcuidbebe 2y agoSomehow I’ve got a feeling this wont be reported nearly as much as the previous doomsday reporting.