Astronomers track an asteroid that could hit the ground in 2032: NPR

Do you feel lucky? Astronomers say that a recently identified space rock that is potentially as big as a football field has a better than 1% chance to go down on Earth on December 22, 2032.

These odds may seem pretty good (assuming you hope for a miss) but consider this: it International Warning Asteroid Network (IAWN), a global collaboration that was started in 2013 to monitor and trace space objects that could influence the Earth issued its first ever ever Potential review of asteroid impact For the asteroid, known as 2024 YR4, says Iawn -Manager Tim Spahr.

The message is intended to wake up astronomical society to collect as much information as possible about the near-earth object (NEO).

“Hitting the probability of 1% influence is actually a rare event,” says Spahr.

How likely is it to hit?

When Iawn issued his review on January 29, it reported a 1.3% chance of 2024 years that affected the Earth in 2032, based on data from NASA JPL Center for Neo Studies (Cneos) and its European counterpart. But from Friday the likelihood of going up a bit was to 1.6%.

And the time is running out to refine calculations for his orbit and either rule in or exclude an influence, says Cneo’s director Paul Chodas.

“We need larger and larger telescopes to observe this object. In mid -April he says,” it will be too weak to be discovered. “

Then comes the next opportunity to study it again until 2028.

Although the current odds look like a 1 out of 63 chance of a direct hit, there is still a much better chance of a miss, Chodas emphasizes.

The way the likelihood of an impact is determined is very similar to how the National Weather Service determines the chances of a hurricane being landfall.

“It’s kind of analogous to having a larger city like New Orleans in the cone of uncertainty in a hurricane,” says Chodas.

Still, as astronomers further fine -tune the accuracy of their orbital calculations for 2024 years, their odds of a earthen strap “could fall to zero almost any day now,” he says. “But we don’t know.”

Kelly Fast, the functioning planetary defense officer for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination OfficeSeems it is important to keep perspective.

“The worldwide society looks at this and notices that it reached this threshold,” she says.

“We want to keep an eye on it. We take it seriously, but we will put it into perspective … There is still a very low likelihood that it would affect the soil at all.”

How big is it and how much damage could it do?

The Asteroid 2024 YR4 is great, but it is certainly no dinosaur murderer. It could cause significantly localized damage if it affects a populated area.

In order to judge its destructive potential astronomers use something called Turin scale. CNEOS is currently ranking the asteroid one 3 on a scale of 0 to 10. “It’s not happening very often,” says Chodas. In fact, nothing is compared to it since Apophis, a cruise ship’s asteroid discovered in 2004. It was originally assumed to have a 2.7% chance of hitting the Earth in 2029, but this probability was later downgraded. In 2021, Said astronomers The Earth was safe against apophis for at least another 100 years.

If 2024 YR4 hit a city, it would “definitely break windows,” said Anne Virkki, a research fellow at the University of Helsinki. Virkki used Radar to track near earth objects at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico until 900-ton equipment platform over the main radio telescope that dramatically collapsed in 2020destroys the instrument.

To find out how big an asteroid is, astronomers are dependent on the brightness of the object as a yardstick. Lighter items are larger. They place upper and lower bounds in size partially because it is not easy to tell how reflective an asteroid can be.

“You can estimate the size based on the observed brightness without knowing exactly how reflective it is … but there is still some limitation to how reflective asteroids are generally,” says Virkki.

In the case of 2024 years, astronomers believe it is between 40 meters and 90 meters (130 feet to about 300 feet) in diameter. For comparison Meteor that hit ChelyabinskRussia on February 15, 2013, was estimated to be about half of that size (17 to 20 meters or 56 to 66 feet) in diameter. The Chelyabinic object injured about 1,500 people and caused damage to thousands of buildings in several cities.

The energy released over Chelyabinian was estimated to be equivalent with about 500 kiloton tnt – About 30 times more than the Hiroshima atom bomb. If 2024 YR4 hit, it could be more like 8 to 10 megatons, says Carson Fuls, director of Catalina Sky Survey at the University of Arizona. An explosion wave from such an influence would have a radius of several miles.

Iawn’s review says that in the event that it hit the Earth, “the risk of influence risk” extends “across the East Pacific, North America, the Atlantic, Africa, the Arabian Ocean and South Asia.”

It includes a lot of sea, FULLS notices.

“We have had 8 to 10 megaton nuclear tests in the Pacific, and it did not create a worldwide tsunami or something close to it.”