Why the Odds of an Asteroid Striking Earth in 2032 Keep Going Up (and Down)
The New York Times
NASA and European scientists explain how they calculate the probability of the space rock 2024 YR4 impacting our planet, and why it’s not yet time to worry.
Since December, astronomers have been carefully studying whether an asteroid between 130 and 300 feet long will impact the Earth in just under eight years. And the odds, overall, seem to be rising.
On Jan. 29, the chances of this asteroid (named 2024 YR4) striking our planet on Dec. 22, 2032, were 1.3 percent. Then they rose to 1.7 percent on Feb. 1, before dropping the next day to 1.4 percent.
Then on Thursday, they leaped to 2.3 percent, before slipping slightly to 2.2 percent on Friday. That’s a one-in-45 chance of an impact (but also a 44-in-45 chance of a miss).
To many, this feels unsettling. But what appears scary is, in fact, typical when it comes to newly discovered near-Earth asteroids.
“It is true that the probability of impact has doubled recently, but that doesn’t mean that it will keep doing so,” said Davide Farnocchia, a navigation engineer at the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California who is involved in overseeing the programs that make these orbital calculations. “What matters is that the probability of impact is very small, and that it is likely to drop to zero as we keep observing 2024 YR4.”
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