Scientists Address The Possibility Of Asteroid 2024 YR4 Striking Earth

There is a likely chance of an asteroid called 2024 YR4 that will potentially strike Earth in 2032.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) astronomer Richard Binzel compares this theory to predicting a home run the moment the bat hits the ball. The asteroid, formally known as 2024 YR4, has gotten so much press because it’s supposedly large enough to take out a major city at about 50 meters across, according to the Deccan Herald.

Scientists have only seen a small fraction of the asteroid’s orbit, which every four years goes in a wildly long path from inside the Earth’s orbit to nearly Jupiter’s distance. Binzel said telescopes can track the asteroid as it recedes from the Earth’s population as a whole.

He adds that even though it’s tiny as astronomical objects go, the powerful James Webb Space Telescope could soon see enough of its path to predict whether the odds of impact are zero or 100%.

Astronomers say they can pinpoint the landing area with a few weeks’ notice. The exact date of the asteroid is December 22, 2032.

“It might seem like things are getting more dangerous or more scary, but what’s really happening is we’re making ourselves more and more secure,” Binzel said.

In 1994, a couple of scientists estimated that the odds of humanity being killed by an asteroid were higher than the odds of being killed in a plane crash. Now with scientific tracking, giant asteroids of those that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago are relatively easy to see. Binzel adds that scientists have located 99 percent of those with extinction potential.

No recorded deaths from asteroid strikes have occurred. However, in 1954, an Alabama woman received a gruesome bruise from an asteroid. Rewind even backward to 1908, an asteroid about the same size as 2024 YR4 came hurtling towards Siberia, exploding in the atmosphere but still flattening trees for several hundred square miles.

Astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said that in 2022, NASA took a step in that direction with its DART mission. A small spacecraft successfully nudged the Dimorphos asteroid into another orbit. But McDowell advises immense care on further research.

“You want to be careful that you understand the trajectory well enough that you’re really confident that you’re moving it away from impact,” McDowell said.

For now, the hope is to keep gathering the necessary data. NASA is planning a 2029 mission to rendezvous with the once-threatening asteroid Apophis. The goal in connection to the alleged asteroid in 2032 is to better understand how it’s assembled.

NASA plans to use the same craft that landed on the Bennu asteroid and returned samples to Earth in 2023. Said samples were rich in some of the building blocks of life and could help scientists better understand the solar system’s formation.

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