back to article City-slaying space rock 2024 YR4 still has 2.4% shot at smacking Earth

The latest figures from the European Space Agency (ESA) on the trajectory of asteroid 2024 YR4 show a reduction in uncertainty around the object's orbit while the probability of impact remains low. The estimates from ESA's Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre show a marked reduction in close approach uncertainty based on …

  1. KittenHuffer Silver badge
    Mushroom

    Or ....

    .... the corridor might narrow until everything apart from the Earth is excluded!

    ------------> Run to the hills! Run for your lives!

    1. entfe001
      Alien

      Re: Or ....

      Should I stockpile on towels or it's still too soon?

      1. Someone Else Silver badge

        Re: Or ....

        Don't know about towels, but you can never have enough toilet paper...

        1. GBE

          Re: Or ....

          Don't know about towels, but you can never have enough toilet paper...

          You can always tear up towels and use them for toilet paper. Using toilet paper as a towel doesn't work as well.

          Strive to be known as a frood who always knows where his towel is.

      2. Marty McFly Silver badge
        Alien

        Re: Or ....

        Would 42 towels be enough for a stockpile? Given the published probability, can we rank the asteroid as Mostly Harmless?

        1. Eclectic Man Silver badge
          Joke

          Re: Or ....

          I have a shipping container full of lemon-soaked paper napkins, if that helps?

          1. Rattus

            Re: Or ....

            they are not " lemon-soaked paper napkins" they are telephone handset sanitation wipes :-)

            1. GBE

              Re: Or ....

              they are not " lemon-soaked paper napkins" they are telephone handset sanitation wipes

              Back in the 90's I flew across the Atlantic for the first time and spent a couple weeks at my employer's site in Bognor Regis helping get a new production process started up. As a USAian, I had read Adams and laughed about telephone sanitizers but didn't realize that was actually "a thing" [I should have known it was real]. One morning I picked up the phone, and it had a very distinctive scent. I apparently got a funny look on my face that was noticed by one of the local guys I was working with. He smiled and said "Yep, the phone sanitizers where in last night." The phone sanitizers were apparently not the same people as the normal cleaners.

              1. YetAnotherLocksmith

                Re: Or ....

                Good that someone took the correct lesson from the book!

                Next, get elno onto that spaceship B!

    2. Eclectic Man Silver badge
      Alien

      Re: Or ....

      I believe that the astro-boffins have calculated if it impacts the Earth, where it might land:

      "The International Asteroid Warning Network put out a list of possible impact locations, which ranges from uninhabited or sparsely populated areas to densely populated areas in the eastern Pacific Ocean, northern South America, the Atlantic Ocean, parts of Africa, the Arabian Sea and South Asia.

      North America was not among the possible impact locations."

      From: https://eu.statesman.com/story/news/state/2025/02/15/asteroid-earth-2024-yr4-odds-potential-locations-2032-nasa/78627463007/#:~:text=The%20International%20Asteroid%20Warning%20Network,Arabian%20Sea%20and%20South%20Asia.

      Aslo see: https://www.space.com/asteroid-2024yt4-image-feb7

      1. Dostoevsky Bronze badge

        Re: Or ....

        Yes, we know the impact corridor to a very high precision. It's the timing we don't know. It's about a sixteen-minute window, IIRC, and over 7 years out. You do the math!

      2. Blank Reg

        Re: Or ....

        With just a little nudge we can probably take out mar a lardo

      3. Bebu sa Ware
        Coat

        Re: Or ....

        "North America was not among the possible impact locations."

        They have clearly underestimated the positive power of prayer.

        I am sure the chap upstairs groks lat.&long. (38° 53' 52.6452'' N and 77° 2' 11.6160'' W. would be favourite.)

  2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Time to take a DART at it.

    1. Richard 12 Silver badge

      The launch opportunities for a diversion mission are in 2028.

      So hopefully India will save us.

      the probability of impact will likely eventually decrease and reach zero

      What actually happens is that the probability increases as the corridor is narrowed, because more of the possible corridor includes Earth.

      Then it suddenly drops to (nearly) zero if Earth is excluded.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        You have a good point there. India may be the ones to launch a mission to divert it as they're in the firing line and have the capability, judging by Scott Manley's calculations on YouTube.

  3. Michael Strorm Silver badge

    Won't end civilisation, but still has potential to be catastrophic if it hit near a major city

    tl;dr is that this thing won't end civilisation (the projected explosion is comparable to thermonuclear tests the US did in the early 50s and much smaller than the largest bomb ever exploded by the Soviets) but it could still be disastrous- on the level of wiping out a major city- if it hit in the wrong place.

    To go into more detail...

    This thing is expected to be comparable to an 8000 kiloton nuclear bomb. While that's *massively* larger than the bombs that hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki (15 and 21 kilotons, tiny compared to almost everything that followed), and still several times larger than the largest bomb currently in the US arsenal (around 1200 kilotons), it's no larger than the Castle Bravo and Ivy Mike tests carried out in the open by the US in the 1950s. And it's still nowhere near the size of the largest bomb ever exploded, the early-60s Soviet Tsar Bomba which was a ludicrous 50,000 kilotons and broke windows almost 500 miles away.

    From that point of view, then, we've had explosions of that size and larger before so, as I said, this one would be very unlikely to be civilisation ending.

    On the other hand, 8000 kilotons is still massive and- according to Nukemap- if one were to hit (say) central London, it would pretty much destroy everything within a 6 to 9 mile radius and cause damage across an area the size of Greater London.

    London isn't anywhere near the expected impact path, but there *are* still several major cities in South America, Africa and south-east Asia which certainly are.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Won't end civilisation, but still has potential to be catastrophic if it hit near a major city

      Lagos is on that map.

      Stand by for spam emails from a random Nigerian Princess who is trying together all their money transferred!

    2. frankvw Bronze badge
      Trollface

      Re: Won't end civilisation, but still has potential to be catastrophic if it hit near a major city

      " Won't end civilisation, but still has potential to be catastrophic if it hit near a major city"

      That depends on who is in that city when it hits. We could do worse than figuring out what city it's going to be and then organizing a political summit there with selected invitees. Or perhaps we can make suri it hits, oh, I don't know, Washington DC, maybe?

  4. Rob 15

    3.1%

    It's 3.1% now, or 1-in-32, according to New Scientist. That seems quite high to me.

  5. IGotOut Silver badge

    It's ok...

    ...I'm sure all the governments in the world will unite under a single common cause, to save humanity from this.

    Hmmm.

    Nope we're fucked

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    That graph looks promising

    Though we're in the error bars for every observation, all the observations seem to be converging on a consistent point - and we're not at that point.

  7. YetAnotherLocksmith

    As an air burst in the desert, sure, it's fine. But that would be very much the best case.

    Isn't there a rather large risk that it'll hit the ocean, causing rather a lot of issues for anyone within range of the massive tsunami waves? And killing every fish for a thousand miles from the concussion?

    1. David Hicklin Silver badge

      I thought that the size of tsunami waves for a surface impact were far smaller than caused by an earthquake where the full column of water from seabed to surface is lifted?

      Hence smacking into the central Atlantic would be the best outcome

      1. Richard 12 Silver badge

        It'd raise a small tsunami

        Large enough to wipe Mar-a-lago off the map, but not enough to do any damage.

  8. Oneman2Many Bronze badge

    Its a similar size to the Tunguska asteroid which is thought to have been up to 60m wide, though obviously could have a different composition and trajectory. That event exploded about 10 km in the air with force of up to 50 megatons. It flattened trees over a 2,000 sq km area.

    So it is it an extinction event, no. Could it cause significant damage and loss of life, yet.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    MEGA - Make Earth Great Again

    With all the recent brain damaged machinations of the planet's hegemon and its autocratic friends, is anyone else secretly hoping the rock will hit?

    1. Michael Strorm Silver badge

      Re: MEGA - Make Earth Great Again

      It won't end civilisation, and it's not projected to hit anywhere that deserves to be hit, so no.

      1. EvilDrSmith Silver badge
        Trollface

        Re: MEGA - Make Earth Great Again

        So you are saying that this asteroid is inadequate?

        Too small?

        MAGA: Make Asteroids Great Again!

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