{"id":303810,"date":"2025-02-19T08:00:33","date_gmt":"2025-02-19T08:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=303810"},"modified":"2025-02-20T07:22:20","modified_gmt":"2025-02-20T07:22:20","slug":"nasa-quietly-increases-the-chance-of-city-destroying-asteroid-hitting-earth-in-2032-yet-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=303810","title":{"rendered":"NASA quietly increases the chance of ‘city-destroying’ asteroid hitting Earth in 2032 yet AGAIN"},"content":{"rendered":"

William Hunter \u2013 Daily Mail Feb 18,2025<\/strong><\/h1>\n

The ‘city-destroying’ asteroid hurtling toward Earth is being carefully watched by hundreds of the world’s most powerful telescopes.<\/p>\n

Now, NASA<\/strong><\/a> has quietly increased the chances that this deadly space rock will smash into the planet in 2032.<\/p>\n

The space agency predicts that the asteroid 2024 YR4 has a one-in-38, or 2.6 per cent, chance of hitting.<\/p>\n

Those are the same odds as having your number come up on a spin of a standard American roulette wheel.<\/p>\n

When it was discovered in December last year, NASA estimated that the chances of 2024 YR4 hitting us were one in a thousand.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

However, as more data has been gathered about its orbit, the impact probability has rapidly increased.<\/p>\n

Currently, the odds of 2024 YR4 hitting Earth on December 12, 2032, are double what they were at the end of January less than three weeks ago.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

With an estimated diameter of 54 metres (177ft), or a little taller than Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, that collision has the potential to cause enormous amounts of damage.<\/p>\n

The asteroid was discovered on December 27 by the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescope in Chile.<\/p>\n

Early calculations of its orbit quickly showed that there was a slim chance of the near-Earth object (NEO) making a close pass of the planet in the next decade.<\/p>\n

However, as astronomers made more observations and arrived at a better estimation of the asteroid’s orbit, the probability of a collision continued to rise.<\/p>\n

On January 27, 2024 YR4 truly set alarm bells ringing<\/strong><\/a> when it became the only large asteroid with an impact probability greater than one per cent.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

This prompted NASA to award the asteroid a score of three on the Torino Scale, a standard measure for the danger of NEOs.<\/p>\n

This rating is extremely rare since it can only be given to an object over 20 metres (65ft) in diameter with an impact probability greater than one per cent.<\/p>\n

The Torino scale describes this threat as: ‘A close encounter, meriting attention by astronomers. Current calculations give a 1% or greater chance of collision capable of localized destruction.’<\/p>\n

Were the asteroid to hit Earth, NASA estimates that the explosion would be equivalent to eight megatons of TNT.<\/p>\n

That is more than 500 times the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II.<\/p>\n

The resulting blast would be similar to that caused by the Tunguska Asteroid, which flattened 830 square miles (2,150 square km) of Siberian forest in 1908 – an area more than double the size of New York.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Based on current estimates of the asteroid’s orbit, astronomers have calculated a ‘risk corridor’ of locations that could be hit <\/strong><\/a>if it were to collide with Earth.<\/p>\n

This path stretches from northern South America, across sub-Saharan and North Africa, and into South Asia.<\/p>\n

Worryingly, the risk corridor passes over eight of the world’s most populated cities, including Bogota in Colombia, Lagos in Nigeria, as well as Mumbai and Chennai in India.<\/p>\n

Those cities alone have a combined population of over 110 million people, who could be in serious danger from an asteroid impact.<\/p>\n

In the history of astronomy, only one other asteroid has ever been given a Torino Scale rating of three or higher – that being the 185-metre (600ft) 99942 Apophis.<\/p>\n

Apophis, nicknamed the ‘God of Chaos’ asteroid, was briefly escalated to a four on the Torino Scale in late 2004 before rapidly dropping back towards zero.<\/p>\n

Astronomers around the world are currently holding out hope that 2024 YR4 will soon follow a similar pattern.<\/p>\n

Most NEOs have a higher impact probability right after they are detected with the risk dropping off as scientists gather more data about their orbits.<\/p>\n

At first, as lots of new data comes in, the probability tends to sharply increase creating the impression of a rapidly growing risk.<\/p>\n

However, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) currently predict that this should be followed by a drop in probability once the astronomers can be more certain about the asteroid’s orbital path.<\/p>\n

NASA spokesperson Molly Wasser wrote in a blog post<\/strong><\/a>: ‘As more observations of the asteroid\u2019s orbit are obtained, its impact probability will become better known.<\/p>\n

‘It is possible that asteroid 2024 YR4 will be ruled out as an impact hazard, as has happened with many other objects that have previously appeared on NASA\u2019s.’<\/p>\n

She adds: ‘It is also possible its impact probability will continue to rise.’<\/p>\n

Both NASA and ESA will continue to make observations of the asteroid until April at which point it will become too faint to observe until it returns around June 2028.<\/p>\n

In a rare emergency decision, ESA has also been granted access to the James Webb Space Telescope in March to better assess the risk posed by 2024 YR4.<\/p>\n

The JWST will record the heat emitted by the asteroid using its infrared sensors which will give a more accurate estimate for its size.<\/p>\n

Those measurements will be key to making a decision on whether action needs to be taken to divert the asteroid from its course.<\/p>\n

If the decision is made to push the asteroid off its current course, the most likely option would be using a\u00a0‘kinetic impactor’ to push it aside by ramming a satellite into the asteroid as fast as possible.<\/p>\n

In 2022, NASA’s DART mission showed that it was possible to significantly alter the trajectory of a large asteroid with a satellite collision.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/a>However, with only eight years until the asteroid arrives, some scientists have cast doubt on the plan to deflect the killer asteroid.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

In a post on X, Dr Robin George Andrews, a volcanologist and author based in London, points out that we ‘have less than eight years to potentially deal with it’.<\/p>\n

‘You need 10 years or more to build, plan and execute an asteroid deflection mission,’ he said.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When it was discovered in December last year, NASA estimated the chances of it hitting the earth were one in a thousand. However, those odds have since been revised to a one-in-38 chance of collision <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":215355,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-303810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Predictions_from_the_past_or_for_the_future"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=303810"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":303811,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303810\/revisions\/303811"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/215355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=303810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=303810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=303810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}