INCREASES AGAIN! Chances of asteroid 2024 YR4 hitting Earth is now at 3.1%
Wednesday, 12 Mar 2025
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Don’t forget: Due to the way the trajectory is calculated the chances will only rise till they drop to zero
And where is Bruce Willis when you need him?
This is reminding me of a specific movie.
Time for the world to collaborate on a joint Asteroid Steering System.
That’s higher than (official) inflation
As they constrain the uncertainty in the asteroids path the measured probability of the asteroid hitting the Earth will increase. At the moment, the estimates of where the asteroid will be at closest approach to the Earth are stretched out on a line through space (an ‘error line’) that includes the Earth.
As we get more & better observations the orbit will be better constrained and the error line will get smaller, and correspondingly the Earth will take up a larger fraction of the error line and the measured probability will therefore increase. If the asteroid won’t end up hitting the Earth (which is the overwhelmingly likely outcome), then probability will increase until this error line no longer includes the Earth at which point the probability will drop to zero.
And if it does hit the Earth, there’s a good chance that it will land in the ocean (Atlantic or Arabian sea), or some uninhabited area (the rainforest or desert). If it does hit an inhabited area, there’ll be years to prepare an evacuation. Potentially an impactor probe similar to the DART mission could alter its orbit such that it will miss the Earth. We might not know for sure if it will miss or hit the Earth (and if so, where on Earth it will impact) until the next orbital pass in 2028
Some good videos by Scott Manley on the topic:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Esk1hg2knno](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Esk1hg2knno)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK5IXX4p2d0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK5IXX4p2d0)
Statistically speaking, there is a surprisingly large amount of land in this track. That is to say, a disproportionally small amount of ocean. I guess that’s because so little of it is in the Pacific. [Edited for grammar]
Ah yes keep going daddy
For anyone wondering it’s nowhere near a planet killer. It would cause potentially the destruction of a city.
So all this “cheering for it to end” kinda strikes me as odd. All it will do is increase human suffering. It’s like cheering for a hurricane.
Edit: [This beautiful man](https://youtu.be/eHbJ9beQc08?si=0N-roe-9JLJovYk-) puts it better than I can.
We are in between Don’t Look Up and Idiocracy timelines.
We are so fucked
I have a horrible feeling this thing is gonna land in India/Bangladesh and cause a crisis like the world has never seen before.
Characterizing asteroids like this is exactly what the late Arecibo radio observatory was great at. It’s a shame that my US government so de-prioritized paying for its maintenance and upkeep.
Oh this things gonna smash
As they narrow the window the percentage will keep going up as long as Earth is still in the window. And then one day it’ll go down to 0% because they narrowed the window some more and Earth is no longer in it.
Don’t look up!!!
I hope it hit the fucking ocean 🌊
Hopefully it does strike but doesn’t injure anybody just to see the footage of it screaming into the earth in beautiful 4k
I am sure this has been asked already, but are there any projections as to the size of the tsunami that will occur if the asteroid strikes the ocean instead of land?
Is there a chance that the asteroid is far bigger and heavier than current observation?
See how quickly people stop caring about it hitting now that we know it’ll be somewhere in the southern hemisphere.
We will start selling tickets at 5%
At what percentage will it need to get for the U.S. to re-hire the staff they’re letting go of at NASA?
If it hits anywhere on land in India this is the largest loss of human life in a single event in history.
Gonna need to blast this guy out of the sky
You have better odds 2024 YR4 hitting than you betting on a roulette number. Think about that.
The only thing that gives me solace about this is that we’ve blown up bombs with more power than this thing can produce
It was 2.6% a few hours ago. At this rate it will be 100% by Thursday.
I’m disappointed that the path doesn’t appear to cross anywhere near Mar-a-Lago.
I guess even if it hits there is a very small chance of hitting a populated area. Looks like India is worst case.
Fingers crossed
Just cut those scientists’ jobs, that whay they stop providing updates, and it will just go away. I think the guy in the White House would jump on that idea.
Only a city buster. We need a world ender to cleanse this shitty timeline
All those people who voted for Asteroid were onto something… good to see an underdog candidate rise in the polls!!
Yay! Come in asteroid!!