The chances of 2024YR4 hitting earth are now around 2%
Wednesday, 12 Mar 2025
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When ? 2032?
Your father and I are for the jobs the comet will provide
As an X-Com fan I can say with confidence that this is much higher than it seems.
So you’re saying there’s a chance!
I hope it hits the moon. There’s a 0.3% chance of that. The moon has had it coming for a long time. It just sits up there, taunting me.
We need a drill team
Knowing this timeline.. oof.
For everyone shook at this…don’t be. The way you narrow down the path of a meteorite is just that…you have to narrow it first. It may double again to 4%, and then again to 8%%, until finally, the pathway has been narrowed to where earth 🌎 is no longer in its path.
Imagine these [ parentheses ] represent the borders for the path of the meteorite, and the dot is the earth.
[ . ] here is a 2% chance. Narrowed further,
[ . ] the chance has increased significantly as the path has been narrowed now say to a 8% chance as the right border of the path is brought in towarfs earth. Then finally, [ ] .
The path has been narrowed tightly enough to where the right parentheses (parameter) is now past the earth. The chance is now zero.
This is all very oversimplified, but you get the basic idea here. The path is tightened until the earth is beyond the path, and until it is narrowed enough, it may seem as though the chance is rising. Mathematically it is..until it isn’t, and we have enough observational data to determine that we are in the clear.
Reminder, space is very, very open. It’s a bit like throwing a pebble in a football field and hoping you hit one single blade of grass halfway across the pitch. It can happen. Just not often enough to see it a whole lot in a single lifetime.
My rough calculation for energy came out to be 20 megatons, in other words, like a very big nuke. What’s the real calculation?
I’ve got enough to worry about, if a space rock hits, a space rock hits. At least it would be quick.
Chances are it will hit the ocean, and hopefully the tsunami will be negligible.
Maybe Musk can figure out a way to safely land it on Earth, and then we can mine it for it’s rare minerals!
/s
If this thing doesn’t hit us and just comes close, isn’t it an amazing opportunity for a manned or autonomous mission?
I forget, has the likelihood gone up or down?
Is this rock taking requests?
What can we do to get to 100%?
Wtf, I’m seeing “Dont look up” right now
#TeamAsteroid
I like how everyone wonders why the human species can’t improve while also loudly praying for the apocalypse.
I promise you, y’all. You do not want this particular smoke.
For everyone cheering it on in some cathartic moment trying to be edgy
This is not large enough to actually wipe us all out
You’ll still have to pay rent and go to work
I can’t be the only person that kind of wants it to hit an uninhabited or otherwise evacuated area right. The scientific data that could be gathered from it. All from pre-atmosphere through to collision and after. There would be so, so much we could learn from it. Especially since it is rather small and unlikely to cause catastrophic damage it could help simulate actually dangerous impact events. I mean, I’m sure everybody loves watching the nuclear test footage in HD, and shockwaves and such, to see an impact from so many angles would be insane. There would be impressive high speed footage, there would be weather satellite footage, footage from space, footage from all around the impact, seismograph data from all over the world would show the impact through the surface. Just crazy stuff really.
Tunguska 2.0
Bit of a weird question, but what happens if it barely misses us. Like if it enters the atmosphere, but still flys by. Would there be any climate changes from just that?