Asteroid's chances of hitting Earth have nearly doubled in a week, ESA scientist warns
The chances of an asteroid that could be up to 300ft (100m) wide hitting Earth in 2032 have almost doubled after new telescope scans, an expert told Yahoo News.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has raised the odds of the asteroid designated 2024 YR4 hitting Earth to 2.2% following updated data from telescopes in recent days. The odds were put at 1.2% as recently as 29 January.
Juan L. Cano, of the ESA's Planetary Defence Office, told Yahoo News on Thursday: "The results are analysed on a daily basis, so we are updating the results every day with observations that are provided.
"We are retrieving that information, the new measurements in order to redo all the calculations on a daily basis. We are reaching the 2% today. Yesterday we reached 1.8%.
Cano says that the probability of the asteroid hitting Earth will either increase to 100%, drop to 0%, or increase for a while, then reduce to zero as more measurements come in.
If the asteroid is bigger than 50 metres, the ESA will debate sending a space mission to intercept it, according to Cano.
"We have two scenarios here, if we see that the impact probabilities have not gone down in April, The Space Mission Planning Advisory Group, will decide if the asteroid is bigger than 50 meters - if it is not, the suggested solution is evacuation of the impact area," Cano told Yahoo News
The asteroid is currently moving away from Earth and astronomers are observing it with increasingly large telescopes.
Astronomer Dr David Whitehouse told Sky News that another potential option would be launching a nuclear weapon.
"I think this has the potential to be very serious indeed," he said on Thursday. "So, we have to keep a close eye on this object because it could turn out to be the most dangerous thing in space,"
The asteroid was spotted on 27 December by NASA's Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS).
ATLAS is a warning system for asteroid impacts consisting of four telescopes. It is designed to offer a minimum of 'several weeks' of warning before the impact of a 300ft asteroid like 2024 YR4.
As telescope technology has improved, the number of asteroids spotted has increased, although the number of space rocks remains the same.
The ESA estimates that the asteroid is between 40m (131ft) and 100m (328ft).
That would potentially make the space rock's width similar to the height of Big Ben in London, which is 316ft tall.
The time of closest approach to Earth (when it could potentially impact) is the 22 December, 2032.
The asteroid has been ranked as 'level 3' on the Torino Impact Hazard scale - but NASA says this is likely to drop.
NASA describes level 3 asteroids as a "close encounter, meriting attention by astronomers. Current calculations give a 1% or greater chance of collision capable of localised destruction."
It adds: "Most likely, new telescopic observations will lead to re-assignment to Level 0. Attention by public and by public officials is merited if the encounter is less than a decade away."
It is difficult to accurately predict any potential damage. NASA says that an 100m asteroid has 10 times the destructive force of the 2021 Tonga volcanic eruption, which caused a large explosion and tsunamis in several countries.
The damage caused by such an explosion would vary depending on where the asteroid hit.
"An asteroid this size impacts Earth on average every few thousand years and could cause severe damage to a local region," the ESA has said. NASA says that the impact could kill up to a million people, "averaged over all possible impact locations".
"These deaths could result from a direct hit or by tsunami (tidal wave) in the event of an ocean strike," it adds.
An asteroid thought to have been around 60ft across 'blew up' over the Russian town of Chelyabinsk in 2013.
During the 2013 Chelyabinsk event, 1,500 people were injured and 7,300 buildings damaged by the intense overpressure generated by the shockwave at Earth's surface.
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