Here's The Likelihood Of An Asteroid Slamming Into Earth In 2032, According To Scientists
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said Tuesday that 2024 YR4 had a 3.1% chance of impact, but astronomers lowered the estimate on Wednesday after darker skies and increased visibility allowed them to take a better look at the asteroid. However, the European Space Agency (ESA) estimates the likelihood to be at 2.8% as of Wednesday.
The asteroid is estimated to be between 130 to 330 feet wide, and astronomers believe it could plow into the planet on Dec. 22, 2032.
There is also a 0.8% chance it could slam into our moon that day instead, according to NASA.
The International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN) said the following regions on Earth are at risk of being hit by the asteroid in 2032: the eastern Pacific Ocean, northern South America, the Atlantic Ocean, Africa, the Arabian Sea and South Asia.
The risks to Earth if the asteroid does collide with the planet are uncertain at the moment as its mass and potential impact location are unknown. As The New York Times notes, this could lead to a variety of possible scenarios from leveling a city to landing in the ocean and causing relatively little harm.
CBS News space consultant Bill Harwood said that the impact would be 'catastrophic' if the asteroid landed in a populated area, but the damage wouldn't be global.
'It wouldn't be something like the rock that killed the dinosaurs,' Harwood said. 'It wouldn't affect the global climate, but it would certainly be a disaster of every proportion. So we're all hoping that doesn't happen.'
While 2024 YR4′s risk level on Tuesday was the highest ever recorded, it's overwhelmingly likely that the asteroid misses Earth. However, the IAWN notifies the public of an asteroid anytime there is a 1% chance or above of impact, which is extremely rare.
The last time an asteroid met this threshold was in 2004, when asteroid Apophis' probability of hitting Earth in 2029 was raised to 2.7%. After its 2004 discovery, astronomers tracked Apophis, estimated to be about 1,100 feet across, to better understand its path. NASA now says there is no risk of Apophis striking Earth for at least a century.
2024 YR4 was discovered last December, when it had an estimated 1% chance of crashing into the planet in 2032. Passing the planet once every four years, the space rock blew past us in 2024 and is expected to do so again in 2028 without incident.
'We are not worried at all, because of this 99 percent chance it will miss,' Paul Chodas, director of NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies, said at the time. 'But it deserves attention.'
The asteroid will no longer be visible starting in April, but experts intend to study it using the James Webb Space Telescope in the meantime. It will be visible again in June 2028.
'As more observations of the asteroid's orbit are obtained, its impact probability will become better known,' NASA said in a planetary defense blog post published on Feb. 7. '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's asteroid risk list, maintained by NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies.'
According to NASA, asteroids were born during the formation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago. There are currently 1,362,002 of them known to NASA — many of them ranging from as tiny as 3 feet to as large as 329 miles.
Besides 2024 YR4, there are not currently other asteroids with an impact probability above 1% at the moment, according to NASA.
The good news is that NASA demonstrated that it's possible to alter an asteroid's trajectory with a first-of-its-kind test conducted in 2021 and 2022. In the experimental mission, known as the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, experts successfully changed the path of space rock after launching a spacecraft into the object. The method is known as 'kinetic impact.'
Newly Spotted Asteroid Has Tiny Chance Of Hitting Earth In 2032
Asteroid Will Pass In Front Of Bright Star Betelgeuse To Produce A Rare Eclipse Visible To Millions
NASA Discovers Asteroid Has Its Own Tiny Moon
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Yahoo
James Webb Finds Evidence of Free-Floating Planets So Large They Can Gather Their Own Planetary Systems
So much for heliocentrism. An international team of astronomers using observations made with the James Webb Space Telescope have found evidence of massive planets out there that're capable of forming their own planetary systems — without a star. These planets would be the center of something like a mini version of our solar system where other, smaller planets revolve around it. But without the light of a star, these systems, if they exist, would go largely overlooked by our telescopes, lost to the dark void of space. The work, a new study accepted for publication in the The Astronomical Journal, focuses on free-floating "rogue" planets which are not gravitationally bound to a star. While some rogue planets are first formed around a stellar object before being ejected from their system, the astronomers believe these ones may have formed from the same mechanism that gives birth to stars. "These discoveries show that the building blocks for forming planets can be found even around objects that are barely larger than Jupiter and drifting alone in space," lead author Belinda Damian, an astronomer at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, said in a statement about the work. "This means that the formation of planetary systems is not exclusive to stars but might also work around lonely starless worlds." Using James Webb observations taken between August and October 2024, the astronomers examined eight free-floating planets. With masses between five to ten times that of Jupiter, these belong to a class of objects believed to be the lowest mass objects that form from the collapse of the giant gas clouds that are sometimes referred to as stellar nurseries, as they're typically associated with star formation. For one reason or another, these objects didn't accumulate enough mass to sustain nuclear fusion reactions in their cores and become proper stars. These shouldn't be confused with brown dwarfs, however, which are much more massive substellar objects that are dozens of times heavier than Jupiter that also fail to kickstart nuclear fusion, earning them the moniker of "failed" stars. In this latest work, the astronomers detected excess emissions in the infrared spectra of these objects, showing that six of them have emissions associated with warm dust. This indicates the presence of a disk, or a circumstellar cloud of gas and dust that surrounds the planet. In itself, this isn't unusual, and such disks have been detected around rogue planets before. Around stars, these disks, referred to as protoplanetary disks, are where dense regions of gas and dust can coalesce to form planets, and are the leftover material from the star's formation which didn't get sucked into its collapsing core. But the kicker here is that the scientists have detected signs that the rogue planets' disks are already exhibiting the crucial first steps of planetary formation in the form of harboring silicate grains, which appear to be growing and crystallizing. These dusty grains can clump together to form planetesimals, the large, solid objects that are the building blocks of a baby planet. This is the first detection of silicate grains around a planetary mass object, the authors said. And it pairs tantalizingly with their previous study which showed that the rogue planet disks can last for millions of years, providing more than enough time to incubate inchoate worlds. "Taken together, these studies show that objects with masses comparable to those of giant planets have the potential to form their own miniature planetary systems," coauthor Aleks Scholz, who is also a St Andrews astronomer, said in the statement. "Those systems could be like the solar system, just scaled down by a factor of 100 or more in mass and size. Whether or not such systems actually exist remains to be shown." Ironically, then, maybe our ancestors weren't totally off the mark with their whole geocentrism fixation — they just had the wrong planetary system in mind. More on exoplanets: James Webb Spots Planets Forming Into Solar System in Real Time, Like an Organism's First Cells Solve the daily Crossword
The Hill
10 hours ago
- The Hill
Critics shouldn't block NASA's nuclear path to a moon base
Sean Duffy, NASA's interim administrator, proved that the U.S. is serious about establishing a lunar base when he announced the deployment of a 100-kilowatt nuclear reactor on the moon by 2030. The idea, although a sound one, is not without its critics. The announcement that the first element of a lunar base will be a nuclear reactor was logical. Nuclear power, unlike solar, is available 24/7 and thus does not require backup batteries during periods when the sun is not available. That the reactor is first means that every other element of the lunar base can be hooked up and powered up immediately. As NPR notes, a 100-kilowatt reactor on Earth would be able to power 70 to 80 private homes in the United States, so it could power a decent-sized lunar base. It would have to withstand the extremes of heat and cold on the moon, not to mention the possibility of moonquakes and meteor strikes. Instead of water to cool it, the reactor would simply radiate the heat it creates into space. The cost would be about $3 billion. Space lawyer Michelle Hanlon describes some of the legal aspects of placing a nuclear reactor on the moon, especially in context of the space race with China. While the Outer Space Treaty prohibits claims of national sovereignty on the moon, the establishment of a nuclear reactor, especially with a lunar base attached to it, grants the nation-state that does it some measure of control over the surrounding territory. Its Article IX requires that states act 'with due regard to the corresponding interests of all other States Parties to the Treaty.' The practical effect of the Article IX provision is that the first country to establish a lunar base on the moon's south pole would be able to claim control over some prime real estate, important where ice mining is likely to be an essential enterprise. Duffy is therefore correct that the U.S. and its allies should be first with a nuclear reactor and a lunar base before China can establish its own and thus exert control. The idea of a nuclear-powered lunar base is not without its critics. For example, a CBS News host opined that colonizing the moon was akin to the colonization of native peoples on Earth by European powers. Celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson set him straight by pointing out that no native peoples exist on the moon or anywhere else in the solar system beyond Earth. The exchange elicited eyerolling on the Fox News show 'The Five.' But even there, some griping occurred. Dana Perino, who used to work for President George W. Bush, expressed considerable ennui about the whole concept of space travel. From the perspective of someone who has seen a space shuttle launch in person and watched men walk on the moon live on television, the attitude seems to be bizarre and dispiriting. Tyrus, the former wrestler turned social and political commentator, trotted out the 'let's solve problems on Earth before we go into space' trope that has been around since the beginning of the space age. The obvious answer has always been, 'Do both.' Ross Marchand, writing for Real Clear Science, noted the $37 trillion national debt and then claimed that building a lunar base would be just too expensive. He undermined his argument by comparing the 100-kilowatt lunar nuclear power plant to the 1-gigawatt reactors that exist on Earth and cost $10 billion to build (largely because of permitting and environmental regulation problems). Then he increased the estimated cost by a factor of 10 'or more.' Although NASA projects often do suffer cost overruns, $3 billion to $100 billion would be a little much, even for the space agency with its history of inefficiency. Marchand also trotted out the 'robots can explore space cheaper and better than humans' claim that was soundly debunked by the late, great lunar geologist Paul Spudis. In fact, returning to the moon and going on to Mars also polls well and has bipartisan political support, even it still has its critics. No great endeavor ever undertaken since the beginning of civilization has not had people saying it can't or shouldn't be done. The International Space Station, for example, drew fierce opposition and was almost cancelled more than once. The orbiting space laboratory is currently churning out a stream of scientific discoveries and technological innovations, confounding its early critics, who are long since forgotten. The lunar base and even Elon Musk's planned Mars colony will undergo a similar process. Future generations will find it difficult to imagine a universe where humans just occupied one world. Mark R. Whittington, who writes frequently about space policy, has published a political study of space exploration entitled ' Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon? ' as well as ' The Moon, Mars and Beyond,' and, most recently,' Why is America Going Back to the Moon? ' He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner.
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Yahoo
Astronomers Say They've Finally Solved the 'Little Red Dots' Mystery
When the James Webb Space Telescope first came online in 2022, it immediately spotted something astronomers had never seen before: "little red dots" peppering the ancient expanse of deep space, originating from around when the universe was just one billion years old. Ever since, we've struggled to explain what these faint signals could be. The prevailing theory is that they're some kind of extremely compact galaxy. But at only two percent of the diameter of the Milky Way, the distribution of stars would have to be impossibly dense, perhaps more so than our current laws of physics allow. They're also too faint to be produced by a quasar, a type of supermassive black hole that is actively devouring matter, which it causes to heat up and glow. Moreover, the black holes would be "overmassive" for such a small galaxy, scientists argue. Now, famed Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb (or infamous, depending on how you view his speculative theories regarding aliens) and his colleague Fabio Pacucci believe they have an answer. In a new study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, the pair reinforce the idea that the family of red oddities are, in fact, galaxies — but are unusually tiny because they haven't started spinning up to speed yet. It's a hypothesis rooted in one of the leading theories for galaxy formation, which holds that these structures form in "halos" of dark matter, the invisible substance thought to account for 85 percent of all mass in the cosmos. While we can't see or interact with dark matter, it does exert a significant gravitational influence, which explains how the largest structures in the cosmos came together and took shape. In the study, the astronomers propose that the diminutive galaxies formed in halos that just so happened to be among the slowest spinning in the cosmos, with 99 percent of halos spinning faster. The idea, in principle, is simple. If you held out a piece of rope in one hand and started spinning in place, the rope would stretch out and reach farther. But if you slowed down, the rope would slump to the ground. This hypothesis would explain why we're only seeing the dots at such a nascent period of the universe. Over time, the halos would inevitably speed up, and their constituent galaxies would expand. "Dark matter halos are characterized by a rotational velocity: some of them spin very slowly, and others spin more rapidly," Loeb said in a statement about the work. "We showed that if you assume the little red dots are typically in the first percentile of the spin distribution of dark matter halos, then you explain all their observational properties." It's a compelling theory — but it's not the only game in town. Recently, two teams of astronomers found clues that what we're witnessing may actually be an entirely new class of cosmic object: "black hole stars." Their work suggests the glowing dots are an active supermassive black hole surrounded by a vast and thick shell of gas. The intense radiation of the black hole heats up the shell, which absorbs most of the emissions, dimming the light to an outside observer. In many ways, it resembles a star blown up to epic proportions — except, instead of nuclear fusion powering the center, there's a voracious black hole churning through matter. Loeb and Pacucci's theory doesn't address whether these slow-spinning galaxies have a black hole at their center, but suggests that they could form one. "Low-spin halos tend to concentrate mass in the center, which makes it easier for a black hole to accrete matter or for stars to form rapidly," Pacucci said in the statement. The luminous red dots, he added, "might help us understand how the first black holes formed and co-evolved with galaxies in the early universe." More on space: Astronomers in Awe of Terrifying "Eye of Sauron" That's Pointed Straight at Earth Solve the daily Crossword
