Carrie Nugent

Here’s why I’m not worried yet about this asteroid hitting Earth

Two days after Christmas, the Atlas sky survey team discovered a new rocky object in Earth’s astronomical neighbourhood. Atlas discovers near-Earth objects all the time: in 2024, the team discovered 167 of them. They also codiscovered comet Tsuchinshan–Atlas, which dazzled sky gazers last autumn. But this discovery was special: there’s a chance the 40- to 90-metre object, known as 2024 YR4, will hit Earth in 2032. In January, the impact probability was just over 1%, then it was raised to 2.3% in early February. Last week, the Nasa JPL Center for Near Earth Object Studies raised that to 3.1% – or about a 1-in-32 chance of impact. There are four reasons I’m not worried just yet. First, the possible impact would be in December 2032, so we’ve got time to…

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Guardian Weekly (Digital) - 1 Issue, 28 February 2025

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