“How’s your asteroid?”
On Tuesday last week the National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced that an asteroid measuring 40-90 meters (130 to 300 feet) wide had a 3.1 percent probability of hitting Earth in Dec. 2032. The odds make the asteroid the most threatening space rock ever recorded by modern forecasting.
The asteroid called Spacerock 2024 YR4 was first detected last Dec. 27 by a telescope in Chile. And when the impact probability crossed 1 pecent, the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN), a worldwide planetary defense collaboration, issued a warning memo on Jan. 29 about it.
The impact, if it does come to pass, will not result in a global catasrophe, say scientists, but it would be enough to destroy a city. Thus the term “city killer.” The potential devastation comes less from its size and more from its velocity, which could be nearly 40,000 miles per hour if it hits. If.
The so-called impact risk corridor stretches across the eastern Pacific Ocean, northern South America, the Atlantic Ocean, Africa, the Arabian Sea, and South Asia.
Just the following day, however, NASA revised its calculations and reduced the probability to 1.5%, even as there remains a 0.8 percent chance the asteroid would hit the moon. A separate calculation by the European Space Agency placed the probability of the asteroid hitting the earth at 1.38%, a downgrade from 2.8 percent, reported DW.
The probability was downgraded even before the powerful James Webb Space Telescope had started training its gaze on the asteroid, supposedly in March.
Prior to the downgrade, some scientists were interviewed and asked whether the asteroid was making them scared. But the AFP report says the global astronomical community did expect the odds to hit the Earth to eventually fall to zero. “I’m not panicking,” said the chief scientist for the nonprofit Planetary Society, Bruce Betts. As scientists get more data, the probability likely rises before dropping to zero, he explained.
Richard Moissl, head of the ESA’s planetary defense office, said the percentage reduction had been expected. The uncertainty region where the asteroid could strike starts to “slip off” Earth.
Observations by the Webb telescope – the most powerful space observatory — would be key to knowing more about the asteroid’s trajectory and all the other dangers that may come with it. Betts said Webb is able to see objects that are very, very dim.
But if the risk numbers change again, and, say, crosses 10%, a formal warning would be issued by the IAWN. All United Nations members who have territories in potentially threatened areas will need to start terrestrial preparedness, Moissl told AFP.
The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago measured 10 kilometers in width.
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When people are caught up in their own affairs, it is easy to think that all that matters is all that is in front of them.
The problems that we are currently dealing with appear to be the only challenges that must be resolved: political crises, for instance, the circus of an election that is getting closer by the day, the demands of our respective jobs, and the day-to-day minutiae of the the things we need to do to support our titles, our offices, our salaries, and our lifestyles. The number of likes or followers on our social media page. This is what is normal.
It could take the threat of a figurative asteroid to make us snap back into the reality that what we are caught up in may not be the things that actually matter.
Our asteroid can take the form of…anything we can imagine. A threat to one’s work or relationship or health or stability. It could be the possibility that the things we are enjoying right now may not last for long. It could be the prospect of change, the nature and scope of which may not yet be defined.
The realization that everything that we now have may just as easily be taken from us.
And then we get to really think: What is important?
We find that the answers usually do not vary much: family, friends, making a difference, helping others. Everything else is secondary, if not extraneous.
I bring this up in the context of the real-life asteroid that may or may not smash into the Earth because any time is as good as any for us to be gobsmacked into stepping back and taking stock of the kind of life that we have led, so far.
If an asteroid struck now, how would I feel about it, and what would I do?
This week scientists said that the chances of Spacerock 2024 YR4 hitting the earth are now practically nil. That’s a relief. But for now it is a good exercise to stop and imagine being faced with such a threat and see our lives through this (we hope, remote) possibility.