In case you’ve missed it, there’s an asteroid hurtling through space that could very well end up smashing into our planet within the next eight years. Labelled 2024 YR4, the rogue chunk of rock is currently travelling away from us, after passing by at a distance of 828,800 kilometres on Christmas Day 2024, however, it will be back.
And this time there’s a chance of it colliding with Earth.
2024 YR4 is currently forecasted to begin making its Earth-bound approach in late 2028, with current estimates penciling in 2032 as a day in which it could hypothetically make impact.
The current line from NASA officials is that they are monitoring YR4 as an object of interest, but don’t start panicking just yet, as the asteroid currently has a 2.3% chance of crashing into us, according to forecasts made this month.
Which means there’s a 97.7% chance that we’re not on track to live out the plot of an apocalyptic disaster film just yet — hooray!
However, the pessimists – or pragmatists – among us will likely be pointing out that a slight chance of 2024 YR4 hitting Earth doesn’t mean that we’re fully in the clear.
One person to share this point of view is volcanologist Dr Robin George Andrews, who recently pointed out that we only have eight years to come up with a plan for the worst case scenario.
Hopefully this scenario is not on the cards for planet Earth (Getty Stock Images)
“You need 10 years or more to build, plan and execute an asteroid deflection mission,” he recently pointed out on X, adding: “We have less than eight years to potentially deal with it, if needed.”
He added: “But we don’t have much time, and we don’t have enough info about this rapidly fading asteroid to properly inform our planetary defence decisions yet.”
What would happen if asteroid 2024 YR4 hits Earth?
Once again, it’s worth reminding you that we’re not staring directly into the possibility of a dinosaurs 2.0 event should YR4 end up smashing into the planet.
Astronomers believe the asteroid is around 40m to 100m wide, with NASA stating that damage would be ‘localised’ instead of a mass extinction event.
