from Hacker News

Asteroid YR24; now at 1.6% impact probability in 2032

by fghorow on 1/31/25, 7:14 PM with 2 comments

• by liamwire on 1/31/25, 11:56 PM

  YR24 is estimated to be less than a third the size of Apophis. Side note, we’re only about 4 years away from that asteroid coming within 32,000 km of the planet, closer than the orbiting height of geosynchronous satellites.

  If YR24 were to hit the planet, the article puts the impact energy on par with a 10 MT nuclear bomb, or similar to the Tunguska event:

  “Everything within three or four kilometers would be incinerated,” Tonry says. “Everything out to maybe 10 kilometers is smashed. […] There would be a huge fireball that would start fires out to 15 kilometers, something like that. It would kill a lot of people if they haven’t moved out of the way.”

  So, not nothing, but also not an existential threat even for most individual nation states, and also a 98% chance of being entirely uneventful.

  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

• by duffyjp on 1/31/25, 8:13 PM

  An election year in the US. Those "Giant Meteor" lawn signs have been working. ;)