from Hacker News

Odds of asteroid 2024 YR4 hitting Earth in 2032 have reached new high

by wlkr on 2/18/25, 7:17 PM with 8 comments

  • by southernplaces7 on 2/18/25, 10:52 PM

    Given the asteroid's relatively small size and how well watched it is by this point, i'd worry little even if its known odds of collision turned out to be nearly 100%.

    One the one hand, the lead-up to arrival would offer a wonderful opportunity for testing asteroid deflection technologies live and in the flesh, and on the other hand, if these failed or weren't tried, we'd have a wonderful opportunity for examining an asteroid impact in real life, up close.

    With an expected blast power of roughly 8 megatons and with all the surveillance around it, it wouldn't even be enormously difficult to prepare the impact site so that no lives are lost. This last step in the worst case of an actual unstoppable impact might not even be necessary, since most of the Earth is devoid of humans and could handle this without a hiccup..

  • by ChrisArchitect on 2/18/25, 8:55 PM

  • by Trasmatta on 2/18/25, 7:44 PM

    Is there anything we can do to increase the odds?

  • by vmilner on 2/18/25, 8:07 PM

    “This steady increase does not necessarily mean that the asteroid is actually more likely to hit Earth”

    I’m struggling to understand the alleged difference between “odds increasing” and “being more likely”.

    Isn’t that exactly what it means?