Asteroid 2024 yr4, Measurements about 40-100 meters wide could even attack planets in December 2032, passing very close to Earth. Because of its size, speed, and the potential impact it could have made, the Internet gave it the nickname “city destroyer.”
Major space agencies such as European Space Agencyestimates there is about a 2% chance that the 2024 YR4 will hit Earth, but this risk figure will be updated as scientists learn more about the asteroid path. It’s far more likely that asteroids will miss Earth, but where the potential impacts have already been identified.
The destructive potential of the 2024 YR4 depends on its composition, speed, and mass. Because the asteroid is still very far, these properties can only be estimated, and therefore the outcome of the strike at this stage is also somewhat inaccurate predictions. Currently, astronomers believe that the 2024 YR4 will cause an air burst or air explosion equivalent to 8 million tonnes of TNT, or that in Hiroshima it will have an impact of 500 times the power of an atomic bomb. . This explosion affects approximately 50 km of a radius around the impact site.
Regarding the location of the collision, some experts, including David Rankin, an engineer at NASA’s Catalina Sky Survey Project, sketched the “Risk Corridor.” According to the current asteroid’s path, if a 2% chance is real, the asteroid should fall from northern South America to somewhere in the territory stretching beyond the Pacific Ocean to South America, South Asia, the Arabian Sea and Africa. is. Countries such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Sudan, Nigeria, Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador are at risk.
The threat posed by asteroids and comets that could potentially hit the Earth is 11 Points Turin Scale: The higher the score, the greater the risk that the moving spatial object will affect the Earth and cause a large amount of destruction. The 2024 YR4 asteroid ranks level 3, so it’s big enough and close enough to be deserved to be monitored carefully. However, most international organizations believe that risk levels will zero over time as the asteroid’s trajectory becomes more clear. Initially, the probability of a shock was 1.2%. Later, the latest rating was adjusted to a maximum of 2.3% before reducing the risk to 2%.
This is not the first time such an alert has been raised, and the 2024 YR4 is not the most risky space object to be monitored. asteroid ApophisIt was discovered in 2004 and could exceed the 2024 YR4 on both the Turin scale and collision probability. Shortly after it was discovered, it was given a 2.7% chance of hitting the Earth. However, a few months later, after observations improved, scientists adjusted the calculations to a more realistic value. Currently, we will be very close to Earth in 2029, but there is no chance of a collision.
In response to YR4 2024, the United Nations has activated emergency protocols for the protection of the planet. For the time being, given that the asteroid is at level 3 on the Turin scale, this is limited to continuous surveillance to understand the asteroid’s movement.
Measures are also being developed to protect the Earth from asteroids with potentially destructive potential. These include strikes in motion that rockets are sent into space to collide with the asteroid and deflect them from the collision path with Earth. NASA’s 2023 darts mission proved that it could launch such a strike and that it could move space objects by testing this technique on a harmless asteroid called Dimorphos.
This story originally appeared Wired enespañol Translated from Spanish.
