Chances of an asteroid the size of Big Ben hitting Earth in 2032 just increased

…Don’t look up. Astronomers say there is a 2.3% chance an asteroid nearly as big as Big Ben is tall will smash into the Earth in 2032.

The odds of this big old space rock, 2024 YR4, striking us was only 1.33% last week, or about a one-in-53 chance.

But Nasa’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (Cneos) revised the odds yesterday to one in 43.

As the agency stresses, however, this still means there’s a good 97.7% chance the asteroid will miss the Earth altogether. So don’t panic.

YR4, which space officials believe could be as large as 300 feet, is expected to either impact or glide past Earth on December 22, 2032.

While it’s not large enough to create a dinosaur-level extinction, experts say this could flatten a city or cause tsunamis if it plopped into the sea.

It’s also large enough to warrant a rare impact warning from the International Asteroid Warning Network, a collective of observations, scientific organisations and space agencies – the UK’s own included.

‘We monitor an average of 200-300 asteroids that safely pass Earth every month and the risk from 2024 YR4 in 2032 remains low,’ Angus Stewart, joint head of the UK National Space Operations Centre, told Metro.

‘The UK will work with international partners to continue to assess 2024 YR4 right up until it disappears from sight sometime in April or May.

‘After this, if there remains a risk to Earth, the UK will work with the international community to consider what options might be available to reduce that risk to acceptable level.’

The impact alert, issued on January 29, said the rock could fall somewhere ‘across the eastern Pacific Ocean, northern South America, the Atlantic Ocean, Africa, the Arabian Sea, and South Asia’.

‘Blast damage could occur as far as 50km from the impact site, based on the larger end of the size range,’ the Potential Impact Warning Notification said,

Akin to the weather warnings issued by the Met Office, Nasa’s Torino Scale rates how ‘hazardous’ an asteroid’s impact would be out of 10.

Right now, YR4 sits at three, a fair few ranks away from a civilization-ending 10 but still the second-highest rating ever given to an asteroid.

Apophis, a 375-metre-wide asteroid, is top of the chart. It briefly reached four on the Torino Scale with a 3% chance of impact.

As scientists learned more about the asteroid as it whizzed towards us, they realised that it had next to no chance of coming anywhere near us for at least a century, so it tumbled down the Torino Scale to a zero.

And most expect the same to happen to 2024 YR4. More data about its size, trajectory and orbit will be gathered in the years ahead, especially during a flyby in 2028, that astronomers say will lead to the impact odds being revised.

‘There have been several objects in the past that have risen on the risk list and eventually dropped off as more data have come in,’ Nasa said last week.

‘New observations may result in reassignment of this asteroid to zero as more data come in. ’

YR4 was first spotted by telescopes in Chile on December 27. The telescope, operated by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS, caught it just two days after it came close to Earth.

The asteroid is now slingshotting around the solar system as it orbits the Sun.

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