Nasa has increased the odds once again of ‘city killer’ asteroid YR4 whacking into Earth in 2032.
The likelihood is now 2.6%, meaning around 1 in 38 chance of a direct hit.
It had been hoped that examining the space rock more closely would reduce the odds of impact, however the odds have now gone up from 2.3%.
It comes after a former astronaut told how the asteroid would essentially act like a giant grenade being hurled from the heavens.
Chris Hadfield, a former commander of the International Space Station, said this space rock could potentially strike with a force 500 times more powerful than the atomic bombs which ended World War Two.
‘Think of the destruction we wraught on each other during Hiroshima and Nagasaki,’ he said. ‘This is 500 times more powerful, just because of the energy of it coming through the atmosphere, causing shockwaves, and because of the heating, exploding.
‘It’s like a grenade. A grenade is no bigger than your fist, but it can do damage over a wide area. This is a grenade that’s 60 metres across.’
He added the rock was like a ‘bullet zeroing in on Earth from deep space’, travelling at around 17 kilometres per second.’
So far, so terrifying – and if you hoped learning more about the asteorid would be reassuring, that’s not necessarily true.
Of course, the likelihood is still that it will pass us by. Even if not, it’s more likely to splash down in the ocean than in London or Manhattan.
Still though… a 2.3% chance means you’d be less likely to bump into a friend in town, or lose your luggage at the airport.
It’s the kind of hairy statistic that means we’d probably like to take precautions just in case.
This weekend, celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrass Tyson also hammered home the potential dangers (even with a lower chance of impact), saying: ‘At the moment, mansion-sized Asteroid 2024-YR4 has a one-in-fifty chance of hitting Earth in the next eight years. Now might be a bad time to reduce spending on Science. Just sayin’.
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