Washington, United States:
A colossal explosion in the sky, unleashing energy hundreds of times more than the Hiroshima bomb. An almost as bright blinding flash as the sun. Shock waves powerful enough to flatten everything per miles. It may sound apocalyptic, but a freshly detected asteroid almost detected the size of a football field now is more likely of one percent of colliding with the earth in approximately eight years.
Such an impact has the potential for devastation at the city level, depending on where it happens.
Scientists are not panic, but they are watching closely.
“At this point, we are paying a lot of attention, we obtain as many assets as we can observe,” Bruce Betts, head scientist of the planetary society, told AFP.
Rare finding
Nickname 2024 years 4, the asteroid was first seen on December 27, 2024 by the El Sauce Observatory in Chile. According to their brightness, astronomers estimate that it has between 130 and 300 feet (40-90 meters) wide.
For the eve of the New Year, he had landed on the Kelly Fast desktop, an acting planetary defense officer of the NASA US Space Agency, as an object of concern.
“You get observations, they leave again. This seemed to have the potential to stay,” he told AFP.
The risk assessment continued to rise, and on January 29, the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN), a global planetary defense collaboration, issued a memorandum.
According to the latest calculations of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, there is a 1.6 percent chance of the asteroid hitting the Earth on December 22, 2032.
If it hits, the possible impact sites include on the Eastern Ocean of the Pacific, the north of South America, the Atlantic Ocean, Africa, the Arabian Sea and Asia del Sur, the Memorando states IAWN.
2024 years follows a highly elliptical orbit of four years, which swings through the internal planets before shooting Mars and Jupiter.
For now, he moves away from the earth: his next closed step will not reach until 2028.
“The probabilities are very good that not only this does not reach the earth, but at some point in the coming months or a few years, that probability will be zero,” Betts said.
A similar scenario was developed in 2004 with Apophis, an initially projected asteroid to have a 2.7 percent chance of hitting the earth in 2029. Other observations ruled out an impact.
Destructive potential
The most infamous asteroid impact occurred 66 million years ago, when a space of six miles wide triggered a global winter, cleaning dinosaurs and 75 percent of all species. On the contrary, 2024 years 4 is in the category of “City murderer”.
“If you put it on Paris or London or New York, you basically eliminate the entire city and some around,” Betts said.
The best modern comparison is the Tunguska event of 1908, when an asteroid or kite fragment that measures 30-50 meters exploded on Siberia, flattening 80 million trees in 770 square miles (2,000 square kilometers).
Like that impactor, it would be expected that 2024 years 4 explode in the sky, instead of leaving a crater on the ground.
“We can calculate the energy … using mass and speed,” said Andrew Rivkin, a planetary astronomer in the Johns Hopkins applied physics laboratory.
By 2024 years 4, the explosion of an air cap would match about eight TNT megatons, more than 500 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb.
If it exploits the ocean, the impact would be less worrying, unless it occurs near a coast that triggers a tsunami.
We can stop it
The good news, experts stress, is that we have a lot of time to prepare.
Rivkin directed the investigation for NASA’s Dart 2022 mission, which successfully pushed an asteroid of its course using a spacecraft, a strategy known as a “kinetic impactor.”
The objective asteroid did not represent a threat to the Earth, which makes it an ideal test subject.
“I don’t see why it wouldn’t work,” he said again. The most important question is whether the main nations would finance this mission if their own territory was not threatened.
There are other more experimental ideas.
The lasers could vaporize part of the asteroid to create a thrust effect, pushing it from the course. A “gravity tractor” has also been theorized, a large spacecraft that slowly pulls the asteroid using its own gravitational pull.
If everything else fails, the long warning means that the authorities could evacuate the impact zone.
“No one should be afraid of this,” said Fast. “We can find these things, make these predictions and have the ability to plan.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a feed union).
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