If You're Along The Blue Line You're In The Danger Zone

Another week has passed, and there’s been another update on 2024 YR4, and the news wasn’t good. Unfortunately, this Statue of Liberty-sized asteroid has rocketed straight to the top of the charts, competing with the speed of a Taylor Swift new release. It’s now the most threatening thing in space, about life on Earth.

What does that mean? 2024 YR4, the asteroid newly discovered in the last days of 2024, saw its chance of hitting Earth rise to 3.1 %. It’s been in multiple news posts and the men and women at NASA and every space agency around the globe on pins and needles. There was an emergency declaration made to retask the James Webb Telescope.

If it sounds familiar, that’s probably because you’ve seen the movie Armagedon, and remember the actor playing the role at NASA excitedly telling his co-workers, “We’re moving the Hubble.” We could be living in an example of life imitating art.

Even though the reality is there’s still a 96 to 97% chance that 2024 YR4 will miss us, it has people concerned because as the asteroid is studied, the chances continue to grow, albeit, in small increments. We’ve seen it go from a 1.1% chance to a 3.1% chance.

Then there’s the projected path of the asteroid. This is the path that covers the approximate areas where it could impact. Unfortunately, this also covers an area where nearly 100 million people reside. Several major cities are included in a list of potential impacts, with one area in India having nearly 28 million people.

Imagine the devastation of something 50 times the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima during WW2. That’s the early estimate, before a complete analysis of the asteroid’s composition. With a stellar speed of 38,000 miles per hour, the impact would be unlike anything humankind has seen. What would it be like?

Now that you've watched that, and presumably thought about it, feel free to go change your pants. It's a scary proposition to consider, particularly if you live along the path predicted to be in the most danger. Imagine if you're one of the 100 million people on the path. You're hoping that the odds start going down and stay that way, or so we'd imagine.

The fact is, with the governments of Earth not able to get along, it's going to fall to the few countries that can work together on the problem. We can't do anything about it, without the scientists in the various space agencies formulating a plan, and someone paying for that plan. It's unlikely that it'll go unchallenged.

We shouldn't be looking for the deep blue heroes of the movies to solve our problems, but instead, the brightest minds that NASA and the European Space Agency have to offer. And there are hundreds, if not more, actively watching the stars for such threats heading in our direction. Sadly, there's a short amount of time to work with.

Think about the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) that was performed in 2022. It was an amazing feat of engineering, rocket science, and mathematics. In the beginning, the Mission cost approximately 324 Million dollars. The people at NASA spent some years preparing it, planning, and deploying the DART craft into space. Then, it took from November of 2021 until September of the following year before they'd know if it would work.

The mission was deemed a success. DART impacted Dimorphos and redirected it. So, the Office of Planetary Defense and NASA will be watching carefully.

As an example, 2024 YR4 has been given another calculation today. According to NASA, it's now as low as a 1 percent chance of an impact. Que the sighs of relief.