Step
The media is full of reports of a “city murderer” asteroid called 2024 Yr4 that is destined to affect the Earth in 2032, with astronomers ready to be left powerless as they move from telescopes by 2028. Here’s what experts think .
Estimated asteroid orbit 2024 yr4.
The main facts
All asteroids orbite the sun, and some have orbital trails that cross the Earth. This is the case with 2024 years, one of the about 20,000 Apollo -type asteroids that orbite the sun from the same distance as the Earth, so are a possible threat.
2024 Yr4 orbits the sun every four years on Earth, so it passes relatively close to Earth once every four years. That just happened. 2024 Yr4 was found, for the first time, by the latest system of asteroid land alarm on December 27, 2024, two days after its nearest access, when it reached within 515,000 miles (828,800 kilometers) of the Earth, about twice as much than twice as much as the moon.
Its four -year -old orbit has had astronomers to try to examine the archive images from the sky telescopes from 2020, 2016, 2012 etc. Its trajectory also means that it will pass near the Earth in December 2028 and 2032, when its calculated orbit only has potentially affected the land on December 22, 2032.
There is currently a 2.3% chance of hitting the ground. For this reason, it sits on the list of objects of objects whose orbital trajectories suggest a potential impact with the Earth in the future. It also has a value of 3 on the degree of risk of Turin’s influence, the list of asteroids of the international astronomical union approaching the Earth. This is higher than any other asteroid, though as much data on his orbit has been obtained, it is expected that they will eventually be declared safe.
Should we worry about asteroid 2024 Yr4 that affects Earth?
“People get a somewhat arbitrary stories about killer asteroids, but I think this is a little different,” said Danny Steeghs, head of the astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom in an interview. “This is rare. Once every five years, you may have something like this, but mostly threats disappear. Current impact events are one hundred years. “
An asteroid as threatening as 2024 years is valid for news because it does not happen too often, however it will almost certainly not hit the Earth. “It can spend 50 times the diameter of the Earth,” said Luca Concli, Manager of the Neo Coordination Center and the Neomir study scientist in the European Agency site in Frascati, Italy, in an interview. The converri has plotted the region where the asteroid can pass in 2032. “The uncertainty we have is much greater than the distance between the Earth and the Moon,” he said.
If he hits the Earth, he will do so on December 22, 2032, with the “Corridor of Risk” calculated beyond the Eastern Pacific Ocean, North America, the Atlantic Ocean, Africa, the Arabian Sea and South Asia, according Astronomers may be accurate about this because the asteroid orbit plane is known, so this risk corridor is unlikely to change, though it is likely to narrow it on whether and when an impact is immediate.
How big is the 2024 yr4 asteroid?
Judging how bright it appears in the images of the telescope, 2024 years is thought to be between 130 and 300 ft. (40 and 90 meters) in diameter. This is a large range, which astronomers want to refine. After all, an asteroid 300ft./90m is about 11 times larger in volume than a 130ft asteroid./40m, making it much more devastating in influence. The difference between, say, a commercial plane and a large navigation ship. Nor do scientists know its density or from what is done, just that it is not ice or metal.
When it was first captured in December by the last system of the latest asteroid land alarm-using a modest telescope-it is very bright. It was also discovered by many other telescopes, including Steeghs and his colleagues on December 27, 2024, using the Goto telescope in Australia, which scans the sky for transitional objects, so sees asteroids smoothly. “Already fading and now we need the biggest telescopes available for us to have potentially further measurement of it in the coming weeks and months to try to refine its orbit,” Steeghs said.
Asteroid 2024 Yr4 As seen in the late 2024 decemner by the Optical Optical Wave of Gravitational Wave … [+]
Background
By Heaven and telescopeThe 350 observations of 2024 years have so far been made by astronomers to over 50 observations since the international asteroid warning network issued a rare warning on January 29, 2025, but is a race against time. Today, it is half of the sun’s distance from the ground to the constellation of Major Canis, and falling quickly. By April it will be invisible to land -based optical telescopes. NASA’s James Webb’s Spatial Telescope will be used to make about four hours of infrared observations in March and May before losing the object’s viewing. Its data will focus on the heat of 2024 Yr4, not its orbit, but can help refine where it can hit the ground.
After these latest observations, it will not be by the end of 2028, when 2024 years approached the Earth next time astronomers will take a different view of it. The problem is, that transition will be distant, with 2024 years to reach only within 4.7 million miles (7.5 million kilometers). This will make radar observations – the only type of observation that can determine the size of the asteroid with certainty – impossible. Radar observations will not be applicable by 2032, just a few months before it could hit the Earth.
Further reading