Astronomers track an asteroid that could hit Earth in 2032 – Public Radio in South Carolina

Do you feel lucky? Astronomers say that the recently identified space rock, potentially large as a football field, is better than 1% likely to collide on Earth on December 22, 2032.

These chances may look pretty good (assuming you are hoping for a pass), but think about it: International Warning Asteroid Network (Iawn), global cooperation began in 2013 to monitor and track space objects that could influence Earth issued by their first ever Potential notification of the influence of asteroid For the asteroid, known as 2024, says IAWN Tim Spahar manager.

The notice aims to put the astronomical community alert to collect as much information as possible on the object of almost Earth (NEO).

“Hitting the likelihood of an impact of 1% is a really rare event,” says Spar.

How likely is it to hit?

When IAWN issued its notice on January 29th, it reported 1.3% probability of 2024. NASA JPL Center for Neo Research (Cneos) and his FellowS But as of Friday, this probability has increased a little, to 1.6%.

And time is expiring to improve the calculations for her orbit and to manage or rule out impact, says Cneos Director Paul Chodas.

“We need larger and larger telescopes to observe this object. By mid-April, he says,” It will be too faint to be found. ”

Then the next study opportunity will not reappear until 2028.

Although the current odds look like 1 in 63 chance of a direct hit, there is still a much better chance of missing out, Chodas emphasizes.

The way in which the likelihood of impact is determined is very similar to how the National Meteorological Service determines the chances that the hurricane will make the land.

“It’s kind of analogous to having a big city like New Orleans in the cone of Uragan’s uncertainty,” Chodas says.

Still, as astronomers further refine the accuracy of their orbital calculations for 2024, their chances of strike on Earth “can fall to zero almost every day,” he says. “But we don’t know that.”

Kelly’s fast, the current planetary defense employee of the NASA defense service, thinks it is important to maintain perspective.

“The world community watches this and notices that it has been reached by this threshold,” she says.

“We want to follow it. We take it seriously, but we want to put it in perspective … There is still a very low probability of affecting Earth at all.”

How big is it and how much damage can it do?

The asteroid 2024 is big, but it is certainly not a dinosaur killer. This can cause significant localized damage if they have influenced the populated area.

To appreciate their destructive potential, astronomers use something called ThorinoS Currently, Cneos ranks the asteroid A 3 on a scale of 0 to 10. “This does not happen very often,” says Chodas. In fact, nothing compares to him, as Apophis, an asteroid with a cruise size discovered in 2004, was initially thought to have a 2.7% chance of hitting Earth in 2029, but later this likelihood was lowered. In 2021, Astronomers said The land was safe by Apophis for at least another 100 years.

If 2024 hit over one city, he will definitely break the windows, “says Anne Virki, a research associate at the University of Helsinki. Virkki uses radar to track close to earth objects in the ARCIBO Observatory in Puerto Rico to the 900 tonne platform over the main radio telescope there dramatically collapsed in 2020Destruction of the instrument.

To find out how big an asteroid is, astronomers rely on the brightness of the site as a criterion. The worse objects are more large. They put in part the upper and lower bounds because it is not easy to say how reflecting can be an asteroid.

“You can judge the size based on the brightness observed without knowing exactly how reflecting … But there is still some restriction to how much the asteroids are as a whole,” Vicky says.

In the case of 2024, astronomers believe it is between 40 meters and 90 meters in diameter (130 feet to about 300 feet). For comparison, meteor who hit chelyabinskRussia on February 15, 2013 is estimated at about half of this size (17 to 20 meters or 56 to 66 feet in diameter). The site of Chelyabinsk wounds about 1500 people and causes damage to thousands of buildings in several cities.

OLG KARGOPOLO / AFP through Getty Images

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AFP via Getty Images

The energy issued over Chelyabinsk is estimated at about 500 kilotons of TNT – about 30 times more than Hiroshima’s atomic bomb. If 2024 was hit, it could be more soon like 8 to 10 megatons, says Carson Fuls, director of the Catalina Sky study at Arizona University. An explosive wave of such an impact would have a radius of several miles.

Iawn’s news says that in the event that he has hit the Earth, the corridor for the risk of impact “extends” through the Eastern Pacific, North South America, the Atlantic, Africa, the Arabian Sea and South Asia. ”

This includes many ocean, Fuls notes.

“We had 8 to 10 megatone nuclear tests in the Pacific, and this did not create a world tsunami or something close to it.”

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