A colossal explosion in the sky, unleashing energy hundreds of times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. A blinding flash nearly as bright as the Sun. Shockwaves powerful enough to flatten everything for miles.
It may sound apocalyptic, but a newly detected asteroid nearly the size of a football field now has a greater than one percent chance of colliding with Earth in about eight years.
Such an impact has the potential for city-level devastation, depending on where it strikes.
Scientists aren’t panicking yet, but they are watching closely.
“At this point, it’s ‘Let’s pay a lot of attention, let’s get as many assets as we can observing it,’” Bruce Betts, chief scientist of The Planetary Society, told AFP.
Dubbed 2024 YR4, the asteroid was first spotted on December 27, 2024, by the El Sauce Observatory in Chile. Based on its brightness, astronomers estimate it is between 130 and 300 feet (40–90 meters) wide.
By New Year’s Eve, it had landed on the desk of Kelly Fast, acting planetary defense officer at US space agency NASA, as an object of concern.
“You get observations, they drop off again. This one looked like it had the potential to stick…