In a rare "time-critical" decision, the James Webb Space Telescope will study the true size of the "potentially hazardous" asteroid 2024 YR4 twice over the next few months. The asteroid has a roughly 2.3% chance of impacting Earth in 2032.
  • db2@lemmy.world
    12411·
    12 天前

    The way things are going down here I’m cheering for the asteroid tbh.

    • Singletona082@lemmy.worldEnglish
      631·
      12 天前

      Eh calculated impact path ranges from south america through africa and india. None of these are where i want it to land.

      • Grimy@lemmy.world
        32·
        12 天前

        Same here but I figure the rates are going to be really cheap so I can just use up my vacation days and travel to wherever it hits.

    • RegalPotoo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      41·
      12 天前

      Even if it’s at the top end of the predicted range, an impact would be ~40MT equivalent. Enough to level a city, but not an extinction event by any means; plus the likely impact path is across central America, the Atlantic, central Africa and north India - not really regions that have the resources to respond to a threat like this. Personally I’m hoping it misses, because I don’t see the counties that could do something about it stepping up right now, so you’d be looking at maybe 100 million people displaced from their homes and an insurmountable humanitarian crisis

      • vga@sopuli.xyz
        432·
        12 天前

        Personally I’m hoping it misses

        In midst of all this funnymaking, I’d like to point out for the record that anybody who genuinely wants it to hit Earth is fucking insane. Some combination of sociopath and psychopath.

        • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
          111·
          12 天前

          The only scenario in which I would really want it to hit would be if it would lead to moderate global cooling without hitting populated areas. If it can dislodge enough particulates over one of the poles to block out some sun and give us a couple of years of reprieve from global warming, without actually killing anyone or destroying much wildlife, that would be nice.

          • MataVatnik@lemmy.world
            101·
            12 天前

            It would be an ice agea where crops fail, people starve and we go back to business as usual.

          • anomnom@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            1·
            11 天前

            Well what if it hits Dallas, or Riyadh? That would probably slow down oil production.

            I wonder if an impact in the middle of the oil fields in like Ghawar ir Kuwait would be enough.

      • troed@fedia.io
        20·
        12 天前

        Most countries on Earth would treat this as a global catastrophe and put up funds regardless of where it’s projected to impact.

        Maybe not the current US, though.

      • kreskin@lemmy.world
        2·
        11 天前

        It goes without saying that this is all because of <enter your deity name here> disapproval of <enter your hated group here>.

        And the flyby is a test of ‘deity’s’ approval of our next actions. Either way we should immediately lower taxes on the rich.

        /s

      • mipadaitu@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        12 天前

        I like how he brought up the fact that if we try and fail, then what? What happens if NASA bumps it just enough to push it from Africa to India?

  • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
    471·
    12 天前

    An impact from such a rock wouldn’t trigger a mass extinction like the much larger, dino-snuffing Chicxulub impactor did 66 million years ago. But an asteroid that size could wreak regional havoc similar to the Tunguska impactor that flattened some 80 million trees in the Siberian wilderness in 1908

    • bss03@infosec.pub
      3·
      12 天前

      I don’t believe it is a possible target given how the orbital disk of the asteroid intersects with the surface of the earth. That’s of we don’t change the orbit, if we decide that is necessary, we’ll probably try to get a complete miss instead of just changing the impact site.

      DON’T LOOK UP

    • Wahots@pawb.social
      11·
      12 天前

      DC, please. Move all the good museums and historical stuff first, but don’t tell the administration.

      • CheeseNoodle@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        12 天前

        Unfortunately in a worst case scenario this gets very political, if we do something about it in advance an impactor probe should do the job, if we decide to play the 1/50 odds and lose then the most effective short notice method is a nuke. Not a direct strike but a near detonation which vaporizes a section of the surface of the object with the outgoing plasma effectively functioning as a massive thruster. Actually doing this is not trivial but not hard either (from an engineering standpoint), the tricky part would be actually managing to launch it without every nation on earth that happens to have a beligerant leader saber rattling and stone walling the prospect of a launch until its too late even for a nuke to do any good.

      • andros_rex@lemmy.world
        31·
        11 天前

        Well, this administration has been forcing politics into NASA by cutting funding and making all female/POC/LGBT employees unsafe/invisible. It’d be lovely if NASA was free from politics, but as we saw from Trumps last appointment of the totally unqualified Bridenstone, politics is shoving its ugly dick into science.

      • Owljfien@lemm.ee
        78·
        12 天前

        Ikr, I have a bunch of terms on my filter list but then its in the comments anyway

        • Opinionhaver@feddit.ukEnglish
          49·
          12 天前

          I have separate filter lists for both, posts and comments but I need to keep adding new ones every day. I guess “Mar a lago” is the one I’m adding today.

    • mipadaitu@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      11 天前

      The space rock is likely not going to hit earth. If it does it’s unlikely to hit land. If it does, it’s unlikely to hit major population centers.

      If it defies all odds and does that, it’s going to happen in a location that is already struggling, and not in an area that’s causing the suffering.

      • Doorbook@lemmy.world
        1·
        10 天前

        Hopefully it doesn’t hit republic city, the Maga people will fill the media with " the deep state controlled it "

  • samus12345@lemm.eeEnglish
    10·
    12 天前

    Xcom programmers say the asteroid has a roughly 2.3% chance of impacting Earth in 2032.

    So it’s a sure thing!

    • Rooty@lemmy.world
      4·
      11 天前

      Can’t wait to empty a SMG clip into an alien’s face point blank and miss.

    • bss03@infosec.pub
      2·
      12 天前

      Apophis missed the keyhole, so no chance of impact this century, sorry. It would be a much bigger event, too, about 10-30 times the energy.

      But, this noise does remind me of 2004.

      • Singletona082@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        12 天前

        Huh didn’t think the keyhole event was til 2028 swingby. Neat. Wonder if Esa or Jacsa can get probes up in time for its next approach.

        • bss03@infosec.pubEnglish
          2·
          12 天前

          Yeah, I misspoke. I meant “will miss”, we’ve got enough observations that we know the “keyhole event” that was a possibility is no longer a possibility.

          • Singletona082@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            12 天前

            Fair. All jokes and nihilism aside. Someone should take advantage of the flyby to send something up to study it.

            • bss03@infosec.pubEnglish
              2·
              11 天前

              I think it’s hard to justify since we’ve already done a successful asteroid rendezvous (a few, IIRC) and it’s unclear (to me) what we could learn from studying the surface of this particular one or even studying from the surface of this one.

              If we knew how to move it from solar orbit to terrestrial or lunar orbit and then use it as raw materials, that might be profitable. Or at least a nice engineering challenge on the way to profitable asteroid mining. But, I think the delta-V we’d have to achieve for that might me more than we are capable of right now.

              I do wonder if we could put something on it and use it as part of a measurement tool, like how they can stitch together multiple 'scope sensors? I forget what the name of that is. Differential capture? Diffusion imaging?

              It is an interesting opportunity, we rarely get such close flybys well predicted, but someone closer to the science / smarter than me would have to put together a mission plan.