A newly discovered city-killer asteroid is keeping astronomers on high alert as its odds of striking Earth in 2032 continue to shift. This video includes ACM-produced voiceover powered by AI.
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00:00If it hit a city it would completely obliterate a very large city.
00:04A newly discovered city killer asteroid is keeping astronomers on high alert
00:08as its odds of striking Earth in 2032 continue to shift. First spotted in December 2024,
00:16asteroid 2024 YR4 measures between 40 and 100 metres wide and could release 500 times the energy
00:25of the Hiroshima bomb if it impacts.
00:27There's a statistical chance that this asteroid might hit the Earth and the current probability
00:33of that is about 2%. Scientists have mapped a potential impact corridor stretching from
00:38South America to India covering an estimated 100 million people. Initial calculations gave
00:44the asteroid a 1.3% chance of hitting Earth but that jumped to 3.2% before settling at 1.5%.
00:53Experts say the risk is expected to fluctuate as they refine its orbit with more precise predictions
00:59expected by 2028. For now the odds still favour a near miss but astronomers worldwide are watching
01:05closely. The most likely outcome is that it will not hit and so nobody's panicking yet. Right now
01:10we're collecting data, collecting ideas about what we would do about this thing as we learn
01:15more about it. Nobody's hitting the panic button yet.