Famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has issued a grave warning about a ‘city-killer’ asteroid that has a chance of hitting Earth.
‘At the moment, mansion-sized Asteroid 2024-YR4 has a one-in-fifty chance of hitting Earth in the next eight years,’ he posted on X, adding: ‘Now might be a bad time to reduce spending on Science. Just sayin’.
This 130-to-300-foot-wide space rock currently has a 2.3 percent chance of directly hitting our planet when it approaches on December 22, 2032, according NASA.
That’s nearly double the chance the asteroid had when it was first identified as a potential threat in December of last year.
If this space rock were to hit Earth, it would create a blast equivalent to detonating 7.7 megatons of TNT and leave a 3,000-foot-wide crater in the ground, experts say.
That means its explosion would be 500 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II.
The odds of a direct impact are low. But astronomers will be watching it very closely so that they know if and when it becomes a serious threat as early as possible, giving space agencies ample time to launch a defense mission.
All that monitoring will require a major scientific effort. But the discovery of 2024 YR4 comes at a time when the Trump administration is making deep cuts to research funding.
