Sign In
Learn bits
Geography
Mahesh

04/02/25 11:05 AM IST

Newly discovered asteroid 2024 YR4 may hit Earth in 2032.

In News
  • A newly discovered asteroid — called 2024 YR4 — has slightly more than 1% chance of crashing into Earth in 2032, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) officials said recently.
2024 YR4
  • The 2024 YR4 was first discovered in December last year by a telescope in Chile.
  • The near-Earth asteroid is as big as a football field, measuring 40 to 100 metres across.
  • It came closest to Earth on Christmas Day — passing within roughly 800,000 kilometres of Earth, about twice the distance of the moon, according to a report by the Associated Press.
  • It will eventually fade from view over the next few months, and will not be visible again until it passes Earth’s way again in 2028.
  • That is why scientists across the world are currently busy using some of the most powerful telescopes to determine 2024 YR4’s path and size before it gets out of sight.
  • To do so, scientists have until mid-April when the asteroid will become too faint to detect.
  • To check how large an asteroid is, astronomers examine the brightness of the object — brighter objects are bigger.
  • However, it is difficult to tell the exact measurements as the brightness depends on how reflective the asteroid’s surface is (asteroids do not emit a light of their own, they only reflect sunlight).
  • As a result, it is a challenge to distinguish between a large, dark-colored asteroid and a small, highly reflective one.
Destruction
  • 2024 YR4 is big but not as big as the asteroid that wiped out dinosaurs and most other extant life some 66 million years ago.
  • The 2024 YR4, however, can cause considerable localised damage in case it hits a populated area.
  • Astronomers use something called the Torino Scale to categorise an object’s destruction potential.
  • The NASA JPL Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) has currently rated the 2024 YR4 a 3 on a scale from 0 to 10.
  • Apophis asteroid, which was discovered in 2004, was initially rated 4 on the scale but was later downgraded as observations showed that it posed no threat for at least 100 years.
  • The 2024 YR4 is expected to release 8 to 10 megatons of energy in case of a crash, according to scientists.
  • The asteroid that hit Chelyabinsk, Russia, on February 15, 2023, released energy equivalent to about 500 kilotons of TNT — about 30 times more than the Hiroshima atomic bomb, according to a report by NPR.
  • It injured around 1,500 people and caused damage to thousands of buildings across several cities. That asteroid was around half the size of 2024 YR4.
Asteroids
  • Thousands of asteroids enter the Earth’s atmosphere every day.
  • Most are very small and burn up in the atmosphere due to friction — some of the larger ones burn spectacularly, and show up as fireballs in the sky.
  • Sometimes unburnt fragments hit the surface but they are not big enough to cause much damage.
  • Large asteroids, which can cause global disasters, hit Earth much less often.
  • Those bigger than a kilometre in diameter, such as the Chicxulub asteroid that sent the dinosaurs into extinction might hit in 260 million years,
  • That is because our Solar System is huge compared to the size of Earth, which means that the chance that the Earth will be hit by an object such as an asteroid is very small.
  • But smaller asteroids can also cause damage, like the one did in Chelyabinsk.
  • It all depends on the asteroid’s speed and angle of entry into Earth’s atmosphere. A 40-metre-wide rock could level an entire city.
Source- Indian Express

More Related Current Affairs View All

04 Feb

ELS cotton

'ELS cotton refers to cotton fibers with a length exceeding 1 3/8 inches or 34.925 mm.'  This makes it significantly longer than regular cotton fibers.   ELS cotton i

Read More

04 Feb

Appointment of ad-hoc judges to High Courts

'To address the growing backlog of criminal cases, the Supreme Court on January 30, 2025, allowed High Courts to appoint retired judges on an ad-hoc basis, provided they hear only

Read More

04 Feb

Production of ethanol

'Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said that India will achieve its target of 20% ethanol blending of petrol in the next two months, at least a year ahead of what was originally planned

Read More

India’s First Ai-Driven Magazine Generator

Generate Your Custom Current Affairs Magazine using our AI in just 3 steps