NASA Downgrades the Risk of 2024 YR4 to Below 1%
52 comments
·February 23, 2025lblume
jmull
Alarm should be a precursor to action. In this case, what action should an alarmed person take?
To put another way, the expected value you should be evaluating isn't something like the megatons of a strike but the difference in outcomes of a strike or miss vs your actions. I would guess there are few meaningful actions you could take (you have no control over or knowledge of where it would strike, if it strikes). With the delta in outcomes close to zero, no alarm is reasonable.
You might review your emergency evacuation plan (or create one if you don't have one). It's very unlikely to be needed in this case, but for all causes over your lifetime, the chances it turns out useful are probably not negligible.
Out_of_Characte
These types of probabilities aren't absolute in the same way that flipping a coin has 50/50 odds.
Its more like a monty hall problem, each door either contains an asteroid collision, or proof that its not going to hit earth. But we dont have perfect information on the size, albedo, spin or orbit of the asteroid so most doors are closed. Each time we open a door and do not find the asteroid, the probability of finding proof of an earth collision AND a proof that its going to miss will go up.
Calculating a spacecraft/asteroid trajectory is already precise enough to land a mars rover in the correct target area. But we know the exact properties of the spacecraft so all the doors are open.
jetrink
This is not the type of asteroid that would end all life on earth. It has the ability to destroy a city, but even if it hit the earth, it would probably land in the ocean or a remote area where few people would be harmed. We should not be alarmed about a 2% x 0.28% probability that a city or town is destroyed in ten years.
muzani
Yeah, even if it hits, chances are it'll end up in the ocean, and the predicted area of impact isn't anywhere near my home.
I still think the odds of something more destructive happening is higher - earthquake-tsunamis, hurricanes, nuclear warfare, large volcanoes, covid25, etc.
adastra22
The current risk of collision is comparable with the background risk of this type of impact, which tend to happen about once per century.
whycome
It’s been as high as 3.1% No one would be cool if I pointed a gun at them and said there was only a 1 in 32 chance that I’d hit them.
adastra22
That’s not even remotely comparable. This wouldn’t have been an extinction level event.
null
whycome
Note: I didn’t say kill.
add-sub-mul-div
If you said there was a 3.1% chance that a gun was going to be fired in a random location on the planet and kill 10,000 people in that area, the probability of both those things happening and affecting you is negligible.
bdhcuidbebe
Somehow I’ve got a feeling this wont be reported nearly as much as the previous doomsday reporting.
trebligdivad
Damn, I guess we do have to fix 2038 then...
delichon
It's nice not to be finding out now, but I wonder if we could estimate a city killer's track well enough to make it worthwhile to evacuate a major city like Mumbai, and if it could be done if needed. And how certain we would have to be to justify an evacuation that would itself be deadly. I'm glad it wouldn't be my call.
I've argued here about the importance of becoming multiplanetary and had many people disagree. Even at just a .28% risk of possibly getting hit with a little rock like this, it's a great argument for building a space faring civilization.
rafram
The Earth is very pretty and comfortable. Mars isn’t. Personally, I’ll opt to ride it out at home, where we have things like trees and oxygen.
notahacker
Yeah. Sure, a bigger asteroid could cause a lot more problems than this one would if it hit. Ask the dinosaurs. But if you haven't got the tech for humanity to survive the fallout from a big impact on Earth, you don't have the tech to make a viable colony on Mars.
ysofunny
before becoming "multiplanetary" we gotta get significantly better and single-planetary management.
there is not even a global "we"
delichon
That's a deeply authoritarian notion, because it implies that we need to subordinate society to a single will for long term survival. I think that the inverse is closer to true, because our only long term hope is in extraterrestrial diaspora.
bdhcuidbebe
> I think that the inverse is closer to true
Thats where we at now. I suppose you’re just another climate denier who cant read the writing on the wall.
scarfaceneo
Exactly. When people like Musk try and brainwash you into believing “we” should be a multi planetary species, what he means is “they” should be, and “you” should fund it.
adastra22
It is fashionable to hate on Musk, sometimes for good reason, but this comment is straight up wrong. From the very beginning SpaceX’s long term business vision has been to enable middle class emigration to Mars.
ema
If you had to choose between everyone dying and everyone except billionaires dying what would you choose?
adastra22
We are perfectly capable of doing more than one thing at a time.
thinkingtoilet
Clearly not. Look around.
d0mine
Even if large asteroid hits the Earth, the conditions are still better than on Mars.
bdhcuidbebe
> I've argued here about the importance of becoming multiplanetary and had many people disagree.
Unfortunatley for humankind, there is no second earth to move to. We need to care for the planet we inhabit, as its the only one capable of supporting life in our solar system, and interstellar travel is probably hundreds of years away.
Even if we could move elsewhere, the chances any one of us would be rich enough to go there is a rounding error to zero.
ourmandave
I think about all the people who refuse evac orders and ride out hurricanes. Or worse, go down to the beach where huge surges are forecasted.
How many would stay in the case of an asteroid?
BriggyDwiggs42
We need much better tech; it’d be borderline useless right now cause any colony would be dependent for the foreseeable future.
ericd
No better way to quickly develop the myriad tech we need for a colony than making a colony.
dartos
Yes there is a better way to develop tech without knowingly sending a group of people to their deaths.
We could throw 100s of billions of dollars into it.
But it’s harder to sell to investors than language models
energy123
The certainty goes from 0 to 1 as it approaches. Given x = time until impact, what does that plot look like?
MaxGripe
Since most objects are getting a downgrade, can we take this into account next time when estimating the probability?
ema
No, if you start out with 5% probability it means that you have a 95% probability that further information will eventually downgrade it to 0% and 5% probability that it will eventually upgrade to 100%. So further information making a low probability event even less probable is expected.
black_puppydog
In a convergence of "Don't look up" and whatever the f*k weird movie we're in right now, I now ask myself whether Elon found some interesting metal he wants to mine off of that asteroid...
retrocryptid
Apropos of Don't Look Up, 2024 YR4 doesn't yet have an official name (or at least I haven't heard it if it does.) So my friends have started calling it "2024 Dibiasky" as a joke.
renegade-otter
Outside of Ariana Grande's grotesquely long musical number (they had to get their money's worth), Don't Look Up will age well. It's a classier, subtler version of Idiocracy.
Macha
It's subtler compared to Idiocracy (most things are), but in the scale of movies, it's still pretty blunt.
renegade-otter
So you are saying there IS a chance?
retrocryptid
I was sort of pulling for the asteroid and got depressed when I heard this, but then realized... 0.28 percent is not zero. There's still enough of a chance it'll hit that we're going to be forced to take it seriously.
In the states we're dismantiling our research and development infrastructure (will the last person at Stennis or JPL please turn out the lights) but China has been making strides and the ESA has a pretty decent record of launching things, so maybe there's enough time for them to plan, launch and execute a DART-like impact mission on 2024 YR4.
We will know we're living in a simulation if North Korea puts a nuke on a large rocket and successfully deflects it.
rafram
AFAIK JPL has not actually been affected by the current turmoil. JPL employees technically work for Caltech, not the federal government, so they’re pretty well insulated. They did a layoff (5%) in November but haven’t done anything since.
genter
But government grants are being rescinded, and I'd assume Caltech depends on those.
pintxo
[flagged]
landosaari
Here is ESA information regarding the asteroid [0]
[0] https://blogs.esa.int/rocketscience/2025/02/04/asteroid-2024...
renegade-otter
Oh boy, I think a sharpie is about to come out.
> These percentages are of course tiny and pose no cause for alarm
Do people really think like this? Fairly small probabilities of catastrophic events don't generally result in a negligible expected value.