‘City killer’ asteroid now has 3.1% chance of hitting Earth: NASA
https://phys.org/news/2025-02-city-killer-asteroid-chance-earth.html
‘City killer’ asteroid now has 3.1% chance of hitting Earth: NASA
https://phys.org/news/2025-02-city-killer-asteroid-chance-earth.html
34 Comments
Ah yes, time to finally pay my student loans with asteroid insurance fraud.
Have they calculated the odds of it hitting a city. There’s a lot of empty space along the strike zone.
Yes and it’s going to keep increasing until it hits 0%.
are we really going to be seeing this for the next freakin 7 years .. ?
Generic comment stating that a rising impact probability is normal until it suddenly drops to 0.
The way things are going on this planet full of fools, I’m beginning to welcome it.
*crosses fingers* Maralago … maralago … maralago.
Alright everyone, tomorrow it’s my turn to post when it hits 3.5%.
Those are rookie numbers. Let’s get that up in the doubles. Cmon!
Sorry, but I’m downvoting these fear mongering articles to hell from here on out.
Can you explain something what is it meant by 3.1% ? Is it like if 100 such asteroids come threatening us only 3.1 will hit. or Earth is bigger in volume by 100-3.1= 96.9% it will a sliding surface run by the asteroid? or 96.9% chance it will not change it’s course, thereby will miss the Earth? or 3.1 % chance of it changing course this time it hits Earth? Last 2 statements make no sense. The first 2 confusing. What they exactly mean by the original statement..
Sigh I guess these posts are a daily occurrence now 🙃
Yeah and its odds of hitting a city and killing people are slim to none. Article writers looking for to generate any buzz for themselves now.
Seem like the hit probability is going up 1% for every article which is released every other day, when it gets to 2030, it will be close to 1000%
Man it’d be nice if we could stop getting the same clickbait article with varying percentage chances daily.
Can we ban posts about this thing?
There is an imaginary line for the predicted path of this thing, and Earth is on that line. As we learn more about this asteroid that line will get smaller and more accurate.
As the line gets smaller, the amount of that line Earth covers increases. In a purely statistical way, this increases the *imaginary* probability it will hit Earth.
The number will keep increasing as we learn more about the trajectory, then it will drop to 0% once we see it won’t actually hit us.
Last night it was 2.3 percent. What, is it increasing by one percent everyday?
Yes it will keep going up until it suddenly goes to zero. The way to think about this is a pizza. Imagine you have one giant cheese pizza, except someone dropped one pepperoni on to it, you hate pepperoni. Oh the horror, one pepperoni ruining that perfect pizza! Let’s imagine at the start it is taking up .5% of the surface area of the pizza
You want to know how likely you are to be left with the slice with the pepperoni later in the night. Well at the start there is a .5% chance of getting that pepperoni as it is the surface area of the pizza (you don’t know where the slices are drawn in this example, just go with it). Well Him comes along and grabs a slice, now you observe the pizza and the pepperoni is still there, terrible. Even worse now there is less surface area in total as there is a slice missing, so the pepperoni now takes up 1% of the pizza. So I revise my assumptions to say I have a 1% chance of getting the pepperoni.
We keep doing this, Joe takes a slice… We look pepperoni is still there 2% chance. Sally takes a slice… We look 3% chance. Then Chris takes a slice… We look and guess what the pepperoni is gone… 0% chance.
It’s basically the same, except the pizza is like the size of Rhode Island. We keep looking at this rock in the sky and getting a bit more info and it will always go up until it suddenly drops to zero.
3% chance of hitting earth but what’s the percent chance of hitting a city?
This is reminding me of the book The Last Policeman. It’s about a homicide detective trying to solve a murder amidst society collapsing due to an impending asteroid impact in a few months. Basically it started out the same as this one; asteroid discovered and given almost no chance of impact, which grew to around 50%, then everyone had to wait until it emerged from behind the moon, then it was ascertained that it definitely would hit. It is an interesting premise.
I’m new to this whole asteroid impact probability, have we had other asteroids get this high of a percentage in recent times, but it didn’t get the same level of attention? Or is this actually unique?
Remind me! 7 years so I can subscribe to r/space again.
Here is a very informative video about that asteroid – and how it might be feasible to re-direct it.
https://youtu.be/kK5IXX4p2d0
I came here to say I’m just glad the title gives the actual percentage, so those paying attention know the actual increase.
These clickbait “OMGZ HIGHEST PERCENTAGE YET WE GONNA DIE” headlines drive me bonkers, because then you find an actual an article that cares about facts, only to see the chance increase was from 2.9% to 3.1% or whatever.
That’s all, just a minor rant. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
This needs to be on polymarket, where we can get a better idea of the probability.
When we turn it around it’s not as impressive:
‘City killer’ asteroid now has 96,7% chance of missing Earth: NASA
It’s very unfortunate that it might hit a city, but seeing this televised would be historic, no?
I heard it was 5% now wait now it’s 10% no wait
Another “We found a habitable planet,” wolf wolf. Any more reason to keep funding NASA? Amateur astronomers are doing a better job. 🤷♂️
In the small chance we find out it’s gonna hit earth, is it small enough to divert?
What are the chances it hits a completely unpopulated area / lands in the ocean?
I’m rooting for you, asteroid. I’m rooting for you.
can we not do this every day please there’s enough bs going on
It feels like all the people cheering for the asteroid are actually helping it get here.