> 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.
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.
I'm principle, if we knew the asteroid is going to hit a populated area (which we would in 2026), we could seriously consider deflecting it to either miss earth or hit the ocean.
Here's Scott Manley from two weeks ago.
There's nothing to do now or for the layman, though, as you said. Also, this opens the fun possibility that people could redirect an asteroid into a city, but unless they can do it secretly or deniably, nuclear weapons are probably easier.
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.
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.
Let's also note we are aware of the possible corridor of impact, so if you don't live near the equator in Central America or Africa the chance of hitting YOUR city is 0%. News articles conveniently leave out this detail so they can continue to spike fear and clicks with every micro-refinement.
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.
The current risk of collision is comparable with the background risk of this type of impact, which tend to happen about once per century.
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.
That’s not even remotely comparable. This wouldn’t have been an extinction level event.
Note: I didn’t say kill.
Well then get used to this risk, because this sized rock was a once-a-century level event. You were living with this risk every year and you just didn’t know it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
before becoming "multiplanetary" we gotta get significantly better and single-planetary management.
there is not even a global "we"
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.
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.
It is not just fashionable, it is downright easy due to his personality. His methods of communication on many topics, particularly political ones, are purposefully misleading and manipulative.
But he is 100% correct about the need to become an interplanetary species. On a long enough timeline, it's the only option to keep our future selves in existence. While I'd certainly prefer to have some wholesome, highly decorated astronaut with an honest streak and a perfect temperament be the one who started SpaceX and enabled multi-planetary travel, I still believe it's better that Musk is doing it than no one at all.
> From the very beginning SpaceX’s long term business vision has been to enable middle class emigration to Mars.
That should have been enough reason for everyone to dismiss Musk, but unfortunatley too many uninformed people in charge.
Mars is -60 celcuius on average, and lack an atmosphere. Youd die off cancer from radiation exposure within a year IF you had every other life supporting system in place.
Then theres the seasonal explosive eruptions, no soil and countless other reasons this is a moronic enterprise.
This aint fashionable, its facts. The sad part is that I think Musk actually knows this but his fans too dumb to see the charlatan for what he is.
There are 40 years of work by subject matter experts on how to adapt to Mars and to adapt Mars to us. Are you aware of this work? Have you read any of it? All of these problems have reasonable solutions, and as someone who has spent 30 years in and around this field, it is frustrating to see this middlebrow dismissal be so commonplace.
If you had to choose between everyone dying and everyone except billionaires dying what would you choose?
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.
> 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.
We are perfectly capable of doing more than one thing at a time.
Clearly not. Look around.
Clearly we are. I literally have no idea what you are talking about and am dumbfounded. Across all of society there are millions of different people pushing forward just as many different projects. New Space ventures are pushing forward the space frontier, while solar, battery, and nuclear companies are moving us off fossil fuels, conservation groups are expanding protected lands, etc. Society as a whole is demonstrably able to do more than one thing.
The sea level rose by a centimeter since 2000 due to melting polar caps, everyone on earth has microplastic in their organs now and land is made permanently inhospitable by industry waste faster than ever. Agriculture is breaking down because of monocultures and overuse of fertilizers, leading to faster soil erosion and guess what? we are running out of fertilizers. Soon our only hope is to mine Greenland for the last of it.
Speaking of running out, we are fast approaching peak oil and peak copper.
PFAS is polluting our drinking water and destertification is spreading. Wildfires and hurricanes are destroying cities. Then theres major wars and countries who transitioned to war economics and western countries run by oligarchs and gangsters.
All while you dream of space exploration for the ultra rich.
I'm sorry that you have so much hate and sadness in your heart that you want to tear down and mischaracterize someone doing something positive because you feel hurt for unrelated reasons. I genuinely hope you can find a way to be happy in this world.
Even if large asteroid hits the Earth, the conditions are still better than on Mars.
> 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.
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?
We need much better tech; it’d be borderline useless right now cause any colony would be dependent for the foreseeable future.
No better way to quickly develop the myriad tech we need for a colony than making a colony.
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
Ways that have no realistic way of happening aren’t better ways.
Obviously we don’t send a group without making it not certain death first. But the person I was responding to said that it would be reliant on Earth, which, yeah, you can’t realistically develop a fully self reliant economy without making a reliant economy first.
I have two important questions.
My first question is: would you be enthusiastic about the concept of a lunar colony?
My second question is: what kinds of things do you think are viable for a colony made within the next 50 years?
Lunar seems more convenient for debugging colony creation than Martian, since the shipping time from Earth will be a whole lot shorter. Projects are a lot harder when trips to the hardware store take months rather than days.
I think Starship makes colonies a whole lot more viable, once they iron out the issues, but I generally don't know enough to answer your second question.
The certainty goes from 0 to 1 as it approaches. Given x = time until impact, what does that plot look like?
Somehow I’ve got a feeling this wont be reported nearly as much as the previous doomsday reporting.
Damn, I guess we do have to fix 2038 then...
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...
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.
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.
It's subtler compared to Idiocracy (most things are), but in the scale of movies, it's still pretty blunt.
Had to be... a lot of people still didn't get the point, or even noticed that there was one.
Sort of like Homelander in The Boys became a MAGA darling, even though he was obviously a Donald Trump satire.
The show-runners had to get so explicit in the later seasons (Pizzagate), that it effectively ruined the show.
Since most objects are getting a downgrade, can we take this into account next time when estimating the probability?
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.
So you are saying there IS a chance?
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.
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.
But government grants are being rescinded, and I'd assume Caltech depends on those.
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Here is ESA information regarding the asteroid [0]
[0] https://blogs.esa.int/rocketscience/2025/02/04/asteroid-2024...
Oh boy, I think a sharpie is about to come out.