Jared talks 2024 YR4 Asteroid and its increasing chance of hitting Earth

2024 yr4 is a asteroid that was discovered in late December of last year it's somewhere on the order we think it's probably about 50 to 60 Metter across it is a asteroid that has the potential for hitting the Earth we're keeping a very close eye on it because right now we have so little observation data of it that we cannot remove Earth from the area of uncertainty or basically the big space where we expect the asteroid to travel through as it goes by the Earth in December of 2032 so we've got eight uh eight is less than eight years now to kind of look at and gather what we can about this asteroid and see what we can do so back last Sunday the chance at that time the probability was 1 in 71 or 1.4% throughout the week it has actually increased which is I don't want to say like unexpected but also like huh look at that there there it goes up um yesterday it was at its peak which was one in 42 chance or a 2.4 ch% chance of hitting the Earth today it's dropped just a little bit but it's still elevated compared to where it was for our last show today it's a 1 and 145 chance which is 2.2% so we're I guess we're up almost a full perc % on on where we were last week but it's it's important to remember that we still have observations to do so at the moment we cannot obviously so we can't really rule out an impact event at the moment there's still enough time that we can like figure this out and have the time to maybe build a deflector if need be basically build a dark Mission and hit it really hard with enough time out so we're just going to we're going to kind of have to do this the really big issue with it is that this is not a big asteroid and asteroids are really dark if you go out and you look at like the tarmac of the road imagine something that's four to five times darker than that and that's what we're trying to look at from millions of kilometers away so yeah this is uh this is this is really tough we're really only we really we have about 6 to 8 weeks left for observations even with the biggest telescopes here on Earth and even then we're still having issues seeing it because of how far away it is how small and how dark it is because that's just the nature of asteroids they're dark by the way just to let everybody know this is not to scale oh my God it's totally to scale look at that that's an Extinction that's a planet hitting our planet that would that would blow the crust off and all the way down to the that that would destroy the Earth even before impact just the gravitational field ripping us apart it just would end well yeah this is not that's bigger than our moon have a pre the ring system of our oceans first by the way um this this actually I I don't know where this simulation came from but this actually is pretty close um to the the actual areas it would impact on the earth we're talking going all the way to the West through uh the Middle East through Africa into the Atlantic Ocean just off of South America there that's your potential impact area here on the earth and just to just to emphasize this this is about 60 we think it's about 60 meters if it were to hit this is what we call a city killer so basically anything within a 50 kilometer radius would be obliterated by it and if it were to land in the ocean it's actually not big enough to generate a tsunami of of substantial size obviously it would still make you know waves that would be a couple meters in height either at at both the Western shores of South America or the Eastern shores of South America and the Western shores of Africa but it wouldn't be something that would if it were to hit in the middle of nowhere it wouldn't like it like this is not going to end all life on Earth or this isn't going to cause a nuclear winter or anything like that but obviously still we don't want this to hit we want to prevent it from hitting the Earth if we can because one that's just a good it's just good to do that right this would be a really great way to test out the technology and our ability to respond to it and we actually already are you know we have this thing called the Torino scale which is what we use to measure the sort of Threat Level of near Earth asteroids and potentially hazardous objects we're we're at Torino level three with this object which basically means hey astronomical Community we we have something on our hands and we need to take a a look at this so right now every telescope that we can use is dedicating their free time to trying to observe this asteroid so that way we can get a better idea with it in a couple months it's going to be positioned well enough that we should be able to use jdub to take a look at it as well and get more information out of it and get better positional data with it as well but even then there's still that's probably going to be a significant enough margin for error that you need to kind of figure it out and 2028 is when it comes by again when it comes by again in 2028 it's going to be you know several million kilometers away so it's not a very close pass like this year was so it's not really going to help us out yeah this this is this is an interesting situation that's happening right now it's definitely not don't don't panic but do know that the right people at the right places are doing all the right things to try to figure out what they need to do next can we send up a giant parachute just like a solar sale to slow it down uh so that doesn't work also something that won't work um as well uh Sharpies you can't put a sharpy and draw where you want it to actually be at for it to work um with it oh Dy you said solar seale I'm sorry I heard Parish did you say parachute or solar sale I said both both okay so parachute not going to work right cuz like air and everything but a solar sale if you got it up there with enough time yeah you very well could but at the same time like that solar sale would probably have need to have been on there like now something else I find really interesting about this one in particular is there's only one other object that has been this risky uh since we've been tracking this stuff apus APO yeah apus hit actually level four on the Areno scale before which was basically like hey we need to really take a look at this but it was only that way for a couple of days before it dropped back down it was so far and that was the risk of it hitting in 2029 there's still a risk that it could hit you know farther in the future but not as big of a risk as they thought for those couple of days yeah I think it's in like the 22nd century when they think that it got risk of hitting or something so we'll let Starfleet deal with that we're going to you know keep an eye on it and try to figure it out and see what we need do but also I I am fairly confident that they'll be able to figure uh figure it out so I mean that's it's what they do we know from Dart that a kinetic impactor will work like we did that with dart Dart was supposed to change the orbit of dioros the the moon of didos that we hit by like 30 seconds like that was the target goal and they did it by something like half an hour in that in that impact so we know that that not only does the kinetic impactor work it works really really well so we'll have to see and just just to let you know about how like confident we are that something like Dart would work this asteroid 2024 yr4 is smaller than diddos was or is like we didn't blow up diddos it's still there uh right or no excuse me dioros so we think that with like a kinetic impactor like Dart we would actually be able to hit it even harder and and move it with even more velocity at that point but there's also something that comes with that too that I was actually talking with about someone at Griffith yesterday which is that you got to make sure that you hit it in a way that is sort of like politically okay because you don't want to knock it in a way that causes it to that like you can knock it and you can make sure that it doesn't that it ends up missing the Earth like hit it with enough that it really does hit the Earth but like what if it what if that imp that line of potential impact has to go through China and then through Russia before it finally is like off of the surface of the Earth or what if you have to send it like down through Australia or something like that like do we have to ask the permission of these countries to be able to do something like that we were like huh like politically you have to think about that too this is going to be an interesting couple of years if we can going to be fun to see the uh the space race and we have five different probes from different nations yeah and then also like you know like what a great what a what a great start to a Sci-Fi story you know the this Rogue Nation decides to knock an asteroid in the wrong direction after it's already been knocked to you know try and steer it towards their enemy or something you know like that that would be pretty funny so EA asks is is this a hard rock uh Hard Rock Hard Solid Rock or block of metal it spins too fast to be a rubble pile so that's a great question ea uh it is too small for us to determine whether it's a solid object or a rubble pile but you did bring up the fact that it does spin fast it is it is a fast what we call a fast Rotator which means that it rotates very fast it literally goes around once every I believe it's 19 and a half minutes which is really fast for an asteroid so most of them take you several days if not at least a vast majority of the day for it to go around so we'll have to we'll have to see jdub may be able to to look at it and figure that out but right now we don't know just because of the fact that it's outbound and it's tiny and it's really tough to tell we we do know that looking at the way the light curve is or basically how much light we see coming from it as it's rotating we do have a a solid guess that it is actually elongated so that it's not like a spherical shape it's actually maybe like a like sort of like a baguette or something like that that's really the only shape I could think of to describe it as but again uh the really the only ways to do this are to get radar info on it so basically aim a big radio telescope at it blast it with some radio waves and get that back like radar or fly a spacecraft out directly to it and as as I was told by a cooworker yesterday the only time that it's going to get close enough to get radar data from it will be when it is inbound in 2032 so basically when it's you know would it would be months away from Impact or basically too late if you want to fly something direct with it then you know you gotta you got to launch that to actually go get it and I I mean I think we could do it if we really wanted to that that requires the the political will to pull that off so so airbo was pretty big right it was it was what 1,00 feet across and then fast uh which is in China their massive radio telescope that they have those are still not big enough because of the fact that this is such a small object this is 60 meters this is not big you know this is not this not even the size of a of a soccer field or excuse me football pitch this is really tough to find so yeah we got to we got to there's a lot of work that needs to be done that's why everybody who can is doing the work right now to try to knock everything down as best we can and I will say that that people have already put in papers or excuse me proposals and have had them approved four time on jdb so it's not like oh we might point jdb at it and and see what we can get no like that time has been set aside and we are going to do observation of it so that that will tell hopefully give us better idea as to what it's made out of better idea as to what shape it is better idea as its size and better idea of its position as well that will really help out so probably going to have to wait until later this year for the statistics to get a bit better