Expert who has written a book on how to defend Earth against asteroids suggested the possible way to protect ourselves is to let it hit us.
Within just two months, we’ve learned that a ‘city-destroying’ asteroid, roughly the size of the Statue of Liberty, could be gradually making its way toward our planet.
There is a one-in-43 chance that the massive space rock, known as ‘2024 YR4,’ will collide with Earth in 2032. While this may seem like we have ample time to develop a strategy to protect humanity, some experts argue that it might already be too late.
Now, nine countries have been identified as being at risk of impact from the asteroid, which astronomers believe would generate a mid-air explosion upon entering our atmosphere. The resulting crash site could unleash energy equivalent to eight million tons of TNT, causing destruction within a 30-mile radius.
At present, David Rankin, an engineer with NASA’s Catalina Sky Survey Project, has mapped out a ‘risk corridor,’ predicting the asteroid could strike anywhere from northern South America, across the Pacific Ocean, southern Asia, the Arabian Sea, and parts of Africa.
This means the nine countries facing the highest risk of impact include India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Sudan, Nigeria, Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador, as they could bear the brunt of the explosion.
Dr. Robin George Andrews, a scientist and author of How to Kill an Asteroid, took to Twitter to caution about the dangers of attempting to alter the asteroid’s course by launching a rocket into space.
“Nobody wants to accidentally ‘disrupt’ an asteroid, because those components can still head for Earth. As I often say, it’s like turning a cannonball into a shotgun spray,” he wrote of the asteroid that is orbiting around Earth.
“But we aren’t going to see it again until another Earth flyby in 2028. So much could go wrong if we try and hit it with something like DART [Double Asteroid Redirection Test – which was the first-ever mission dedicated to investigating and demonstrating one method of asteroid deflection by changing an asteroid’s motion in space through kinetic impact].
“It may be smaller, or larger. If it’s too big, we may not be able to deflect it with one spacecraft. We’d need several to hit it perfectly, all without catastrophically breaking it.”
He continued on the social media platform: “And with only a few years down the line, we could accidentally deflect it—but not enough to make it avoid the planet. Then, it still hits Earth, just somewhere else that wasn’t going to be hit.”
Andrews also suggested that in this case, the most viable defense might simply be allowing it to collide while ensuring the complete evacuation of the area before impact.
“Asteroid 2024 YR4 isn’t likely to be a problem at all; it’ll probably miss Earth. But if it doesn’t, we have to be wary of trying to save the world but accidentally making the problem worse. Maybe we’ll just have to get out of the asteroid’s way this time,” he added.
