NASA Issues Emergency Warning! ‘City-Killer’ Asteroid Locked On Earth… Impact Could Be 500x Stronger Than Hiroshima!

"NASA is training humanity’s most powerful telescope on a “city-killing” asteroid to determine whether or not we need to brace for deep impact.

Dubbed 2024 YR4, the building-sized space rock reportedly has a 1-in-43 chance of slamming into Earth in 2032 — up from about 1%, the Independent reported.

The asteroid was discovered by NASA in December and is reportedly at the top of NASA’s watch list when it comes to hazards from beyond. With this “time-critical” threat potentially on our doorstep, the space agency has enlisted the aid of the James Webb telescope to study 2024 YR4 and gauge how much damage it would cause if it did strike our planet, per a blog post by the European Space Agency. Based on these calculations, a strike by YR4 would cause roughly the same amount of damage as the Tunguska event, which laid waste to around 80 million trees in Siberia in 1908, according to Space.com.

However, as these estimates are based on terrestrial telescope data, they only see sunlight reflected off the asteroid’s surface, providing them a limited picture of the cosmic body.

In reality, the asteroid could be much larger. “In general, the brighter the asteroid, the larger it is, but this relationship strongly depends on how reflective the asteroid’s surface is,” ESA officials said. “2024 YR4 could be 40 m [130 feet] across and very reflective, or 90 m [295 feet] across and not very reflective.”

Also, because it orbits the sun, the telescope doesn’t have to observe near-Earth bodies through our planet’s obscuring atmosphere like its counterparts on the ground, giving it a much clearer view.

The first round of James Webb observations will transpire in March when the asteroid is at its brightest. It will then set its sights on the YR4 again in May as the space rock rockets away from the sun, which will be its final chance to provide observations until the asteroid’s comeback tour in 2028." - NYPOST |