Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has shared a chilling warning about a “mansion-sized asteroid” that could crash into Earth in 2032.
Asteroid 2024 YR4, that was identified as a possible threat to our planet at the end of last year, is between 130 to 300 feet wide. There is a 2.3 per cent chance it will smash into Earth on December 22, 2032.
NASA gave it nearly two higher odds when it was first spotted on the space agency’s radar. Mr Tyson took to social media platform X/Twitter to warn against defunding science programmes that he said are vital to protect the planet from the huge space rock.
“At the moment, mansion-sized Asteroid 2024-YR4 has a one-in-fifty chance of hitting Earth in the next eight years,” he said on Friday. “Now might be a bad time to reduce spending on Science. Just sayin.”
Research projects across the US have been thrown into chaos following the rapid-fire executive orders signed by Donald Trump. Funding has been cut and support for key programmes have been withdrawn as government departments as well as other organisations have been banned from mentioning climate change and words associated diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
The National Science Foundation, which funds grants for projects, has frozen its approval process and that following one of Trump’s executive orders. A federal judge has paused the executive order but the organisation has said it should get ready to lose half of its staff as well as two-thirds of its funding, the New York Post reports.
Experts believe should the asteroid hit Earth, it would be about 500 times stronger than the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the final phase of WW2. Despite chances being low that the space rock will hit Earth, scientists are monitoring the asteroid to see whether it could become a serious threat.
Canadian ex-astronaut Chris Hadfield previously told LBC News: “We think – because of the way it reflects light – that it’s probably a stony asteroid, a bunch of bits of other things that have slowly coalesced together.” He believed the asteroid would strike Earth in fragments rather than in a single large piece.
Each piece could decimate cities with experts having designated it as a “city-killer.” But NASA is prepared and has a developmental asteroid repellent that can steer space rocks away from Earth.
The September 2022, The Double Asteroid Redirection Test uses a spacecraft to shift the asteroid’s orbit by sending it to collide with space rocks with a successful attempt having been carried out in September, 2022.
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