Scientists have discovered a 'significantly sized' asteroid that could hit Earth

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

With the latest update of the Doomsday Clock, scientists warn the end of the world is nigh – that is, of course, unless an asteroid gets there first.

An asteroid the size of a jumbo jet that has more than a 1 per cent chance of hitting Earth has just been discovered. The asteroid, named 2024 YR4, is currently 27 million miles away and has a 1-in-83 chance of hitting Earth in 2032.

The object swept into view of the asteroid warning system, called ATLAS, on Christmas Day last year. Astronomers calculated that the asteroid will make a super close approach to Earth on December 22 2032, coming within 66,000 miles (106,200 kilometers).

However, when scientists take into account the “orbital uncertainties” – the unknowns in predicting the exact path of an object – the asteroid could potentially hit Earth directly. "This is one of the highest probabilities of an impact from a significantly sized rock ever,” wrote David Rankin, Catalina Sky Survey engineer and asteroid hunter, on BlueSky. "It is just important to keep in mind that its orbit is still too uncertain to know if it will hit, and right now, the most likely outcome is a miss," Rankin told Space.com. "This impact corridor estimation will eventually go stale with new observations and better orbit calculations." Currently, the “impact corridor” for the asteroid runs from South America across the Atlantic to South Africa, but Rankin says it’s hard to know how much damage it could do.