Earlier this year there were briefly fears that the 60-metre-wide (200-foot-wide) asteroid called 2024 YR4, which is big enough to level a city, would strike Earth on December 22, 2032.
Subsequent observations from telescopes definitively ruled out a direct hit on Earth.
A new preprint study, which has not been peer-reviewed, is the first to estimate how such a collision could affect Earth.
The impact would be “comparable to a large nuclear explosion in terms of the amount of energy released”, he added.
If the asteroid hit the side of the Moon facing Earth -- which is roughly a 50-percent chance -- up to 10 percent of this debris could be pulled in by Earth’s gravity over the following days, they said.
Earth’s atmosphere would protect the surface from the millimetre- to centimetre-sized lunar rocks, Weigert said. 0.04-2.54
“A centimetre-sized rock travelling at tens of thousands of metres per second is a lot like a bullet,“ Wiegert said.
Meanwhile, those of us on the ground would be treated to a “spectacular” meteor shower lighting up the night sky, the study said.
The asteroid is not expected to be visible again until 2028, so the world will have to wait to find out more.
“I’m sure it will be considered,“ Wiegert said.
If 2024 YR4 is on a collision course with the Moon, it would be “a good target” for another test of our planetary defences, Wiegert said.
The preprint study, which published on the arXiv database last week, has been submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
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