The odds of an impact from the asteroid 2024 YR4 just went up a teeny bit. That's expected, but the good news is we're getting JWST observations of it in a few weeks! That'll help nail down its size and maybe help with an impact prediction.
Time for, well, not a distraction so much as a palate cleanser: a truly phenomenal shot from Hubble of a galaxy that is rippling like a pond that had a rock tossed in it… because that's what happened! Kinda.
And YES you want to grab the hi-res version.
With the small asteroid 2024 YR4 still on the risk list for Earth impact, I wrote an explainer on how we know what the orbits of these objects are in the first place, and why the chance of one hitting us changes over time.
D O N ' T P A N I C
A decently big (50-meter) asteroid called 2024 YR4 has a 1.2% chance of hitting Earth in 2032. Here's what we know, and why I'm not terribly worried about it.
YES, YOU *DO* WANT TO SEE THE MIGHTY 11,000 X 8,000 PIXEL IMAGE OF THIS NEARBY CLUSTER FULL OF GALAXIES UNLESS HAVING YOUR BRAIN LEAP OUT OF YOUR SKULL IN WONDER IS SOMETHING YOU *DON'T* WANT
