Gordie’s Midday Gossip - Did you say Asteroid?

There’s a 1.3% Chance a Massive Asteroid Will Hit Earth in 2032

The asteroid, which exploded over Berlin, Germany,  was called 2024 BXI, and was first discovered by Krisztián Sárneczky, an astronomer at the Piszkéstető Mountain Station, part of Konkoly Observatory in Hungary, according to Live Science.
Asteroid detect before it hits Earth FILE ILLUSTRATION: On Sunday, scientists detected an asteroid before it made its fiery appearance in the Earth’s atmosphere, only the eighth time that has happened in the history of the planet. (buradaki/Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Astronomers in Chile just spotted a massive asteroid with a 1.3% chance of hitting Earth in 2032. That might not sound high. There’s a 98.7% chance it WON’T hit us. But it’s fairly scary when you consider the stakes. They say it’s around 100 meters, or just over 300 feet wide. That’s not big enough to be a “planet killer.” But it wouldn’t be good. According to Space.com, it would create a massive crater . . . destroy buildings up to nine miles away . . . shatter windows more than 60 miles away . . . and trigger a massive earthquake that would destroy stuff over a much larger area. It would also kick up a ton of dust and debris that would linger in the atmosphere. Or if it hit the ocean, it would cause a massive tsunami. Just to give you an idea: An asteroid half this size hit eastern Russia in 1908 and flattened 80 million trees over an area of about 800 square miles. Again, we’re talking a 1.3% chance, so probably none of that happens. One expert said he expects it to “pass by harmlessly.” He said it “just deserves a little more attention with telescopes until we can confirm that.” Because of its orbit, we might not know for sure until 2028. So, we’d have four years to potentially do something about it.

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