In the past week, the odds of Asteroid 2024 YR4 (seriously, who names these things?) smacking into Earth in 2032 have steadily ticked up like the price of eggs.

We started at a cozy, “nothing to worry about” 1.3% chance. Then 1.6%. Then 1.9%.

And now? 2.3%.

Does that seem like a small number? Sure. But let’s apply some doomsday math here:

If this probability keeps creeping up at half a percent every few days, by the time we’re firing up the grill for July 4th, we’re basically at 100% impact certainty.

By ESO/O. Hainaut et al., CC BY 4.0, Link

What does that mean?

Well, either NASA’s going to drop another “Oops, our bad, we recalculated” update that tells us this thing is going to miss us by 12 parsecs or something

Or we start prepping for everything our crazy uncle with the flannels has been saying for years.

Asteroid 2024 YR4, discovered on December 27, 2024, by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in Chile, is estimated to be between 130 and 300 feet wide.

Basically the same size of the object that caused the Tunguska event in 1908, which flattened a vast forested area in Siberia.

If it were to collide with Earth, the energy released could be equivalent to approximately 7.6 megatons of TNT, causing significant localized damage, but not Armageddon... Or Deep Impact.

Only a Level 3 on the Torino Scale, which ranges from 0 (no hazard) to 10 (inevitable global catastrophe).

In response to this potential threat, NASA plans to use the James Webb Space Telescope in March 2025 to observe 2024 YR4. These observations aim to refine estimates of the asteroid's size and trajectory, providing more accurate data to assess the risk it poses.

So when’s this all going down?

December 22, 2032.  7 years..

The same amount of time that I spent in High School..