City-killer asteroid hurtling toward moon this is the terrifying way it could wreak havoc on Earth

Our world could still be rocked indirectly.“City-killer” asteroid 2024 YR4 may no longer be on a collision course with Earth, but it could pose a threat to our planet.Astronomers have upped the odds that the cosmic boulder will crash into the moon, which could potentially cause a cloud of shrapnel to impact Earth-orbiting satellites and other spacecraft, according to a scary new study submitted to the American Astronomy Society Journals.“We were a little bit surprised at the possibility of there being a substantial amount of material [aimed] at the Earth,” Dr.

Paul Wiegert, an astronomy professor at the University of Western Ontario who helmed the research, told the New Scientist.Wiegart illustrated these potential outcomes in a series of scary video simulations showing the potential fallout from a lunar crash-landing.First discovered on December 27 of last year, YR4 sparked worldwide concern that it could strike our planet on December 23, 2032, potentially generating enough power to destroy an entire city.At its peak on February 19, YR4 had an impact risk factor of 3.1%, making it one of the most dangerous asteroids on record.And while follow-up observations revealed that YR4 wouldn’t hit home, the odds of it striking the Moon recently jumped from 3.8% to 4.3%, according to data by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) by NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies.Wiegert estimated that the asteroid would hit the Moon at 29,000 mph, creating a blast crater 0.6 miles wide, making it the largest lunar impact in the last 5,000 years.If it strikes just right, our planet’s gravity would funnel up to 10% of the resultant debris toward our planet, per the simulations.“Intuitively, the Earth is actually quite a small target when seen from the moon, and so your intuition is that not very much material would actually hit the Earth, but it turns out that the Earth’s gravity can focus that material under certain conditions,” warned Wiegert.This debris ...