We're So Screwed, Even That "City Killer" Asteroid Doesn't Want to Destroy Earth Anymore

Earlier this year, a roughly 200-foot near-Earth asteroid, dubbed 2024 YR4, made major headlines, with NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab warning that there was a small chance it could impact our planet on December 22, 2032. Over the following weeks, the probability of a collision grew steadily, eventually reaching 3.1 percent — or about a 1-in-32 chance — according to figures from NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies last week. But fears over a space rock wiping out one of the most populous cities on Earth amounted to nothing. According to the JPL's "more precise models of the asteroid’s trajectory," scientists came up with an updated impact probability only 0.004 percent. "There is no significant potential for this asteroid to impact our planet for the next century," NASA wrote in a recent blog post. "The latest observations have further reduced the uncertainty of its future trajectory, and the range of possible locations the asteroid could be on December 22, 2032, has moved farther ... Read full article.