What are the chances of an asteroid hitting earth in 2032?
More or Less: Behind the Stats
BBC
4.6 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 22 March 2025
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On 27 December 2024, astronomers spotted an asteroid that was potentially heading towards earth. Named 2024 YR4, it was estimated to be between 40m and 90m across, with the potential to cause massive damage if it hit a populated area of the planet.
The chances of that happening, however, seemed to fluctuate significantly - ranging from 1% to a peak of 3%, before falling to virtually zero.
Tim Harford investigates what was going on, with the help of Davide Farnocchia, a navigation engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Presenter: Tim Harford Producer: Lizzy McNeill Series producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Brenda Brown Sound Mix: Hal Haines Editor: Richard Vadon
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Did you know that you can listen to many of your favourite podcasts first on BBC Sounds? |
| 0:06.6 | Like Desert Island Discs, where you can hear castaways like Cher, Gareth Southgate and Nick Cave, |
| 0:12.7 | and enjoy longer versions of the music they've picked. |
| 0:15.7 | Good things come to those who don't wait. |
| 0:18.7 | Listen to your favourite podcasts first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:22.5 | Hello and thank you for downloading the more or less podcast with me, Tim Harford. |
| 0:28.1 | We're the programme that looks at the numbers in the news and in space. |
| 0:33.0 | On December the 27th, 2024, when many of us were still in a mince pie coma, |
| 0:39.4 | astronomers in Chile discovered an object in space with a trajectory that was potentially a bit too close for comfort. |
| 0:47.5 | The object was an asteroid, which they called 2024 YR4. Cute. |
| 0:53.9 | As you probably know, asteroids are basically space boulders and quite probably |
| 0:58.6 | dinosaur killers. News agencies and social media went wild, trying to predict which cities it would |
| 1:05.1 | hit and what the damage would be. There's a potential danger in space and it's on a collision course with |
| 1:10.4 | a city-destroying asteroid that could smash into Earth in 2032. |
| 1:14.6 | Could wipe out an entire country in a few seconds. |
| 1:16.6 | People certainly lost their call. |
| 1:18.6 | So what was the likelihood of the asteroid actually hitting Earth? |
| 1:23.6 | It must be a pretty high percentage to get people so excited. |
| 1:26.6 | 1%. |
| 1:28.0 | The initial finding was a 1% likelihood of hitting Earth. |
| 1:32.8 | So why was this such a big deal? |
| 1:35.5 | Partly because a 1% chance of something really bad is still quite bad. |
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