‘City-killer’ 2024 YR4 surpasses ‘God of Chaos' Apophis' odds of hitting Earth: India also at risk

The most threatening space rock ever: The chances of asteroid 2024 YR4, dubbed the ‘city-killer,' crashing into Earth have shot up again.

Odds of Earth’s potential impact with ‘city-killer’ asteroid 2024 YR4 have risen to an all-time high. The exact size of the space rock is still unclear, though it is estimated to be the same size as New York’s Statue of Liberty and has a destructive potential 500 times the atomic bomb that annihilated Hiroshima.

The 2024 YR4 asteroid, which could level a city now, has a 3.1-percent chance of striking Earth in 2032, according to NASA data released on February 18, 2025, making it the most threatening space rock ever recorded by modern forecasting.(AFP)

The uncertainty has led to the repeated revision of the probability that it will hit our home planet in 2032. The asteroid designated 2024 YR4 initially had a 1.2% chance of colliding with Earth on December 22, 2032. However, those chances were eventually upgraded to one-in-43, i.e. 2.3%. The number has since gone up, with astronomers disclosing on Tuesday that the odds currently stand at 3.1%, per the New York Times.

2024 YR4 vs Apophis

The latest update has resulted in the probability of a potential collision with the city-destroying space rock surpassing the threat once posed by 99942 Apophis, aka the ‘God of Chaos’ asteroid.

In Apophis’ case, scientists previously predicted that it had a 2.7% chance of coming into contact with our planet on Friday the 13th, April 13, 2029 – three years before the projected collision, if any, with 2024 YR4. Subsequent calculations brought the odds of that threat down to zero.

However, fears of the ‘God of Chaos’ astronomic scare surfaced again last year when Canadian astronomer Paul Wiegert’s study suggested that the asteroid could crash into Earth even if a “small object” came into contact with it, redirecting its trajectory.

Even then, Apophis has mostly stayed out of the news, but 2024 YR4 is currently a hot topic of discussion. It should also be noted that the ‘city-killer’ asteroid is relatively smaller than Apophis. The new threat is believed to be 130 and 300 ft long, while NASA estimated the other near-Earth object “to be about 1,100 ft across.”

City-killer asteroid's risk corridor: Populous cities, including India's Mumbai, Kolkata under threat

Although 2024 YR4 doesn’t pose a world-ending, or even a country-killing, threat, it could very much destroy a city in case of a hit. Despite the slim chance of that happening, NASA data shows that the risk corridor of the asteroid the size of Big Ben’s tower stretches across the eastern Pacific Ocean, northern South America, the Atlantic Ocean, Africa, the Arabian Sea, and South Asia.

As a result, its estimated flight in December 2032 leaves eight of the world’s most populous cities (Bogotá, Abidjan, Lagos, Khartoum, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Dhaka) vulnerable. According to the Independent, the urban areas of these cities have a combined population of more than 110 million.

Experts respond to 2024 YR4's current threat

“Nasa’s James Webb Space Telescope will observe the asteroid in March 2025,” the US agency’s Moly Wasser wrote in a blog post earlier this month.

“As more observations of the asteroid’s orbit are obtained, its impact probability will become better known. It is possible that asteroid 2024 YR4 will be ruled out as an impact hazard, as has happened with many other objects that have previously appeared on NASA’s asteroid risk list. It is also possible its impact probability will continue to rise.”

At this point, not much is known about 2024 YR4. Far more accurate calculations are needed to prepare the planetary defence if the asteroid needs to be deflected off course.

“We don’t know how dense or porous it is, so its mass, and therefore the energy it would release if it strikes Earth’s surface or explodes in the atmosphere, is uncertain,” said Mark Boslough, a physicist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.