This time last year, the world was gripped by reports that an incoming, nearly 200-feet-wide asteroid had a tiny, tiny chance of hitting the Earth in 2032. The sigh of relief that we weren’t on course for a Don’t Look Up scenario was palpable when, upon closer inspection, astronomers determined that the space rock, named 2024 YR4, wouldn’t hit our planet after all. Instead, they calculated, it might hit the moon in 2032—with a probability of about 4 percent. And now scientists are sketching out a clearer picture of what such a collision might look like from Earth.

Read the full article →

Source: Scientific American Curated by SERA on 2/5/2026