A major asteroid smashes into Earth in 2032, 3.1% chance, up from 2.6% last week.

6 months ago
19

NASA has increased the chance a major asteroid smashes into Earth in 2032, now giving it a 3.1% chance, up from 2.6% last week.

NASA says the odds the asteroid hits Earth is 1 in 32. It is big enough to wipe out an entire city.

The large cities with the highest risk are Bogotá, Abidjan, Lagos, Khartoum, Mumbai, Kolkata and Dhaka.

According to experts, the 177-foot diameter asteroid would release 8 megatons of energy on impact, 500 times the energy released by the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

NASA has successfully tested asteroid deflection technologies. China will also be testing its own technology on a small asteroid in 2027.

"This is not a crisis at this point in time. This is not the dinosaur killer. This is not the planet killer. This is at most dangerous for a city," said the head of the European Space Agency's planetary defense office, Richard Moissl.

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