Is There Really a “Killer Asteroid” Headed Towards Earth?

The truth behind the social media panic might help you breathe a bit better.

Image of asteroid Vesta, taken by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft. Credit: NASA.

Here we go again. If you’re into astronomy you’ve likely seen this news cycle before. “Asteroid the size of a baseball field could hit Earth!” And yet, the asteroid always passes by Earth with no fanfare, no destruction, just floating through space.

It drives me insane that social media and the news spread fear over asteroids that often pass by our planet at a distance further out than our own Moon.

The latest “world-ending asteroid” all over my social media feed, and maybe yours too, is asteroid 2024 YR4. This near-Earth asteroid was discovered on December 27th of last year and started gaining attention once it was added to the NASA automated Sentry risk list on December 31st. Now, every post I seem to come across is talking about how this thing is going to hit Earth. Yeah, right.

The final straw for me in this social media frenzy was coming across a post about a different asteroid, Apophis. The post was yet another claiming this asteroid was also going to hit Earth in the future. I’ll admit I didn’t know much about 2024 YR4 yet, but I did know about Apophis’ history as a “killer asteroid.” Okay. Sigh. Fine, I’ll talk about it.