The latest analysis from the European Space Agency (ESA) Planetary Defence Office has reduced the probability that asteroid 2024 YR4 might impact Earth in 2032 to 0.001%.
Risk in this sense is a statistical term for the probability of something undesirable happening. So the risk decreased even though the steroid didn’t actually change its track. What changed is our measure of the odds of the impact.
The expectation value was huge at one point: a few percent probability of hitting the planet multiplied by the enormous cost of it hitting the planet (in terms of life and money and environmental damage).
Risk in this sense is a statistical term for the probability of something undesirable happening. So the risk decreased even though the steroid didn’t actually change its track. What changed is our measure of the odds of the impact.
Yeah, I know. But the risk was never “significant”.
The expectation value was huge at one point: a few percent probability of hitting the planet multiplied by the enormous cost of it hitting the planet (in terms of life and money and environmental damage).