There would be only seconds to prepare before the fireball strikes.
A ‘city-destroying’ asteroid is currently on a path towards Earth and could hit as soon as 2032.
Now experts have modelled what the possible impact of 2024 YR4 – equal to 15,000,000 tons of TNT – could look like.
Scientists currently calculate there is a 2.6% chance, or one in 38, that the comet could collide with Earth and wreak havoc.
The potential for impact and scale of this asteroid strike is causing such fear among experts it was given a hazard-measuring Torino scale of 3.
This is the second-highest rating ever given.
(Picture: MetaBallStudios/SWNS)
If it were to hit Earth, the energy released would be 100 times more powerful than the ‘little boy’ atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
An asteroid collision of this size would wipe out central London, with destruction reaching as far as Billericay and Guildford.
Former International Space Station commander Chris Hadfield has now predicted the new comet could produce a crater, rather than break apart with a mid-air explosion.
2024 YR4 was first picked up by scientists operating the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) station last December.
Then, experts gave the asteroid only a 1% chance of colliding with Earth, but in February analysis bumped that up to 2.3%.
The odds have now ratcheted up further 2.6%.
But now scientists have made an even more chilling prediction about the asteroids course – it could plough straight into the moon.
Dr David Rankin, operations engineer for the University of Arizona’s Catalina Sky Survey, warned on Bluesky there is roughly 0.3% chance of 2024 YR4 striking the moon.
This collision could take place at a speed of 31,000 miles per hour, unleashing 343 times the size of the nuke dropped on Hiroshima.
How could we stop an asteroid colliding with Earth?
Scientists are currently wargaming the possibility of an asteroid strike -and are working out how they could stop in its tracks.
In November NASA and the European Space Agency completed their first ever mission to investigate deflecting an oncoming asteroid.
The goal was to find out whether small satellites are capable of preventing asteroids from reaching Earth.
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) saw a satellite collide into the asteroid Dimorphos.
The theory is that even nudging an asteroid ever so slightly while its in space could drive it off a course from affecting human life.
The results of the trial are expected to be confirmed by the Hera mission in December 2026.
As devastating as this sounds, scientists have actually said a lunar explosion of this kind could generate a beautiful meteor shower on Earth.
Gareth Collins, a professor of planetary science at Imperial College London, told New Scientist: ‘The impact flash of vaporised rock would be visible from Earth, even in the daytime.’
The staggering visuals of Asteroid 2024 YR4 hitting Earth were modelled by Alvaro Gracia Montoya, who specialises in 3D animation under the name MetaBallStudios.
He said: ‘I don’t think it’s going to happen, but certainly this kind of news generates a lot of speculation.’
Sixty-six million years ago, a 10 and 15 kilometres wide asteroid crashed into the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico.
The consequences were a devastation and planetary-wide disruption which wiped out the dinosaurs for good.
A version of this article was previously published on February 13, 2025
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