If Asteroid 2024 YR4 falls on the ocean because three quarters of the planet is covered in water, it could cause a tsunami and it would be a local tsunami, those from Atlas who are the ones who are dedicated to these things have published something that is scary.
They warn that if the asteroid is small they can detect it with the capacity they currently have, in 2032 they will have more capacity to detect more things, at the moment with the capacity they have they can detect a small asteroid of about 20 meters several days in advance and in this way they can determine where it is going to fall like what happened in 2008, although 2008 was also the skill of the astronomers of that time, because technology is evolving a lot luckily.
If it is beyond the moon, it will be impossible to detect such a small or practically impossible asteroid, an asteroid larger than 100 m, a type like the one that is worrying us these days and in 2032 may worry us more. It can be detected several weeks in advance where it is going to fall, in the worst case and nothing is done or if it does go wrong, it can be predicted several weeks in advance where it can fall and impact and therefore the area can be evacuated.
Keep in mind that the affected area in this case would be similar to the evacuation in the event of a hurricane, approximately a few thousand square kilometers would have to be evacuated, there is evacuation, for example in the United States they have great experience in this issue, they manage to evacuate up to 5 or 6 million people, the problem is that it happens somewhere in a country that does not have experience in carrying out orderly evacuations and that can be chaos, for example in India or South America.
In any case, as we would know well in advance, I think that the authorities will provide the means and put in place the plans to be able to organize everything in an orderly manner, if in the end everything goes wrong, but a mission can also be organized to be able to impact and deflect the asteroid that is not extremely expensive either, the NASA Dart mission that managed to deflect an asteroid larger than 160 m cost 324 million dollars, it is money, but what can be saved is much greater.
What has me scared is the thing about falling into the ocean, what would happen if it falls into the ocean because they have compared it to the volcanic eruption of Tonga in 2021 at least in the release of energy, the eruption was evidently under the ocean, it was an underwater volcano and it expelled a lot more mass of rocks and materials than what the asteroid itself carries, but it also depends on whether it explodes in the atmosphere or hits the ocean, the Atlas article compares it with this type of eruption and gives a little scary because the eruption of Tonga caused a tsunami on the islands near Tonga, but the waves also arrived with less intensity the further away. Of course, they reached New Zealand, Japan, the United States, the Russian Far East, Chile and Peru.
At least four people died due to this tsunami that reached 20 meters high on the island closest to the explosion and waves of up to 2 meters reached Peru, so it is no joke, they had also published data on the power of this asteroid, but this also varies a lot from the density which is another data that we do not have, it would have a power energy of about 8 megatons which is about 500 times the Hiroshima atomic bomb, of course without radioactivity unless we are incredibly unlucky to have some material radioactive.
Fortunately, uranium and plutonium and other radioactive materials are scarce in nature. The normal thing is that it is a rocky asteroid. It will surely be a conglomerate of rocks and dust.
! The truth will set us free and science is the one that is closest to the truth!
