AN asteroid the size of a football pitch cannot be ignored, an expert has warned after its chances of hitting Earth increased.
The discovery sparked plans that a nuclear weapon could be sent into space to deflect the space rock measuring 330ft by 130ft which could smash into the planet, causing severe damage.
Boffins from the European Space Agency previously said there was a one in 83 chance it could make an impact in a little over seven years.
But astronomer Dr David Whitehouse revealed on Thursday that the chances have now risen to one in 67 which he says is “unacceptable to ignore”.
He told : "I think this has the potential to be very serious indeed…So, we have to keep a close eye on this object because it could turn out to be the most dangerous thing in space.”
Dr Whitehouse said emergency deflection measures may be needed to nudge the asteroid, called 2024YR4, out of its orbit.
Whitehouse warned: "We cannot ignore this rock. It has the highest probability of impact I can recall.
"And it has the potential, the possibility for being an emergency for planet Earth.
"We might even have to consider the severe measures of sending up a nuclear weapon to the surface of this asteroid in order to deflect it further."
This plan echoes that of the 1998 disaster movie Armageddon, starring Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck.
In the film, an asteroid the size of Texas is hurtling towards Earth at 22,000 mph threatening to wipe out life on the planet.
NASA comes up with a plan to drill a hole into the rock, insert a nuclear bomb and detonate it - a plan that saves the day.
But the logistics of this kind of deflection are complex, with Ian Carnelli, a planetary defence expert at the ESA, explaining that the use of a nuclear bomb would not be like the disaster movie.
He told The Telegraph: "It is a lot more complex with a nuclear device, and that is before you get into the political discussion because nuclear explosions in space are banned by UN treaties.
"The nuclear device is not like you see in Armageddon where you send drillers to put the bomb in the core of the asteroid and destroy it - the idea is to detonate it at a certain distance from the asteroid.
"Triggering an explosion a certain distance away from an asteroid is extremely complex and nobody would agree to test it before a real threat is identified so you really would have a total lack of knowledge of how to do it."
He added that a carefully deployed spacecraft would be a more logical option.
Two years ago, NASA prevented disaster by smashing a spacecraft into the 160-metre wide asteroid Dimorphos, successfully changing its orbit.
Earth is directly hit by an asteroid similar in size to 2024YR4 once every few thousand years.
But it is most likely the space rock will miss Earth by a few thousand miles.
The space rock is currently 27 million miles away and moving away from Earth, but it will cross our orbit on December 22, 2032.
The Space Missing Planning Advisory Group, chaired by the ESA, is set to discuss the latest observations at a meeting in Vienna next week.
If the group believes there is a risk of a hit, it will make official recommendations to the United Nations and discuss options for a “spacecraft-based response to the potential hazard.”
A video has been released by NASA giving a first look at the asteroid that could destroy cities on Earth.
The clip showing the gigantic space rock as just a tiny speck of white soaring through space.
Initial data on 2024YR4 discovered on December 27, 2024 showed that the asteroid follows an oval orbit around the sun.
Due to its collision risk, it was put at the top of NASA's impact list.
The space agency has given it a Torino scale rating (NASA's hazard scale) of 3 out of 10, meaning it merits attention.
Explained by Jamie Harris, Assistant Technology and Science Editor at The Sun
Nasa uses something called the Torino Impact Hazard Scale to rate asteroids and other objects.
The scale goes from zero to 10.
Zero - also known as white zone - is defined as: "The likelihood of a collision is zero, or is so low as to be effectively zero. Also applies to small objects such as meteors and bodies that burn up in the atmosphere as well as infrequent meteorite falls that rarely cause damage."
At the top end of the scale is 10, which states: "A collision is certain, capable of causing global climatic catastrophe that may threaten the future of civilization as we know it, whether impacting land or ocean. Such events occur on average once per 100,000 years, or less often."
NASA said: "In the unlikely event that 2024YR4 is on an impact trajectory, the impact would occur somewhere along a risk corridor which extends across the eastern Pacific Ocean, northern South America, the Atlantic Ocean, Africa, the Arabian Sea, and South Asia."
The Tunguska asteroid that crashed into the Earth's atmosphere in 1908 killing three people was about the same size as 2024YR4.
It exploded above Siberia, causing a blast like the detonation of 50 million tons of TNT – 2024YR4 could potentially do the same.
But astronomers have also warned that the asteroid could stay intact after hitting the atmosphere and could crash land making a massive crater and decimating what it hits.
According to the ESA's Planetary Defence Office, a space rock of that size – as large as a 20-storey building – could cause severe damage to a local region if it were to strike a populated area of Earth.
Scientists from the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN) said blast damage could occur as far as 50km from the impact site.
Astronomer John Tonry, of the University of Hawaii, said a direct hit could be equivalent to a 10-megaton nuclear bomb striking the planet.
He told Scientific American: “Everything within three or four kilometres would be incinerated. Everything out to maybe 10 kilometres is smashed. It would kill a lot of people if they haven’t moved out of the way.”
As the asteroid gets ever-closer to Earth, scientists will be able to learn more about it including a more accurate size and its trajectory.
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