Chances of asteroid Bennu hitting Earth put into perspective

Even Harry Stamper would probably like those odds.

Recently, NASA updated its prediction on the chances that asteroid Bennu, one of the two most dangerous known objects in our solar system, will strike Earth over the next 300 years. New calculations put the odds at 1 in 1,750, a number slightly higher than previously thought.

The space agency, which has been tracking building-sized rock since its discovery in 1999, has revised its predictions based on new tracking data.

Even with the small change in odds, it seems likely that we won’t be faced with the kind of storyline featured in the 1998 sci-fi disaster movie “Armageddon” when Stamper, played by Bruce Willis, and his team had to try to figure it out. detonate a huge asteroid that was on a collision course causing extinction with Earth.

(In an unrelated development, NASA plans to launch a mission in November to see if a spacecraft could strike a large space rock and change its course just in case it needs to.)

This raises the question of how good we should feel relative to our chances. We put this question to Lucas B. Janson and Morgane Austern, both assistant professors of statistics.

They compared Bennu’s chances of hitting Earth to the approximate probability of:

• Flip a coin and have the first 11 attempts, all lands are heads.
• Four random people sharing a birthday in the same month (odds are 1 in 1750 exactly).
• Throw a dart at a dart board with your eyes closed and hit a target.
• Win the state’s VaxMillions lottery on two separate days if every eligible adult resident is entered and a new draw is held every second.

At the end of the line ? Janson, an IT affiliate, says that if he was a gambler, he would put his money on our good health. There again, he stresses, if he is wrong, “Paying would be the least of my worries.

This story is courtesy of the Harvard Gazette, the official journal of Harvard University. For additional academic news, visit Harvard.edu.