(KTLA) -- This week's hype around a "city-killing" asteroid possibly striking Earth raised the fears of many before the odds of impact dropped to nearly nothing, but the MIT scientist who developed the risk scale for this type of event said it still has a lot to teach the public.
Richard Binzel, astronomer and professor of planetary sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the case of the 130-to-300-foot-wide asteroid named 2024 YR4 can serve as a learning experience.
Binzel, who developed the Torino scale for measuring the impact hazards for objects like asteroids and comets, added that scientists know that with more information, projections of the paths of asteroids and comets change -- which is exactly what happened.
The 1% chance of impact detected earlier this month rose as high as about 3.1% before falling to nearly zero. For reference, a 1% likelihood of impact is often the standard to draw scientists' attention.
"We're used to this. We understand how these probabilities work, how these uncertainty factors come in and out of our calculations as we try to pin down the orbit," said Binzel, who also has made headlines studying Pluto. "We're used to seeing these probabilities bounce around, and once they start shrinking, the odds are so great in our favor that we'll be able to say for certain that it's going to miss."
The public should keep this in mind going forward, because as scientists' tools become more powerful and accurate, they're going to detect more and more of these objects that previously flew by unnoticed.
"These objects are out there, they've always been out there and now we're seeing them," he explained.
Upon the initial discovery of an asteroid or comet, scientists are "only seeing a tiny bit of the orbit," and they try to project that orbit to see if "it might become an object of interest passing through our neighborhood," Binzel said.
"If it is on track to pass through our neighborhood in some years or decades into the future, then we'll have an uncertainty number or probability number associated with it. But most objects we discover, we can tell pretty quickly they're never going to come very close."
And for those objects that do come close, "we'll know in advance and we can make careful decisions about what to do, and that is much better than being taken by surprise," the astronomer explained.
So if you find yourself worrying about "Armageddon" becoming reality and causing widespread devastation, you can take comfort in knowing the experts aren't letting that possibility ruin their day.
He added: "The way I like to say it is, 'I don't lose sleep about these objects unless I'm at the telescope observing them."