Happy Monday, listeners, for Scientific American Science.
Quickly, this is Alison Parshall filling in for Rachel Feltman.
Let's get the week started by catching up on some of the latest science news.
First, a quick update on our favorite ominous asteroid.
The Rock dubbed 2024 YR4,
briefly had an even higher probability of hitting Earth than the last time we mentioned it.
Early last week, NASA pegged the rock's chances of smashing into us in 2032 at more than 3%.
That was the highest impact probability ever recorded for an asteroid of its size or larger.
But you can relax, because as of last Thursday,
that estimate had fallen back down to a reassuring 1.5%.
It's totally understandable if you find all of this wishy washiness a bit disconcerting,
but rest assured
that things are playing out more or less exactly the way that scientists told us to expect.
For more information on 2024 yr4 and why its chances of hitting us just keep changing so rapidly,
check out our February 12th episode.
And speaking of space,
new observations from the James Webb Space Telescope suggest
that the black hole at the center of our galaxy is having something of a constant cosmic rager.
Sagittarius A,
which is the black hole that sits at the center of the Milky Way our galaxy is apparently emitting flares of light pretty much all the time.