A Cosmic Show

It's rare that people get really excited about something with a 4% probability. But when that's a 3-fold jump from a 1.33% probability, it gets a little more ecxiting.

That's the odds that a 165-foot asteroid will smash into Mars at 8.5 miles per second on January 30, at a hair before 3am Pacific Time. The asteroid was first spotted in November, as a part of an ongoing effort to keep an eye out for things that could hit Earth. When the odds of hitting Mars were set at only 1-in-75 just before Christmas, scientists started getting excited. They've now refined their estimate on the same observation, and the odds improved to 1-in-25. Usually, the odds of such things are in the 1-in-500,000 range. But the asteroid is behind our moon, and so the game now is wait-and-see. Shortly, there will hopefully be good news about an interesting show.

For comparison, a 165-foot asteroid would be similar to the one that put Meteor Crater in Arizona.