Apophis asteroid will speed past Earth on April 13, 2029, at just 18,600 miles away – which is less than one-tenth the distance between the Earth and the moon.
New Delhi: The threat of an asteroid impacting the Earth is ever-growing with astronomers now predicting that it will happen sooner or later, if not now.
Throughout its 4.5-billion-year history, Earth has been repeatedly pummelled by space rocks that have caused anything from an innocuous splash in the ocean to species annihilation, although nobody knows when the next big impact will occur.
“Sooner or later we will get... a minor or major impact,” Rolf Densing, who heads the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, told AFP ahead of International Asteroid Day on Friday.
What's even more worrying is astronomers have calculated that the Apophis asteroid will speed past Earth on April 13, 2029, at just 18,600 miles away – which is less than one-tenth the distance between the Earth and the moon.
Named after the Egyptian god of evil and destruction and discovered in June 2004 by Roy A Tucker, David J Tholen, and Fabrizio Bernardi at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, asteroid Apophis is about 370 meters in diameter.
Although the possibility of an impact during its close approach in 2029 was excluded, the asteroid's collision with Earth in the more distant future cannot be completely ruled out.
Based on recent observations, the probability of an impact during its close flybys of Earth on April 13, 2029 was eliminated by astronomers.
"We can rule out a collision at the next closest approach with the Earth, but then the orbit will change in a way that is not fully predictable just now, so we cannot predict the behavior on a longer timescale," Alberto Cellino of the Observatory of Turin in Italy told Astrowatch.net.
But the asteroid's collision with Earth in the more distant future cannot be completely ruled out.
The next time Apophis will return to Earth after 2029 is on April 13, 2036. While NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies is not concerned, saying that the rock will come no closer than 14 million miles from Earth, this situation may dramatically change someday. Given that near-Earth objects (NEO) orbits are chaotic, what is not dangerous today can become a candidate impactor in the future.
According to Alan Harris, a former Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) researcher, "Apophis has a Palermo Scale rating of about minus three, so while we cannot rule out an impact in the future, it is about 1,000 times less likely than a random impact in the same interval of time. “
“Due to a close but non-impacting pass by the Earth, there are numerous possible impact trajectories beyond that, but all are of very low probability," Harris told Astrowatch.net.
To improve the knowledge of its orbit, astronomers are constantly monitoring the asteroid.
It may not happen in our lifetime, but “the risk that Earth will get hit in a devastating event one day is very high”, added Densing.
So for now, there is little mankind can do – firstly,they need to be able to spot the threat.
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Hello i have done the necessary (remembered how to spell using never eat chips eat salad sandwiches and remain young-necessary) to recap i have done the calculations and we are ok it will miss us by approximately 1950.6 of our earth miles , the only caveat is that my workings out have been done with a six inch ruler and a small length of string and some inverted binoculars so im almost sure im correct however in the event i am wrong then i apologise (fingers crossed people) on a serious note however im hoping if this scenario does happen and it could well do, that i am asleep when it comes :)
WOW ! It's time to wake up ,this could never happen because there is NO SPACE. The earth is flat and we are under a dome- under water 💦 NASA LIES awe have never bin to the MOON and you need to RESEARCH FLAT EARTH. And DEBUNK IT we do not live on a GLOBE 🌎