The Asteroid Apophis: Could It Hit Our Planet?
This assteroid, discovered in 2004, will fly very close to Earth in 2029.
An asteroid, called Apophis 99942 (Apophis was an evil Egyptian god) was discovered in 2004.
This asteroid is interesting to many astronomers. Trajectory calculations show that in 2029 Apophis will fly only 30,000 to 40,000 km from the Earth.
The asteroid won’t hit the Earth, but planet’s gravity will affect its trajectory and in 2035 Apophis will probably hit the our planet. That is the biggest danger for us in past 200 years. Even if asteroid will flies a safe distance away from Earth, it can be bad for our planet.
Apophis isn’t very big. Its diameter is only 390 meters, but when it hits the Earth, there will be an explosion 100,000 times bigger than the Hiroshima’s atomic bomb.
It would be even more dangerous if Apophis falls into the ocean. A huge tsunami would destroy many populated coasts. Scientists suggest thinking about Earth’s protection. There are plans to send a spaceship with a navigation system into the asteroid and watch its orbit.
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39 Responses to “The Asteroid Apophis: Could It Hit Our Planet?”
On June 14, 2007 at 2:14 pm
Risk of impact? 1 in 45,000, according to NASA: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/a99942.html
That’s not the same as ‘probably’ hitting our planet.
On June 14, 2007 at 2:55 pm
I’m not rushing off to get my offshore drilling team together again with these kinds of odds.
On June 14, 2007 at 3:04 pm
That looks like one of those asteroids that shares Earth’s orbit. I forget the technical term for them. They tend to become synchronized with the Earth and don’t generally pose a risk.
On June 14, 2007 at 4:40 pm
“This assteroid, discovered in 2004, will fly very close to Earth in 2029″
What? are we getting hit by a monster hemeroid?
On June 14, 2007 at 7:34 pm
That picture makes it look like it will plow directly into Venus, not Earth.
On June 14, 2007 at 10:12 pm
if the earths gravity does affect the astroid all it will do is swing the astroid out of the solar system. that is… if another planet doesntdo it first. and if not it will just hit venus like matt said.
On June 15, 2007 at 12:03 am
The piss poor english makes me realize this is a credible threat. God help us.
On June 15, 2007 at 3:43 am
The risk with this asteroid is that it’s not yet known if it will fly through the “keyhole” in 2029 — that is, a fairly narrow range of positions in which the Earth’s gravity will deflect it into a collision course for the 2035 encounter. If it misses the keyhole, it’ll miss the Earth in 2035 and (according to those who track this stuff and have the supercomputers to predict orbits that far out) for at least the next century afterward — and, now being a known object with, by then, a *very* well known orbit, we’ll have lots of warning if it becomes a threat later.
The concern at present is that, in practice, we won’t know if it’s going to hit the “keyhole” until after the fact, which would then give us at most six years to deflect it away from impact — and during most of that time, it’ll be far enough away from Earth to be pretty difficult to reach with anything but a robotic probe. The time to work on deflecting this body is *now*, when we still have a couple decades; there have been arguments that we shouldn’t risk deflecting it *into* the keyhole, but with, say, ten years to push/pull it after spending twelve years developing the spacecraft to do the job, it should be possible to (for instance) deflect it into a for-sure impact on the Moon or push it into an orbit that won’t intersect that of Earth for centuries or longer.
On June 15, 2007 at 5:56 am
the term for objects that share earth’s orbit is “trojan”, with 5 stable points, forward and aft of the planet.
On June 15, 2007 at 7:42 am
this was forseen in the bible code prophecies
On June 15, 2007 at 8:54 am
Right… several years after the earth is destroyed (2000 according to nostradamus?) it will be hit by a large meteor.
On June 15, 2007 at 8:58 am
NASA can claim ownership and sell the rights for some corporation to put their name on it.
On June 15, 2007 at 9:09 am
Why worry, the world’s gonna end in the year 2012 anyway.
On June 15, 2007 at 9:36 am
I agree that we need to react to this situation when it arrives in 2029. At the rate of advancement in technology we’ve been seeing there should be ways to deflect it (like in an original Star Trek episode) or blow it to pieces (Armageddon).
The map seems to indicate that its orbit is traveling between the inside of Venus’s orbit and outside Earth’s. It will only be a matter of time before it will collide with Venus, the Moon or Earth. Even though this is fairly big (about four football fields in area) there are many other pieces of rock that crosses Earth’s orbit that may be bigger. The knowledge gained from handling this one may be invaluable if a threat from a much larger one shows in the future.
On June 15, 2007 at 10:00 am
lol the world is not going to end in 2012.. its just a rumor someone started to get the least bit of attention..
On June 15, 2007 at 12:01 pm
Why do they make this look like a real news article?
I’m changing my home page! The headline looks like a real article, but the author could hardly write a coherent sentence. It’s a joke.
On June 15, 2007 at 12:52 pm
Learn English grammar… then report the apocalypse. This is the typical crap you can find on at Netscape.com. They used to be good before the radical alarmists took over.
On June 15, 2007 at 3:10 pm
Actually, a7xfail, the correlation to the year 2012 is not a rumor. There are many articles on the subject, many relating to the aztec and mayan calendars….. not 2035, now THAT’s a rumor……LOL…..
On August 17, 2007 at 3:46 am
alll i gott to say is someone VERY smart better think of something in the next 29 years before something happens because i wanna live until iam 90…. NOT 45!!!!
On October 15, 2007 at 9:44 pm
I say we must take drastic action. I see that NASA didn’t give US any information on this. WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING! Not just wait like we are doing now. OUR PLANET DEPENDS ON US!
On October 17, 2007 at 5:45 am
This is Asteroids that will hit the Earth possible the end of the world because their are Bible refrence to it.
On March 21, 2008 at 5:22 pm
NASA needs to do something now…. we have the tech that has been proven to exist in our missiles.. we have to reconfigure it to move the asteroid and not destroy it.. make a lunar base… that way it can see the asteroids we can’t! WAKE UP, HOUSTON WE DO NOW HAVE A PROBLEM ESPECIALLY WITH THE SPECULATION A LARGE COMET COULD HIT IN 2012….should we be concerned.. ahh, yeah NASA.
On March 31, 2008 at 4:53 pm
It would be nice to hear Nasa commment on this. As it is now, we are the blind leading the blind here. What do we know?
I do worry it could wipe us out. But i guess this can’t go on forever anyway can it?
think about it.
On April 16, 2008 at 8:47 am
German schoolboy, 13, corrects NASA’s asteroid figures: paper
Nico Marquardt used telescopic findings from the Institute of Astrophysics in Potsdam (AIP) to calculate that there was a 1 in 450 chance that the Apophis asteroid will collide with Earth, the Potsdamer Neuerster Nachrichten reported.
On April 17, 2008 at 6:49 am
I have reaserched apophis for a long time andi have never seen anything like it
On April 17, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Don’t wory everybody. We have Bruce Willis for this
On April 22, 2008 at 3:54 pm
BERLIN (AFP) – A 13-year-old German schoolboy corrected NASA’s estimates on the chances of an asteroid colliding with Earth, a German newspaper reported Tuesday, after spotting the boffins had miscalculated.
(Advertisement)
Nico Marquardt used telescopic findings from the Institute of Astrophysics in Potsdam (AIP) to calculate that there was a 1 in 450 chance that the Apophis asteroid will collide with Earth, the Potsdamer Neuerster Nachrichten reported.
AFP – Tuesday, April 15 10:44 pm,
and vnunet.com, 16 Apr 2008
On August 10, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Apophis wouldn’t smash into Venus. Based on the diagram, by the time apophis gets to where venus is in that picture, venus would probably be opposite that.
Anywho, if Apophis gets too close, Chuck Norris will just roundhouse kick it out of the solar system! Duh.
On September 15, 2008 at 9:42 pm
I work for a program that tracks objects and paths conflicting with earths path of movement. What is known now is this, Earth is infact in the path of a large object, 2012 is the predicted or estimated impact year. This will be at a minimum, The End Of Mankind. I am running for the shores and getting a team together to do some high tech drilling, ( Bruce Willis ) will be the lead man in this operation. On a serious note this is infact as real as it can be, joking aside have children, get married, rob banks, underage drink. I will see you all in the after life and laugh with the dinosaurs, it will be great times my friends.
On October 15, 2008 at 1:39 am
My monitor is ruined. It is full of corrective red marks trying to render this news/article coherent to English speakers. A run of the mill word processor could have easily identified the spelling problems.
I are reporting on on assterhoid hitted Earth on 2029.
On November 6, 2008 at 2:42 am
All you have to do is look at the craters in our moon to find out how lucky we are and how good it is to have a moon
On January 17, 2009 at 8:51 am
guy it is 2036, not 2035. If i were nasa i would send a spacecraft to push it to the moon to study crater physics. Did you know that it would pass ~40000 km from the moon?
On January 17, 2009 at 8:53 am
The 13-year-old thing is refuted by NASA. Also the thing wouldn’t be anything near Armageddon. It will only cause something like all of the volcanoes in Sumatra going off.
On January 17, 2009 at 8:55 am
#19 by aaron, Aug 17, 2007
alll i gott to say is someone VERY smart better think of something in the next 29 years before something happens because i wanna live until iam 90…. NOT 45!!!!
Look at Revelation. Doesn’t it sound more like the Big Crunch? (stars collapsing and falling)
On January 27, 2009 at 10:52 am
See it is easy to understand The End of The Day truly will happen!
http://www.bukisa.com/people/cyberneverty
On September 6, 2009 at 10:54 am
Ok, i’m confused,will we die in 2012 or 2035?
I have read many things about 12/21/12, and since im not so smart i will get answers from my science teacher about it.
And also, wouldn’t it be kinda cool to see an asteroid hit us???
“OOOHHH, Look at the pretty light…”
On September 7, 2009 at 10:25 am
Apophis will not hit venus. The diagram in this article is 2D, if you rotate the diagram to look at the orbits edge on. You would see that Apophis’s orbit is at an angle to the rest of the orbit of the planets, including earth’s and venus’s. Where the diagram above shows an intersection with venus, if turned 90 degrees you could see that it would miss venus.
However, the worry I have about venus is that in 2016 Apophis will be very close to venus and may be affected by Venus’s gravity. I only hope if that it is effected it does so to earths benifit.
Be Well
On October 11, 2009 at 8:39 pm
ummm i don think 2012 is going to happen… because we dont know if the people that worked on the calander just got tired, got killed of by the spanish, or what so technically we really dont know about 2012 except for “global warming” and for 2035 & 2028 we just have to get more ideas and pray about it… so dont worry be happy live life lol
On November 16, 2009 at 11:30 pm
O.k. listen to what Donald Qualls (up top) is saying about the small chance of it going through the key hole. If it does yes there COULD be a CHANCE that it will hit the earth. You also have to understand that this has been in close orbit around the sun for probably a couple million years. So you can’t assume it just appeared in 2004 and is either going to hit Earth or Venus.
Doing something now is not a bad idea, but aiming stuff at the moon is not the best idea considering the moon gives us high and low tides and if it were to be pushed a little further away it’s pull would be less and we would have massive flooding.
2012 is very interesting but the only fact around the subject is that our solar system will be in the equator of our galaxy. If the Mayans thought the world was literally going to end the calendar would be a straight line and not a circle insinuating a cycle of life.
Last but not least Nostradamus doesn’t mention dates leaving lots of room for his articles to be put at any place in history that might make since.
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