It’s been claimed that an asteroid the size of two and a half football fields will plow into Earth in just under 20 years and wipe out humanity. So is it time to start making your peace with the cosmos and preparing for the annihilation of our species? Probably not, we’re glad to report. Frothy-mouthed news articles and internet conspiracy theorists have claimed a space rock called Apophis will smash into our planet in 2036, bringing about the apocalypse and destroying human civilization. This claim was supposedly backed up by this Nasa press release, which detailed scientists’ work to ‘refine’ predictions about whether Apophis will hit us.
Anyone who became nervous after reading the release can’t have been paying close attention because in the second sentence Nasa wrote: ‘The refined path indicates a significantly reduced likelihood of a hazardous encounter with Earth in 2036.’ ‘Apophis has been one of those celestial bodies that have captured the public’s interest since it was discovered in 2004,” said Nasa’s Steve Chesley. ‘Updated computational techniques and newly available data indicate the probability of an Earth encounter on April 13, 2036, for Apophis has dropped from one-in-45,000 to about four-in-a million.’ Astronomers first said there was a 2.7 percent chance of Apophis hitting Earth in 2029, but this possibility was totally ruled out after further analysis. However, this ‘record-setting, but harmless close approach’ will bring it within 18,300 miles of Earth’s surface – a tiny distance in galactic terms.
Scientists subsequently dropped their prediction about the likelihood of it hitting in 2036 and calculated that there’s a three-in-a-million chance of impact in 2068. Of course, some of the wilder minds of the internet will not believe anything Nasa says and insist it’s dedicated to covering up everything from the existence of aliens to the truth about whether Earth is flat. So what would happen if Nasa really was lying and the asteroid was actually set to smash into our beautiful planet? Robert Walker, an inventor, computer programmer, and astronomer, said anyone unlucky enough to be near the impact site would be killed, but humanity would survive. In a blog post for Science 20, he said millions of people would be killed by a tsunami if it smashed into the sea near a major city.
Scientists subsequently dropped their prediction about the likelihood of it hitting in 2036 and calculated that there’s a three-in-a-million chance of impact in 2068. Of course, some of the wilder minds of the internet will not believe anything Nasa says and insist it’s dedicated to covering up everything from the existence of aliens to the truth about whether Earth is flat. So what would happen if Nasa really was lying and the asteroid was actually set to smash into our beautiful planet? Robert Walker, an inventor, computer programmer, and astronomer, said anyone unlucky enough to be near the impact site would be killed, but humanity would survive. In a blog post for Science 20, he said millions of people would be killed by a tsunami if it smashed into the sea near a major city.
He continued: ‘If it hit on land it would create a large crater (as a rough guide the crater is ten times the diameter of the asteroid) and that could kill millions of people if it landed in or near a city. If it landed in a remote place the effects could be minimal – and much of the land area to this day is still desert or ice or uninhabited by humans.’ Whilst this would obviously be a major disaster, it would not throw up enough debris and dust to cause an ‘impact winter’ which blocks out the sun across the world and causes a mass die-off of plants, animals, and humans. ‘It would not have any long-term global effects,’ he added. Previous estimates suggested the impact would cause an explosion about 15 times more powerful than the detonation of the Tsar Bomba, a Russian ‘King of Bombs’ that’s the most powerful hydrogen bomb that’s ever been tested. This would leave a 2.6 mile-wide crater and be extremely bad news for anyone living nearby, but would not destroy our species.
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