It's called Apophis. It's 390m wide. And it could hit Earth in 31 years time [Asteroid]

The Guardian (UK) ^ | December 7, 2005 | by Alok Jha

[boris]

This URL crashes my copy of IE. FYI.

[kx9088]

We need to find the Fifth Element!

[rwfromkansas]

It is 2012 we have to worry about. That is the end of the Mayan calendar.

And...they predicted the end of their civilization accurately using their calendar system.

[JohnBovenmyer]

btt

The Planetary Report article from last summer, outlining the problem and explaining why we may need a mission to it in the next decade to determine if it is really a problem in time to prevent a disaster, is finally online here.

[SunkenCiv]

odds have fallen to a 1 in 5,880 chance.

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/a99942.html

[dvan]

Damn! I'll only be 103 then!

[SunkenCiv]

(nearly five years later) Thanks JohnBovenmyer.

Scientist: Asteroid May Hit Earth in 2029
Yahoo/AP | 12/23/04 | JOHN ANTCZAK
Posted on 12/23/2004 8:24:16 PM PST by hole_n_one
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1307719/posts

Predicting the Earth encounters of (99942) Apophis
Giorgini, Benner, Ostro, Nolan, Busch
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/apophis/Apophis_PUBLISHED_PAPER.pdf

“While the potential for impact in 2036 will likely be excluded in 2013 (if not 2011) using ground-based optical measurements, approximations within the Standard Dynamical Model (SDM) used to estimate and predict the trajectory from the current era are sufficient to obscure the difference between a predicted impact and a miss in 2036 by altering the dynamics leading into the 2029 encounter... asteroid (144898) 2004 VD17, itself having a statistical EArth impact in 2102, will probably encounter Apophis at 6.7 lunar distances in 2034, their uncertainty regions coming as close as 1.6 lunar distances near the center of both SDM probability distributions.”

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from December 6, 2005.

Thanks aculeus.

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