On Friday, 13, 2029, Earth will have a fascinating and intimidating visitor in the form of the “God of Destruction” asteroid Apophis. The asteroid — named after the Egyptian serpent god of chaos and destruction Apep — is so large and will pass within 19,000 miles (30,600 kilometers) of Earth, so close to our planet that it could be visible to the naked eye.
New research has suggested that if other much smaller space rocks hit Apophis, the asteroid, which is almost as wide as the Empire State Building is tall, could be redirected, and Earth might not be narrowly missed by it during subsequent passages or in extreme circumstances, even during the 2029 passage. But don’t panic just yet.
Research author Paul Wiegert, an astronomer at the University of Western Ontario, told Space.com that the odds of a dangerous asteroid strike on Apophis are very low. “The odds are essentially 1 in a million that an asteroid strike could deflect Apophis enough to put it in danger of a future post-2029 collision, and only 1 in a billion that it could send Apophis colliding with Earth in 2029,” he said. “I calculated the odds of asteroid Apophis, whose current path is computed to take it near but safely past our planet in 2029, being deflected onto a more dangerous path by an unexpected small asteroid impact,” Wiegert explained. “These are the same kind of small asteroids that occasionally appear in our atmosphere as ‘shooting stars‘ or ‘fireballs’ and could strike Apophis just as unexpectedly.”
