[ASTRONOMIA] ¨ a Sunlight Shifted Asteroid Might Hit the Earth in 2068 with a 1200 Megaton Impact
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SOURCES- Wikipedia, University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy, Sentry Risk Table, B612 Foundation
Dave Tholen and collaborators have detected light from the sun is moving the 300 meter near-Earth asteroid Apophis by 170 meters per year. This acceleration means that Apophis might hit the earth in 2068.
Detailed analysis on the next close pass in 2029 will determine if Apophis is a risk.
The Sentry Risk Table estimates that Apophis would impact Earth with kinetic energy equivalent to 1200 megatons of TNT.
The highest probability of impact is on april 12, 2068 and the odds of an impact on that date, as calculated by the JPL Sentry risk table using a March 2016 solution, are 1 in 150 000. The calculations are that it should miss the Earth by 150 million kilometers. The acceleration should only shift the asteroid by about 122 kilometers.
Assuming Apophis is a 370-meter-wide stony asteroid with a density of 3000 kg/m3, then if it were to impact into sedimentary rock, Apophis would create a 5.1-kilometer impact crater.
A deep-water impact in the Atlantic or Pacific oceans would produce an incoherent short-range tsunami with a potential destructive radius (inundation height of about 2 meters) of roughly 1000 kilometers for most of North America, Brazil, and Africa, 3000 km for Japan, and 4500 km for some areas in Hawaii.
in nextBIGfuture.com
