The end of the world is getting nearer and nearer, hurling towards us at over 25,000 miles an hour. The current assumption is there is a 10% chance per century of a dangerous, life destroying space object striking the earth.
Apophis is small by asteroid standards, perhaps 300 meters across, but it could hit with about 60,000 times the force of the Hiroshima bomb– enough to destroy an area the size of France.
Quotation from The Atlantic, The Sky is Falling by Gregg Easterbrook
If Apophis is a RETROGRADE rotator on the small, less-massive end of what is possible, the measurement uncertainty region will get pushed back such that the center of the distribution encounters the Earth’s orbit. This would result in an impact probability much higher than computed with the Standard Dynamical Model.
Quotation from U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Near Earth Object Program, Predicting Apophis’ Earth Encounters in 2029 and 2036.
