Is the asteroid Apophis really a danger to Earth?

MEXICO CITY (apro).-Living is not easy. There are endless daily risks to which we are exposed and of course, human beings have tried to minimize them. Thus, we try to protect ourselves against events of Nature, for example, earthquakes, which to this day cannot be predicted. And beyond this, we have to deal with climate change, with wars here and there, against environmental pollution, against injustices, diseases, pandemics, etc. If we calculated all the bad things that could happen to us, one could say that we are miraculously alive.

And if all the previous catastrophes sound few, now we find out that an asteroid could destroy the Earth in 2029. It is the asteroid Apophis, which in its trajectory will come very close to our planet and if it collides with it it could destroy the planet or even the best case scenario, making all of life change forever.

Apophis, according to Wikipedia, is an Aton asteroid, with an orbit close to that of the Earth (object close to the Earth). In December 2004, some observations indicated a relatively high probability of a collision with Earth (2.70%) in the year 2029. However, additional observations helped improve the orbit calculation, proving the possibility of an impact remote. with Earth or the Moon in 2029. Still, the possibility remained that during the 2029 close encounter with Earth, Apophis would pass through a “gravitational lock,” a very precise region of space no more than 400 m in diameter. , which would place it on a collision path for a future impact on April 13, 2036.

But this possibility kept the asteroid at level 1 on the Turin scale until August 2006. New observations of the asteroid’s trajectory revealed that it will most likely not pass through the “lock”, so on August 5, 2006, Apophis It was lowered to level 0 on the Turin scale. On October 19, 2006, the estimated impact probability for April 13, 2036 was 1 in 45 thousand. Another possible impact date has been identified in 2037, but the odds of a collision during that encounter are 1 in 12.3 million. It has also been calculated that if it does not collide in 2037 it would pass close to Earth again in 2068.

But… What is the size of Apophis? Based on its brightness, its length was estimated at 415 m; A more refined estimate based on spectroscopic observations using NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii offered a measurement of 250 m. Its mass has been estimated at 2.1×1010 kg. Observations in January 2013 corrected this size by increasing it to 325 m. That is, this is equivalent to the size of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. And if this is so, the question is how much damage could an asteroid of that size cause if it hit the Earth, which (according to the research Weighing the stars by John Michell and Henry Cavendish), has a weight of 5,975 trillion? of tons.

There are those who believe that this amount of material in the asteroid is not significant to cause problems for the planet in the eventual event that it collides with our planet. Others indicate that with the speed that is coming (14 km per second), it could be terrible for the future of the Earth. However, in these calculations it must be noted that the asteroid would lose mass upon entering the Earth’s atmosphere. Let’s not forget the Tunguska episode, where something seems to have fallen from the sky, destroying a non-inhabitable area in Siberia at the beginning of the 20th century. Come on, there are calculations to do to get a better idea. In the meantime, it will be good not to be too alarmed because the chances of a crash occurring are very small.