Valladolid Astronomers Predict Huge Asteroid Impact with Earth
July 29th, 2010
A team of experts, including some working for NASA, believe that a five hundred and sixty metre wide asteroid has a one in a thousand chance of making impact with the Earth in 172 years time.
While quite large, the odds of a crash are considerably shorter than those given for another asteroid, known as Apophis, which has a one in a quarter of a million chance of striking Earth in 2036.
A report in the solar system journal, Icarus, said the odds of an earlier impact were remote but those odds start to increase by 2080 when its orbit will bring it back towards Earth.
Maria Eugenia Sansaturio from Valladolid University in Spain, who is one of the leaders of the research, told Universe Today that knowledge of the potential risk posed by the asteroid “may help in the design of advance mechanisms aimed at deviating the asteroid’s path.”
The asteroid was first discovered in 1999 and is more than twice the size of Apophis. If it were to hit the planet, then it is likely to cause widespread devastation and possible mass extinction.
Sansaturio added: “The consequence of such an event is not just the likelihood of a comparatively large impact, but also that a realistic deflection procedure, or path deviation could only be made before the impact in 2080, and more easily, before 2060.
Previous asteroid impacts are thought to have created massive craters and tsunamis and some theorists have even blamed for the extinction of the dinosaurs.
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