(NewsNation) — Scientists say an asteroid known as the “God of Chaos” has a slightly increased chance of impacting the Earth in 2029, but only if a very unlikely series of events plays out.
Not only that, but if the asteroid, which is named Apophis after an Egyptian god resembling a snake who sowed chaos and disorder, were to hit our planet, it would likely happen on Friday the 13th.
While this scenario may sound like a made-for-TV science-fiction movie, a new paper suggests there is a possibility for Apophis to shift off its current trajectory and come barreling into Earth with catastrophic results. Luckily for the planet, the odds of this actually happening are pretty small: Roughly one in two billion.
What would it take for Apophis to set us on an Armageddon-like scenario of disaster?
A NASA analysis from 2021 found Apophis’ current trajectory doesn’t pose a threat to Earth. While it will pass close to the planet in 2029 and 2036, NASA says it’s unlikely to pose a real threat to our home planet for at least another 100 years.
But a new paper published in The Planetary Science Journal suggested things could change. In 2026, Apophis is set to have a near-encounter with another asteroid, with the much less memorable name of 4544 Xanthus. The asteroids will be less than 6,200 miles apart, which is pretty close in cosmic terms.
While Apophis and 4544 Xanthus aren’t expected to collide with each other, material around Xanthus could hit Apophis. If a small asteroid were to hit Apophis, there’s a chance it could be knocked off its current course, although the chance is described as “exceedingly low.”
There’s also a chance that Apophis could collide with another small asteroid between now and 2029. There are 1.2 million known asteroids in the galaxy, but there are others too small to track, any of which could theoretically collide with Apophis.
Still, it would take an asteroid with enough mass and velocity to affect Apophis’ current course of movement and it would have to hit Apophis at exactly the right time to set it on a collision course with Earth.
For those worried about humans going the way of the dinosaurs, the good news is we’ll have a pretty good idea if Apophis has changed course by 2027 when it will be observable in the night sky. Scientists viewing the asteroid and its associated debris would be able to tell something had happened and recalculate Aophis’ new path.
Even if the worst-case scenario were to happen, which would be somewhat fitting for a cosmic body named after a chaos deity, humanity isn’t necessarily doomed. Apophis is around 1,100 feet long, which is pretty big but still not as big as the asteroid that is believed to have killed the dinosaurs, which was estimated to be between six and nine miles long.
NASA also has contingency plans for Apophis or any other asteroid being set on a path to Earth, having tested the Double Asteroid Redirection System (DART) in 2022, deliberately crashing into an asteroid to see if it could be pushed off course.
DART did successfully alter the path of a small asteroid known as Dimorphos, so there’s at least a possibility of successfully deflecting a catastrophic asteroid.
Meanwhile, scientists at NASA and the European Space Agency are getting ready to study Apophis. NASA’s OSIRIS-APEX (formerly known as OSIRIS- REx) is set to investigate the asteroid after its close call with Earth and the ESA will send a spacecraft known as the Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety (Ramses) that will meet Apophis ahead of its encounter with Earth’s gravitational pull to gather data. That data could be used to help develop planetary defense systems to protect us from cosmic bodies.
