Asteroid Apophis Approaching Earth

This sounds like a job for SG1.

Thanks Astro! :)

:wellshit:

Quote where I said it would hit. I gave the odds last night...

Do explain how providing free, live telescope views of a potentially hazardous asteroid is trolling?

It will be here Friday April 13th 2029

This sounds like a job for SG1.

When Astro posts, I listen.

Too bad none of us will be

Da Fuq? Now I’m concerned that the demogorgans are chiming in.

how long until it hits Washington DC?

You need to suck more dick instead of posting bullshit about an awesome contributor.
Now, suck more dick.
:bjob:

If we mined it, it's mass would be changed, and probably hit us.

I think we should mine in the asteroid belt first before we start mining near Earth asteroids.

Lets hope it doesn't land on a pyramid. That is all we need now - the Goa'uld showing up.

thanks Astro for putting this up.

Interesting choice for asteroid name?

Apophis (also known as Apep) is the Great Serpent, enemy of the sun god Ra, in ancient Egyptian religion. The sun was Ra's great barge which sailed through the sky from dawn to dusk and then descended into the underworld. As it navigated through the darkness of night, it was attacked by Apophis who sought to kill Ra and prevent sunrise. On board the great ship a number of different gods and goddesses are depicted in differing eras as well as the justified dead and all of these helped fend off the serpent.

Ancient Egyptian priests and laypeople would engage in rituals to protect Ra and destroy Apophis and, through these observances, linked the living with the dead and the natural order as established by the gods. Apophis never had a formal cult and was never worshiped, but he would feature in a number of tales dealing with his efforts to destroy the sun god and return order to chaos. Apophis is associated with earthquakes, thunder, darkness, storms, and death, and is sometimes linked to the god Set, also associated with chaos, disorder, storms, and darkness. Set was originally a protector god, however, and appears a number of times as the strongest of the gods on board the sun god's barque, defending the ship against Apophis.

I second this emotion!

The gravity of the Earth and Moon is already factored into the calculations. That's not the issue. The issue are very minute perturbations to the orbit that occur over decades of time. The 2029 impact is already ruled out. There is a very slim possibility of impact in 2068. Phenomenal orbit places the asteroid over an astronomical unit away from the earth at the time of impact but the orbit is very uncertain that far out. The uncertainty is driven by the limits of our observational data on the asteroid and also by the limits of our modeling of very small long-term effects like the Yarkovski effect.

Anything we can do to increase the odds of an impact? (like jumping up and down from dawn till noon every day)