Here we go again! It was in 2004 when NASA scared the heck out of people and this time its the Russians. Dont take me wrong... All due respect to both the organizations for keeping track of such objects well in advance.
Here is the thing, there is 1 in 250,000 chances that the "Planet Killer" will hit Earth. Its comforting to know however, that in one of the International NEO (Near Earth Objects)meetings in 2005, it was decided that more research needs to be done on how to avoid that "1" chance of impact. Since then there have been numerous ideas on how to avaid that impact.
Just to give you an idea of how large this asteroide is...it is larger than two football fields and cause more damage that 1000 Hiroshimas blown at once!
The asteroid will come really close to the Earth in 1929 and will cause it to change its path by an angle due to Earths gravity. It will continue to rotate around the Sun until it gets back to Earth on April 13, 1936. There is very very little or no chance that it will hit Earth in 1929 but what will happen in 1936 is still a little fuzzy. It seems we will have to wait until 2013 before we get a clearer picture of what will happen then.
There are certainly tons of reports that conflict the probability of such a doomsday event on the internet, but the question remains: How scared should we be?
Images Courtesy: nasa, jpl, msnbc, and space.com
