2004 MN4

99942 Apophis (2004 MN4) is set to fly a minimal distance from earth on 2029-Apr-13 of 0.000251979577683381. per ( ssd.jpl.nasa.gov... ) - I have no idea what this mean. Maybe someone can explain it to me. I just read that Russia is going to try and blow it into smaller pieces in 2036.( www.cnn.com... ). And Congress wants Nasa to create deep space living quarters by 2018, Nasa must report in 180 days about status of program and use of funds Original plan was to start testing craft in the 2020s and ship out in 2030s ,Contract companies also working on technology for effective life support.( www.dailymail.co.uk... ) So to my little conspiracy brain it is going to hit earth, the government wants to save people by moving them to Mars and Russia is going to try to Bruce Willis it. Any thoughts? After all this is ATS and we are about conspiracies. Even highly doubtful but fun to thing about ones.

a reply to: tluna1
I can't locate that phantom form-field


0.000251979577683381 Astronomical Units (AU), distance from Earth to Sun.

So yea, what does that mean in miles? I am just an average person, with below average math skills.
a reply to: zilebeliveunknown

never mind, I found a converter. so 23422.965058466 miles from the earth. Ok that sounds far but, not really.

a reply to: tluna1
Yea, it's very close with diameter of 325 meters.
If it hit, we will be leaving the world of living in style.

eta: for better perspective, that distance is less than a tenth of the distance Earth to Moon. Ouch.

I was watching an old video from Neil deGrasse Tyson that if it hit, it would hit in the Pacific Ocean and would just take out the Western Seaboard. Well that's not so bad, except I live in Seattle!

Here's a useful tip: if you copy&paste that long AU number into Google, followed by "to km" or "to miles" and click Search, it gives you the conversion. Google doubles up as a calculator and a converter.

For example, "0.000251979577683381 AU to miles" gives approximately 23,423 miles. Keep in mind that this is counted from the centre of the Earth, so we need to substract 3,959 miles (the mean radius of Earth) to get the approach distance to the actual surface. So, for the minimum close approach we are looking at the asteroid passing just 19,464 miles from the surface of Earth.

That JPL page is also useful for predicting where that asteroid will appear in the sky and how bright it will be, allowing people with telescopes and binoculars to track it. This particular asteroid will be so bright, it will be visible to the naked eye!

Quite uncanny, the date will be Friday the 13th. science.nasa.gov...