It was around a few months back that Iain McDonald, a top scientist at the Cardiff University's school of earth and ocean sciences claimed that the earth will be hit by a doomsday asteroid one day or the other. After making this prediction, McDonald claimed that catastrophic events like asteroid hits are not confined to the past, but will happen in the future too.
As per NASA, more than 900 asteroids with a diameter of minimum one kilometer are orbiting the earth around the sun. In this long list, experts consider Apophis asteroid as the most dangerous rogue body that could hit the earth. Since its detection in 2004, space experts at NASA have been observing the celestial body, and as per latest updates, this deadly space rock could zip past or hit the earth on April 13, 2036.
If April 13, 2036, goes uneventful, asteroid Apophis will return back for another close encounter in 2068. NASA reveals that the chances of Apophis hitting the earth on April 13, 2036, is 1 in 45,000, while the possibility of an impact in 2068 is 1 in 1,50,000.
If such an impact happens, the area of impact and thousands of kilometers around the site will face huge devastation. Popular physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson had previously revealed that Apophis asteroid hit is capable of triggering a gigantic tsunami on the US coast. Tyson made these remarks during a public lecture with Ryan Watt in San Francisco in 2008.
"In the era of observing the cosmos with technology, this will be the closest biggest thing we will ever see. If it goes through the center, it will plunge down into the Pacific Ocean to a depth of three miles, at which point it explodes, caveating the Pacific in a hole that's three miles wide. That will send a tsunami wave outwards from that location that is 50 feet high," he said.
"Oceans don't like having holes in them, so this three-mile-high wall does what? It collapses. It falls back into the hole sloshing against itself with such ferocity that it rises high into the atmosphere and falls back down to the ocean, caveating it again," said Neil deGrasse Tyson, Express.co.uk reports.
In the meantime, NASA is busy developing their planetary defense weapon to protect the earth from rogue space bodies like asteroids and meteorites. Using this weapon, NASA is aiming to deflect the trajectories of space bodies that are approaching the earth for a possible collision.
