Huey: Apophis asteroid won’t bring the apocalypse…for now
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If you’re not familiar with the Apophis asteroid, it’s a big rock that’s hurtling through space in a somewhat predictable orbit, and scientists are almost positive it’s NOT going to hit us, not this time anyway.
However, they’ve already changed their predictions at least 12 times because the trajectory keeps shifting. When the asteroid arrives in April, Friday the 13th (of course) 2029, scientists give Apophis a one in a thousand chance of hitting this planet.
What that means is, if it has already been through here 999 times, and it probably has, then the odds of it hitting us in 2029 are now even, at 50-50. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. If it actually WAS going to smash into Earth though, government agencies would never tell us because it would cause too much panic in the streets.
So, will it hit us or not?
Even if it DOES, there’s nothing to worry about unless you live within 100 miles of the most likely smash-down site. It won’t be anywhere near as bad as when Chicxulub bopped the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago, ending the reign of the dinosaurs and producing us.
But the asteroid is not exactly small either.
If we could place it on the 431 bypass, it would reach from McDonald’s almost all the way to Walmart, and the sides would stretch from Knight-Enloe over to Lakeview Drive. Now, just imagine a rock that size smashing into downtown Birmingham at 11,000 miles per hour. People vacationing at the Redneck Riviera would probably feel it.
If Apophis hits the Pacific Ocean close enough to California, which some scientists say is where it’s headed, the resulting tsunami will most assuredly solve their homeless problem. That’s how big it is. It’s not a planet killer, so even if it does hit, we won’t be wiped out but it WILL produce a tsunami like you’ve never seen. If it misses, they still need to see how it behaves after it leaves Earth’s gravitational pull in order to calculate whether it’ll strike us when it returns in 2036.
People with inquiring minds insist that government officials know that Apophis IS the end of time, but scientists say that there’s no truth to their claim, and that the asteroid will come close but not hit us. We won’t know for sure until it gets here, but as of now, scientists can only speculate because there are just too many variables in their calculations.
Those folks in religious circles are wondering if Apophis is the Wormwood Star that’s mentioned in Revelation, and they’re really worried about it. Christian folks are terrified when they actually should be rejoicing because that’s the first sign of the end of time. Then you’ll have no more worries.
Speaking of religion, cults are already forming around the existence of this rock. Remember the Hale-Bopp comet in 1997? This rock will be Heaven’s Gate all over again.
So let’s nuke it, some say. Fine, but you know the old saying: Every solution brings new problems. After we blow it up, there will be a whole bunch of smaller asteroids coming our way, changing it to maybe to a 100 percent chance of being hit. It may just be a meteor shower, but it’ll leave some big chunks too, then we’re back where we started and by then it’ll be too late to fix it.
So what are we going to do?
If we have the technology to nuke it, then we probably have the technology to send a missile up and knock it one degree off course. That’s all it would take. One degree difference from as far away as it is now, will put it in a completely new path and won’t hit us for at least another 100 years. So that’s the solution! Technology should be way more advanced then than it is now, so let those people worry about it. We’ll be long gone by then.
