Apophis is a peanut-shaped space rock spanning around 1,100 feet (340 meters) across, or around the same size as the Eiffel Tower. At this size, the chunky space rock is not hefty enough to be considered a "planet killer" asteroid but is big enough to wipe out a large city and trigger planet-wide climatic effects. The "potentially hazardous" object was discovered in 2004 and was named after Apep, the Egyptian serpent god of darkness and disorder, which has earned it the nickname "God of Chaos."
Shortly after the space rock was discovered, astronomers revealed that Apophis would have an extremely close fly-by with Earth on April 13, 2029, sparking fears that it could hit our planet. However, follow-up observations revealed that the asteroid will sail safely past Earth at a distance of less than 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers) — less than one-tenth the distance between Earth and the moon, according to NASA. This could still be close enough to hit some of our most distant Earth-orbiting satellites.
But large asteroids like Apophis can be nudged off course by impacts from smaller asteroids, similar to how NASA's DART mission successfully redirected the asteroid Dimorphos by smashing a spacecraft into it in 2022. Researchers have previously warned that this could be a possibility with Apophis over the next five years, potentially bumping the city-killer onto a collision course with Earth.
In the new study, published Aug. 26 in The Planetary Science Journal, astronomer Paul Wiegert — an expert in solar system dynamics at Western University in Canada — calculated the odds of such a scenario happening and found that while it was extremely unlikely, it is still possible.
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