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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted that "a big rock would reach Earth eventually and we currently have no defense"
A huge asteroid will eventually reach humanity and there will be no escape, predicted SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
An asteroid called Apophis, named after an Egyptian "god of chaos", will come dangerously close to the Earth, about 31,000 km from the surface.
"Great name! Do not worry about this one, but a big rock will reach Earth and we currently have no defense," tweeted Musk Monday night.
Big name! Do not worry about this one, but a big rock will eventually hit the Earth and we currently have no defense. https://t.co/XhY8uoNNax
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 18, 2019
On April 13, 2029, a grain of light will radiate in the sky, becoming more and more brilliant and fast.
At one point, it will travel more than the width of the full moon in one minute and become as bright as the stars.
But it will not be a satellite or a plane – it will be an asteroid close to the Earth, called "Apophis", measuring 100 meters wide, which will potentially navigate harmlessly on Earth.
"Apophis' close approach in 2029 will be an incredible opportunity for science," said Marina Brozovic, a radar scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who works on radar observations of nearby objects. of the Earth (NEO).
"We will observe the asteroid with optical and radar telescopes, and radar observations may allow us to see surface details of just a few meters," she added.
It is rare for an asteroid of this size to pass so close to the Earth.
Although scientists have spotted small asteroids, of the order of 5 to 10 meters, flying over the Earth at a similar distance, the asteroids the size of Apophis are much less numerous and therefore do not pass as close to the Earth .
The asteroid, which looks like a star-shaped light point, will become visible to the naked eye in the night sky over the southern hemisphere, flying over the shore's land. is on the west coast of Australia.
He will then cross the Indian Ocean and by the afternoon, in the eastern United States, he will have crossed the equator, still moving towards the United States. west, over Africa.
"Current calculations show that Apophis still has a low chance of having an impact on the Earth, less than 1 in 100,000 in several decades, but future measurements of its position are expected to eliminate any possible impact, "NASA recently announced.
Apophis is a representative of about 2,000 potentially dangerous asteroids currently known.
"It is possible that there are surface changes, like small avalanches," said Davide Farnocchia, an astronomer at JPL, in the article published on the blog.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not changed by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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