Apep, the Egyptian demon of Chaos, also known as Apophis, 'Evil Lizard','Enemy of Ra', 'World Encircler' and 'Serpent of Rebirth' (source). He was a demon of the unknown and frightening events, and was so feared that he was never pictured as he 'appeared' so as to avoid giving the drawing magical demon power, so was often depicted as a water-snake. He battled the Sun-god "Ra" daily just beneath the horizon and solar eclipses were "interpreted as a victory of Apep over Ra".
Apophis is also the name of an asteroid (full designation: 99942 Apophis) that NASA estimates to have a 2.7% chance of hitting the earth in 2029. And factors such as "sunlight", a gravity sweet spots may push Apophis a couple of Earth lengths left or right. And assuming it misses Earth in 2029, the closeness of the 'miss' could alter the trajectory on it's return flight in 2036. The calculations are so complex that the NASA boffins cannot with a reasonable degree of confidence tell us where Apophis will end up in 2036...at this time. They will have to recalculate if and when the near miss occurs.
(But don't worry they can tell us with a "high" degree of certainty with a similar if not more complex system what the weather will be like in a 100 years or so...)
Here's an Apophis-eye view of what we hope is a miss:
Should the cosmic pinball game that is our solar system run in such a way that planet Earth becomes the 5000 point bumper, our Egyptian/NASA friends will indeed have aptly named the "World Encircler" as Apophis will have finally overcome his sworn enemy Ra (our sun) by causing a world-wide blackout:
“Nasa has estimated that an impact from Apophis... would release more than 100,000 times the energy released in the nuclear blast over Hiroshima. Thousands of square kilometres would be directly affected by the blast but the whole of the Earth would see the effects of the dust released into the atmosphere.”Oh yeah, and the best bit? The date of the "fly-by" in 2029...April, Friday the 13th.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!
2 comments:
I liked News.com's reporting that the Russian's were commencing secret planning, as announced by the Head of the Department for Space (or some such). Quality reporting there News!
Still, 350m is not expected to be a world killer. Maybe it'll just lower the amount of greenhouse gases by killing a billion people or so! And the nuclear winter that follows the impact from all the dust in the atmosphere will lower global temperatures for many years afterwards. Then you can tell us all how right you were all along!
True, not a world killer. A city killer maybe if it hits land. A huge Tsunami generator if it hits the ocean.
But don't worry, let's focus all our efforts on CO2 and not worry about the odd Apophis type comet... I think the Russians might be on the money on this one :) However they might need some good capitalist technology to counter the usual Soviet technical reliability...
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