An asteroid dubbed “God of Chaos” will be passing by Earth not in decades but in about three years.
Space.com said Apophis will be closer than satellites when it flies over Europe and Africa in what is being called a “true once-in-a-lifetime event.” It happens only once in every few thousands years.
It will zoom by so close that it will be seen with the naked eye. It will be one of the closest passes of an object of the size, according to Space.com.
Apophis will be about 20,000 miles from Earth at its closest point at 5:45 p.m. ET and will have a peak brightness of 3.1 at 4:30 p.m. ET.
It will be almost 12 times closer than the average distance that separates the Earth and the moon, ABC News reported.
Not only is it called the “God of Chaos,” asteroid 99942 will make it’s earthly visit on April 13, 2029, or Friday the 13th.
When Apophis was discovered in 2004, it was believed it could have impacted Earth, but additional observations and radar tracking have ruled that out. Still, it is called a “potentially hazardous asteroid,” because of its size (1,230 feet across) and how close it will get, not because it will hit our planet.
“Apophis will come so close that it will be visible to the naked eye and will feel a strong tidal pull from the Earth. The effects of these tides will include changing the spin rate of Apophis, seismic shaking of its interior, and maybe even landslides on the surface," Lowell Observatory planetary scientist Nick Moskovitz told Space.com.
The asteroid came from the early days of the solar system, or about 4.6 billion years ago, and was raw materials that never formed into a planet or moon, NASA said. Apophis is a Greek name for the Egyptian god Apep, ABC News reported.
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