Asteroid Apophis Just Got Bigger

That orbital perturbation is random & would simply not be predictable.

Not exactly. It's passing by earth again in another 15 years or so -- and its orbit has to pass through a very small space in order for Earth's gravity to alter it just that tiny smidge so that over the following 15 years, that few thousands of a degree change due to gravitational pull will close that 22,364 mile gap. It has to be spot on -- if the vector is even slightly off, it'll either get slingshot out of the solar system (or into one of the outer planets), or into the Sun.

While you're right that the energy required to move the asteroid into a collision path is low, it has to be the precise amount, and at the precise vector. A random preturbation has a very low chance of being at both the correct energy level, and at the correct vector. And even many such random preturbations still wouldn't alter the orbit enough that if we looked for it on its next approach in a very narrow region of the sky, we couldn't find it. Which means we'll know its coming, and we'll have several years' warning to take action. I just hope they can clone Bruce Willis before then.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/6UendPPwJ4M/story01.htm

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