The asteroid Apophis, which is considered one of the most dangerous, in the spring of 2029 will approach the Earth at a distance where geostationary satellites are placed in orbit, warned the All-Russian Institute of Emergency Situations (which is part of the Ministry of Emergency Situations).
According to the forecast available to RIA Novosti, it will happen right after the Day of Cosmonautics on April 13, 2029. The approach speed is estimated at 7.42 kilometers per second.
According to expert calculations, if the asteroid collides with Earth, the released energy will amount to 1717 megatons. This is 30 times more than the explosion of the world's most powerful Soviet thermonuclear bomb, which was tested in 1961.
Apophis was discovered in 2004. Its diameter is about 325 meters and weighs about 27 million tons.
Asteroids with a diameter of more than a kilometer belong to large space objects. Some scientists attribute the fall of such celestial bodies to the mass extinction of living organisms about 250 million years ago or the extinction of the dinosaurs.
On Earth is known about 120 very large asteroid craters, the largest in Russia is Popigai hollow in the north of the Siberian platform. The size of the inner crater is 75 kilometers and the outer crater is 100 kilometers; the catastrophe occurred about 36 million years ago.
Smaller asteroids can also pose a serious threat, as their fall is fraught with significant destruction commensurate with damage from an atomic explosion. Only by chance did the Tunguska meteorite in 1908 fall in an uninhabited area and not cause such consequences.
Apophis has been called the most dangerous of the asteroids because, when it was discovered, calculations showed a 2.7% chance that it would collide with Earth in 2029. But scientists later ruled out this threat - according to their data, on April 13, 2029, the asteroid will fly 37.6 thousand kilometers from the center of the Earth.
