14 DAY TRIAL // An asteroid capable of delivering an amount of energy equivalent to all the world's nuclear weapons may hit the Earth in less than a century from now. The additional observations made by astronomers instead of downgrading the asteroid, as it was hoped, had increased the chances of the strike to "a bit less than 1 in 1,000," said NASA Near-Earth Object (NEO) expert David Morrison.
"The risk of an impact within the next century (is) higher than that of any other known asteroid," he said, stressing however that the likelihood of a hit is still quite small. "Fortunately, it is nearly a century before the close pass from VD 17. This should provide ample time to refine the orbit and, most probably, determine that the asteroid will miss the Earth." The asteroid is around 500 meters long and has a mass of nearly a billion tones.
In December 2004 a rock called 99942 Apophis captured the attention, but further observations downgraded it. Apophis, measuring 300 meters across and having a mass of less than 100 million tones, will fly by Earth at a distance of 36,350 km on April 13, 2029. This is slightly higher than the altitude of geosynchronous satellites.
The prospect of an asteroid hit is rather grim. If it would hit the land it would probably cause vast clouds of dust that that would filter out light and heat from the Sun, and causing a sudden climate change. If it would hit the water it would cause enormous tsunamis on a scale never seen before.