Adophis Asteroid--By Hannah Mikels
Scientists believe a 25-million-ton, 820-ft. wide asteroid named Adophis carrying the energy of 65,000 Hiroshima bombs will be crashing into the earth at a speed of over 28,000 miles per hour on April 13, 2029, at 4:36 Greenwich Mean Time.
According to Buzzle.com, the asteroid will pass within 18,800 to 20,800 miles of the earth, similar to the distance of a round-trip flight from Melbourne, Australia, to New York City, making it the first asteroid visible to the human eye.
The most probable cite of impact is several thousand miles off the West Coast of the United States. The destruction would include a 5-mile-wide crater in the ocean floor creating tsunamis with 50-foot waves that could plague the coast of California.
However, scientists believe the asteroid will go through a "graviational keyhole" if it passes the earth at a distance of exactly 18,893 miles, which would make it come back around seven years later with earth at the center of its path. Scientists also believe the odds to be slim.
Despite the unlikeliness of this happening, former Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart, 71,feels preparations need to be made for the threat of the asteroid, but there's nothing today's technology can do to prevent the asteroid from crashing into the earth in 2036.
What can be done is land a radio transponder on the asteroid to track its path which Schweickart has been urging NASA to carry out since 2005. If the path indicates it will pass through the keyhole, there will still be time to deflect it by either hitting it with a 1-ton "kinetic energy impactor" spacecraft or pulling it off course by using a "gravity tractor" spacecraft, but NASA has decided to wait until 2013 when they will be able to track the asteroid from Arecibo, Puerto Rico. If it's on path to hit the keyhole, there will still be time to launch a deflection mission.