99942 Apophis: The God of Chaos

Meet 99942 Apophis, the asteroid that once put the entire world on

high alert. Its name is the Greek word for the Egyptian god of chaos.

This massive rock is roughly three hundred and seventy meters across, equivalent to three

football fields, and it hurtles through the void at thirty kilometers per second.

On Friday, April thirteenth, twenty twenty-nine, it will come closer to Earth

than our own weather satellites, screaming across the sky at an altitude of just

thirty-one thousand kilometers. While NASA now believes it will pass us safely, a small group

of scientists warns that our calculations might still be off, even by just