2036

Le Figaro published an article today on the probable (or according to them, no longer that probable) apocalypse in 2036. A 13-year old German whiz kid had discovered, while working on his project for a regional science competition - perhaps the German equivalent of 'I am a Young Astronomer' - that an asteroid named Apophis has a 1 in 450 chance of colliding with Earth. Earlier calculations by NASA had put the likelihood at 1 in 45000.

Apparently, 'if the asteroid does collide with earth, it will create a ball of iron and iridium 320 metres (1049 feet) wide and weighing 200 billion tonnes, which will crash into the Atlantic Ocean. The shockwaves from that would create huge tsunami waves, destroying both coastlines and inland areas, whilst creating a thick cloud of dust that would darken the skies indefinitely.'

It seems that at one point in time, NASA was understood to have admitted that it had committed an error in its calculations and that the probability calculated by the German whiz kid was the correct one. The German kid had taken into consideration - NASA had not - in his calculations the probability that the asteroid might collide into one of the 40000 plus satellites orbiting around Earth during its path close to our planet on 13 April 2029 (which happens to be a Friday, just to add some spice to the "story":p). If this were to happen, the asteroid will change its trajectory and hit Earth in 2036. NASA has since clarified that the asteroid is quite unlikely to damage any of our satellites (no worries that screening of EPL matches will be disrupted).

In any case, 1 in 450 or 1 in 45000 do not make too much of a difference in my opinion. If it's 1 in 450, it would probably be similar to the odds quoted by bookmakers on Singapore winning the 2010 World Cup. If it's 1 in 45000, it would be higher than the odds of winning the first prize in Toto. Which doesn't leave us with much to be optimistic about either. Many people have won Toto's first prize before.

For those who are about to freak out, you can perhaps take comfort in the fact that in order to possibly experience the possible apocalypse, we have to stay alive for at least another 28 years. I'm not even sure if the probability that my heart can beat on for another 28 years is more than 1/450, which is currently the worst-case scenario proposed by the kid.

I believe that most newspapers have extracted and published the odd of 1 in 45000 from this NASA article. NASA mentioned in the article that a lot of uncertainties exist in their prediction. Most newspapers have however not quite highlighted this point. It is thus more probable than 1 in 45000 that 1 in 45000 is not the correct probability of Apophis hitting Earth in 2036. I believe the statisticians among you would be quite interested to find out the confidence interval that NASA had employed in their choice of 1 in 45000. I quote below one paragraph in the article in which NASA admitted the difficulty in estimating the risk of Apophis impacting Earth (that is to say, 50-50 that they either have underestimated or overestimated the probability):

'...the team found solar energy can cause between 20 and 740 km (12 and 460 miles) of position change over the next 22 years leading into the 2029 Earth encounter. But, only 7 years later, the effect on Apophis' predicted position can grow to between 520,000 and 30 million km (323,000 and 18.6 million miles; 0.0035-0.2 AU). This range makes it difficult to predict if Apophis will even have a close encounter with Earth in 2036 when the orbital paths intersect.'

I have been inspired by the discovery of Apophis to keep myself alive till 2029. I am confident that by then, scientists will be able to calculate with more certainty the trajectory of the asteroid. I just hope that they will be forthcoming with their results even if they find that Apophis will be kissing Earth. If that's the case, the 7 years leading up to 2036 should be quite exciting.

And I don't wanna miss a thing.