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Discovered in September of 1999, asteroid 101955 Bennu is a 500-meter (1,640 foot) asteroid that crosses Earth’s orbit once every six years. Because it has been observed for 17 years, astronomers have been able to plot its orbit very accurately, and have found that it will make a series of extremely close passes to the Earth between 2169 and 2199, but they calculate that the chance of an impact is only 1-in-2,700.

Unfortunately, this possibility of an impact has fueled the circulation of a great deal of misinformation on the internet, with most articles illustrating a civilization-ending impact to take place in 2135, with the equivalent energy of 3 billion tons of TNT — but this figure appears to be grossly erroneous.
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The media is bursting with scare stories over asteroid 1999-FN53. It’s a kilometer wide and it’s going to make a close pass on Thursday at .68 astronomical units (AU). Will it strike Earth? Highly unlikely, NASA says. Its high speed of 30,000 mph means that it should be easily propelled past us without slowing down. If it did, it would essentially destroy civilization, leading to the death of at least a third of mankind.

It will not impact Earth on its initial pass, but only in the extremely unlikely event that it was caught by our planet’s gravity and began to orbit us. If that happened, it would eventually strike the planet. It is approximately twice the size of Mt. Everest and a strike would have devastating results.
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The risk of a sizeable asteroid colliding with the earth has always been purported to be extremely low, with scientists reporting that such an event was only likely to occur every twenty million years or so.

Unfortunately, our collective sigh of relief could be a little premature, as recent evidence suggests that, not only is the risk much higher than previously thought, but that such events are occurring regularly in our atmosphere. The new information has been released by an organisation known as the B612 foundation, a private collective whose mission is to detect and deflect dangerous asteroids.
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Prophets and soothsayers have been predicting the end of the world for thousands of years, with possible extinction-level events cited as super-volcanoes or earthquakes, giant solar flares, pollution, plague and pestilence, and the favourite of the 20th century, nuclear war. There is no doubt that planet Earth is currently under-going what Confucius would describe as ‘interesting times’, with all of these proposed threats simmering away ominously in the background as we continue our ordinary lives. One of the other threats which could end Life as we know it, and one which has been credited with extinguishing the dinosaurs millions of years ago, is if the Earth was to be struck by a sizeable asteroid, and it is this scenario which could occur in the not-too-distant future.
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