Friday the 13th, 2029

[marieelissa]

Asteroid 2004 MN4 will come scarily close to Earth on April 13, 2029, but it will not hit.

May 13, 2005: Friday the 13th is supposed to be an unlucky day, the sort of day you trip on your shoe laces or lose your wallet or get bad news.

But maybe it's not so bad. Consider this: On April 13th--Friday the 13th--2029, millions of people are going to go outside, look up and marvel at their good luck. A point of light will be gliding across the sky, faster than many satellites, brighter than most stars.

What's so lucky about that? It's asteroid 2004 MN4 ... not hitting Earth

For a while astronomers thought it might. On Christmas Eve 2004, Paul Chodas, Steve Chesley and Don Yeomans at NASA's Near Earth Object Program office calculated a 1-in-60 chance that 2004 MN4 would collide with Earth. Impact date: April 13, 2029.

The asteroid is about 320 meters wide. "That's big enough to punch through Earth's atmosphere," devastating a region the size of, say, Texas, if it hit land, or causing widespread tsunamis if it hit ocean, says Chodas. So much for holiday cheer.

Asteroid 2004 MN4 had been discovered in June 2004, lost, then discovered again six months later. With such sparse tracking data it was difficult to say, precisely, where the asteroid would go. A collision with Earth was theoretically possible. "We weren't too worried," Chodas says, "but the odds were disturbing."