What do you think about the asteroid apophis?
I think that this name was wasted because of a knee-jerk reaction to poor data. When it was discovered in 2004, there was little data to calculate a precise path, therefore lots of uncertainty. Immediately, someone announced that we were doomed and the thing was given the name “Apophis” (Greek name of the Egyptian god Apep, god of darkness and chaos). It even rated a 4 on the Torino scale (a scale of 0 to 10, combining the probability of impact and the consequences of that impact), the first such score. It had everyone excited… …for a few months. Since then, better observations show that it will not hit us and that it will not even cross in the “keyhole” (the dreadful position that would cause Earth’s gravity to divert it back in our path to cause a future collision). The Torino score was dropped a few notches before the end of 2004. There is still some tiny uncertainty as to what will happen after a few passes near Earth, but the uncertainty is so small that the Torino score is pr
