A new study has found that our planet’s gravity will cause significant seismic activity on the asteroid Apophis, which will approach Earth in 2029.
At this moment, Apophis is at a distance of 1.97 AU from Earth, which is about twice the distance of our planet from the Sun. But in five years, the asteroid will fly right past our planet, and the research team believes that the approach will cause landslides and earthquakes on this small object, which is 335 meters wide.
“The 2029 encounter will trigger discrete, short-duration, tidally driven seismic events that will result in high-frequency surface accelerations reaching magnitudes similar to the gravity of Apophis and detectable by modern seismometers,” they write researchers in a paper for The Planetary Science Journal, now posted on arXiv.
Apophis is expected to pass by us on Friday, April 13, 2029, and will be 38,625 kilometers from the surface of our planet. This is about ten times closer than the normal distance to the Moon.
This close proximity to Earth means that Apophis will be modified by our planet’s gravitational pull, the same force that keeps the Moon in orbit around us. But Apophis is much smaller than the Moon and will be closer to Earth, so the planet’s gravity will have an extreme effect on the asteroid. At the same time, this celestial body will probably not pose any threat to Earth.
