That's right, an Air Force aerospace engineer has developed a plan—well, let's call it a method—for altering the path of potentially harmful space objects by tethering them, via hilariously long cord, to a multi-billion pound weight. Theoretically, the weight would alter the menacing rock's orbit enough to avoid an Earth impact and certain doom. Oh, but that alteration would take anywhere from 10 to 50 years, which could be problematic based on our current detection capabilities. And we don't actually have a way of sending anywhere near that much weight into space in the first place, much less an idea of how to tie it around an asteroid. Maybe a really, really big sailor's knot? [Wired]

If it's typical density, it would create a 4 kiloton explosion in the Earth's atmosphere if it were to hit, which of course it won't. You'd expect an object of this size to fly within the orbit of the moon every few days or so.

That's what Don Yeomans—manager of the Near-Earth Object Program Office at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California—said talking about 2009 TM8 and the other 7 million objects in the near-Earth space which, "needless to say we have discovered only a small fraction of them."

Great. At 30 feet, something like 2009 TM8 is not as big as the killer Apophis or as the superkiller that can destroy everything on Earth. But who cares about destroying everything when this thing is large enough to annihilate Brooklyn.

Ah well, as if I needed any excuses to celebrate after this sodding Friday. Zacapa rum, here I come. [MSNBC]

The Sydney Morning Herald says that if it had been headed toward a populated part of the world, we would have had 24 hours to act and evacuate. Sky and Telescope says that it was about twice the altitude of our communications satellites.

To put it into perspective, here's io9's list of scariest asteroid attacks on Earth, not including this one.

It would have looked somewhat similar to this, the great daylight fireball of 1972. How do we know that wasn't Kal-El? [SMH and Nasa - Image credit to the original artist, Discovery News]

The meteor—or comet fragment—was only a few tens of meters in diameter, according to modern estimates based on its 15 megatons energy blast. This 3D simulation, however, shows what something like Apophis will do if it hit Earth. I saw a while ago on the web, but now it is available in glorious HD, so you can see all the gritty-nitty detail of good old planet Earth getting completely obliterated.

Kind of helps putting things in perspective. NASA and the rest of the world better get up to speed on their anti-asteroid alert and destroy system, I don't care what they say about weaponizing space.

The fact is that these things are very real, and they are lurking out there. So with that in mind, keep your list of things before I die handy. You never know what awaits for us in 2009. [YouTube—Thanks Louise]

NASA said in a statement today that they haven't talked with any German student and that, from what they have read, he's absolutely wrong. The student said that NASA's math was erroneous because they didn't take into account the probability of Apophis hitting a geosynchronous satellite, which would have made the "apocalyptical" piece of rock hit the Earth in its next orbit, basically killing most life in the planet a lot of the life over a large region, with an impact energy estimated in 880 megatons of TNT, Jerry Bruckheimer-style.

To give you an idea of how powerful this is, the original atomic bomb that exploded over Hiroshima unleashed only 13 kilotons of TNT, while the combined energy of all explosives used in World War 2 was an estimated five megatons. Or compared to a more modern example: the largest bomb ever detonated in this planet was 50 megatons, the Soviet RDS-220 hydrogen bomb or Tsar Bomba (you have to love the fact that Humanity can be more destructive than any asteroid passing by.)

The space agency, however, says that there's no chance of Apophis hitting a satellite because it's not going to get anywhere near the "main belt of geosynchronous satellites," saying that the Near Earth Object Program at Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory maintains their previous hit estimate: 1 in 45,000 chance of Apophis destroying some Earthlings in 2035. And a 1 in 23 million hit probability in 2037.

This makes Apophis a type 0 in the Torino scale. In other words: "NO HAZARD. The likelihood of a collision is zero, or is so low as to be effectively zero. Also applies to small objects such as meteors and bodies that burn up in the atmosphere as well as infrequent meteorite falls that rarely cause damage." Quite far from the other extreme alternative, the type 0: "A collision is certain, capable of causing global climatic catastrophe that may threaten the future of civilization as we know it, whether impacting land or ocean. Such events occur on average once per 100,000 years, or less often."

But even if it Apophis hit Earth, according to NASA it would not be devastating for planetary life. The effects would have been bad, yes, depending on the composition and the area of impact, but it wouldn't have been enough to start a global climate change according to the projections. It could have destroyed something like the West Coast with a giant tsunami, if it fell on the Pacific, but not obliterate all life in the Northern Hemisphere.

In any case, we are glad that this is the case. First, that a) this German kid is an idiot, b) the news agencies are stupid, and c) we are even more stupid for believing them. Still, our favorite tin foil hat theory is that this may all be a conspiracy to hide Humanity from the prospect of certain extinction. Your bet, in the poll:

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NASA Statement on Student Asteroid Calculations
WASHINGTON — The Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., has not changed its current estimates for the very low probability (1 in 45,000) of an Earth impact by the asteroid Apophis in 2036.
Contrary to recent press reports, NASA offices involved in near-Earth object research were not contacted and have had no correspondence with a young German student, who claims the Apophis impact probability is far higher than the current estimate.
This student's conclusion reportedly is based on the possibility of a collision with an artificial satellite during the asteroid's close approach in April 2029. However, the asteroid will not pass near the main belt of geosynchronous satellites in 2029, and the chance of a collision with a satellite is exceedingly remote.
Therefore, consideration of this satellite collision scenario does not affect the current impact probability estimate for Apophis, which remains at 1 in 45,000.

[Apophis, Torino Hazard Scale, NASA Near Earth Object Program, and NASA News Release]