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A large asteroid in space that has a remote chance of slamming into Earth would most likely hit in 2182, if it crashes into our planet at all, a new study suggests.
The asteroid, called 1999 RQ36, has about a 1-in-1,000 chance of actually hitting the Earth, but half of that risk corresponds to potential impacts in the year 2182, said study co-author Mar Eugenia Sansaturio of the Universidad de Valladolid in Spain.
Sansaturio and her colleagues used mathematical models to determine the risk of asteroid 1999 RQ36 impacting Earth through the year 2200. They found two potential opportunities for the asteroid to hit Earth in 2182.
The research is detailed in the science journal Icarus.
The asteroid was discovered in 1999 and is about 1,837 feet (560 meters) across. A space rock this size could cause widespread devastation if it were to hit Earth, based on a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences.
Scientists have tracked 1999 RQ36's orbit through 290 optical observations and 13 radar surveys, but there is still some uncertainty because of the gentle push it receives from the so-called Yarkovsky effect, researchers said.
The Yarkovsky effect — named after the Russian engineer I.O. Yarkovsky, who proposed the theory behind the effect around 1900 — describes how an asteroid gains momentum from thermal radiation that it emits from its night side. Over hundreds of years, the effect's influence on an asteroid's orbit could be substantial.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38434537/ns ... nce-space/
