# The fear that asteroid Apophis, the “God of Chaos,” will strike Earth during its close approach on 13 April 2029 is debunked, though the flyby itself is real and will be one of the closest passes of a large asteroid in recorded history

**Verdict: Contradicted.** The impact fear is debunked, and the underlying event is real: those two facts sit side by side. Asteroid 99942 Apophis, roughly 340 to 375 meters across, really will pass about 32,000 kilometers from Earth's surface on 13 April 2029, closer than the ring of geostationary satellites and near enough to be seen with the naked eye. But it will not hit us. After radar observations from the Goldstone antenna and Green Bank telescope on 8, 9, and 10 March 2021 nailed down its orbit, NASA removed Apophis from its impact-risk list and stated there is no chance of collision for at least the next hundred years, closing the door not only on 2029 but on the once-watched 2036 and 2068 passes. The “God of Chaos will end the world” framing is a nickname-driven doomsday story, not a scientific forecast. The genuine 2029 flyby is an extraordinary observing opportunity, and the target of a dedicated NASA spacecraft, OSIRIS-APEX.

Category: Science, Space & Technology · Era: 2020s · First circulated: Late December 2004, when early tracking briefly gave the newly found asteroid a 2.7 percent (1-in-37) chance of impact in 2029 and a record Torino-scale rating of 4; the doomsday framing revived with each close-approach anniversary and again as the 2029 date drew near · Believed by: The 2029 flyby is universally accepted and eagerly anticipated by astronomers; the claim that it will be an impact is rejected by NASA, ESA, and the entire planetary-science community. The doomsday version survives mainly on social media, in clickbait headlines that lean on the “God of Chaos” nickname, and among a general public that remembers the early scare but not its resolution.
URL: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/apophis-2029

## Summary
In December 2004, just months after its discovery, a near-Earth asteroid named Apophis briefly looked more threatening than any object astronomers had ever tracked, with a 2.7 percent chance of striking Earth in 2029 and the highest Torino-scale rating on record. That early alarm, amplified by the asteroid's ominous name after the ancient Egyptian serpent-god of chaos, hardened into a lasting doomsday legend. The science moved the other way. Successive observations, and above all precise radar ranging in March 2021, shrank the uncertainty in Apophis's orbit to the point that NASA ruled out any impact for at least a century and struck the asteroid from its risk list. This file separates the documented, genuinely spectacular event, an unusually close flyby on 13 April 2029, from the debunked claim that the flyby is a collision. It reports what will actually happen, and why the world-ending version is wrong.

## The claim
That asteroid Apophis, nicknamed the “God of Chaos,” is on a collision course with Earth and will strike the planet during its close approach on 13 April 2029, causing a regional or global catastrophe, and that space agencies are downplaying or concealing the true risk.

## Origin and timeline
- 2004-06-19: Astronomers Roy Tucker, David Tholen, and Fabrizio Bernardi discover the asteroid, later numbered 99942, at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona. Provisionally designated 2004 MN4, it is soon named Apophis after the ancient Egyptian serpent-deity of chaos and darkness, a nickname the doomsday story would later feed on.
- 2004-12-27: As fresh observations refine its path, Apophis's calculated impact probability for 2029 peaks at about 2.7 percent, roughly 1 in 37, and it reaches level 4 on the 10-point Torino impact-hazard scale, the highest rating any asteroid has ever received. For a few days it is the most closely watched object in the sky.
- 2004-12-28: Within a day, older “precovery” images of Apophis from March 2004 are located, extending the observation arc. The added data sharply narrows the orbit and drops the 2029 impact odds effectively to zero. The Torino rating falls back to 0, but the scare has already entered popular culture.
- 2013-01: Apophis makes a distant flyby of Earth. Radar and optical tracking during this pass further refine its orbit and size (around 340 to 375 meters) and rule out an impact in 2036, another date that had drawn attention. A small residual worry about a 2068 return remains, tied to whether Apophis might pass through a gravitational “keyhole.”
- 2021-03-08: Over three nights (8, 9, and 10 March), NASA uses the 70-meter Goldstone antenna in California, with the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia receiving, to bounce radar off Apophis during a distant approach, pinning its distance to within about 150 meters and dramatically tightening the orbit.
- 2021-03-25: On the strength of the new radar data, NASA/JPL announces that Earth is safe from an Apophis impact for at least 100 years. The asteroid is removed from the Sentry impact-risk table, retiring the 2029, 2036, and 2068 concerns together.
- 2023-09-24: NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft delivers its sample of asteroid Bennu to Earth and is redirected on an extended mission, renamed OSIRIS-APEX (OSIRIS-Apophis Explorer), to rendezvous with Apophis after the 2029 flyby, underscoring that scientists treat the pass as an opportunity, not a threat.
- 2029-04-13: The planned date of closest approach. Apophis is forecast to pass roughly 32,000 kilometers above Earth's surface at about 21:45 UTC, inside the belt of geostationary satellites, brightening to around magnitude 3 and becoming visible to the naked eye for observers across Europe, Africa, and western Asia.

## The evidence, claim by claim
- Claim: Apophis really will make an extraordinarily close pass on 13 April 2029.
  Evidence: True, and this is the part that earns the excitement. NASA and ESA both put the closest approach at roughly 32,000 kilometers (about 20,000 miles) from Earth's surface, nearer than the geostationary satellite ring and about a tenth of the distance to the Moon. A body this large (around 340 to 375 meters) coming this close happens on average only once every several thousand years. The flyby is genuine; it is the impact that is not.
- Claim: That distance means it is going to hit, or could be nudged into hitting.
  Evidence: No. “Close” in astronomical terms is still a wide, precisely known miss. After the March 2021 radar campaign, the uncertainty in Apophis's position at the 2029 encounter is measured in kilometers, not in the thousands of kilometers that would be needed to reach Earth. The flyby will bend Apophis's orbit, but the geometry is now modeled well enough that NASA has ruled out any resulting impact for at least a century, including the later 2036 and 2068 returns.
- Claim: The early 2.7 percent impact probability proves the danger was real and is being hidden.
  Evidence: The 2.7 percent figure was real for a few days in December 2004, but it reflected a short observation arc, not a genuine 1-in-37 collision. That is exactly how impact odds behave with a new object: a wide error ellipse that happens to overlap Earth gives a nonzero probability, which then collapses to zero as more data shrinks the ellipse. Precovery images found on 28 December 2004 did precisely that. Nothing was hidden; the number went public, then went to zero, in the open.
- Claim: The “God of Chaos” name shows scientists themselves consider it a world-ender.
  Evidence: The name is mythological branding, not a threat assessment. Apophis (Apep) was the ancient Egyptian serpent of chaos; the discoverers, fans of the science-fiction show Stargate SG-1, chose it partly for that reason. An asteroid's designation carries no information about its orbit. Headlines that pair the nickname with “doomsday” are doing rhetoric, not physics.
- Claim: Even a near miss could trigger earthquakes, tides, or other disasters as it passes.
  Evidence: At 32,000 kilometers and a few hundred meters in size, Apophis is far too small and too distant to raise measurable tides or trigger quakes on Earth. The tidal effect runs the other way, in fact: Earth's gravity is expected to slightly stretch, spin up, and possibly reshape Apophis's surface, an effect scientists are eager to watch. The planet will feel nothing.
- Claim: The precise orbit is guesswork, so a surprise impact can't be excluded.
  Evidence: Radar ranging is among the most precise measurements in astronomy. The March 2021 observations fixed Apophis's distance to within roughly 150 meters and its velocity to a fraction of a millimeter per second, tightening the orbit prediction so much that NASA retired the risk listing entirely. Small forces like the Yarkovsky effect are folded into the models, which is how the safe-for-100-years statement was reached rather than merely asserted.
- Claim: Space agencies are treating 2029 as a threat behind the scenes.
  Evidence: They are treating it as a scientific windfall. NASA redirected the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft to become OSIRIS-APEX and rendezvous with Apophis after the flyby, and ESA is developing the Ramses mission to reach the asteroid before it. You do not send hardware to escort an asteroid you expect to hit you. The agencies' own plans are the clearest sign they consider a collision ruled out.

## Why people believe it
- The name does enormous work. Calling an asteroid the “God of Chaos” practically writes the doomsday headline by itself, and the mythological weight sticks in memory long after the orbital details fade.
- The early scare was real and widely reported. For a few days in December 2004 Apophis genuinely held the highest impact rating ever recorded, so many people correctly remember an official alarm, and simply never registered the retraction that followed within days.
- The flyby's real closeness feels intuitively dangerous. Told that a 340-meter object will pass beneath the satellites and be visible to the eye, it is natural to assume that “that close” must mean “almost hit,” when in fact the miss distance is enormous and exactly known.
- Doomsday content performs. Each close-approach anniversary and every step toward 2029 gives content farms a reason to recycle the scare, and a countdown to a fixed date is far more shareable than the accurate but undramatic message that scientists have already ruled the impact out.

## Open questions
- The interesting unknowns about 2029 are scientific, not existential: how much Earth's gravity will stretch, spin up, and reshape Apophis's surface as it passes, which is one of the main reasons the flyby is prized as a natural experiment.
- Exactly how the encounter alters Apophis's future orbit will be measured in detail, refining predictions for later returns; this is bookkeeping within a no-impact framework, not a reopening of the collision question.
- Whether both planned spacecraft reach the asteroid on schedule (NASA's OSIRIS-APEX arriving about a month after the flyby, ESA's Ramses ideally before it) is a mission-planning question, and their science, not any danger, is what is at stake.
- Why the resolved-scare pattern keeps repeating is the real social puzzle: the impact was ruled out years ago, yet the doomsday version reliably resurfaces, a case study in how a retracted alarm and a vivid nickname outlive the correction.

## Sources
- NASA Analysis: Earth Is Safe From Asteroid Apophis for 100-Plus Years, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) (2021): https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-analysis-earth-is-safe-from-asteroid-apophis-for-100-plus-years/
- Apophis, NASA Science (Solar System): https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/asteroids/apophis/
- Radar Observations of Asteroid 99942 Apophis, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) (2021): https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia24168-radar-observations-of-asteroid-99942-apophis/
- Planetary Defense Exercise Uses Apophis as Hazardous Asteroid Stand-In, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) (2021): https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/planetary-defense-exercise-uses-apophis-as-hazardous-asteroid-stand-in/
- OSIRIS-APEX, NASA Science: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/osiris-apex/
- Apophis, European Space Agency (ESA): https://www.esa.int/Space_Safety/Planetary_Defence/Apophis
- Ramses: ESA's mission to asteroid Apophis, European Space Agency (ESA): https://www.esa.int/Space_Safety/Planetary_Defence/Ramses_ESA_s_mission_to_asteroid_Apophis
- This asteroid will skim by Earth and be visible with the naked eye. And scientists have calculated whether it will hit us, BBC Sky at Night Magazine: https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/news/asteroid-99942-apophis
- June 19, 2004: Asteroid Apophis is discovered, Astronomy.com (2004): https://www.astronomy.com/today-in-the-history-of-astronomy/june-19-2004-astroid-apophis-is-discovered/
- 99942 Apophis, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis

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