Are you Making Plans for August 2027?

According to scientists there is an excellent chance (astronomically speaking, of course!) that we might have a close encounter with a meteor a kilometer-wide that could strike a bulls-eye right here on Terra-Ferma!

That's right, boys, girls (...and sailors), in as little as 20 years we might have our proverbial "Evolutionary PlayStation" reset and have to start over, although that is more likely to happen a few years later in 2039 the results will no doubt be "a smashing success" for the astrophysicists that predicted the event.
Although new evidence released this week predict that the new close encounter date is August 13th 2027 (Yes, that happens to be a Friday too!) Most recent predictions have lowered the odds to 1:45,000 (that's NOT good!)

The Continuing Story Of Asteroid 1999 AN10

New observations are now available for asteroid 1999 AN10, which is gradually moving away from the glare of the Sun. The new data allow a considerably improved orbit to be calculated for this potentially hazardous object, and the revised predictions indicate that this kilometer-size asteroid could pass particularly close to the Earth on August 7, 2027. The passage in 2027 could be as close as 37,000 km from the Earth's center (just 19,000 miles above the Earth's surface), but no closer. The miss distance is still very uncertain, and the asteroid could easily pass well outside the Moon's orbit. The probability of a collision in 2027 is essentially zero.

The accompanying diagram shows the uncertainty in the predicted close approach in 2027. The asteroid must pass through the plane of the diagram somewhere within an extremely elongated uncertainty ellipse, which appears simply as a line segment. (To be precise, the ellipse as drawn is a three-sigma linear confidence boundary.) The center of the ellipse is indicated by the plus sign, which is located at a nominal distance of 58,000 km from the center of the Earth. The minimum distance between the ellipse and the Earth center is 37,000 km.

here is still a very remote possibility that asteroid 1999 AN10 could pass by Earth in 2027 in such a way as to return in the year 2039 on an impacting trajectory. First identified by researchers Andrea Milani, Steven R. Chesley and Giovanni B. Valsecchi, this scenario is still exceedingly unlikely, but the probability of collision in 2039 has now increased to about 1 chance in 10 million. The post-2027 (Monte Carlo) analysis of this object's motion will continue.

Paul W. Chodas
Research Scientist
Near Earth Object Program Office
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
May 18, 1999

...Hey, if you don't believe me, look it up for yourself!