No, asteroid 2009 JF1 is not going to hit Earth this Friday

Are you aware that an asteroid the size of the Great Pyramid may hit Earth this Friday?

You might have if you listen to conspiracy-laden videos and news websites that make claims without being overly reliant on accuracy.

An asteroid the size of an Egyptian pyramid won't hit the earth on Friday. It is unlikely to miss us by tens of million kilometers.

The deal is here. On May 4, 2009, the Catalina Sky Survey's telescope in Arizona was used to find an asteroid in its observations.

As images are taken over the course of a night, asteroids appear as a dot moving from frame to frame, and it is possible to calculate its shape. The calculations show that JF1 came very close to Earth, less than half the distance to the moon. It is difficult to get a very accurate calculation over a short period of time.

As I've written before, when an asteroid is first discovered, the orbit calculated for it is pretty fuzzy, because we don't have a long enough arc to really be able to predict where it will be in the future. Small uncertainties in the position early on add up to big ones later. The analogy I like is if you're an outfielder in a baseball game, and as soon as the batter hits the ball you close your eyes. Now, predict where the ball will be when it lands. Yeah, nope. But if you keep watching it you’ll be able to see its trajectory much better.

The JF1 was very faint at the time and was only able to be tracked for a short period of time. It was shown that there was a 1 in 4,000 chance it would hit Earth.

It is a 99% chance it will miss. Astronomers kept this rock in mind even though the prediction was very rough.

They were not concerned. They assumed the asteroid was 10 meters in size based on its distance and brightness. That is much smaller than the asteroid that broke up over Russia and will not cause an Earth- shattering kaboom.

The European Space Agency's Near- Earth Object Coordination Center, which keeps track of such objects, was put on their risk list because of this.

Progress continues 13 years later. Astronomers use software to analyze asteroids. The measurement of star positions is used as a benchmark for the asteroid calculation. Astronomers use better software and stellar positions to reanalyze observational data.

Guess what? There was a drop in the chance of an impact. The impact risk went from one in 4,000 to one in 170,000. It has a 99.9994% chance of missing.

That action will be taken by me. The new work took JF1 off the priority list.

It is most likely that the miss distance will be about 24 million kilometers. The closest approach will be on May 15th.

We're safe. Well, okay? Okay, let's get on with it.

There are a lot of garbage websites about the asteroid if you search online. Many people say that NASA will hit on May 6, but they never link it to that claim. That's funny. Some asteroids and comets follow a path that takes them closer to the Sun than usual. I can't find anything on the internet from NASA. I've found more credible sites with this statement, but nothing like this as a direct quote from NASA. Some websites talk about a completely different asteroid. It doesn't inspire trust.

Even from the very first observations, it was never true that JF1 was over 100 meters across. From the beginning, it was known that it was small. It was never classified as a Potentially Hazardous object because it needed to be at least 140 meters wide. It's too small to be a real threat.

Every time I hear about a claim of an asteroid impact, I ask myself, "Who is making this claim?" They might be an astronomer. Is it possible that it comes from NASA? Or any organization that deals with astronomy?

If I hear of an actual asteroidal threat, you can bet your last penny that I will be screaming about it on the website and on every social media platform I have access to. If you don't hear anything from me, you're fine.

You should stop going to channels with names like NASALies69420SheepleFlat Earth$NFT$. Either way, or anything. I will use that as a favor.