Asteroid Named After Egyptian Chaos God to Crash Into Earth (In 50 Years, Maybe)

We like to put our name on a lot of things. Maybe an Earth-shattering asteroid isn't one of them, unless you're the type who likes to see the world burn. And if you are really that morbid, it might delight you to learn that a giant 1,000 foot asteroid was serendipitously named after Apophis, the Ancient Egyptian god of chaos. Apophis, or Apep, was a giant snake that curled around the world just beneath the horizon, and threatened to destroy us all every night. The Ancient Egyptians believed that Ra, God of the Sun, fought him every evening, and that when the sun rose up from behind the horizon every morning, that proved Ra's victory over the evil snake.

But maybe one day Ra will lose one of his nightly battles against the world ender. And with the approach of the asteroid that took the chaos god's name, you may be tempted to get in a bomb shelter with a surplus of toilet paper and canned beans looking to wait out the devastating onslaught of the cosmic collision you read about on your Facebook news feed. But we're here to tell you, guys. Chill out. Take that one extra second to breathe. There we go.

While astronomers at the University of Hawai'i have spotted Apophis heading towards our dear planet Earth, it won't make it anywhere near us until April 12, 2068. Even then, its chances of actually making an impact are astronomically low: 1 in 150,000, according to NASA's Sentry Risk Table. That still makes it the third most dangerous celestial threat around though (that we know of!), especially since its crash would result in an explosion equivalent to 1,151 megatons of TNT. But that's only in the astonishingly unlikely event that it hits us - or if Ra slips up, whichever comes first.