The most bizarre orbit of any asteroid NASA has heard of:

From www.spaceweather.com.

HORSESHOE ASTEROID DISCOVERED: Astronomers from the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland have found that recently-discovered asteroid 2010 SO16 has been following Earth around the Sun for more than 250,000 years. Relative to our planet, the asteroid describes a horseshoe-shaped path in space. Strange, but true!

Click HERE to see the Armagh Observatory's website, which includes a diagram showing this really bizarre orbit and the history of Earth's odd companion, SO16.

Do you suppose that it is merely a coincidence that it's nearest approach to Earth will be right around the year 2012?

Better buy a few beers and enjoy the last two years of your life then, Rich, lol. Sometimes things that look coincidental really are coincidental. It's not like government conspiracy stuff works on asteroids, unless NASA suddenly wanted to play space cowboy and send a retrofitted shuttle up to mine a hole in the rock and blow it towards Earth with a properly timed and placed nuclear bomb.

Any ideas on how an orbit like that can exist via natural means? Basically have a travelling body reverse it's direction apparently based solely on it's distance from Earth? It appears that the object reverses it's direction only when it gets close to the Earth, otherwise it would have crossed the Earth's path already. The open part of the U shape apparently must stay centered on the Earth's position. The only forces I can think of that would cause something like that would be either magnetic or electrostatic, where the Earth and that object has the same polarity which repells that smaller object when the two get close enough. But even in those cases, the repelling force wouldn't likely be strong enough to push that asteroid back onto the same exact path in reverse, and remain in that same orbit.

Originally Posted by snowgyre

Better buy a few beers and enjoy the last two years of your life then, Rich, lol. Sometimes things that look coincidental really are coincidental. It's not like government conspiracy stuff works on asteroids, unless NASA suddenly wanted to play space cowboy and send a retrofitted shuttle up to mine a hole in the rock and blow it towards Earth with a properly timed and placed nuclear bomb.

Two or maybe three things happening coincidentally are coincidences. The odds of four or more coincidental events strains credibility of it being MERELY a coincidence.

I'm not a physicist, but I'm sure there's a mathematical model that explains these orbits. I'll leave that for the rocket scientist types to understand! If you're that interested (and feel like some dry, heavy reading), you can do a search on Google Scholar for relevant peer-reviewed scientific articles. If my brain wasn't so fried trying to learn occupancy modeling for wildlife populations, I'd probably do the investigation myself. x_x

It's orbit is almost circular - only the path it appears to take in our sky (due to its motion with respect to us) appears as a horseshoe shape. It's about the same distance from the sun as us, but not in the same orbital plane. It doesn't come very close, and it definitely won't hit the earth any time soon.

Here's a diagram of the orbit you can rotate and play with. (you need java enabled). I haven't been on that site in years... brings back memories.
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=2010%20SO16;orb=1