German schoolboy, 13, corrects NASA’s asteroid figures: paper

BERLIN (AFP) – A 13-year-old German schoolboy corrected NASA’s estimates on the chances of an asteroid colliding with Earth, a German newspaper reported Tuesday, after spotting the boffins had miscalculated.

Nico Marquardt used telescopic findings from the Institute of Astrophysics in Potsdam (AIP) to calculate that there was a 1 in 450 chance that the Apophis asteroid will collide with Earth, the Potsdamer Neuerster Nachrichten reported.

NASA had previously estimated the chances at only 1 in 45,000 but told its sister organisation, the European Space Agency (ESA), that the young whizzkid had got it right.

Full Article

This entry was posted in Goofy. Bookmark the permalink.

One Response to German schoolboy, 13, corrects NASA’s asteroid figures: paper

  1. another_dan says:

    1 in 450 is pretty high. I don’t know if I want to be around in 2029 to see that one. I understand [I think from an earlier BON posting] that NASA has a plan to pull the asteroid off its collision course on the second pass. Maybe they better dust the plan off and start working on it.

Comments are closed.