Latest News on Apophis: 13 -year-old Boy Corrects NASA’s Estimates of Earth Impact
Here’s a story that supports the value of science fairs. And it also makes one wonder where else NASA’s decimal points might be off by a couple of places. One caveat on this news piece, however: as far as I know there hasn’t been an official NASA press release on this.
Reportedly, a 13-year-old German schoolboy doing research for a science competition found errors in NASA’s estimates on the chances of the asteroid Apophis colliding with Earth. The boy, Nico Marquardt used data from the Institute of Astrophysics in Potsdam to calculate that there was a 1 in 450 chance that the Apophis asteroid will collide with Earth. NASA had previously estimated the chances at only 1 in 45,000, but according to an AFP news release, NASA now acknowledges the kid is right.
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Read the rest of Latest News on Apophis: 13 -year-old Boy Corrects NASA’s Estimates of Earth Impact (304 words)
© Nancy Atkinson for Universe Today, 2008. |
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