Web gaga over reports that schoolboy “corrects” NASA over asteroid danger…
Uh-huh...
Sorry, the kid didn’t know what he was talking about. Nor did all the bloggers who picked up the tale…
If he had been proved correct, 13-year-old Nico Marquardt might have embarrassed some of NASA’s finest scientists. The schoolboy astronomer thought the space agency had missed something when calculating whether or not an asteroid it is tracking is likely to hit the Earth in 2036. His own calculation suggested that a collision is hundreds of times more likely than Nasa thinks.
But anyone concerned about an imminent impact should rest easy. Scientists welcomed the German teenager’s enthusiasm but have pointed to a number of errors in his work. And reports that Nasa has put its hands up and admitted errors (repeated all over the web today) seem wildly exaggerated…
Monica Grady a planetary scientist at the Open University in the UK…isn’t worried by Marquardt’s calculations. “Not until I see some more evidence. It’s really interesting that it should come to light in this particular way and it shows there is always room for people to check up on things and it’s very valuable that they do. But it’s not something that I’ll read and think, oh crikey, I better start laying in the baked beans.”
Posted: Wed - April 16, 2008 at 02:38 PM