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The Sky is Falling and NASA gets into a pissing match with a 13 year old

By 4L

I just saw this story this morning and since I vaguely remember reading something about this a few years and again a few months ago, thought I would click on it. Supposedly, an asteroid is projected to come within a few thousand miles (which is close, relatively speaking) of Earth in about 20 or 30 years. NASA put the odds of hitting at 1 in 45,000. Apparently, a 13 year old German boy, as part of a school project, calculated that the odds were actually closer to 1 in 450.

Whether the 13 year old exposed a massive coverup to avoid general panic or these physicists and mathematicians who are among the most elite in the world miscalculated something a 13 year old could do. The funny thing, to me anyway, isn't whether NASA is right or wrong, but how two different groups are reporting the story. See German Schoolboy, 13, corrects NASA's asteroid figures (I'll change this link once I find the more permanent one). Cf. The Register: Schoolboy's asteroid-strike sums are wrong (stating that the numbers the boy used to make his calculations were actually incorrect).

So who is right? Does it really matter? As is plainly evident by the way things are handled nowadays, I see this as being the next generation's problem. For now, I'll stick with NASA's estimations.

Full post as published by The Once and Future Lawyer on April 16, 2008 (boomark / email).