German Boy Corrects NASA's Asteroid Doom Odds

razor - April 16, 2008 05:30AM in General News

Over the years, NASA has made an incalculable number of advances in space technology and research, and those contributions have sometimes made life better for the world - but it appears that NASA might want to consider outsourcing its advanced doom calculations.  A 13 year old German kid corrected an erroneous calculation made by NASA that was to determine the likelihood of a killer asteroid impacting the Earth.  Apophis, the asteroid of death, is scheduled in April 2029 to orbit our planet in such a fashion that it might impact one of the 40,000 satellites currently hanging around up in space - and if Apophis does strike one of those satellites, Germany's little doom prophet calculated that it has a 1 in 450 chance of colliding with our planet on its next orbit in 2036.  NASA incorrectly put the odds at 1 in 45,000.