13-year-old pwns NASA

Ouch. I liked NASA's odds a lot better.

F*cking unbelievable....

I guess that is how NASA is alright with $25,000 hammers and $45,000 toilet seats being charged to them from their contractors and suppliers..

This proves we have not been to the moon!

Well at least the young German is using the formal "Sie" instead of the familiar "du".

Respect your elders.

goshh, why wasn't I that smart when I was 13?
oh I know, it's cause I was born in America.

Clearly that German-born efficiency starts young!

Well that's just dandy. And having a high I.Q. isn't something you can be taught (especially in America) it's something your born with.

Can we get this kid to recompute the results of the 2004 presidential election?

Oh, by the way April 13, 2029 is a Friday if anyone cares to know...

NASA says "Oh no you didn't"!!!!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/16/esa_german_scho...

Well, I don't believe this proves anything relative to the moon trips. Smart kid, regardless of the comparison with the NASA math. I hate the 12 year old saying "pwns" or "owns". That should be left to the kiddies in myspace.

NASA may have been right, but the Headline " NASA pwns 13-year-olds math skillz" is much less of an eye catcher. Points for trying 13-year-old German kid!

If you're counting on an asteroid making a bank shot off a satellite then that's longer odds than just hitting the earth directly I would think.

Especially since there are a lot more variables in the orbits of satellites because being artificial they can be changed a lot more easily.

That only goes to show even if your are a genius at math, that all the calculations in the world won't help if your premises are faulty.

I too am afraid for our future generations, kozeki, especially since one of our peers mistakenly said that Hitler was a product of Germany. He was Austrian, homes...

Sorry to sound like a dick.

And really, using Hiltler as proof of Germany's superiority to the US!?!?! WOW, dude. WOW.

Kids are pretty amazing things. This kid had to correct the Smithsonian.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/bizarre/article442423.ece

dude hitler was austrian

High IQs can also be severely stunted by dysfunctional societies, dysfunctional cultures, bad diets, dysfunctional family and dysfunctional educational systems. If one is lucky enough to have a very strong character and personality along with one's high IQ, it may survive all of the above.

hope you guys didnt air it just yet...turns out, shits fake.

wow, talk about light on details. The linked page has very little and the 'Yahoo News' link at the bottom returns page not found. No names, no math.

Here is the real story:

http://www.physorg.com/news127499715.html

And here is NASA's return ho-slap:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/16/esa_german_scho...

http://au.news.yahoo.com/080416/21/16hjf.html

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/vdunet/20080416/ttc-schoolboy-...

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=11508

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,235...

http://www.dailynews.lk/2008/04/17/news13.asp

But....

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/register/20080416/ttc-schoolbo...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/16/esa_german_scho...

Hmmm I wonder if this is real or not now.

i like nasa's odds better..

Mankind is today's dinosaurs.

There's more of a chance we will do ourselves in.

13 year old is doing NASA math while im f***ing up on my taxes...great.

What if shorty is right and NASA had his people to contact their people and told them to make the kid a lier. I do believe that we have not touched the moon. First of all, I don't believe we have the technology to go outside of Earth, because anything going on the outside will burn. And how in the hell did Russia build a master orbiter that they can not repair. They need the USA to repair what they built. Come on people, after that bull that Bush done can you believe anything that our country says.

Are we really that dum that we believe that they are searching for a new planet so that only the rich and important can travel to live.

I do believe that once Earth gets mad, there is nothing we can do but run. Nature has its way of telling us that we are messing up. 12/21/2012 will show.

THE GERMAN KID IS WRONG!!! EVERYONE WHO READS THIS ARTICLE SHOULD ALSO READ http://www.physorg.com/news127634108.html
But the amazing story of the whizzkid versus the space bureaucracy turned out to be wrong, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said Wednesday.

The agency, sounding a bit like a weary math teacher, said its figures are correct when it comes to the asteroid Apophis, not the boy's.

"We stand by our numbers," NASA spokesman Dwayne Brown told AFP.

The agency that oversees space shuttle missions and unmanned space probes issued a statement after the German newspaper Potsdamer Neuerster Nachrichten reported on Tuesday that student Nico Marquardt had calculated there was a 1 in 450 chance that the Apophis asteroid will collide with Earth.

He argued in his project for a regional science competition that scientists at NASA had got it wrong when they estimated the chances of a collision at only 1 in 45,000.

But experts at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California had no doubts about their calculations, Brown said.

The Near-Earth Object Program Office "has not changed its current estimates for the very low probability (1 in 45,000) of an Earth impact by the asteroid Apophis in 2036," Brown said in a statement.

And the newspaper's account was also inaccurate when it described NASA telling the European Space Agency that the German student's calculations were correct, Brown said.

"Contrary to recent press reports, NASA offices involved in near-Earth object research were not contacted and have had no correspondence with a young German student, who claims the Apophis impact probability is far higher than the current estimate," the statement said.

The student's estimates were reportedly based on the asteroid hitting a satellite in 2029.

"However, the asteroid will not pass near the main belt of geosynchronous satellites in 2029, and the chance of a collision with a satellite is exceedingly remote," it said.

While the German newspaper article had spread across the Internet, NASA said the probability of Apophis colliding with Earth remained at 1 in 45,000.

^_^

Had us all going for a while.