What is Digg?Warning: The Content in this Article May be Inaccurate
Readers have reported that this story contains information that may not be accurate.335 Comments
- greydonkey, on 04/16/2008, -1/+124The article is inaccurate see:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/16/esa_german ... - Jeconais, on 04/16/2008, -3/+111Buried as inaccurate. Simple fact checking is no longer a barrier to journalism. NASA have not agreed their sums are wrong. - http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/apophis/
- JaySanz, on 04/16/2008, -6/+94450...45,000 come on... what's 44,550 among friends?
- xerexes1, on 04/16/2008, -1/+89bof·fin (bŏf'ĭn)
n. Chiefly British Slang
A scientist, especially one engaged in research. - Cyre, on 04/16/2008, -23/+81What is a boffins?
- bosssmiley, on 04/16/2008, -0/+40El Reg calls "*****!" on this:
"It would appear that the intial article in the Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten, which says that NASA and the ESA endorsed Nico Marquardt's calculations, was incorrect. The story was picked up by German tabloids and the AFP news wire, and is now all over the internet."
El Reg article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/16/esa_german ... - Sludgehammer, on 04/16/2008, -2/+35Hmm... I'd like to see some confirmation for this before I start excepting it as fact. I have to wonder how he arrived at the 11/5000 chance that Apophis would hit a satellite. Still, if this is true, it's easy to understand how the scientists missed the chance of satellite collision, it's pretty rare that a large object gets close enough to earth to cross their orbits.
- loquax, on 04/16/2008, -2/+35Not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with a misplaced decimal.
- baylat, on 04/16/2008, -0/+31uhm guys, this article is inaccurate.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/16/esa_german ...
stop bashing NASA - inactive, on 04/16/2008, -4/+35Something from the lord of the rings?
... no that was baggins - cawpin, on 04/16/2008, -2/+32Excuse the comment abuse. This is a link from below that shows the boy is wrong.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/16/esa_german ... - TripcodeMel, on 04/16/2008, -1/+31Many boffins died to bring us that information. Ungrateful bastard.
- cerealman, on 04/16/2008, -2/+30The kid was wrong.
- inactive, on 04/16/2008, -2/+29Apophis is such a scary, foreboding name.
- acceleration, on 04/16/2008, -2/+27It's slang for an expert
- Unskillful, on 04/16/2008, -6/+30HOW the hell are more people paying attention to the boy, and not the fact that the odds of this happening are 1/450...
- ghm101, on 04/16/2008, -4/+28British slang for a scientist.
- cerealman, on 04/16/2008, -0/+23The kid is wrong.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/16/esa_german ... - alex7575, on 04/16/2008, -0/+22They sure don't get math, but they do get a joke...
- franklymister, on 04/16/2008, -1/+22Thanks to the commenters who pointed out that this article is not, in fact, correct. Buried as inaccurate.
- Swipecat, on 04/16/2008, -0/+21Yep, it's not fact at all. See this article which debunks it:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/16/esa_german ... - spyd3rweb, on 04/16/2008, -6/+26If an asteroid was going impact earth, would they tell you?
- barroni, on 04/16/2008, -8/+28Maths errors at NASA is nothing new they lost Mars orbiter in 1999 because one engineering team used metric units while another used English units for a key spacecraft operation
- Aberen, on 04/16/2008, -17/+37Hah, once he hit's 20 he should apply for a job at NASA.
Only thing to put in the resumé
"Proved you wrong in 2008" - nachowski, on 04/16/2008, -1/+19(FTA) (...) it will create a ball of iron and iridium 320 metres (1049 feet) wide and weighing 200 billion tonnes, which will crash into the Atlantic Ocean.
So, for an asteroid that has actually only has a 1/450 chance of hitting earth, they've already figured out which ocean it will fall into? - kreejo, on 04/16/2008, -1/+19Boffin basically means smart person, generally associated with scientists, professors, etc. It's used mostly in my country, England
- Harabeck, on 04/16/2008, -0/+18woosh
- Ihatepolitics, on 04/16/2008, -0/+18don't worry Bruce Willis will save us.
- Duositex, on 04/16/2008, -4/+21Am I the only one who absolutely detests this word? Or any slang used in a formal publication? I find that the word just sounds irritating.
- hadak, on 04/16/2008, -6/+23So, this is the way the world ends.
- ardnut, on 04/16/2008, -0/+16http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boffin
- hokie47, on 04/16/2008, -0/+13In April 2008 it was widely but incorrectly reported that 13 year-old Nico Marquardt from Potsdam, Germany, had recalculated the odds as part of a science competition, and found the risk had been underestimated. Taking into account the possibility of the asteroid colliding with one or more of the estimated 40,000 artificial satellites orbiting the earth, possibly causing a shift in its orbit, increases the probability of a collision with [5] earth on its next fly-by in 2036 to 1 in 450. NASA was reported as confirming these results with the ESA[6], yet they have since apparently denied these claims, and on April 15, 2008 it was reported Nico Marquardt's calculations were incorrect.[7]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis - chillybeans27, on 04/16/2008, -0/+11I immediately thought "Many Bothans died to bring us this information."
- sdcarter, on 04/16/2008, -1/+12Cause he'd miss you, babe
And he don't wanna miss a thing - jacenat, on 04/16/2008, -0/+11"Let the private industries do the space thing, they do a better job anyway."
HEAVENS NO!
you DO know how much private companies care for fundamental research and human life ... do you? - silfiriel, on 04/16/2008, -0/+10check wikipedia about apophis asteroid, you'll see that the final decision of NASA is that the calculations of the student are INCORRECT. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis
- Braik, on 04/16/2008, -0/+10Taken from that site,
"The future for Apophis on Friday, April 13 of 2029 includes an approach to Earth no closer than 29,470 km (18,300 miles, or 5.6 Earth radii from the center, or 4.6 Earth-radii from the surface) over the mid-Atlantic, appearing to the naked eye as a moderately bright point of light moving rapidly across the sky. Depending on its mechanical nature, it could experience shape or spin-state alteration due to tidal forces caused by Earth's gravity field.
This is within the distance of Earth's geosynchronous satellites. However, because Apophis will pass interior to the positions of these satellites at closest approach, in a plane inclined at 40 degrees to the Earth's equator and passing outside the equatorial geosynchronous zone when crossing the equatorial plane, it does not threaten the satellites in that heavily populated region.
Using criteria developed in this research, new measurements possible in 2013 (if not 2011) will likely confirm that in 2036 Apophis will quietly pass more than 49 million km (30.5 million miles; 0.32 AU) from Earth on Easter Sunday of that year (April 13). "
At least we know that if the world IS going to end it'll end on Friday the 13th - Orion682, on 04/16/2008, -0/+10http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/16/esa_german ...
The article is inaccurate - daRoach, on 04/16/2008, -0/+10That's a strange name, I would have called it a Chazwozzer.
- daRoach, on 04/16/2008, -0/+10But now I lost all confidence in 13 year olds.
- cawpin, on 04/16/2008, -0/+9Don't get too confident. They did screw up a miles to kilometers conversion a few years ago, remember.
- Zeigy, on 04/16/2008, -0/+9Point the HUGE HARDON Collider into the asteroid path and make a black hole.
- trispear, on 04/16/2008, -6/+15Yeah. But WTF is anybody doing using English units in engineering. Metric ftw. (Plus the whole powers of ten thing is so much better than the English systems which love to throw a new arbitrary number whereever they can. Lets see: 12 inches to a foot. 3 feet to a yard. 1760 yards to a mile. Yeah, makes sense. So much better than 1000 millimeters (or 100 centimeters) to a meter. 1000 meters to a kilometer.) End sarcasm.
- breadfred, on 04/16/2008, -1/+10What do you mean, dude?
- postitnote, on 04/16/2008, -0/+9NASA, 49, corrects German schoolboy's asteroid figures.
- Logicexe, on 04/16/2008, -4/+13What propaganda is NASA spreading? Oh wait, you must either be a moon landing conspiracy theorist of a global warming warming denier. lolz
- MWeather, on 04/16/2008, -0/+9By they, I assume you mean the multitude of observatories around the world that were used to verify the results? Yeah, I can see a few thousand people keeping a secret that big.
Makes as much sense as faking the moon landing. - blitzkriegpunk, on 04/16/2008, -2/+10Like your speeling?
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