Schoolboy Corrects NASA's Math On Killer Asteroid

spiracle writes "A German schoolboy, Nico Marquardt, has revised NASA's figures for the chances that the Apophis asteroid will hit earth. Apparently if the asteroid hits a satellite in 2029, its path could be diverted enough to cause it to collide with Earth on the next orbit, in 2036. NASA had calculated the chances as 1 in 45,000 but the 13-year-old, in his science project, made it 1 in 450. NASA agreed." Update: 04/16 16:47 GMT by Z : This is not entirely accurate, it turns out — more details.

Not peer reviewed.

[Plazmid (1132467)]

Not peer reviewed.

Other news stories on this

[goombah99 (560566)]

NASA previously estimated the chance "Apophis" the asteroid would strike earth in 2027 was 1 in 45,000. But a german schoolboy, Nico Marquardt, pointed out that NASA overlooked the probability the asteroid would strike one of the 40,000 sattelites orbiting Earth and enter a new solar orbit intersecting Earth in 2036. A german newspaper reports that NASA now concurs the chance this will happen is about 1 in 450. If the 200 billion tonne ball of iridium and iron stikes the planet then it's literally light's out for earth: 800 foot tidal waves followed by an indefinite period of dust cloud covered darkness, not to mention metal vapor in the atmosphere. The original Slashdot discussion [slashdot.org] was in 2007 when the odds were better. At that time it was known that there was a small risk of a gravitational slingshot dropping it into the 2036 collisional orbit, however, to do so the asteroid had to pass through an improbable 400 meter wide strike zone to be properly deflected, as described in 2006 in Popular Science [popularmechanics.com] from 2006. Today's announcement of the new finding is here [physorg.com]and here [yahoo.com].

Friday the 13th

[goombah99 (560566)]

By the way, it passes by the earth in 2027 on friday the 13th. If it hit's it will hit in the pacific ocean. So California may get wet. The energy content is said to be 26,000 Hiroshimas which is not that much but recent calculation suggest is more than enough to darken the earth.

Re:Friday the 13th

[terrymr (316118)]

> 26,000 Hirshimas

So a little less than 1 Mt St Helens then.

Re:Friday the 13th

[jd (1658)]

Volcanic ash, when mixed with crushed limestone, makes some of the best concrete. At least, the Romans thought so. That's what they used. Set underwater, was strong enough to use on big construction projects like the Colleseum, and so on. (Concrete appears to have been invented by the Egyptians - the upper levels of the pyramids show evidence that the limestone was poured into place, not set as a naturally-formed rock.) I suspect ash from Mount St. Helens would be excellent in a Roman-recipe concrete.

Also on the theme of Mount St. Helens, it stopped building the dome inside the crater at about the same time as swarms of earthquakes were detected off the coast of Oregon (usually a precursor to volcanic activity). There are no volcanos in the area the earthquakes were detected, so vulcanologists have ascribed the tremors (reaching 5.5 on the richter scale) to a shift in the magma flow. There was no suggestion - as far as I can tell - that the lack of mountain-building and the earthquakes were linked, but it wouldn't shock me. If that is corrct, then there's an awful lot of molten rock going somewhere - the dome was building a dumptruck's worth of rock per second, according to one quote I saw - and there are a lot of volcanos considered overdue for exploding.

Re:Friday the 13th

[MrNaz (730548)]

26,000 Hiroshimas?! Why, that's almost an Africa!

Re:Friday the 13th

[Kjella (173770)]

The energy content is said to be 26,000 Hiroshimas

Huh, wait a second. The estimates for the Hiroshima bomb is 13-16 kiloton which would make it in the 340-415 megaton range. That's just 8 times the Tsar Bomba of 50 megaton the Soviets tested, and last I checked the world did fine. That number must be way off or the potential damages way exaggerated.

Fuzzy math

[commodoresloat (172735)]

Huh, wait a second. The estimates for the Hiroshima bomb is 13-16 kiloton which would make it in the 340-415 megaton range. That's just 8 times the Tsar Bomba of 50 megaton the Soviets tested, and last I checked the world did fine. That number must be way off or the potential damages way exaggerated.

Sounds like they need another German schoolboy to help them out here.

Google translation of German source

[goombah99 (560566)]

Here's the (semi hilarious) machine translation [google.com].

I forgot the World Downfall chosen! ... AND NASA HAS SAID, I HAVE QUITE

BY MICHAEL SAUERBIER

Potsdam - He is the greatest threat our planet: On Sunday, 13 April 2036, the asteroid crosses "Apophis" the orbit.
Nevertheless, the probability that we killer lumps from the All true, is 0.2 percent! This is a student from Potsdam calculated.

And doing so, Nico Marquardt (13) the research of NASA corrected! For his disturbing discovery was the small physics genius now for the youth researchers Prize.
"The asteroid has left me no rest," says the SiebtklÃssler from Potsdamer Humboldt Gymnasium. "On the Internet, I had high bets on the impact of Apophis was discovered. But NASA is the impact likely only 1 to 45000. I wanted to know how it really is. "
With the telescope of the Astrophysical Institute Potsdam Nico was allowed to observe asteroids train.
The student: "Then I said Spahn professor at the University of Potsdam, as the attractions of the sun, moon and earth the way of Apophis influence." Astrophysicists had a suitable formula.
Nico: "With Professor Landgraf, ESA's satellite control center, I train then recalculated."
Frightening picture: "The harvest probability is 1 to 450," said a young astronomer. For comparison: For a lottery-six (without super number), it is at 1 in 14 million.

Nico: "When would the impact force of 98000 Hiroshima bombs freely. Stürben million people, dust would darken the sky, a super-tsunami swamped parts of the earth. "
But: "I hope that Apophis nearly vorbeischrammt to us ..."

Re:Google translation of German source

[thodi (37956)]

No need to translate it to make it hilarious:
a) The source "newspaper" is Germany's biggest tabloid - with as much knowledge on astrophysics as a kindergarten kid
b) No 13 year old German kid says "stuerben"

His peers

[goombah99 (560566)]

Still, no one has scrutinized the boy's work for math errors.

Well surely we can find another school boy to peer review it.

Re:His peers

[RuBLed (995686)]

Thoughts of another schoolboy:
"But if we make it strike the Earth and not one of those sattelites in 2029, the probability of it striking the Earth in 2036 is NIL. NASA agreed."

Re:His peers

[arivanov (12034)]

We just need to make sure it is in a place like Germany, France or Russia where they still teach terrorist material like mathematics, physics and chemistry in school.

Re:Other news stories on this

[Digestromath (1190577)]

If nobody has criticised it yet, that means its every /.ers responsibility to, regardless of thier actually knowledge of the facts or math.

So I'll bite the bullet.

First off... how does a 200,000,000,000 tonne asteroid (200,000,000,000,000 kg) travelling at any substantial inter-planetary speed be deflected by a satellite travelling at 3070 m/s and at most wieghing 10,000kg?

Of course thats presuming an elelastic collision as opposed to the satellite deflecting off the asteroid in a cloud of debris.

Its been a while since I've done any physics, and I'm just grabbing numbers from the article (which are likely to be wrong anyways).

But to bring it all together in a car analogy for the fellow /.ers... How does a .22 bullet deflect an oncoming semitruck forcing into the little old lady on the sidewalk?

Re:Other news stories on this

[amRadioHed (463061)]

But to bring it all together in a car analogy for the fellow /.ers... How does a .22 bullet deflect an oncoming semitruck forcing into the little old lady on the sidewalk?

Aim for the driver.

Re:Not peer reviewed.

[commander_gallium (906728)]

You are right that NASA has not updated it's site since 2006.

Just to be clear, the Impact Risk Page [nasa.gov] is kept current (pretty much to the day). You'll see the link for Apophis if you scroll down a little. If the odds of impact jumped by a factor of 100, this would be one of the first places to show it.

Re:Not peer reviewed.

[ZX3 Junglist (643835)]

Honey, Hi. It's Me. Your sense of humor. Can't we sit down and talk sometime? I'm a mess without you. Please say you miss me. I know deep down you feel the same way.

Oh, greeeaaaat.

[sammy baby (14909)]

From TFA:

The shockwaves from that would create huge tsunami waves, destroying both coastlines and inland areas, whilst creating a thick cloud of dust that would darken the skies indefinitely.

And thanks to little Nico, we now know that the likelihood of this happening is one thousand times greater than we thought.

Thanks, little buddy! You're a regular ray of sunshine.

Re:Oh, greeeaaaat.

[wizardforce (1005805)]

one hundred, do you by chance work at NASA? :P

Oblig.

[Alaren (682568)]

Never tell me the odds!

Damn him!

[Jafafa Hots (580169)]

Little bastards gonna get us all killed!

Re:Damn him!

[jamesh (87723)]

Now lets burn down the observatory so this can never happen again!

Re:Damn him!

[by Anonymous Coward]

Righhht.... sure, Lord Apathy, we believe ya....

Unix 1 - Humanity 0

[rubypossum (693765)]

And the 2038k problem solves itself, thus vindicating Ken Thompson and pessimists everywhere.

Re:Unix 1 - Humanity 0

[Dunbal (464142)]

2038 years should be enough for anybody

Either NASA was using FORTRAN again...

[Theatetus (521747)]

...or they forgot to do the metric conversion. Again.

Dang

[mandolin (7248)]

I hope that kid won the science competition he was in!

"... and for my science project, I proved NASA wrong and made a discovery of potentially epic proportions..."

Kindof tough to follow that one.

Hang on ...

[attonitus (533238)]

... it will create a ball of iron and iridium 320 metres (1049 feet) wide and weighing 200 billion tonnes ...

If this thing weighs 200 billion tonnes, it seems surprising that hitting a satellite is going to divert its course very significantly (unless that satellite is the moon). And:

NASA and Marquardt agree that ... [it] will crash into the Atlantic ocean

Ah, so there's only a 1 in 450 chance of it hitting earth, but we know which ocean it will land in if it does (7 years after it hits the satellite).

Next week: 13 year old boy discovers new chemical reaction in which a combination of scientifically illiterate PR bunnies and sub-editors produces large quantities of bullshit.

Re:Hang on ...

[attonitus (533238)]

Right, but the asteroid has hit a satellite between now and then, a satellite which has, apparently, increased its chance of hitting earth from 1 in 45000 to 1 in 450, which means that its trajectory has changed fairly significantly. In particular, its orbital period has probably changed, which makes it seem unlikely that we can say anything accurate about an impact time 7 years later. There's only a four hour window to hit the Atlantic.

Not only that, but the Atlantic only covers one fifth [wikipedia.org] of the earth's surface, which means that even if, despite all the uncertainty, we knew exactly what time it would hit the earth, the Atlantic would cover at most about one half of the target. So I very much doubt that anyone who knows what they are doing would be prepared to "agree" that it will hit the Atlantic.

So I smell bullshit in the science lab. To be fair, it's possible that a bad translation from the original German article was required as a catalyst.

Re:Hang on ...

[evanbd (210358)]

The NASA NEO [nasa.gov] site gives 2.1E10 kg, or 2.1E7 tons -- 21M tons, unless I've screwed up the units somewhere or that site is wrong (both possible :) ).

The same site gives vImpact for Apophis at 12.59km/s. I haven't looked at the approach trajectory in detail, but geosynchronous orbit is only 3.07 km/s, so the relative velocity is dominated by Apophis (moving at less than 12.59, but more than the 5.87 km/s vInfinity; I'm too lazy to work out the exact number). It's orbital velocity wrt the Sun is about the same as Earth's, or 30 km/s -- so the 5-10 km/s collision velocity is 15-30% of its orbital velocity, roughly.

It's a small effect, to be sure, but it has a very, very long lever to work with. I'd be reluctant to say he's wrong without actually doing the math myself in far greater detail than either of us has done here.

I want to see NASA's acknowledgement he is right

[MarkLR (236125)]

This does not sound right. The article states that Apophis has a mass of 200 billion tonnes. How would colliding with a satellite which except for the ISS max out at about 20 tonnes do anything at all to Apophis' orbit? Forget the link to the wire story where is a link to NASA statement that the impact chance is really 1 in 450?

Original article

[ulash (1266140)]

Here is the original article [www.bild.de], in German, from the German newspaper. It looks like a professor helped him (Professor Spahn from Potsdam University). Bild is semi-infamous in Europe for sensationalizing stories but at least we know that the boy is real if nothing else...

Um, was this by any chance an April Fools paper?

[TheMohel (143568)]

Let's see. We begin with the original source of data, "telescopic observations." Good, but perhaps a bit, shall we say, lacking in nine-digit precision. Then we add the element of a bright schoolboy (always a favorite in the papers) doing something big and being validated (instantly!) by "NASA" (not a person, but apparently the entire agency). Oh, and "NASA" told "ESA", but we still don't have the identity of anyone other than the putative schoolboy.

So far, doing well.

Then we hit the big problems. First, we have the scare factor of "40,000" satellites surrounding Earth. Most of which, actually, are in LEO, with a few more in geosynchronous orbit. Which makes the space around the Earth only about 99.999% empty space, rather than a few more nines. As it turns out, space is big.

But it sounds good to imply that somehow there's this asteroid belt around the earth, and that the "killer" asteroid might hit a satellite.

Well, WHICH ONE? They have a lot of different masses, they are going in different directions, and we pretty much have to get a specific momentum change in the right direction in order to get just the right perturbation. Hitting a small piece of space junk is one thing, but the variation in weight of those "40,000" satellites is orders of magnitude. And that makes a big difference in orbital perturbation, even if the difference in orbital velocity is small compared to the velocity of the asteroid. We're talking about a subtle effect here.

And let's not figure in things like elastic collisions, off-center collisions, pieces flying off, or anything else. Nope, it's gonna happen perfectly, just like that seven-ball four-cushion bank shot we all can hit again and again.

Heck, they even called the pocket. Right into the Atlantic, after an orbit measuring in the decades. Now I will grant that the orbit is pretty well known, but again, that little "satellite assist" must be just precise as heck.

A nice touch gives us the "destroy both coasts and darken the world indefinitely." While it's good to be so certain, couldn't they be more specific about the method of destruction? Seeing as how they apparently know everything else, and all.

And finally, we have the 450:1 odds. Not 500:1, and certainly not 1000:1, but exactly 450. Cool. About as believable as my old homework excuses, but infinitely cooler. Can you say "significant figures"? I knew you could.

I think it's what you get when you let AFP (my source of news of the world for sure) loose in spring.

Re:Um, was this by any chance an April Fools paper

[PatrickThomson (712694)]

As it turns out, space is big

You may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

Re:Um, was this by any chance an April Fools paper

[TheMohel (143568)]

Sadly, I actually used your cogent comments to waste a fair bit of time and go look at the original press paper (in German, it's at this link [www.pnn.de]). It's a story of an intrepid science fair paper. Let's hear the Google translation:

Perhaps the most "exciting moment in human history", as Nico Marquardt promises Completes had chosen on Friday, 13 April 2029 at 22:45 am Central European Time. Then flies from the iron and Iridium existing space-potato, 320 metres in diameter and 200 billion tons, only 32500 kilometres of the earth over.

There, I hope that gave you a flavor. BTW, there is no mention here either of any named individual in NASA or ESA that is standing behind the numbers quoted.

The article is breathless about how wonderfully catastrophic this all is, but I do have some questions about the math. For one, are there really 40,000 satellites in geostationary orbit (or geosynchronous orbit)? That's the quoted number - I was under the impression that there were rather fewer. And how on earth do they get a figure of 1:450 that the satellite will hit one of them? And that that hit will guarantee the catastrophic outcome they so desire?

For another, I'm not getting a picture of a long observational period and multiple telescopes. Only one telescope is mentioned, and the science fair aspect makes it more suspicious. It looks more like a novel hypothesis ("what if it rams a satellite?") combined with some serious guesswork.

And finally, did anybody else get a little bothered by the description of a 160-meter radius asteroid that weighs 200 billion tons? That gives a density of a little under 12 kilograms per cubic centimeter, which would make it a rather unique and valuable material. As near as I can tell, Wikipedia being your friend and all, they missed by three orders of magnitude. Speaking of correcting the numbers...

Hollywood

[Eth1csGrad1ent (1175557)]

And now Hollywood can turn the German boy into an American boy, chuck the complex math for a backyard telescope, name the asteriod after the boy, throw in a baby to add drama and get Morgan Freeman to play the President... Oh wait... ...never mind.

At least we don't have to worry

[The Bender (801382)]

Well, think on the bright side.
At least we don't have to worry about fixing the 2038 UNIX 32-bit date bug [wikipedia.org] any more.

This makes the physicist in me cry

[TiberSeptm (889423)]

I'd love to see the computer-cluster this kid calculated the 100k+ iterations of the many-bodied system of time-retarded lagrangians required to solve something like this. His parents power bill has to be insane. Considering uncertainties involved in orbital trajectories and timing for asteroids like this, 100k might even be a low number of runs for something like this. The number of satellites in orbit, their varying masses, uncertainty in the current un-colided trajectory, etc. can't possibly create a situation where you have improved odds of impact anyways. There is actually a greater solid angle of impact for collisions that would decrease the likelihood of eventual earth impact than increase it. Maybe these odds are after the most favorable possible satellite impact plus the help of magical space faries?

Apophis is an opportunity, not a threat

[damburger (981828)]

We are developing several strategies to deflect the course of asteroids. If these mature over the next few years before our close encounters with Apophis, we may have the chance of bringing into Earth orbit, providing nearby and easily accessible resources for space construction.

Providing it with enough energy to slow from solar orbit to Earth orbit could be tricky, so I suggest the best way is to deflected in such a way it undergoes aerocapture.

People always seem concerned about the possibility of the rock just smacking into Earth, and think this is a reason not to pursue such a strategy. Tell me, am I being too Lex Luthor about this?

Re:Damn zeros

[kcbanner (929309)]

I guess NASA was using MS Excel to do their calculations.

Re:Damn zeros

[snl2587 (1177409)]

I guess NASA was using MS Excel to do their calculations.

Or faced political pressure to predict something other than a fairly decent chance of doom. I mean really: does anyone think a 13-year-old outsmarted every scientist at NASA?

Re:That can't be right

[snl2587 (1177409)]

Political pressure tends to be pro impending doom these days.

Err...yes, I would agree with that sentiment, but I think that's exactly why they wouldn't predict doom.

Bear with me for a moment (and feel free to rip the argument apart later): if NASA predicted impeding doom from the asteroid then people would panic and NASA would receive tons of funding, but for all the wrong reasons. Instead of attempting to focus on research and possible Mars visits they would be forced to spend tons of time and effort trying to avert an Armageddon that would likely never come. This would most likely set the program years back.

If they instead ignored the thing until it was certain to collide with the Earth, then they would have several years to find a relatively easy solution, and up until that point they would have twenty years of advances under their belt.

Maybe this is the lack of sleep combined with hours of work and six cups of coffee talking, but I think that NASA had/has very good reasons for keeping this thing quiet.

Re:No suprise here...

[by Anonymous Coward]

And this observation is applicable for exactly what reason? Are you claiming that NASA management is screwing up the calculations? Or are you just talking out of your ass and trying to insinuate that NASA is always incompetent in whatever it does?

Btw, in case you are not aware, the NEO office is at JPL--not JSC. And JPL is run by Caltech for NASA--not directly by NASA.

Now that we have that cleared up you should feel free to continue your bullshitting and insinuating via hearsay.

Re:DOUBLE OH-NOES!!!

[Mr. Picklesworth (931427)]

Don't worry; with the skies darkened, they will have no source of energy.
Oh, wait...

Better add Keannu Reaves to the 2029 roster.

Re:Where's the math?

[dave1791 (315728)]

IIRC - The last PISA study put Germany and the US next to each other in the math rankings - i.e. neither had any reason to brag.

Interestingly, this caused shock in Germany as Germans had regarded themselves as having one of the best education systems in the world. In the US, people are so used to the idea of having a shitty education system that it passed without notice.

Re:Where's the math?

[turkeyfish (950384)]

Even so, it would be nice to see the math. The only place I have seen such equations solved is in Feynman's Physics volumes, which unfortunately I lost to Katrina.

What is the error estimate on the precise trajectory of the asteroid and its velocity? How can they arrive at a 400 m window, when they don't even have a good tracking of all the space junk in orbit? How many satelites were taken into consideration in reaching the 1:450 number? Can these really be ignored if the trajectory is to be computed this precisely? Have all the calculations taken into account numerical precision associated with floating point representation? Have the gravitational effects of the other planets been adequately accounted for? With what precision?

Just questions it would be interesting to look at to assess how these figures are arrived at.
It wouold be instructive to see what figures NASA or the German schoolboy used in their equations.

Re:So if it does hit a sat will we know about it?

[by Anonymous Coward]

And how long will it take to figure out if we're boned? 2 years? That leaves about 5 years to do something about it.. or, ya know, go on a long killing spree.

That's the depressing part.

To answer your question: Probably a few months after the 2027 encounter (and hypothetical collision with the satellite), but at that point, it'll be impossible to do anything about it in the 9 years between 2027 and 2036.

The right strategy is to use the 20 years between now and 2027 to build an orbiter/lander (with a big-ass nuke, nuclear reactor powering a big-ass laser, or big-ass solar sail of reflective/absorptive paint -- and as much as I like nukes, the big can of paint's probably the best way to go -- attached).

We use the 20 years to build the orbiter/lander. We send it up to rendezvous or orbit in 2027. If Apophis smacks into a satellite (or we're just unlucky), we'll have an orbiter and countermeasures in orbit around the asteroid on that pass, and those countermeasures will have nine years in which to do their work. A nuke's pretty cool, but it can't compete with nine years of momentum transfer from the sun shining on a rock painted white on one side and black on the other side.

Suppose we cut it short and by 2027 we still don't have any good countermeasures - just a crappy-ass nuke as a last-ditch measure. Even if we go this route, we've still got 9 years for this orbiter to give us an exact gravity map of this object, and we'll have a couple of years after that to figure out where to land the nuke for maximum trajectory deflection away from the earth. (Hell, if we get the orbiter up there early enough in 2027, we can blow the nuke at/near closest approach to Earth and guarantee a miss in 2036!)

But we're short-sighted. So we'll do nothing between now and 2027. And odds are it'll sail on by in 2027 and we'll conclude that the odds of an impact in 2036 are only one in a few tens of thousands. But what an irony -- if we're wrong, then it'll be too late in 2028 for us to send anything to catch up to the rock and do anything about it. For the sake of a month's pork-barrel spending in Iraq, we'll condemn a few billion of our fellow humans to certain death in 2036.

If it's not Apophis, it'll be some other rock in the next few centuries. Just like the dinosaurs, we'll go extinct because we don't have a space programme. Unlike the dinosaurs, this time around, we'll deserve it.

Re:Not Math Error

[JLF65 (888379)]

They didn't forget about them. There is almost no chance a satellite will be struck. If you read the original FA, you'd see that a) the asteroid will pass inside the orbit of them, b) it will pass at a 40 degree angle to them, and c) when the satellite does reach the distance the satellites orbit at, it'll be well beyond the region the satellites are in.

The kid calculated the odds of the asteroid hitting the earth IF the asteroid hit a satellite JUST PERFECTLY. The odds of the asteroid hitting a satellite, much less just right for that to occur, are remote at best. This is just media hype to increase ratings.

Re:there's no way this is true

[enoz (1181117)]

It appears we have a 200 billion tonne asteroid [google.com] in a possible collision against a satellite weighing between 200KG and several tonnes [wikipedia.org]

I'd say it's more like the haystack hitting the needle.

Re:So.....

[nametaken (610866)]

Nonsense. Everyone knows that for an asteroid on a collision course with Earth you call Bruce Willis. At least he has a drill, a nuke and a fatherly love for Liv Tyler. It's very different from the kind of love I have for Liv Tyler, and makes him do heroic things like blow up killer asteroids at his own peril.

All Harrison Ford has is a stupid whip. All that's good for is killing Nazis and stealing rocks from crazy people.

And if anyone says Chuck Norris, I'm gunna scream. You call him when someone steals your Mountain Dew.