Apophis Brouhaha

There’s been a proliferation lately of “Young Genius Proves Adult Experts So Very Wrong” stories popping up on the Internet lately. There was something about some kid pointing out an error at the Smithsonian Institution, and now this:
http://www.physorg.com/news127499715.html, “German Scoolboy, 13, corrects NASA’s Asteroid Figures.” This website’s story is a little confusing. The story claims the schoolboy calculated the asteroid Apophis has a 1 in 450 chance of hitting the Earth. It’s not clear whether this 1 in 450 chance applies to the asteroid’s 2029 approach (when, the story claims, the asteroid will approach to within 32,500 kilometers of the Earth) or in 2036 when the story claims the asteroid will hit the Earth.

Here’s the kicker: The story claims the young boy calculated the change in the asteroid’s chances of hitting the Earth by calculating trajectory changes if the asteroid hits one of 40,000 satellites orbiting the Earth. Here’s a direct quote from the story: “If the asteroid strikes a satellite in 2029, that will change its trajectory making it hit earth on its next orbit in 2036.” I’m aware of only one satellite with enough mass to make this kind of change. You may have heard of it. The cow jumped over it, and it’s made of cheese.

A strike from a satellite – they may weight a few tons at a stretch – is going to alter a 200-billion ton asteroid’s trajectory enough to make it hit the Earth? No way.

So let’s search the original source of the story, the German paper Potsdamer Neuerster Nachrichten. A web search calls up three – THREE – hits on this paper’s name. One is the original physorg.com story. The others are reprints of this story in the Daily Telegraph of Australia’s website and cyberpresse.ca, in French. I can read French so I know this is just a reprint of the original story.

So, no Potsdamer Neuerster Nachrichten, eh?

First, what does this mean in German. I find an online translator. Potsdam I know is a city in Germany. Nachrichten seems to have several meanings, all along the lines of news, tidings, et cetera. Neuerster doesn’t seem to exist, but it’s close enough to “neuester,” or “trendily,” that I’ll accept there could be a newspaper called the Potsdam Trendy News, roughly translated. But no website? That’s suspicious.

Turns out there is a newspaper called the Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten (http://www.pnn.de/). So now we’re getting somewhere. So far, we have a very iffy story that gets the name of the source wrong. That’s okay. Still within the realm of journalistic reason, if I can use those concepts in the same sentence.

Even better. A search of the paper’s archives turns up the story: http://www.tagesspiegel.de/weltspiegel/Astronomie;art1117,2512033 (all in German, which I do not read. I used babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/tr to get a rough translation).

The story claims NASA and the European Space Agency agree with young Nico Marquardt. But here’s something fishy: The story makes the claim, but it does not quote anyone form either agency. No perplexed astrophysicist. No stammering public relations flunky. Nobody.

Ya gotta have proof before you can say something like that. At least that was the rule when I was a journalist. But I know journalists love the story of the amateur proving the experts wrong. I wrote a few.

To continue:

The ESA is not reporting any agreement with young Marquardt.

Nor the Planetary Society, which looks to Apophis as a funding opportunity: http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects/near_earth_objects/asteroid_alert/letter.html

Nor the International Astonomical Union.

Not even the Astrophysical Institute Potsdam, http://www.aip.de/, where the story says Marquardt used telescopes to aid in his discovery, is trumpeting the news.

Neither is NASA.

Question: Should they? If they do, they get pilloried as the snotty people who lost two shuttles and that satellite that crashed into Mars because someone forgot what the metric system is and can't admit that this 13-year-old might be smarter than them because the public, as well as the media, LOVE these kinds of stories. Doesn't matter that this is just a kid making these claims. he used actual math! And these highly-trained astrophysicists are too worried about cahing their big, fat paychecks to check their estimates to the proper decimal places!

Now, I can find this information about Apophis on NASA’s website: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/apophis/, but there’s no information about that German wunderkind.

Conspiracy, you’ll yell. Of COURSE they won’t have anything up about a 13-year-old fixing another NASA boneheaded blunder.

But there are some clues here. First, NASA calculates a 1 in 45,000 chance of the asteroid hitting Earth in 2036. At least we know what date we’re talking about now.

Aha, you’ll say, pointing to this very page. NASA itself says “For Apophis, scaling up to distribute 250 kg (550 pounds) of a reflective or absorptive material (similar to the carbon fiber mesh being considered for solar sails) across the surface could use the existing radiation forces to produce a 6-sigma trajectory change” The smoking gun against my satellite impact argument, eh? Uh-uh. They’re talking here of using a reflective or absorptive material to harness the solar wind to change the ssatellite’s trajectory. Over time. Lots of time. Read further in the same quote. This six-sigma change could be affected over 18 years, not in the second or two of a satellite impact.

NASA researchers go on to conclude: 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).

I am no math or physics wizard. But I know fishy journalism when I read it. This story has too much of a codpiece about it to ring true.

And it's not. the British technology blog The Register today has a story citing an unnamed ESA spokesman (why unnamed? but at least it's a comment) saying the boy's figures are wrong, that NASA is right and that the German paper's claim that the ESA backed his claims are wrong. Here's the link: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/16/esa_german_schoolboy_apophis_denial/.

Bad Astronomy.com (http://www.badastronomy.com/) has also chimed in, placing this story at about 9.9 on the Horseshit-O-Meter. They point to another blog, Cosmos4U, http://cosmos4u.blogspot.com/2008/04/apophis-risk-not-increased-science-fair.html, that has a quote from actual NASA and German scientists denying the boy's claims. Finally. But, as many have pointed out, the news agencies that picked the story up haven't done much backpedaling, nor is such backpedaling likely, given the industry norms. This was a wire story. We're sorry, we say, in a correction buried somewhere, if at all.

I feel bad for the kid. He sounds pretty eager to learn and is at least thinking about things. The news people who handled this story, however, did him a great disservice.