Blue Collar Scientist

There’s a story going around in the media to the effect that some German schoolkid corrected NASA’s odds of a collision with Apophis, with the resulting figures having 100 times higher impact probability.

It’s a hoax¹.

I ran across the story yesterday, and my baloney detectors got pinned; for a while there, I could barely even speak over the preposterousness of the claims. While I was engaged in paralysis, Daniel Fischer did the outstanding work in taking the story down. Great job!

1. Ok - it could possibly maybe be a legitimate error. But read about the people this kid did consult with, and see if you agree. [↩]

Tags: apophis, hoax, impact, Nico Marquardt

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 1:05 pm and is filed under astronomy, skepticism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.