absurd, a hoax or both
EIN 13-JÄHRIGER GYMNASIAST BERECHNET DAS ENDE DER WELT UND BLAMIERT DAMIT DIE NASA. So ungefähr titeln Bild und Tagesspiegel. TV-Berichte gab es wohl auch schon. Und einen Sonderpreis von Jugend-forscht noch obendrauf.
Oder man sieht es wie Don Yeoman von der Nasa:
We have not corresponded with this young man and this story is absurd, a hoax or both.
And here’s how one of the German scientists mentioned in the first story, celestial dynamics expert Frank Spahn from Potsdam University, explained events to this blog today: “I indeed had contact with this engaged boy - he asked me which perturbations/forces determine Apophis’ orbit and especially during the close flybys. You know that I deal with kinetic theory & celestial mech. in the context of planetary rings, preplanetary disks etc. I explained him the 3 and 4 body problem and gravitational interactions in general. He did not tell me about his idea to consider a collision. This was in January or February. The next time when I heard of him was in in the boulevard journaillie “Bild” - together with my name.
I asked him to meet me (last Friday), he told me about the asteroid - satellite collision thing (after I asked him how he calculated and “corrected” the NASA result). Then I showed him at the black board about the extremely small collision probability (frequency) with such an object. Seeing the arising problems I attended the set of [German TV news station] N24 and explained the leading responsible person that I appreciate the engagement of that young student but simultaneously I express that one has to mention the low probability of such a collision plus expressing that this is not a correction to NASA. The filming session went on and I had to leave for another meeting. The I saw yesterday that nonsens in TV - and I am shocked. By the way - I haven’t seen that paper and the work sofar, Nico told me that his computer disk had a virus so that only hard copies are available which are with the referees of the contest at the moment. So - I do not know how he could have won the competition, obviously the referees were no experts.“
Manchmal bin ich froh, dass ich bestimmte News eher international lese… Überhaupt scheint dieses seltsame Recherchieren völlig aus der Mode gekommen zu sein.