Yahoo is today carrying a story from AFP about a 13 year old German school boy who has corrected NASA’s calculations on the probability of ‘planet killer’ asteroid Apophis crashing into earth and causing a global catastrophe. The wunder-kind in question did his analysis as part of a regional science competition.

It seems that NASA forgot to factor in the affect of Apophis hitting one or more of the numerous satellites that orbit the earth in close proximity to the path the Asteroid will take on its next pass past the Earth in 2029. Apparently, if it hits a satellite the odds of Apophis hitting the earth in 2036 drop from a lottery-like 1 in 45,000 to a more troubling 1 in 450.

The IQ issue here is completeness of information. NASA failed to take into account the satellites in its risk model, resulting in a whopping understatement of the risk to the planet.

The short-term IQ Trainwreck comes about because the NASA scientists were corrected by a 13 year old. The long term IQ Trainwreck comes about because the 1 in 45,000 odds are probably firmly fixed in the minds of disaster recover planners around the world giving rise to degree of complacency, whereas a 1 in 450 risk might prompt some consolidated efforts to figure out how to properly manage the risk of Apophis hitting the earth or handling the ensuing global catastrophe.

However, more recent reports this afternoon suggest that the wunderkind may be a blunder-kind and may have based his model on some incorrect assumptions about the path of the asteroid. Oh dear.

In any event, the fact that a teenager is interested in this and that he researched the possiblity of the risks is commendable. Hopefully someone will take the time to reassess his work and determine if he is wrong or just not as right as he thought, improving the accuracy of the prediction models for Apophis.

Good quality information can help save the planet.  Poor quality information can send people unnecessarily into a panic.