NASA calculations corrected by............... a German school child But the Kid is wrong, not NASA

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The Original:

As if you did not think our Math situation was in dire straights,

we now have word that a NASA calculation was a bit off:

Instead of 1 in 45,000

It should be 1 in 450

NASA only missed by a factor of 100.
..... Was it a pesky decimal point placement???

This was noticed by a 13 year old German School Boy.

The good news is he discovered this when preparing for a Science competition.

So perhaps its not really a math problem, it could be a Physics problem or an Engineering problem.

It still could be important as the title of his project was:

"Apophis -- The Killer Astroid"

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The Update:

Wednesday's Buzz You Missed
by Molly McCall

4 hours ago Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:45:10 PDT

In today's round-up of some of the hottest stories in Buzz, the "NASA boy" is proved wrong, some Chinese Web users express their national pride, and a popular HBO actress reveals her health struggles...

NASA sets the record straight
It read like a space-age tale of David and Goliath. An enterprising 13-year-old German boy recalculates the likelihood of an asteroid hitting Earth, alerts NASA, and the big American space agency acknowledges he's right. Only problem? It's not true.

Officials from both NASA and the European Space Agency have refuted the account, which sped across the Web at the speed of light. The young man's asteroid-strike numbers were not correct and the U.S. space agency has not, repeat has not, changed its mind about the 1-in-45,000 chance that the hurtling hunk of rock will collide with our planet. (The student thought it was a 1-in-450 chance. Yikes!)

Unfortunately, all this came out after articles on the teen's statistical success soared in Buzz, and even made it to the Yahoo! front page. Lookups for "apophis," the asteroid in question, surged into the top hourly searches.