Regional Science Contestant Corrects NASA - We’re Screwed

I don’t mean we’re screwed because a 13 year old German kid corrected the math of an organization made up of rocket-fucking-scientists. I mean we are screwed because there is now a 1 in 450 chance that a big ass hunk (1,049 feet wide) of iron and iridium known as the Apophis asteroid is going to land in the Atlantic Ocean right about 2036. NASA’s crack squad had calculated that the odds were 1 in 45,000. Sure the numbers are similar but that is a pretty big goddamn difference.

What Nico Marquardt took into account that NASA didn’t are the 40,000 satellites currently orbiting the planet. In 2029 this big ass hunk of metal is going to pass within 32,500 kilometers of the earth. The problem is that most of those 40,000 satellites are orbiting 35,800 kilometers above the earth. Nico figured out that if the rock hits one of those 40,000 satellites it will be enough to change the trajectory of the rock so that the next time it passes through our neighborhood in 2036 it will destroy the fucking neighborhood.

Original Story: Yahoo News via Gizmodo