Astronomical journalism, 101

Colby Cosh indicates that AFP's science writers may not be paying close attention to their own stories:

As the tale goes, a German schoolboy has corrected some NASA math and found that a 26,000-kilotonne asteroid actually has a 1 in 450 chance, not a 1 in 45,000 chance, of striking the Earth in 2036. The AFP's take is "Ho ho, look how a teenager showed up those American boffins." As an editor I'm pretty sure my headline would be "0.2% CHANCE HUMANITY IS SCREWED". That seems to me like an A1 above-the-fold story, but the NASA homepage hasn't gotten around to mentioning it, much less recommending the most effective anti-asteroid prayers from various world religious faiths. And for some reason, according to this account, NASA and the boy wonder have a good idea where the asteroid will hit, if it does hit.

Why do I suspect that some junior science reporter has got in over his head here? I will say this: if the story checks out, this kid should definitely get that blue ribbon at the science fair. And also Al Gore's Nobel Prize.

Update, 17 April: Er, oops:

Widespread media reports claim that a German schoolboy has recalculated the likelihood of a deadly planet-smasher asteroid hitting the Earth, and found the catastrophe is enormously more likely than NASA thought. The boy's sums were said to have been checked by both NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), and found to be correct.

There's only one problem with the story: the kid's sums are in fact wrong, NASA's are right, and the ESA swear blind they never said any different. An ESA spokesman in Germany told the Reg this morning: "A small boy did do these calculations, but he made a mistake... NASA's figures are correct."