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10-Year-Old Boy Discovers 600-Million-Year-Old Supernova

Posted by samzenpus on from the did-you-see-that? dept.

minty3 writes "Nathan Gray, 10, from Nova Scotia, Canada, recently discovered a 600-million-year-old supernova in the galaxy PGC 61330, which lies in the constellation of Draco – beating his sister by 33 days as the youngest person to find a supernova. Gray made the discovery on October 30 while looking at astronomical images taken by Dave Lane, who runs the Abbey Ridge Observatory (ARO) in Nova Scotia. The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada confirmed Gray's discovery, but astronomers with the International Astronomical Union say they will need to use a larger telescope to make the finding official."

16 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. A great example for kids by cold+fjord · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I hope this gets shared widely in school science classes and among the home schooled.

    Science is open to people of all ages.

    --
    much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
    1. Re:A great example for kids by billakay · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I hope this gets shared widely in school science classes and among the home schooled.

      In my experience most of the home-drooled kids get only a very basic bit of science because it's likely to interfere with the wacky creationist/survivalist ideas of their parents.

      This is a vile stereotype that doesn't deserve to be propagated. I say this as a home-schooled person currently enrolled in a Computer Science Ph.D. program at a well known state university.

    2. Re:A great example for kids by krelvin · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Perhaps you are more the exception than the rule here?

    3. Re:A great example for kids by Lumpy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Nope. It is shown that home schooled and private school kids get a far higher education overall. Now the people that are interested in control whine that they dont get the proper exposure to liberal/conservative "values" but that is nothing but raging by the extremists on both sides. Parents do tend to cherry pick, but that flushes out when they hit college.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    4. Re:A great example for kids by ganjadude · · Score: 5, Informative

      says the coward with no proof backing his claim?

      http://blog.writeathome.com/index.php/2012/03/homeschool-vs-public-school-statistics-infographic/

      Take a look at the info graph - yes it is sourced.

      --
      have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
    5. Re:A great example for kids by Bill_the_Engineer · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It's only been reported that a higher percentage of people who are homeschooled graduate from college compared to their non-homeschooled counterparts (66.7% home schooled versus 57.5% non-homeschooled)(source: US News and World Report). Of course this only looks at homeschooled people who were accepted into college and does not take into account the entire homeschooled population. The statistics that pro-homeschool sites tout are the ones that have qualifiers in them like the us news statistic that only looked at homeschoolers that attend college. I haven't found the percentage of homeschool students that continue their education after high school equivalency.

      It makes sense that homeschool do better than the overall population of public school. After all, only 2.9% (2009) of the school age children were home schooled. Their household tended to have both parents and at least one of them being a professional in a field and more than half of the homeschooled had a household income greater than $50,000/yr (2003). The traditional educational system is "burdened" by students with economic, mental or social disadvantages not found in large numbers in the homeschool population. If I limit the population of non-homeschooled students to similar demographics within the ed fast facts, I get close to the same completion percentages as the homeschooled population.

      In other words: Homeschooling in of itself will not magically make you a better student. However if you were homeschooled then the odds are greater that you come from a two parent household that values an education which makes you more likely to succeed at least academically.

      --
      These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
    6. Re:A great example for kids by LordLimecat · · Score: 4, Informative

      Every graph you will find on the topic will show, in order of performance,
      Public Schools
      Private schools
      Homeschools / Catholic schools (I forget which performs best)

      If you really want to be lazy,
      Good old wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling#Research

      This one is a goodie-- its in a peer reviewed journal, shows the full demographic breakdown, and indicates that 65% of homeschool families in 2007-2008 spent less than $900 on schooling (compared to the average $9000 /pupil in public schools)-- a full quarter spent only $200-400. It also indicates that in all tests the students on average achieved 84th and above percentile.
      http://contentcat.fhsu.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p15732coll4/id/456 (pick "Academic achievement and.....")

      If you need more, you should really just google "homeschool achievement". This isnt even news, youre just trolling at this point.

    7. Re:A great example for kids by jc42 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Daddy lets you look at a slideshow, spot the magically appearing star. Boy genius!

      Or, to convert it from an unsubtle put-down to a more accurate description, it's a straightforward example of something that astronomers have long pointed out: Despite being one of the hardest of "hard sciences", astronomy is a field that has always made good use of interested amateurs. This is yet another of thousands of examples.

      The typical explanation is that astronomers do much of their work on high-powered equipment that can give them detailed, close-up views of things out there. This is valuable research, but has the problem that such equipment typically has a tiny field of view, so astronomers often miss interesting things that are outside their tiny fields of view. Astronomy needs people doing wider-angle work, comparing images from different times (and maybe different equipment), to spot interesting things. This is often best done by amateurs with lower-powered equipment. They can report their findings to the astronomers, who can aim their high-powered tools at the coordinates to get the details. Amateurs rarely get paid, but astronomers traditionally reward them by naming discoveries after them.

      An interesting extension of this in the "Zooniverse" project, ake the "Galaxy Zoo". Look it up. What they do is take images from the petabytes of data supplied by the newer telescopes, show them to volunteers, and ask them to mark various kinds of "interesting" things in the photos. Each of their projects starts with a short training session showing you one or two examples of what they're looking for. Then you dive into a string of random images, marking them up, and sending them back to the project's computers. Currently, they have a set of details in the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) for people to see and mark up.

      This development is interesting partly because it's aimed at amateurs with no special equipment other than a personal computer. They've got very good response, from people who want to while away a few hours looking at pretty pictures of the sky and marking them up. Astronomers have said that their volunteers have led to a lot of interesting discoveries. One of the widely-recognized examples was "Hanny's Voorwerp" (look it up ;-), which was discovered by and named for a young woman who is a Dutch school teacher. It has led to several years of work by many astronomers trying to figure out what that thing is.

      So, while mocking this kid might be satisfying, it's missing an important point about how some scientific fields actually work. He's probably good enough already to contribute to this effort. As are most of the readers of slashdot.

      --
      Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
  2. No, 10-year-old boy's FATHER finds supernova by TWiTfan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    10-year-old boy gets credit for it.

    --
    The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
    1. Re:No, 10-year-old boy's FATHER finds supernova by VortexCortex · · Score: 4, Funny

      I have trained OCR programs to recognize patterns. If they discover something from the data I give them, do I not take the credit?

    2. Re:No, 10-year-old boy's FATHER finds supernova by mythosaz · · Score: 3, Funny

      All credit to Adam and Eve.

  3. Need Coffee by RandomUsername99 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Read that as 10-Year-Old Supernova Discovers 600-Million-Year-Old Boy

  4. Re:Cue jealous 30-something /.ers by sandytaru · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My team mate and I discovered that the Cepheid variable we were supposed to be studying in astronomy back in 1998 was actually a binary star system. The prof got credit, of course, but it was enough to make me feel as though I had Contributed To Astronomy.

    So, mad props to this young man. Good on ya, kid.

    --
    Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
  5. Re:Recently discovered almost 3 years ago by jones_supa · · Score: 5, Funny

    Published on Tue Jan 04 2011

    Cool story. Not exactly recent, though.

    That is because before publishing, all Slashdot news go through a rigorous fact-checking and quality assurance review, which can take months or years.

  6. Ho-hum by Roblimo · · Score: 3, Funny

    "10-Year-Old Boy Discovers 600-Million-Year-Old Supernova" is a "Dog Bites Man" story. "600-Million-Year-Old Boy Discovers 10-Year-Old Supernova" would be serious real news. Wow!

  7. I cannot believe.... by DaveLaneCA · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I really cannot believe the "garbage" that is getting posted here as comments to this news item. And no, I'm not just a "reader" ... I am part of the story as it is my backyear observatory that provides the images, both for Nathan and for his sister Kathryn and before that for others. We have discovered 5 in total. Providing opportunities for youth in science is one of the things I do - in this way and in many others ways (but principally through astronomy. What have you done today with your energy for the betteremnt of future scientists and technology professionals? (oh, of course, you trashed an achievement made by a bright kid that through this attention will probably have a brighter future, despite the critics. --- Dave Lane