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17-Year-Old Corrects NASA Mistake In Data From The ISS (bbc.com)
"A British teenager has contacted scientists at NASA to point out an error in a set of their own data," writes the BBC. An anonymous reader quotes their report.
A-level student Miles Soloman found that radiation sensors on the International Space Station (ISS) were recording false data... The correction was said to be "appreciated" by NASA, which invited him to help analyse the problem... The research was part of the TimPix project from the Institute for Research in Schools (IRIS), which gives students across the UK the chance to work on data from the space station, looking for anomalies and patterns that might lead to further discoveries. What Miles had noticed was that when nothing hit the detector, a negative reading was being recorded. But you cannot get negative energy... It turned out that Miles had noticed something no-one else had -- including the NASA experts. NASA said it was aware of the error, but believed it was only happening once or twice a year. Miles had found it was actually happening multiple times a day.
There's a video of the student -- and his teacher -- describing the discovery, a story which Miles says his friends at high school listen to with "a mixture of jealousy and boredom"
There's a video of the student -- and his teacher -- describing the discovery, a story which Miles says his friends at high school listen to with "a mixture of jealousy and boredom"
Jesus does not approve of homosexuality. All homosexuals are abominations in the eyes of our Lord. You must repent and turn away from your homosexuality or else you will surely face eternal damnation. Our Lord wants all of you to be saved, but you must believe in Jesus Christ and repent of your homosexuality in order to avoid the fires of hell. Our Lord is merciful and forgiving. It's not too late to repent! Moderators are tools of Satan and will try to censor the truth in this post. If you oppose Satan, mod this post up.
Un-"correct" it I mean.
The moderators are persecuting me for being a Christian. Modding my posts down is blatant persecution. In Rome, early Christians were fed to the lions. Here, the persecution is even more insidious because most people don't even see posts at -1 and won't see the Christians being persecuted. Homosexuality is, indeed, an abomination. However, speaking the truth about homosexuals and preaching the Gospel will get you persecuted. It is sad that the moderators consider Jesus unwelcome.
There is such a thing as negative energy. That sensor shouldn't be showing a negative, sure, but negative energy absolutely exists within the universe.
So he found some out of range values in some data. I have yet to figure out why this is a 'story.'
Interestingly, all of the comments up to this point have a negative reading (-1) as well.
1% jealous
99% bored
A-level students are, after all, in what, grade school? What do 10 YO kids want to do? That's right. They do.
How long until the first comment that says this is proof that climate change isn't real?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Many types of radiation sensor have an average count they pick up in their sampling window. This is then subtracted to get an reading which, on average, is zero but which for any given reading could be negative if the count fluctuates low when there is no particle incident. It might be that they had an issue with the pedestal fluctuating.
All this guy did was look at a column in an Excel spreadsheet, saw that there were negative numbers for the energy and contacted NASA to ask about it. Has the standard of A' level science fallen so far in the UK that this is now newsworthy or is this just an indication of the appallingly low level of science at the BBC?
They will find him stuck heads down into an unflushed toilet with a broom up his butt.
So is the data wrong or is the negative reading the result of a hardcoded bias on the sensor? Biased sensors aren't that accurate so if it's reading a negative value when it should not be in any case, you cannot depend on the results to be 100% reliable. 95% reliable might be ok depending on the type of tests you're running. It could be a big deal or not a big deal, all depends.
Student saw an in-band indication that the detector was in a non-radiation reporting state, and asked NASA about it.
NASA says, huh, that's weird. It's not supposed to happen that often. Hey kid, wanna do us a solid (in more ways than one)?
Hell yes, says kid.
BBC, realizing that story is too complicated, bowdlerizes title to get people to read it.
Slashdot talks about something else entirely.
when a young and aspiring person notices something wrong, but doesn't realize that the reason grownups didn't bother looking into it is because they have more important shit to do. It's good if you can let the youngster fix it. It'll be a crappy fix, but who cares? Too bad if you have to do it yourself, and then come up with some stupid story about how noone ever tought this could be not functioning properly. Being young is awesome. It's easy to get the impression that you're a total badass and be happy because of this.
but can't get their noses off the nanotechnology marvel they call smartphone that was built by NERDS!
Well, that may not be entirely true. The Casimir effect and Hawking radiation are both potential examples of "negative energy". Hawking radiation is still entirely theoretical, and the few (I think maybe singular) experiment that actually measured Casimir forces (as described here makes no mention of negative energy. And, of course, this experiment was not designed to detect anything like this; especially seeing as Hawking radiation would only be right outside the event horizon of a black hole.
Harold White, working with NASA, theorizes that the Casimer effect may be able to produce the type of negative energy required to create a working Alcubierre warp drive but it's all still highly theoretical. Well, mostly theoretical but there have been some tantalizing results from a few experiments.
It still doesn't explain why the best current measurements indicate that dark energy contributes 68.3% of the total energy in the present-day observable universe.
It's refreshing to see a young person trying to learn and do good in the world.
in appreciation the astronauts have agreed to brew the lucky and smart student an espresso from their specially crafted coffee maker in space!
He has to come and get it in person though, to weed out those wannabes and posers.
Just the discovery of negative energy!
the NSIDC has a great website with automated analysis of satellite data on how much ice is in polar regions
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
I look at this every day or so, and about a year ago, noticed the trend line was odd
I emailed them, hey, maybe you should look at the data
A day or two later, they put up a notice: sattelite sensor malfunction, data collection suspended
co incidence ?
Would be my first thought when I see negative energy readings. If a sensor produces a signal when no radiation hits it, then the average level of this signal is substracted. Since such a signal normally has a noise it will result in some negative values. Then it would not be an error.
I don't see any details on what kind of sensor this is though, or what kind of energy it measures. So I can't tell if it is that.
"But you cannot get negative energy.."
Based on my experience with my first wife, I disagree. That bitch could suck the happiness out of a room at a hundred paces.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Given that "child helps pros" news often turns to be false, I'd wait for some confirmation or a follow-up from NASA.
Irrelevant news and morons using moderation to mod down what they disagree on. 2018 resolution: so long.
Yeah, run it through the Fox-A-Tron
Notice I put data in quotes to indicate I am using the term very loosely.
Yeah continue giving access to your select few then when the government says they aren't going to pick winners anymore, decry the horrible state science will fall to now that everyone is on a less inequal footing.
How can NASA miss so much bad data? "believed it was only happening once or twice a year" WTH? Take a fucking look at the data. Should be pretty fucking obvious to search for negative values, if you even suspect there's even one point.
It looks like it concerns a TimePix detector. If it is so : this kind of device is very small, lightweight, usb connected to a PC and gathering hits from (usually) 256x256 matrix - mixed time and energy information. Something like a small resolution camera chip. And sometimes it evidently reads just -1 for energy. How much, how frequently - was not said. Evidently, this was not evidently of a great concern, until it could served for a project promotion. If some more young guys get attracted, people in NASA and elsewhere would be happy.
Just think of it. He's now famous for correcting NASA! I'd bet he's drowning in pussy right now.
Is it just me or is there a bit of a contradiction? From TFA: "It turned out that Miles had noticed something no-one else had - including the Nasa experts." "Nasa said it was aware of the error, but believed it was only happening once or twice a year." So he noticed something no-one else had....then in the very next line state that NASA was aware just they believed it wasn't as common as he pointed out. So NASA did know about the negative readings but didn't quite know the extent of the mistake. I guess, he noticed something they didn't but this seems a little click-baity. I mean good on the kid for noticing a pattern but the wording is just grandiose.
NASA takes a $20 BILLION dollar annual budget and does what exactly?
... frequently involving exotic amounts of tax payer dollars (which it already gets)
Based on my observations:
1) Makes PROPOSALs about places we could send probes or manned missions
2) Reaching out to Muslim nations
3) Collecting climate data that can only be used to advance environmentalism and is probably half baked (esp. if 17 year olds are correcting them) if not fabricated completely
I say drop the whole agency and give the money back to the tax payers.
I'll posit a different theory.
NASA deliberately publishes erroneous data in its Institute for Research in Schools program. Sits back and waits for some smart kid to detect the bad data. Offer kid job (sometime down the track).