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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"
Un-"correct" it I mean.
Interestingly, all of the comments up to this point have a negative reading (-1) as well.
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?
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.
Reaction on Slashdot: 50% jealous, 40% offtopic ranting, 10% insightful.
Parent qualifies as "jealous". Sheesh, the boy noticed something NASA - by their own account - didn't. That doesn't make him a total badass, but it's more of a contribution than you or I have made. Give him some credit.
Well, that may not be entirely true. The Casimir effect and Hawking radiation are both potential examples of "negative energy".
... and the total potential+kinetic energy of a solar system. Or an atom. Energy is so often a sum game where negative energies happen all the time.
But, that's not the case here. If an ADC-based sensor is reading a "negative" amount, it's either an error condition (as it sounds like here) or a bad calibration (pedestal subtraction).
Kudos to the kid for noticing it! Thumbs down to the BBC writer for venturing into negative-energy land in two wrong senses at the same time.
"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...