British schoolboy who outsmarted experts from Nasa
He is known at school as a ‘bit of a nerd’ who will happily spend hours working with data spreadsheets.
so when sixth former Miles soloman was offered the chance to analyse ‘real science’ gathered by Nasa at the International space station he got stuck in – and soon found a significant error.
The 17-year- old realised that measurements taken for energy and radiation levels whilst British astronaut Tim Peake was at the station could not be correct. Houston had a problem.
Miles, a self- confessed space fanatic, had spotted several minus numbers among the data and knew there was no such thing as negative energy. Nasa scientists initially responded that they were aware of the error, which probably only came about once or twice in a six-month period. But Miles returned to his beloved spread- sheets and soon corrected them again. As his physics teacher James O’Neill proudly explained: ‘We found out the error was actually occurring about seven times a day. They have had to go back and correct all the data now.’ Tapton secondary school in sheffield has been taking part in the space project run by the Institute for research in schools (IrIs) with genuine scientific ‘big data’ provided by Nasa.
Pupils have been able to study genuine measurements taken every four seconds by micro-chip to monitor levels of radiation in space during the six month period when Tim Peake was in space.
Miles is studying physics, further maths and chemistry for A level, and jumped to join the project. He said: ‘I’ve been interested in space from when I was very young. I love space and the planets and enjoy learning more about the subject. I’m into maths and can talk about excel spreadsheets for hours and this involved a large amount of data.’
But the teenager insisted he had not ‘caught out’ Nasa. He said: ‘I look at it more like I was able to help them and that is a really cool thing to say,’ he said.
‘After a while we realised this was something important. They did know about it, but not that it was so significant.’
Professor Larry Pinsky at the University of Houston, who has worked on the schools project, told BBC radio 4’s World At One Nasa was grateful for the schoolboy’s help. ‘I wouldn’t say it was embarrassing, it was appreciated,’ he said, adding it showed the value of the schools project – to do work that professionals ‘didn’t have time to do’.
‘I was able to help Nasa and that’s cool’