The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is once again in the middle of a controversy. The reason? Ex-Microsoft chief technologist and billionaire Nathan P. Myhrvold has recently made an exposé about the inaccuracy in the statistics from the space agency's 2009-launched Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft.
NASA Vs. Myhrvold
The space science community has always been mum about the potential apocalyptic impacts of asteroid collisions but Dr. Nathan P. Myhrvold seems to be unimpressed over the efforts made by the scientists. In fact, he is currently targeting NASA for their NEOWISE project, which used the heat data from WISE to calculate the size and reflectivity of 158,000 asteroids, The New York Times reveals.
Myhrvold's Analysis Of NEOWISE Results
In Myhrvold's own analysis of NASA's NEOWISE results he submitted in the journal Icarus, the tech billionaire claimed NASA's observations were "basically wrong." He even questioned the scientists if they really know what they're doing.
"The bad news is it's all basically wrong," Myhrvold said, as per The Christian Science Monitor. "Unfortunately for a lot of it, it's never going to be as accurate as they had hoped."
Myhrvold also added the significance of knowing the distribution of diameters as well as asteroids' albedo or simply an asteroid's surface reflectivity. While NASA scientists said NEOWISE could estimate an asteroid's diameter within 10 percent of its actual size, Myhrvold contended by saying the uncertainties in NEOWISE's calculations could be more than 100 percent in several cases, noting NASA scientists failed to include Kirchhoff's law of thermal radiation in their models, Tech Times notes.
Opposing Myhrvold's Criticisms
After criticizing NASA's flaws, the scientists of the space agency also pointed out several mistakes and problems in Myrhvold's analysis. According to Gadgets 360, University of California's WISE principal investigator Ned Wright said emphasized that WISE's data is very accurate since it correlates with two other infrared telescopes, AKARI and IRAS, obtaining a combined radar observations and observations made with spacecraft.
Amy Mainzer, NEOWISE principal investigator at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, also cited some issues in Myhrvold's analysis, noting the former Microsoft chief technologist's confusion on diameter for radius. She also admitted that the NASA team has seen Myhrvold's analysis in different versions, Science Magazine learns.
Lindley Johnson, who oversees NASA's planetary defense program, on the other hand, said Myhrvold is an intelligent man but it doesn't mean he's an expert. Meanwhile, some experts said Myhrvold's criticisms are "fresh perspectives" for the field of science and his opposition is a "very useful service."
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