The Brazilian woman, Nicole Oliveira, only eight years old, is known as the youngest astronomer in the world and searched for asteroids as part of the NASA program and attended international seminars.
Olivera’s room is littered with solar system posters, miniature rockets and Star Wars characters, and Nicole reads pictures of the sky on two large screens on her computer.
Purpose of the project, named Asteroid huntersIntroducing science to young people by giving them the opportunity to explore their own space.
It is managed Astronomical Search Collaboration International, a NASA citizen science project, in partnership with the Brazilian Ministry of Science.
Nicole proudly told AFP that she had already discovered 18 asteroids.
Eight-year-old Nicole Oliveira, a native of Brazil, is known as the youngest astronomer in the world.https://t.co/bUHJ6iBa0T
– AFP News Agency (FPAFP) September 30, 2021
“I would give her the names of Brazilian scientists or my family members like my mom or dad,” he continued.
If his discoveries are recognized, it could take many years, and Oliveira is the youngest person in the world to officially break the record of 18-year-old Italian Luigi Sunino and officially discover an asteroid.
“She really has a piercing eye,” Heliomargio Rodriguez Morera, an astronomy teacher at Olivera at a private school in Fortaleza, northeastern Brazil, thanked him for the scholarship. They have already figured it out.
Rodriguez Morera added: “The most important thing is that she shares her knowledge with other children. She contributes to the spread of science.”
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Nicole’s family moved to Fortaleza earlier this year from their hometown of Macio, some 1,000 miles[1,000 km]away, after receiving a scholarship to attend a prestigious school. His father, a computer scientist, was allowed to keep his job and work remotely.
Her mother, Jelma Janaka, 43, who works in the craft industry, said: “When she was two years old, she raised her hands to the sky and asked me:‘ Mom, give me a star ’.
“When I asked for a telescope as a birthday present at the age of four, we realized that this interest in astronomy was intense. I don’t know what a telescope is,” Janaka added.
Nicole was so ready to get a telescope that she told her parents she would exchange it for her future birthday celebrations. However, this gift was too expensive for the family and the little girl did not get it until she was seven, and her mother said that all of her friends had raised money to buy it.
On his YouTube channel, Nicole interviewed influential figures such as the Brazilian astronomer Tulia de Mello, who was involved in the discovery of the supernova SN 1997D.
Last year, Olivera flew to Brasilia to meet with Science Minister and astronaut Marcos Pontez, the only Brazilian to ever go into space.
For his own ambitions, Nicole wants to become an aeronautical engineer.
“I like to build rockets,” he said. “I want to go to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to see their rockets. All children in Brazil have access to science.”
Source: Scientific warning
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