BERLIN, Germany--Time to restock your fallout shelters. The German "Röntgensatellit" or ROSAT will most likely slam into Earth's atmosphere in late October or early November.
However, whereas the UARS carried a 1 in 3,200 chance of hitting us, the German version comes with a 1 in 14 billion chance.
This news leaves many Americans in a quandary as the talk of odds confuse even educated folk.
Harfold State College math instructor, Sara Bounier: "When the UARS was to fall, many of my students thought that dividing the U.S.'s population by 3,200 would give us the number of Americans who were going to be stricken by a piece of satellite.
"The scary thing about that is, they had no problem coming up with 95,000 people, even though it was thought that the satellite was to break up into 26 pieces."
Bounier worries that students will be wildly confused by the fact that 14 billion is larger than the U.S. population of some 310 million.
Student Rich Hargan showed no signs of being perplexed. "If you put the 14 billion on top, and the 310 million on the bottom, you can divide the two. Comes out to not even five people. I'd say we should feel safe."
