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Nicoli Oliveira reached up to the sky to catch the stars as she took her first steps, and the eight-year-old Brazilian girl became an accomplished astronomer in the hunt for asteroids.
On the walls of his room in Fortaleza (northeastern Brazil), there are no photos of music stars, but a large map of the solar system. On a shelf, a blonde doll seems lost between miniature rockets and Star Wars characters.
But the field in which she fishes is a computer with two large screens placed near her bed. Through them, a girl affectionately named Nicolina watches over the images of the sky sent by the asteroid hunters.
This project aims to introduce young people to science by directly involving them in discoveries, and is the result of a partnership between the Brazilian Ministry of Science and the Organization for International Cooperation for Astronomical Research of the US Space Agency. NASA ”.
“I have found 18 so far!”, Proudly tells AFP the little girl with long dark brown hair.
knowledge sharing
If Nicoli’s findings are confirmed, which may take years, she will become the youngest person in the world to officially discover an asteroid, and she will be able to break the record set by Italian Luigi Sannino, who discovered an asteroid in the world. eighteen years old. .
Then he has the right to call the asteroids whatever names he wants. “I will give him the names of Brazilian scientists, or members of my family, like my mother or my father,” she said.
And the astronomy teacher at the school she has been attending since the start of the current year, Eleumarcio Rodríguez Moreira, confirms that she “has an insight” in this area.
He notes that she “immediately notices dots that look like asteroids in the pictures and often gives advice to her classmates when they are not sure she has found any.” He believes that “the most important thing is that she shares her knowledge with other children and thus contributes to the dissemination of science”.
Nicolinia has already made a name for herself thanks to her astronomy videos on YouTube, her online participation in international scientific conferences, and even a family assistant who helps her with all requests.
Commercial parts for a telescope
In January, her parents did not hesitate to move from Maceio, another city in northeastern Brazil, to Fortaleza, 1,000 kilometers away, to allow their daughter to benefit from a scholarship at a prestigious institution. His father’s IT company agreed to keep him working remotely.
“When she was two, she would raise her arms to the sky and say to me: ‘Mom, give me a star'”, says her mother, Zelma Janaka, 43, who works in the craft industry.
“But we realized this passion for astronomy was serious when she asked us for a telescope as a gift for her fourth birthday. I didn’t even know what a telescope was.”
“She even told us that she was ready to swap all of her birthday parties for a telescope, but it was still too expensive for us. Continues.
Faced with Nicolinia’s precocious talent, the organizers of astronomy courses did not hesitate to lower the minimum age for enrollment in these courses, often reserved for over twelve years old.
On his YouTube channel, Nicoli interviewed several personalities, such as the famous astronomer Doulia de Mello, who participated in important discoveries like the supernova (SN 1997D).
And last year, I went to Brasilia to meet with Minister of Science and former astronaut Marcos Pontes, the only Brazilian to have traveled to space so far.
But Nicholas has other ambitions. “My dream is to become an aerospace engineer,” she said. “I want to make rockets. I would love to go to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, to see their rockets.”
“I would also like science to be accessible to all children in Brazil,” she adds.
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