I'm not sure what the article is talking about. Movement of a particle under gravitation plus friction is not exactly an unsolved problem. For example: http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/reh10/lectures/ia-dyn-handou...

This sounds like the kind of stuff you would see in a class on ordinary differential equations, usually in your first or second semester of undergrad engineering. Certainly advanced for a high school student, but not really what I would call newsworthy...