12-Year-Old Rewrites Einstein's Theory of Relativity 588
rhathar writes "A 12-year-old boy by the name of Jacob Barnett is a math genius. Mastering many college level astrophysics courses by the age of 8, he now works on his most ambitious project to date: his own 'expanded version of Einstein's theory of relativity.'"
Primary Source (Score:5, Informative)
The Indianapolis Star [indystar.com]
Sounds like he's good at math. (Score:5, Informative)
So, the kid seems to be great at math. Question is, is he great at physics? Manipulating equations in startling ways is cool and all, but if the result doesn't agree with reality, or if it produces nothing testable, then you're just messing around. Period.
Einstein always struggled with the mathematics and didn't consider himself to be very good at it. Einstein's contribution was the physical insight behind relativity.
Stick this boy in a proper school... (Score:5, Informative)
And away from sensationalist reporters going for "OMG! Big Bang didn't happen says genius kid!".
http://www.indystar.com/article/20110320/LOCAL01/103200369/Genius-work-12-year-old-studying-IUPUI [indystar.com]
Meanwhile, Jake is moving on to his next challenge: proving that the big-bang theory, the event some think led to the formation of the universe, is, well, wrong.
Wrong?
He explains.
"There are two different types of when stars end. When the little stars die, it's just like a small poof. They just turn into a planetary nebula. But the big ones, above 1.4 solar masses, blow up in one giant explosion, a supernova," Jake said. "What it does, is, in larger stars there is a larger mass, and it can fuse higher elements because it's more dense."
OK . . . trying to follow you.
"So you get all the elements, all the different materials, from those bigger stars. The little stars, they just make hydrogen and helium, and when they blow up, all the carbon that remains in them is just in the white dwarf; it never really comes off.
"So, um, in the big-bang theory, what they do is, there is this big explosion and there is all this temperature going off and the temperature decreases really rapidly because it's really big. The other day I calculated, they have this period where they suppose the hydrogen and helium were created, and, um, I don't care about the hydrogen and helium, but I thought, wouldn't there have to be some sort of carbon?"
He could go on and on.
And he did.
"Otherwise, the carbon would have to be coming out of the stars and hence the Earth, made mostly of carbon, we wouldn't be here. So I calculated, the time it would take to create 2 percent of the carbon in the universe, it would actually have to be several micro-seconds. Or a couple of nano-seconds, or something like that. An extremely small period of time. Like faster than a snap. That isn't gonna happen."
"Because of that," he continued, "that means that the world would have never been created because none of the carbon would have been given 7 billion years to fuse together. We'd have to be 21 billion years old . . . and that would just screw everything up."
Plenty of time for Carbon at the beginning of things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallicity [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple-alpha_process [wikipedia.org]
http://www.solstation.com/x-objects/first.htm [solstation.com]
IANAA, so my GUESS here is that kid lacks the knowledge necessary to put the whole thing in perspective.
As indicated by astrophysics Professor Scott Tremaine's reply to his theories that suggests "Jake to spend as much time as possible to learn more and to further develop his theory".
It's a polite way to say "Well thank YOU Mr. Smartypants. Us poor astrophysics scientists here would have NEVER thought of THAT had YOU not come along. NOT!".
And the journalist simply doesn't have a clue on the subject and is clearly going for a sound-bite.
Re:Primary Source (Score:4, Informative)
I would take that with a grain of salt. He obviously has something akin to a photographic memory. FTA:
Photographic memory doesn't really exist [wikipedia.org] the way most people think of it, as in being able to look at a photograph of a forest and later being able to answer how many trees were in the forest or being able to recall the fourth word in the sixth paragraph after staring at a page in a book.
;)
Being able to memorize a deck of playing cards or a book of mathematical formulas is NOT photographic memory. No scientific study has ever found anyone with a true photographic memory... well, except one, but the scientist went and married the girl and she refused to repeat the experiments to other scientists so that's questionable.
So next time you hear someone say "I have a photographic memory" you can chuckle to yourself
Re:Stick this boy in a proper school... (Score:4, Informative)
Actually there are a litany of problems with the big bang, not the least of which is relativistic time. That said, I haven't seen a good reworking of the Big Bang theory taking relativity properly into account yet.
*I'm not saying there isn't one, I'm saying I haven't read one.
Re:I think he's saying there is. (Score:5, Informative)
As smart as he is mathematically, his ignorance of high-school level geology is rather shocking* if he's going to make pronouncements like this. The Earth is 62% iron and oxygen, not carbon. Carbon's not even in the top ten. Even in the lithosphere, carbon is only 0.03% (yes, three HUNDREDTHS of a percent) of it. I'm not qualified to say if his hypothesis would have issues with the oxygen and iron abundance, however. I recall iron being a sort of low energy state with respect to nuclear reactions, where fusion reactions with elements with atomic weights below iron being generally exothermic and fission being generally endothermic, and the reverse being true of elements heavier than iron. But in thinking the earth is primarily carbon when it's not he's starting out with a false premise.
*- Well, however smart he is, he's still a 12 year old boy so I should cut him a little slack.