12-Year-Old Rewrites Einstein's Theory of Relativity

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.'"

Aspergers Syndrome

[WrongSizeGlass]

This kid has Aspergers syndrome and is making the most of it. Good for him. Hey kid, invent me a time machine dammit so I can warn myself about all the stupid stuff I did to end up where I am in life!!

Re:Aspergers Syndrome

[strack]

well, the real measure of this is to see where he is when hes like 25 or roundabout. theres been a lot of boy wonders who burnt out.

Re:Primary Source

[xTantrum]

[blockquote]The boy wonder, who taught himself calculus, algebra, geometry and trigonometry in a week[/blockquote] I call bullshit.

Re:Evolution..

[Anonymous Coward]

So guys with autism get more pussy?

Re:Evolution..

[smelch]

I've been saying it for years, Autism is what uncomfortable people use to make themselves feel ok about never quite understanding humans because they were too busy thinking instead of experiencing. Also, in rare cases used to refer to a mental disorder.

Re:Primary Source

[gstoddart]

[blockquote]The boy wonder, who taught himself calculus, algebra, geometry and trigonometry in a week[/blockquote]
I call bullshit.

How so? It's not unprecedented for people to be savants, and to have singularly amazing mathematical abilities. The human brain is an amazing thing ... I don't even think this is the first time I've heard about a teenager with some form of autism who is a math prodigy.

According to the article:

At this point, Jake's math IQ -- which has been measured at 170 (top of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children) -- could not get any higher.

"You could tell right off the bat, his performance has been outstanding," said Ross, who, at age 46 with a Ph.D. from Boston University, has never seen a kid as smart as Jake.

Sure, it's rare. But, I don't think it's unprecedented to see this.

Of course, I can only imagine that between being this smart (for math) and having some degree of autism is going to make it difficult for him -- I can only imagine how messed up it would be to be doing graduate-level mathematics, and still have all of the other crap a 12 year old has to go through on top of that.

But, I don't dis-believe that he taught himself high school math in a week or two. Some of these kinds of problems are well documented as something that occasionally someone with autism or something similar just "see" and work with naturally.

Re:The Big Bang

[PvtVoid]

Explanation at http://www.indystar.com/article/20110320/LOCAL01/103200369/Genius-work-12-year-old-studying-IUPUI [indystar.com]

Here is his "debunking" of the big bang:

"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?"
...
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."

This is total gibberish. There is no carbon [wikimedia.org] created in the Big Bang, only hydrogen, helium, and lithium. This was understood in the 1970's. All of the carbon in the universe is created in stars. This is likewise well understood. Also, the earth is mostly iron, not carbon. If this kid's new theory of relativity is anything like his theory of cosmology, he needs to be back in school getting an education, not doing independent research.

Re:Primary Source

[fotbr]

That was the 90s and early 00's. Then something happened and they turned into the bible/ufo/aliens/ghosts/monsters channel.

Re:Primary Source

[PaladinAlpha]

It's not about being "smart (for math)".

Let me put it like this. What if the kid was a whiz programmer, and they said he had taught himself "C, C++, Perl, Python, Ruby, Java, Lisp, Prolog, and x86 assembly in a week"? It's nonsense. There's more information there than can be read in a week, let alone applied and digested.

What does that imply about the claim, then? Well, for our hypothetical whiz programmer, it means he knows how to write "hello, world" a lot of different ways, but lacks the capacity to use the strengths of each language. He's committed the grievous error of the breadth-first search in an expertise-driven field. And I submit that the same thing holds for our actual math genius, here -- which I would further claim is a tragedy.

If they held this kid accountable and really put him through the full coursework, he could turn into a very powerful mathematician, or physicist. But if they're letting him skate by with thinking he's taught himself everything there is to know about every major branch of mathematics inside of a week, they're ruining his ability to carry his investigation with scientific rigor. What he's learned is no doubt the trigonometric identities, the power and chain rules, and similar "first brush" material, and will spend the next two decades with mistakes and discoveries that have already been made countless times before.

Genius is a reason to work more, not less. Removing responsibility from our best and brightest is one of the biggest threats to our prosperity.

Re:Primary Source

[Ben4jammin]

Well, I don't know if you read the article or not, but I did. I assume you are basing your response partly on this:

The boy wonder, who taught himself calculus, algebra, geometry and trigonometry in a week, is now tutoring fellow college classmates after hours.

I would take that with a grain of salt. He obviously has something akin to a photographic memory. FTA:

By the age of three he was solving 5,000-piece puzzles and he even studied a state road map, reciting every highway and license plate prefix from memory.

So a more likely explanation is that he ran through the books very fast because he only needs to read it once to memorize it. I would agree with your point that memorizing facts does not automatically mean you know when to apply them.

But I think they are holding him accountable as evidenced by him attending lectures and providing tutoring services. If he is given the information about the mistakes and discoveries so far there is no reason to believe he can't assimilate it and push it further. He will need to learn scientific rigor, sure, but he is already on his way if the article is accurate when it reports that he seeks out the professors after class to ask questions...what else can he do at this point?

I guess what I am trying to say is your response reeks of "sour grapes" :) I too wish I had a photographic memory. Although my hypnotherapist has helped me greatly in remembering names

Fagot

[rubycodez]

Most people over 25 are Spanish bassoons? Even if I accept this magical transformation into a musical instrument by the underachievers and ungifted of the human race, I really doubt it would universally be into one with such specific ethnicity. And a doubt any musical instrument could either gain employment or procreate, without human intervention.

follow a dead end, or do vital research?

[foszae]

well, being a math prodigy is fine and all that. just, the thing is that it means he probably spends a lot of time with mathematicians. and if he's working on a refinement of special relativity, i hope for his sake that he doesn't get mired in the same thought processes which turned the field of physics into an quagmire forty years ago. yes, it's necessary to understand where we are to see where we're going, but frankly if you listen to a modern physicist, they are so utterly lost in the minutiae of particle decays that they're missing the right-in-their-face boots-on-the-ground reality. the last few decades of research have brought us practically nothing except the word "string". and even then it is inconsistently applied, poorly conceived of, and utterly obtuse to a layperson anyhow. sure kid, it's neat that someone proved the photon can be particle or wave purely on circumstance. but if you start obsessing over trying to make a followup experiment to prove some minor particle effect, you will end up just as gobsmacked by the new reality as the rest of the physics faculty.

Re:Stick this boy in a proper school...

[SETIGuy]

I feel sorry for this kid, because these stories/videos aren't going to go away. The kid is talking about things he partially understands, and maybe he has some insights or ideas, but other people have probably already had those insights. He's got a lot more to learn before he'll be reworking general relativity. Maybe he'll be working on it in graduate school. The problem is, that these videos will follow him there.

I think this happens to all the physics freaks at that age, but we old timers didn't have video cameras following us around when we were explaining to the rest of the class why the detection of cosmic ray muons at ground level is good evidence for special relativity. I tried to build a version of special relativity with quantized space-time when I was in middle school. Of course I didn't succeed, but I've still got the papers somewhere. It's extremely stupid and I did learn things in the attempt. But with a little more knowledge I wouldn't have even tried it. But fortunately I (and more importantly, my colleagues) don't have video of TV interviews with a 13 year old me saying things that any physicist undergrad would know were wrong.

So let's leave the kid alone and let him fail at these unattainable goals without us looking. Then he will go to college and grad school and become a scientist that might actually do some of these things. If we keep bothering him, and make his inconsequential failures public, he'll probably end up an accountant.