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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.'"
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.
If I can just reach out with my words and touch a butthole, just one, it will all be worth it.
Explanation at http://www.indystar.com/article/20110320/LOCAL01/103200369/Genius-work-12-year-old-studying-IUPUI
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 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.
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.