Autistic boy,12, with higher IQ than Einstein develops his own theory of relativity

There's a lot of information on the kid but not anything on his "theory" so there's not much to evaluate at the moment. Are there any links to his actual theories?

I suspect, Roswell, that that's just some journalistic BS designed to make the story "sexy." It's interesting enough on it's own, but the press have a strong inclination to "man bites dog" stories.

http://www.youtube.com/user/mathboysmom#p/a/u/2/lNypTxvOxxQ

Is that the kid you were refering to in your initial post edgar?

he doent appear to fit the "autistic" syndrome.

Evidently it's mild Asperger's.

I think he's definitely smart. Not sure whether his theories are going to go anywhere, though. (There are a lot of people like him in science depts. these days. My husband's a scientist and we recently tallied up people we know who have diagnosed Asperger's or we just think are likely to have it -- it was a pretty big number. Even when we kept it to just the actual diagnosed people.)

rosborne, more details here:

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2011103200369

As with ADHD I think the temptation for doctors to lable people is sometimes taken a little too far.
It would be a big leap for me to say this kid does not have mild asbergers syndrome.
Maybe he's just a really really smart kid.

what is really exciting is that a kids imagination is far less limited than an adult. He can imagine something then calculate if its possible.

Can duck farts power a subspace hyper drive?

Still not much detail, but then again, he's only 13, so we can give him a break

This little digression seems to indicate that he is unsatisfied with the relationship between carbon production and some basic assumptions of the BB and stellar evolution. But this is a long way from having a new theory. At this point there isn't even any solid evidence that there is a discrepancy between existing theory and data, and there are lots of details still unresolved in super novae and black hole activity. I'm sure he's a very smart kid, but many of these young geniuses progress rapidly through the known information and then come to a halt right where most of the other physicists are. We'll have to give him a bit more time.

That's about my take, too.

There is a guy with a "higher IQ than Einstein" in the office where I work. He is a finance clerk.

A 12-year-old boy who's been taking advanced astrophysics classes at Indiana University since he was eight is trying to pick up where Einstein left off.

Jacob Barnett has an IQ of 170, ten points higher than Einstein's. He is also mildly autistic, though the developmental disorder did not prevent him from teaching himself algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus in a week. According to the Daily Mail Reporter, the savant hopes to present his own "expanded version" of Einstein's relativity theory.

After his parents sent a video of his work to Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, a world-famous professor and astrophysics expert verified Barnett's calculations, saying they address "several of the toughest problems in…theoretical physics." The professor added, "Anyone who solves these will be in line for a Nobel Prize."

Barnett soon plans to leave behind coursework altogether in order to accept a paid research position in advanced mathematics.

For 12-year old astrophysics prodigy, the sky’s the limit
By Zachary Roth

In some ways, Jacob Barnett is just like any other 12-year-old kid. He plays Guitar Hero, shoots hoops with his friends, and has a platonic girlfriend.

But in other ways, he's a little different. Jake, who has an IQ of 170, began solving 5,000-piece jigsaw puzzles at the age of 3, not long after he'd been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, a mild form of autism. A few years later, he taught himself calculus, algebra, and geometry in two weeks. By 8, he had left high school, and is currently taking college-level advanced astrophysics classes—while tutoring his older classmates. And he's being recruited for a paid researcher job by Indiana University.

Now, he's at work on a theory that challenges the Big Bang—the prevailing explanation among scientists for how the universe came about. It's not clear how developed it is, but experts say he's asking the right questions.

"The theory that he's working on involves several of the toughest problems in astrophysics and theoretical physics," Scott Tremaine of Princeton University's Institute for Advanced Studies—where Einstein (pictured) himself worked—wrote in an email to Jake's family. "Anyone who solves these will be in line for a Nobel Prize."

It's not clear where Jake got his gifts from. "Whenever I try talking about math with anyone in my family," he told the Indianapolis Star, "they just stare blankly."

But his parents encouraged his interests from the start. Once, they took him to the planetarium at Butler University. "We were in the crowd, just sitting, listening to this guy ask the crowd if anyone knew why the moons going around Mars were potato-shaped and not round," Jake's mother, Kristine Barnett, told the Star. "Jacob raised his hand and said, 'Excuse me, but what are the sizes of the moons around Mars?' "

After the lecturer answered, said Kristine, "Jacob looked at him and said the gravity of the planet ... is so large that (the moon's) gravity would not be able to pull it into a round shape."

"That entire building ... everyone was just looking at him, like, 'Who is this 3-year-old?'"

Here you can watch Jake question some of the key elements of Albert Einstein's theories on quantum physics:

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2011103200369

I call hype on this. Especially since it was featured in the "Daily Mail". He's "asking the right questions". Nobody is saying, either at Princeton or anywhere else, that he is providing any answers.

bookmark

Hell, I have a higher IQ than Ienstien.

I have to point out the fact that Einstein had never taken an IQ testing in his life. Higher than Einstein? That's suspicious. Besides, Savant's IQ is 228, beyond the reach of Albert. And what has she done? Only trifles.

The netzens have asked the boy to solve the biggest problem of all: the meaning of life. Hmm, well asked. The problem, however, needs to be dealt with by one's own. No one can help but you yourself.

IQ is pretty much an over-rated quality. Quantifying IQ is also hard to do. Stanford-Binet IQ test has been discredited by many as inaccurate and culturally biased. Einstein's IQ was guess-timated and vos Savant's IQ of 228 was a fudged guess, as well.

Granted, I'd rather have a high-IQ person solving a problem; however, there's not neccesarily a correlation with accomplishment. Marilyn vos Savant is quite accomplished as an author and playwright. I hear she treats her mother well, too.