A 12 Year Old Kid Questions Einstein's Theories

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I was just browsing around on Yahoo today, and I came across this particular article. After reading it, I thought that I must post this on WrongPlanet.net. This article talks about a 12 Year Old boy diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome with a 170 IQ questioning Einstein's overall ideas in astrophysics. You can find the article using the link below.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookou ... -the-limit

Yeah, I saw this the other day. Just shows how awesome Aspies are, I don't see 12 year old NTs with higher IQs than Einstein who can actually question his theories

Yeah, the kid's got a good point. The whole idea of acceleration includes both changes in speed and direction.

The answer to the question, though, is that the light isn't accelerating at all when it bends around a gravity well. It's traveling a straight path through curved space-time. No wonder he's thinking of different universes; that bent space-time really does behave in a non-Newtonian fashion, and it does change the laws of physics. It's the same effect as an accelerating reference frame, actually.

Very smart kid. Took me until high school to figure that one out. I think he's pretty much re-deriving relativity for himself, which is definitely a good thing to do if you're going to understand it thoroughly.

Last edited by Callista on 31 Mar 2011, 11:27 am, edited 1 time in total.

Yes, I also read he was questioning the big bang theory. He says there's a discrepancy in the amount of time it takes to create all the carbon in the universe. He calculated this "the other day," like taking a walk in the park. It's really remarkable stuff. I hope he wins a Nobel prize.

Genius at work

I think we constantly underestimate kids, particularly ones who are disabled or neurodiverse. Stories such as these are living proof.

People have been wishing autism would get some good publicity for once. It looks like that wish has been answered.

On the one hand, if he becomes the new Face of Autism, it might raise expectations to impossible-to-meet heights for people who share his diagnosis but not his startling math abilities.

On the other hand, if a pre-natal test for autism ever does come into existence, his very existence will make women less inclined to abort if the test comes back positive.

On the other other hand, will parents become extra-bitter if their autistic child isn't remotely like him?

An interesting can of worms has just been opened. You can see this in the comment section. Most of the comments are a version of "ohmigod he is so smart, maybe he can fix everything, or at least cancer, or at least renewable energy". But some comments show peiople starting to grapple with his autism. People have seen savantism before. Stephen Wiltshire is semi-famous for his cityscapes. But this kid seems to have a far more comprehensive understanding of math and physics than other similarly smart savants. Daniel Tammet is also jaw droppingly brilliant and autistic, but he douesn't seem interested in tackling problems of this scope. Or maybe this kid is actually more talented in math than Tammet.

Anyway, the world waits breathlessly to see what happens when he hits his stride. And we do pray he hits his stride rather than burning out such as James Siddis.

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt155982.html,
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt156134.html

And so on and so forth...

This is something I can identify a lot with. When I was 9 I questioned how can electrons go from one orbit to the other in atom without ever being between the orbits.

I also questioned, at 12, why are we in this specific location instead of some other location (after all we are right here because of where we were a second ago, which is because of where we were two seconds ago, and so forth, so where did it start? At a big bang? Why was big bang at that particular place rather than somewhere else?)

Naturally I also questioned Einstein's relativity when I came across it; but it didn't happen until I was 14.

Because of these kinds of questions I decided to become a physicist back at 9, and it is STILL my life time goal at 31. I guess I kind of ruined thigns between then and now; I used to be far ahead of my age, having studied calculus at 13, and now I seem to fall behind in physics compared to my collegues. A lot of it was due to bad strategy and bad planning so my accomplishments are behind my abilities. But I will try and catch up.

I'm glad autism and Asperger's get good publicity too, Janissy.

Anyway, I read at age zwei Komma fünf*. Well, the TV captions, anyway. But still. According to my mom, you most likely won't really see any other baby at that age reading at that level.

*Just so you know, I like to emphasize numbers by making them into foreign languages.

German is not a foreign language to me.

("Komma" bedeutet "comma" auf Deutsch.)

Buzz kill ahead ...


I'd like to know how this kid handles it when proven wrong. Even the most brilliant people make mistakes. If he believes himself infallible he will have a lot of difficulty as he gets older. I hope there are people around him that help him keep perspective.

Cool, I hope he goes on to make a good contribution to the field

But wait, didn't Einstein have Asperger's too (supposedly)? So this is basically isn't about Apsies being smarter, but rather a competition over which Aspie is right.

Wavefreak: a bigger buzzkill would be to consider that perhaps many children show such promise, but very few manage to get over their first great error.

It takes a lot of experience and maturity to admit one has made a mistake. Many physicists will never have the chance to pursue a line of thought to the point they can realize it is a dead-end. Those that have, usually discover this much later in life.

How do you think he will react if, at 20, he finds himself in the position many physicists do not reach until past 40?

The bright side to this morbid reasoning is that if he does encounter such an obstacle, he will be young enough to devote decades more to alternatives, than the average physicist who may discover it at 60.

Hopefully he will be able to take a "it was just a prototype" perspective about his failed theories the way that Edison was about his failed inventions. It really could go either way. I think a certain amount of hubris is to be expected and is healthy especially in one so young. I worry about publicity. If there is too much circulating footage he might feel compelled to live up to his own hype, cornering him into trying to defend a theory he knows in his heart has already failed just because there are a million youtube viewers commenting about it. In the arid realms of academia he might be more willing to let go of something that is wrong. Or maybe not. It all depends on his psyche, I suppose.

When I googled math prodigies (which of course I did after viewing his youtube) I came to the cautionary tale of James Siddis. He burned out and eventually refused to do any math at all because of the intense pressure to "live up to his potential". And that was 100 years ago when some newspaper articles and the lecture circuit were what passed for a media circus. This days with all the youtube views of his videos, these internet articles and probably appearances on TV (Ellen, it was on in the background for a reason), he may crack under pressure. I hope not. But I read some pages of the comments in this article and there are definately some haters who want to take him down a notch and are waiting to pounce if he's wrong. I personally think it's just fine if he's wrong. Edison had many, many lightbulb protoypes. Even Stephen Hawking is re-thinking some things. But he's going to have to be able to ignore the haters who want to scoff at him when he's wrong. That's not easy to do. It all depends on what sort of academiv mentorship he lucks into at the university.

There are plenty of NT-s who question Einstein. It is quite common among the non-scientific public to question him. Among scientist there are a lot fewer people who do. But I think the "few" counter-Einstein arguments comming from scientists ARE wroth considering (in fact this kind of stuff I want to build my career over); non-scientific arguments, on the other hand, are usually just a crap that comes out of not understanding Einstein properly. But anyway, the only thing that distinguishes this aspie from NT-s is that most NT-s who question Einstein are much older than 12.