http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2011103200369
I don't want to sound like i'm trying to be cool or anything, but I had thought the same thing (how he disproves the big bang) awhile ago.

Give me three days with this kid and he'd be a normal dude playing video games and sleeping in a lot. Paid researcher indeed! He's obviously never experienced the joy of mindless movie, TV series, and gaming marathons. Or the exquisite art of... staring blankly into space for long periods while a woman is talking about something like her day.

"Disproves" is hardly correct here. If the Big Bang theory is generally correct there was multiple factors going on in those first few instances that he doesn't seem to be taking in to account. You can't rest on a single process to prove or disprove such a complex process. For example, if we follow the general rules of freezing but ignore crystallization we can disprove that ice floats on water - and obviously ice does float on water.

My problem is with the article and not the kid. He's figured out that something doesn't add up and he's using this to explore the issue further, that's great science. I believe I've seen the question raised before so there may already be some literature exploring the issue. If there is I'm sure he'll be reading up on it soon enough.

I heard he mastered staring blankly off into space since birth.

Heh.

That article over glorifies things a lot. At least so I feel about it.
Good job anyway, after that achievement, please invent fusion power, faster than light travel, cure AIDS and famine. You got plenty of time to do so

Congratulations. I'd recommend that you write a paper regarding your findings and form a team to further test your hypotheses regarding the Big Bang theory.

I foresee a real life Sheldon.

Indeed. The article is full of holes - Asperger's is not "related to" autism - it is autism. Autism is a disorder that's spectrum-based - you can have mildly autistic children like Jacob or severely autistic kids who don't interact with others and don't talk at all.

I wish he would teach me Calculus

What about the string theory

:rofl:

Hey, if the kid was eighteen my post would have looked very different. I mean you could replace movie with strip clubs, TV series' with bars, and video games with... video games... oh, wait. Replace marathon with crawl... except with video games, it remains marathon... and replace staring into space when a woman is talking about her day. To the woman not talking and the kid being too involved with her not talking to even remember what the words stare or space even mean...

... Bazinga!

Actually fusion power might be in the near (history wise) future. It's just not proven yet. If ITER works it will be great:
http://www.iter.org/

I understood everything he was talking about up until that point. He never really explains why creating so much carbon in such a small amount of time is impossible. I'm no mathematician so I don't know if it's possible or not. But I do know there is still too much that we don't know about the birth of the universe to jump to conclusions like that. It's good data but it needs to be assessed properly before any theories can be drawn.

Fusion power is a proven technology - making it a viable power generation technology is something else. Just saying.

Indeed, but a title of "12 year old kid makes really interesting observation about the Big Bang theory" just doesn't have the same zest to it.

That's the whole point of ITER.

I realize that. Your post made it seem, to me, that there was a question of whether sustainable fusion was possible. Sorry for misinterpreting.

I hear about these "prodigies" all the time. Not to say that I doubt that he is smart, but articles like these tend to exaggerate the truth.

I think the Big Bang theory is doing just fine...cool kid though.

Damn asperger people, having an unfair advantage over normal people :banghead:

Yep, given that we don't know how much carbon is in the universe, and given that he doesn't have any specific numbers for his time frame, I don't see anything more than a question that can be pursued.

Good luck with that kid, something that simple was already thought by many physicists before he was even born /thread

He's 12. He's also enrolled in college. He made a decent observation about the Big Bang theory at age 12. That's the real story.

Not really. Most suffers of asperger's don't become savants, and even this kid is still going to have some level of social disfunction. Even this kid would be at a disadvantage without the support structures and society us normal people help provide.

I thought we were talking about the show for the longest time -_-

Now that would be breaking news! "Kid disproves existance of popular comedy!"

I don't care how "smart" he is supposedly, I'm not listening to creation theories from a 12 year old using the words "poof" and "blow up".