Young Einstein: 12-year old astrophysics prodigy

DATELINE ZERO — A boy named 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.” Oh ya, he also has an IQ of 170, began solving 5,000-piece jigsaw puzzles at the age of 3, and is currently being recruited for a paid researcher job by Indiana University.

Also at the age of 3, Jacob was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a mild form of autism. A few years after conquering puzzles, he conquered calculus, algebra, and geometry; learning it all on his own within two weeks. He entered and left high school; and “is currently taking college-level advanced astrophysics classes—while tutoring his older classmates.”

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.”

Read more, from the full article at Dateline Zero.