The Chronicler's Web (TCW)

by DAN CALLOWAY
Published 31 March 2011

PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY – A 12-year-old boy genius by the name of Jacob Barnett, who has a reportedly high 170 IQ–higher than that of Dr. Albert Einstein–seeks to disprove the current “Big Bang” theory, which is held in high regard by most leading scientists and physicists today, and offers his own theories as to how our Universe came about.

Jacob, who has been diagnosed with mild autism, has an elevated intelligence as well as an eidetic memory. At the age of two, Jacob stopped talking. Worried that he had some physical disorder that prevented him from speaking, his mother, Kristine Barnett, age 36, took him to a doctor to be examined. It was later that a psychologist determined that Jake has a form of mild autism known as Aspergers Syndrome. When Jacob started talking again he told his mother that he was working on an equation that would allow him to solve for the volume of his cereal box, which accounts for his persistent empyting of the box’s content onto their kitchen floor.

Well beyond his fellow classmates, Jacob attends Princeton University where he is quickly advancing beyond his current studies and what the professors have to offer him. From childhood, Jake taught himself geometry, trigonometry, and Calculus. His ability to solve complex mathematical problems with ease has astounded his college professors and his 18-year-old fellow students who look to him for assistance with math problems with which they often have difficulties. Jacob has told his college professors that when he grows up he wants to be a college professor and that he wants to write a math book that will help students to learn complex mathematics more rapidly and with less difficulty. Now, Princeton University college professors have told the Barnett family that Jacob has progressed beyond the educational benefits that he can acquire from traditional institutes of higher learning and that he should pursue paid research positions especially in the area of astrophysics.

One day, Jacob began to tell his mother that he had studied the currently-held theories expounded by Dr. Albert Einstein and World-renowned mathematician and physicist, Stephen Hawkings, and had come to the conclusion that their theories were flawed. Of course, he was talking about Albert Einstein’s General and Special Theories of Relativity and Stephen Hawkings’ theories regarding the Big Bang and how our Universe was created. Stephen Hawkings currently holds the title of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge–a title once held by Sir Issac Newton–and is thought to be one of the World’s greatest minds today. Not sure whether Jake was talking nonsense or not, Kristine created a video of her son as he wrote advanced mathematical equations in grease pencil on their living room windows, and she took the video to the renowned Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. The World-renowned astrophysicist and expert in the field of astrophysics, Scott Tremaine, confirmed that the theories that Jake was proposing were authentic and that his mathematics supported his theories.

Jacob tells his college professors and everyone else who will listen that the theories he is currently working on will expand upon the theories offered by Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawkings and are not designed to disprove them altogether. However, Jacob says that the problem that he has with current theories offered by both is that they do not explain the amount of carbon that we see in the Universe today if the “Big Bang” theory is to be upheld as the manner in which our Universe was created. Jake goes on to say that he doesn’t really care about the fundamental elements of Hydrogen and Helium in the moments that supposedly followed the Big Bang, but that he is more concerned how carbon was formed, which he states could not have been created in the quantities that we see in our Universe today if we follow the Big Bang model from the moment of the Bang until now. And, finally, Jake tells his professors and Dr. Tremaine that he can show that Dr. Einstein’s theories of relativity are flawed, especially in the area of the Cosmological Constant that was introduced to explain inconsistencies in those theories, and that he can prove this with a few mathematical expressions that he is working on.

I watched in awe yesterday when Jacob appeared on the Glenn Beck show on the FoxNews channel. Glenn Beck asked Jacob during the interview he conducted with him to go to the blackboard and prove that the infinite power series expression that had been placed there was in fact convergent rather than divergent. Jacob walked to the board and immediately started writing complex mathematical expressions as he spoke through the proof step-by-step. He introduced the Calculus concept of improper integrals as he walked through the process ending up showing for Glenn Beck and the general audience that indeed the infinite power series did converge. It was a remarkable sight to behold how seemingly effortlessly he approached the problem and how quickly he formulated the proof in solving the problem. It brought back memories of my own college professor, Dr. Jack Wilson, who always astounded me with the ease with which he could solve problems, especially those involving Calculus. Jacob made it look even easier.

If Jacob’s work on challenging the theories of Dr. Einstein and the theories of the Big Bang as supported by Stephen Hawkings comes to fruition, Jacob may be looking at the next Nobel Prize in Physics. What is certain is that Jacob will go on to accomplish great things in the area of astrophysics and in expanding our current ideas of where we came from and where we are going. Big Bang or not, it will be interesting to see the theories that Jacob Barnett brings forth and shares with the World. Whether we will be able to understand those theories is yet to be seen.