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Hellbent

The world's most promising Physicist?

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At eight years old, Jacob Barnett began auditing physics classes at Indiana University.
At age nine, while playing with shapes, he built a series of mathematical models that expanded Einstein's field of relativity, which was described by a Princeton University professor as ground-breaking.
At age 12, Jacob enrolled in university full-time, and it was around then that he published his first physics paper.

Read more: http://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/15-year-old-jacob-barnett-one-of-the-world-s-most-promising-physicists-1.1479602#ixzz2gb07291w



Some more insight into Mr. Barnett: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57358845/jake-math-prodigy-proud-of-his-autism/?pageNum=3

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Hellbent said:

At age nine, while playing with shapes, he built a series of mathematical models that expanded Einstein's field of relativity, which was described by a Princeton University professor as ground-breaking.

Can you please explain this to me? It sounds quite like garbage.

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dew said:

Can you please explain this to me? It sounds quite like garbage.


Sounds like the resume of 'The Most Interesting Man in the World.'

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Brains and bodies are still growing at such a young age. People should be expanding their mind at that time. I wonder how he does in public school. I wonder if his parents are also physicists.

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dew said:

Can you please explain this to me? It sounds quite like garbage.

I can't explain it to you, therefore it must be garbage. edit: He visualizes numbers as geometric shapes. He thinks different. Just because you don't understand it, doesn't mean it's garbage. He's a paid research student (he's currently working on his Masters--he's 14 or 15 now). From his website:

Jacob Barnett has just begun work on theoretical physics at The Perimeter Institute, one of the top places of its kind for the top minds of the world!
He is the youngest researcher ever to be published in Physical Review A.
Jacob's mission is to spread his love of science throughout the world and to end what he calls Math Phobia.


More insight into Mr. Barnett: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57358845/jake-math-prodigy-proud-of-his-autism/?pageNum=3

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Circles = 1
Rectangle = 2
Triangle = 3
Square = 4

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Hellbent said:

I can't explain it to you, therefore it must be garbage.

I did not know you hadn't possessed the faculties to explain it even in vague terms, so I wasn't drawing that correlation. Now that I know, I just think you don't have the capability to judge how promising the guy is, or how great his accomplishments so far are. You only say so, because CBS tells you to say so.

He visualizes numbers as geometric shapes. He thinks different. Just because you don't understand it, doesn't mean it's garbage. He's a paid research student (he's currently working on his Masters--he's 14 or 15 now).

Look, I'm pretty sure this guy is a natural savant and he will make an impressive academic career. I'm just calling you on your bullshit claims, you know? According to you, he "expanded Einstein's field of relativity". "At age nine." He was killing Einstein's... field (uhh) at 9, but he still works on his Master's at 15?

I'd be probably thrilled about this if it weren't presented in "MTV Science" terms, I guess.

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aside from apparently being a child prodigy I'm having a hard time finding anything about this kid in terms of publications or specific research interests. There's that 2011 paper he was co-authored in I guess..

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It makes me feel ashamed that a 12 year old kid is going to university and writing physics books and I'm still at home with no job playing computer games because I'm a retard. Then again I can look at that one creepy smiley kid that never talks and gets bad grades to feel better about myself.

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From time to time I read articles saying how essentially most of the great people we read about in history books -in particular polymaths, conquerors, great strategists, rulers, politicians, artists etc. did so at very young ages, e.g. Alexander the Great was conquering empires already at 18 years of age, and by his early 30s he had conquered most of the known world -at least at the East. Leonardo Da Vinci was making sketches, experiments, works of arts, etc. before he hit his 20s.

In general, in the past people seemed to be much more precocious or pressured to excel fairly early, probably because very few could afford protracted formation years -it was do or die in many senses- AND there was less stuff to learn, overall. The prestigious career choices were also few and far between -essentially medicine, law or military academies. In the latter, it was not unusual for a boy to enroll at 14-15 years of age and be commanding men in battle by his 17-18, while receiving an all-around education and being anything but a dumb grunt, for his time.

Or it could simply be much higher selective pressure -shit was so hard back then, that only those with freakishly precocious talent stood out and lived to tell -and write- the tale.

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For one thing, society didn't allow you to act like a complete irresponsible douche until you were 18. Male children could be apprenticed out as early as 12-13 and begin learning a craft or trade. Also people didn't live as long, so, you used those years or you wasted them.

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Maes said:

The prestigious career choices were also few and far between -essentially medicine, law or military academies.

You are forgetting clergy, which meant freedom to devote your whole life to whatever nonsense you wanted.

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A few really productive people throughout history did a lot of stuff when they were young. Everyone else (>90%) did nothing. They worked their jobs, had kids, and died young.

Now at least most of us do something, can live longer and experience more. The average is better and the prodigies haven't disappeared.

A lot of people as talented as this kid end up burning out somehow, though. I hope he does really well, but being so ahead of the curve in school isn't always psychologically a very stable position. Does he still act like a bratty teenager when he's not working? That might make his colleagues resent him like crazy.

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Jacob was just presented an award by the World Summit on Innovation and Entrepreneurship for The 2013 Most Innovative People Awards. Past winners of the award have been Steven Hawking, Desmond Tutu, Paul Kagame (president of Rwanda), Bill Gates, Samuel Palmisano (Chariman of IBM), Neil Turok, Robert Langer, Marc Yu, and Tarja Harlonen (President of Finland). source: facebook

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Hellbent said:

Paul Kagame (president of Rwanda)

Wow, fantastic! That's some award. Although giving it to this kid might top it in farfetchedness.

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I started reading the book his mom wrote about nurturing his genius and bringing him back from the edge of oblivion (autism). It's an incredible book called The Spark.

here's an update from his facebook page:
We are so thankful to the WSIE for honoring Jacob in New York this past weekend. Here is why he won, which humbles us even more. The criteria for the WSIE Award were listed as:

-- Foresight: Envisages the 'big idea' that transforms inventions into
innovations.
-- Courage: Inspires a track record of upholding the ideals of innovation-
confidence, compassion, humility, honesty, integrity, and diligence to
honor endless obligations.
-- Benevolence: Causes an indelible effect in imparting a sense of
significance, community, and loftier meaning.
-- Connected Leadership: Imparts real leadership to build the future
generation of leaders, peace ambassadors, and spiritual agents of
change worldwide.
-- Execution Intelligence: Enables changes across all parts of the
public/private sector brain by synergizing execution strategies with
its emotional and spiritual qualities.

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schwerpunk said:

That last one... I understand what it's getting at but... Huh.

Has the science world become a wish-washy hug box?

The buzzwords are burning me.

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Here's the paper Jacob co-published when he was 11 or 12: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1108.6083.pdf

Origin of maximal symmetry breaking in even PT -symmetric lattices
Yogesh N. Joglekar and Jacob L. Barnett
Department of Physics, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), Indianapolis, Indiana 46202, USA
(Dated: September 1, 2011)

By investigating a parity and time-reversal (PT ) symmetric, N-site lattice with impurities +- iy and hopping amplitudes t0(tb) for regions outside (between) the impurity locations, we probe the origin of maximal PT -symmetry breaking that occurs when the impurities are nearest neighbors.
Through a simple and exact derivation, we prove that the critical impurity strength is equal to the hopping amplitude between the impurities,
c = tb, and the simultaneous emergence of N complex eigenvalues is a robust feature of any PT -symmetric hopping profi le. Our results show that the threshold strength yc can be widely tuned by a small change in the global pro file of the lattice, and thus have experimental implications.

[...]

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Yeah, it's pretty pointless making a fart's wind's guess of what the paper is about. At least it's short, tho?

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