12 Year old challenges Relativity and the Big Bang Theories

[Dreamwalker]

Interesting video! I must say, I don't think I've ever felt more stupid as I do now after watching that.
I've always had a hard time with math. Thats one pretty smart kid!

 

[EquaL Observer]

Well we can only hope that the proclaimed future Einstein actually turns out to be the next McKenna... that would be quite a hard one for the science community to take aha

 

[33]

"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." - Albert Einstein

 

[longshot]

Aye... unless he raises the well-being of the masses somehow I'm not so impressed . I dislike how we liken intelligence to ultra-rationalism - I reckon its much more than having the capacity for all sorts of equations.

The media like prodigy's. Every now and then they got to come up with one. Usually these kids eventually wind up not performing that well later on in life, because they never had a proper childhood due to all the media attention.
If einstein would have been exhibited on a media freakshow as a kid, we probably wouldn't have relativity theory now.

You are referring to the "You must achieve high or you fail completely" complex?

 

[endlessness]

Floating Gyroscopes Vindicate Einstein

Four superconducting pingpong balls floating in space have just confirmed two key predictions of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, physicists announced in a press conference Wednesday. “We have completed this landmark experiment testing Einstein’s universe, and Einstein survives,” said...

www.wired.com

Im still waiting for the kid to bring something tangible to his challenges

 

[shishigami]

Einstein is worth at least 5 nobel prizes. This kid, while his ideas are novel, isn't. I've gone through the derivations of Einsteins equations and they work. If what he says is true than all of particle physics is operating by some unknown manner. It would have been detected if particles in an accelerator were going faster than the speed of light as he indicates he thinks to be true.

 

[Saidin]

Perhaps because they are going faster than the speed of light, they might not be detectible? It would be outside known physics, so how can you detect something that cannot exist?

 

[The Traveler]

Perhaps because they are going faster than the speed of light, they might not be detectible? It would be outside known physics, so how can you detect something that cannot exist?

I think the fact that particles in an accelerator ARE detected and that they show no speed greater than light is already the proof we need. Theoretically, the particle detector at CERN has no problem registering particles that move faster than light.

How a detector works

b.t.w. Cherenkov radiation is the light emmited when a particle moves faster through a medium as the light would move through that medium. To quote Wikipedia: "For example, the speed of the propagation of light in water is only 0.75c. Matter can be accelerated beyond this speed during nuclear reactions and in particle accelerators but not faster than light".

So Cherenkov radiation does not mean that the particle in that medium is moving faster than C (speed of light in vacuum).


Kind regards,

The Traveler

 

[Cheeto]

Anyway, why this tendency to put hopes on "young messiahs"?

I would expect the younger minds to be more advanced(or have the ability to),(to a degree)....if you believe in evolution.

Perhaps because they are going faster than the speed of light, they might not be detectible?

I think the fact that particles in an accelerator ARE detected and that they show no speed greater than light is already the proof we need. Theoretically, the particle detector at CERN has no problem registering particles that move faster than light.

There are things in existence faster than light, the information or theoretical non-information that entagled particles share. I really have a hard time understanding how they make a theory to fit with the nothing faster than light even when they find something faster than light. Distance isn't an illusion to light, so how is it an illusion to entangled particles, if one particle changes direction of spin and the other instantly changes its spin, then how is that not considerd an exchange of information?

 

[Tsehakla]

There are things in existence faster than light, the information or theoretical non-information that entagled particles share. I really have a hard time understanding how they make a theory to fit with the nothing faster than light even when they find something faster than light. Distance isn't an illusion to light, so how is it an illusion to entangled particles, if one particle changes direction of spin and the other instantly changes its spin, then how is that not considerd an exchange of information?

Matter, and therefore information, is thought to not move faster than the speed of light in a vacuum (c). So, anything that does appear to happen faster than c (e.g., the phase velocity of an EM wave, or the speed at which a galaxy is moving away from us) can't be used to transmit information.

As far as quantum entanglement goes... it all sounds a bit like trying to say that Shrödinger's cat is both alive and dead at the same time, when in reality the state just isn't known. I suppose if you believe that unobserved reality doesn't really exist it makes sense, but that's a metaphysical matter and as such has nothing to do with science.

 

[Entropymancer]

Anyway, why this tendency to put hopes on "young messiahs"?

I would expect the younger minds to be more advanced(or have the ability to),(to a degree)....if you believe in evolution.

Evolution describes genetic shifts in populations over long periods of time. With a population as large as humanity, genetic changes from one generation to the next are not likely to be significant (nor would it automatically be moving in the direction of advancing intelligence); it's the trend of these shifts over time in response to selective pressure that is behind evolution.

Perhaps you're thinking of hybrid vigor? There's no obvious reason to suspect that the latest generation has any different capacity for aberrations (positive or negative) than the last, though I suppose that given the sheer volume of offspring being produced, some of them are bound to be extraordinarily exceptional.

 

[SWIMfriend]

^^ But then there' the Flynn Effect. IQs are going up generation after generation, apparently. Here's a bit more on the Flynn Effect.

 

[onethousandk]

About this kid: that's awesome and I'm happy for him. However, it's waaaay too early to see if his ideas end up anywhere relevant. I do, however, appreciate that we have a child's imagination working on some of the most basic questions about physics. I can't see this being a bad thing.

There are things in existence faster than light, the information or theoretical non-information that entagled particles share. I really have a hard time understanding how they make a theory to fit with the nothing faster than light even when they find something faster than light. Distance isn't an illusion to light, so how is it an illusion to entangled particles, if one particle changes direction of spin and the other instantly changes its spin, then how is that not considerd an exchange of information?

I find quantum entanglement and non-locality to be one of the most fascinating aspects of quantum mechanics. However, I also believe it's entirely too early for us to say that non-locality definitely exists. Chances are that we're simply too ignorant to understand its processes. That being said, it wouldn't surprise me if we find out that entanglement exchanges information faster than the speed of light. After all, this is the fundamental reason why physics doesn't have a Theory of Everything: relativity works at the macroscopic level and quantum mechanics at the microscopic but neither work in the other's position. We have a long way to go before we understand why some rules only apply in certain situations.

As far as quantum entanglement goes... it all sounds a bit like trying to say that Shrödinger's cat is both alive and dead at the same time, when in reality the state just isn't known.

People seem to have a tendency to blow Shrodinger's thought experiment into proportions it doesn't deserve. Experiments have shown that the quantum wave collapses even if direct observation isn't present, simply pulling information from the system is enough and my guess would be it doesn't even take that much.

 

[The Traveler]

There are things in existence faster than light, the information or theoretical non-information that entagled particles share. I really have a hard time understanding how they make a theory to fit with the nothing faster than light even when they find something faster than light. Distance isn't an illusion to light, so how is it an illusion to entangled particles, if one particle changes direction of spin and the other instantly changes its spin, then how is that not considerd an exchange of information?

The exchange of information might be faster than light but the particles themselves are still not going faster than light.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

 

[Saidin]

Evolution describes genetic shifts in populations over long periods of time. With a population as large as humanity, genetic changes from one generation to the next are not likely to be significant (nor would it automatically be moving in the direction of advancing intelligence); it's the trend of these shifts over time in response to selective pressure that is behind evolution.

This is not entirely correct. Epigenetics has proven that significant genetic changes can happen in a single generation due to enviromental factors. For example, if your grandmother experiences drought or famine when your mother/father were inutero, their and your genetic makeup can be significantly altered.

Evolution can happen over long peroids of time, but it can also happen very quickly.

 

[Entropymancer]

Evolution describes genetic shifts in populations over long periods of time. With a population as large as humanity, genetic changes from one generation to the next are not likely to be significant (nor would it automatically be moving in the direction of advancing intelligence); it's the trend of these shifts over time in response to selective pressure that is behind evolution.

This is not entirely correct. Epigenetics has proven that significant genetic changes can happen in a single generation due to enviromental factors. For example, if your grandmother experiences drought or famine when your mother/father were inutero, their and your genetic makeup can be significantly altered.

Evolution can happen over long peroids of time, but it can also happen very quickly.

I guess it depends on how you define evolution. Epigenetics describes heritable changes in phenotype, while I tend to think of evolution in terms of genetic changes (with non-genetic changes in expression based on environmental factors being more of a transient sort of adaptation). Considering evolution is about heritability, the the definition you use is probably more apt than mine.

At any rate, you make a good point: significant phenotypic changes can occur between generations. This could tie in with the Flynn effect that SWIMfriend mentioned.