Big Bang or Big Dud?

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Clearly the more plausible theory is than an immortal mammal from another planet spoke the universe into existence.

QFT

[_Sethbag]

The kid can be as smart as he wants to be, and yet I highly doubt he can, in the end, disprove the Big Bang. For one, I have a hard time believing he thinks the Big Bang didn't happen because of his exposure to, say, some evidence that contradicts the current theory. I find it much more plausible that his parents or others in his social milieu have for religious reasons cast doubt on the Big Bang, and so this kid has set out to prove them right. If he's actually seen evidence that disproves the Big Bang, then others would have seen it too, before him (since he's not doing the original research, so any evidence he's seeing is at least 2nd hand).

I agree that the kid's social development is probably totally borked. I hope it works out for him.

[_Blixa]

Why?

I don't care what a 12 year old thinks, genius or not.

Not to mention this part of the story:

Christians worldwide should applaud Jacob’s intent to disprove one of the many theories put forth by atheists to explain away the Biblical creation.

[_EAllusion]

Off the top of my head, I know the earth is mostly iron and silicates, not carbon. But I have the advantage of not being twelve.

[_Chap]

If this child is good enough at theoretical physics to make a real contribution to cosmology, we shall soon start seeing his publications in the obvious journals. If not, we won't. Till then, we don't know one way or another.

The only significant data provided by the New American piece relate to the mental level of the person who wrote it.

[_Quasimodo]

Just read the article and came upon this statement from our 12 year old.

Otherwise, the carbon would have to be coming out of the stars and hence the Earth, made mostly of carbon, we wouldn’t be here.

Carbon composes a trace amount of Earth's composition (less than 2%). Iron is at the top at over 30%. A glaring error. Not too surprising from a twelve year old and forgivable.

It is painful that proponents of "Intelligent Design" would lean on this kind of fuzzy theory to promote an already discounted idea.

[_xolotl]

My mom watches Glenn Beck regularly and while I was preparing a pasta sauce in the kitchen I noticed Beck announce a boy genius prodigy as a guest to his show and how he is working on hashing out a way to debunk the big bang.
My first reaction was to roll my eyes and drown it out, I didn't want to hear how a 12 year old was planning on debunking BB. I ended up watching it for a bit and found it a little interesting, though I don't recall the debunking theory ever coming up on Beck's show.

As gifted as the boy may be, until he starts hashing out new testable theories, and ideas of his own rather than mimic ones I can't imagine him coming up with anything of much significance so I probably won't be reading the article. I LOL'd when Beck handed him and his family the 5 thousand year leap book or w/e as a gift. I keep telling myself I will read it, but cannot bring myself to actually do it.

[_beefcalf]

There is so much here that is simply wrong...

So you get all the elements, all the different materials, from those bigger stars. The little stars, they just make hydrogen and helium, and when they blow up, all the carbon that remains in them is just in the white dwarf; it never really comes off.

First: stars do not make hydrogen. Stars fuse pre-existing hydrogen into helium and heavier elements. The larger the star, the heavier the elements it can generate in its core, up to a point. Iron is the heaviest element which normal stellar nucleosynthesis can generate. Second, although stars below a certain mass cannot generate a supernova directly, but will instead slough off its outer layers to form planetary nebulae and become a white dwarf, that remaining white dwarf (size of the Earth, mass of our Sun = really dense) can later go supernova if it accretes enough matter from a companion star. If that happens, this type supernovae will spread its entire mass of heavy elements into the surrounding space, carbon included.

So, um, in the big-bang theory, what they do is, there is this big explosion and there is all this temperature going off and the temperature decreases really rapidly because it’s really big. The other day I calculated, they have this period where they suppose the hydrogen and helium were created, and, um, I don’t care about the hydrogen and helium, but I thought, wouldn’t there have to be some sort of carbon?

Perhaps in extremely infinitesimal quantities, but the temperature and pressure requirements for fusing helium into carbon would not have existed during the evolution of the expansion of the big bang. Such temperature and pressures will only be found inside a stellar core.

Otherwise, the carbon would have to be coming out of the stars and hence the Earth, made mostly of carbon, we wouldn’t be here. So I calculated, the time it would take to create 2 percent of the carbon in the universe, it would actually have to be several micro-seconds. Or a couple of nano-seconds, or something like that. An extremely small period of time. Like faster than a snap. That isn’t gonna happen.

His wildly incorrect assumptions about the chemical composition of the Earth was mentioned above. As far as calculating the time necessary to create a certain percentage of carbon... not sure what his point is here, except that it is clearly based on his previous flawed assumption that the energy profile of the expanding universe was somehow sufficient to fuse helium into carbon.

Because of that, that means that the world would have never been created because none of the carbon would have been given 7 billion years to fuse together. We’d have to be 21 billion years old ... and that would just screw everything up.

Um.. I suppose if your overestimate of the amount of carbon in the Earth is too large by 5 or 6 orders of magnitude, the fact that you are less than 1 order of magnitude off in your final calculation should be grounds for hearty congratulations.

Go read some science books, kid.

[_EAllusion]

\
Carbon composes a trace amount of Earth's composition (less than 2%). Iron is at the top at over 30%. A glaring error. Not too surprising from a twelve year old and forgivable.

Hey. Quit trampling on my posting.

[_harmony]

12. Hasn't he been ordained? Some things are important, ya know!