As a three year old with a passion for stars he went on a tour of the Holcomb Observatory and Planetarium at Butler University in Indianapolis.
This is the day his mother Kristin Barnett would never forget (via the IndyStar):
“We were in the crowd, just sitting, listening to this guy ask the crowd if anyone knew why the moons going around Mars were potato-shaped and not round.
Jacob raised his hand and said, ‘Excuse me, but what are the sizes of the moons around Mars?’ ”
The lecturer answered, and Jacob looked at him and said the “gravity of the planet . . . is so large that (the moon’s) gravity would not be able to pull it into a round shape.”
Silence.
Meet Jacob Barnett, now 12 years old, mildly autistic and with an IQ of 170 – higher than Stephen Hawkings and Albert Einstein. At age three, he was solving 5,000 piece jigsaw puzzles and now he’s already got a paid research position at Indiana University.
For a taster of this little man’s out-of-this-world genius, watch this (and enjoy his mother’s comedic timing). There are plenty more videos on his mother’s YouTube channel too.
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