Two-year-old with same IQ as Einstein

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Oscar Wrigley, a two-year-old with the same IQ as Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, has become the youngest boy in Britain to be accepted into Mensa.



By Chris Irvine
Published: 8:00AM BST 10 Oct 2009

"Assessors at the Gifted Children's Information Centre in Solihull said Oscar, with an IQ of at least 160, is one of the brightest children they have every come across.

He has been ranked in the 99.99th percentile of the population and has been ranked off the scale as the Stanford-Binet test cannot measure higher than 160.

Oscar's father Joe, 29, an IT specialist from Reading in Berkshire, said: "Oscar was recently telling my wife about the reproductive cycle of penguins.

"He is always asking questions. Every parent likes to think their child was special but we knew there was something particularly remarkable about Oscar.

"I'm fully expecting the day to come when he turns around and tells me I'm an idiot."

Mother Hannah, 26, told The Daily Mail: "He amazes everyone. We knew at 12 weeks he was extremely bright. He was unusually alert."

Mrs Wrigley, a housewife, added: "His vocabulary is amazing. He's able to construct complex sentences.

"The other day he said to me, 'Mummy, sausages are like a party in my mouth'."

Dr Peter Congdon, who assessed Oscar, said he was a "child of very superior intelligence".

"His abilities fall well within the range sometimes referred to as intellectually gifted. He demonstrated outstanding ability," he said.

John Stevenage, Mensa's Chief Executive confirmed Oscar had been accepted aged two years, five months and 11 days.

"Oscar shows great potential. Converting that potential to achievement is the challenge for his parents and we are delighted that they have chosen to join the Mensa network for support", he said.

The youngest British child to join Mensa is Elise Tan Roberts, from Edmonton, North London, at two years, four months and 14 days, with an IQ of 156."

Hawking Flies Weightless Aboard Jet

"Free of his wheelchair and tethered only to heart rate and blood pressure monitors, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking on Thursday fulfilled a dream of floating weightless on a zero-gravity jet, a step he hopes leads to further space adventures.



The modified jet carrying Hawking, a handful of his physicians and nurses, and dozens of others first flew up to 24,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean off Florida. Nurses lifted Hawking and carried him to the front of the jet, where they placed him on his back atop a special foam pillow.

The jet then climbed to around 32,000 feet and made a parabolic dive back to 24,000 feet, allowing Hawking and the other passengers to experience weightlessness for about 25 seconds.

Hawking, a mathematics professor at the University of Cambridge who has done groundbreaking work on black holes and the origins of the universe, has the paralyzing disease ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

The 65-year-old was the first person with a disability to experience the flight by Zero Gravity Corp., which has flown about 2,700 people out of Florida since late 2004 and began offering the flights in Las Vegas this week.

"As you can imagine, I'm very excited," Hawking told reporters before the flight. "I have been wheelchair bound for almost four decades. The chance to float free in zero-g will be wonderful."

Unable to talk or move his hands and legs, Hawking can only make tiny facial expressions using the muscles around his eyes, eyebrows, cheek and mouth. He uses a computer attached to his wheelchair to talk for him in a synthesized voice by choosing words on a computer screen through an infrared sensor on a headpiece that detects motion in his cheek.

He raises an eyebrow to signal "yes" and tenses his mouth to the side to indicate "no."

"I want to demonstrate to the public that anybody can participate in this type of weightless experience," Hawking said Thursday.

Hawking's personal physicians were on hand to make sure nothing went wrong. The physicist was attached to heart, blood pressure and oxygen-measuring monitors during the flight. Medical equipment sufficient for a mini-intensive care unit also was on board, said Dr. Edwin Chilvers, Hawking's personal physician.

"I'm anticipating everything to nothing," Chilvers said before the flight.

Others on the flight included financial backers of Zero Gravity and passengers who bid a total of $150,000 toward charities to go on the flight.

The jet's interior is padded to protect the weightless fliers and equipped with cameras to record their adventure. Normally, the plane conducts 10 to 15 plunges for its passengers, who pay $3,750 for the ride, although that fee was waived for Hawking.

On Hawking's flight, the jet made eight parabolic dives.

"We had a wonderful time. It was incredible, far beyond our expectations," said Peter H. Diamandis, the chairman and CEO of Zero Gravity, after he exited the jet with Hawking at his side.

As a further safety precaution, Zero Gravity founders Peter H. Diamandis and Byron Lichtenberg, who has flown on the space shuttle, were on either side of Hawking so they could lower him to the ground gently at the end of the parabola. Hawking also took a motion sickness pill as a precaution.

The astrophysicist hopes the zero-gravity flight is a step toward going on a suborbital flight, which may be offered by private space companies by the end of the decade.

"It's a test to see how well he can handle the g-forces that would be necessary in order to leave the atmosphere," said Sam Blackburn, Hawking's assistant. 'That is very much one of the major purposes of this flight.'"

Stephen Hawking Plans Prelude to the Ride of His Life

"Stephen Hawking, the British cosmologist, Cambridge professor and best-selling author who has spent his career pondering the nature of gravity from a wheelchair, says he intends to get away from it all for a little while.



On April 26, Dr. Hawking, surrounded by a medical entourage, is to take a zero-gravity ride out of Cape Canaveral on a so-called vomit comet, a padded aircraft that flies a roller-coaster trajectory to produce periods of weightlessness. He is getting his lift gratis, from the Zero Gravity Corporation, which has been flying thrill seekers on a special Boeing 727-200 since 2004 at $3,500 a trip.

Peter H. Diamandis, chief executive of Zero G, said that “the idea of giving the world’s expert on gravity the opportunity to experience zero gravity” was irresistible.

In some ways, this is only a prelude. Dr. Hawking announced on his 65th birthday, in January, that he hoped to take a longer, higher flight in 2009 on a space plane being developed by Richard Branson’s company Virgin Galactic, which seeks to take six passengers to an altitude of 70 miles.

Dr. Hawking says he wants to encourage public interest in spaceflight, which he believes is critical to the future of humanity.

“I also want to show,” he said in an e-mail interview, 'that people need not be limited by physical handicaps as long as they are not disabled in spirit.'"

Read more from the NY Times article by clicking the title above

Hawking Seeks Answers on Humanity's Future

"Some questions even stump Stephen Hawking.

The famed British astrophysicist and best-selling author has turned to Yahoo Answers, a new feature in which anyone can pose a question for fellow Internet users to try to answer. By Friday afternoon, nearly 17,000 Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) users had responded.

Hawking's question: 'In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?'

Some of the answers were short - 'get rid of nuclear weapons' - and others vague - 'Somehow we will.' Many were doubtful: 'I don't think it is possible unless we expand into space,' one user wrote.

A number of people suggested thinking differently, ending bickering or fostering cooperation.

Officials at the University of Cambridge, where Hawking is a mathematics professor, confirmed that Hawking wrote the message but said he would have no further comment.

Hawking's groundbreaking research on black holes and the origins of the universe has made him one of the best-known theoretical physicists of his generation. Author of the global best seller "A Brief History of Time," Hawking is known for proposing that space and time have no beginning and no end.

Lately, he's been pondering about the fate of humans.

In a June 13 speech in Hong Kong, Hawking said the survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe because there's an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy Earth.

He said that if humans can avoid killing themselves in the next 100 years, they should have space settlements that can continue without support from Earth.

Hawking is one of 10 celebrity questioners Yahoo solicited as part of its "Ask The Planet" campaign.

The Sunnyvale, Calif., Internet company spent weeks trying to track Hawking down but got his participation within a day of reaching the correct assistant, said Patrick Crane, vice president of marketing for Yahoo Search.

The question was submitted a few days before the Hong Kong speech and posted this past Wednesday.

Over the next week, Yahoo employees are expected to work with Hawking to sift through the answers and select one or several to highlight as best responses.

Yahoo Answers, like an offering from Google Inc. (GOOG) and one planned by Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), is among the services aimed at tapping the collective intelligence. It's based on the premise that humans as a group can do a better job at finding information than machines or any single person can.

Anyone can ask or answer a question, regardless of expertise, although Yahoo will eventually implement a rating system meant to elevate users with better reputations, based on their past questions and answers.

Questions typically get 6 to 10 answers.

Past celebrity participants include Donald Trump, Isaiah Washington, Al Gore and "Click & Clack," the hosts of NPR's "Car Talk." U2 lead singer Bono closed the celebrity series Friday by asking, "What can we do to make poverty history?"

Stephen Hawking Warns About Global Warming

"Stephen Hawking expressed concern about global warming Wednesday even as he charmed and provoked a group of Chinese students.

Before an audience of 500 at a seminar in Beijing, the celebrity cosmologist said, 'I like Chinese culture, Chinese food and above all Chinese women. They are beautiful.'



The audience of mostly university students and professors and a smattering of journalists laughed and applauded.

Asked about the environment, Hawking, who suffers from a degenerative disease, uses a wheelchair and speaks through a computerized voice synthesizer, said he was 'very worried about global warming.'

He said he was afraid that Earth "might end up like Venus, at 250 degrees centigrade and raining sulfuric acid."

The comment is a pointed one for China - which is the second largest emitter of the greenhouse gases that are blamed for global warming, after the United States. Experts warn that if emissions aren't reduced the world's glaciers could melt, threatening cities and triggering droughts and other environmental disasters.

An occasional visitor to China, Hawking was in Beijing to attend a conference on string theory, an area of physics that attempts to explain and model the universe.

Hawking's ability to explain abstruse scientific concepts to laymen has given him a worldwide following. In China, whose communist government regularly preaches that scientific prowess is crucial to the country's future power, Hawking has near-superstar status.

When he was wheeled onstage 20 minutes into the event, the audience rushed forward, taking pictures with their mobile phones.

Many stood and craned to see him better throughout the talk and one man in the fifth row watched Hawking through binoculars.

Xu Fanrong, a 23-year-old student at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Physics in Beijing, praised Hawking's pithy and humorous remarks during the one and a half hour event. He said Hawking's appearance could help inspire more young Chinese to study physics.

"Our country needs science," said Xu. "No basic science means no basic technology and no economic development."

Other speakers at the seminar included Edward Witten, winner of the Fields Medal in mathematics in 1990; David J. Gross, winner of the 2004 Nobel prize for physics; and Harvard University physics professor Andy Strominger.

Despite the stellar academic credentials of his fellow speakers, Hawking stole the show, fielding questions about his life as well as science. Asked by one Chinese student how he would describe himself, Hawking said: "Optimistic, romantic and stubborn."

"In the world there's only one like him. I very much respect his personality and strong spirit," said Liu Fei, 24-year-old doctoral candidate at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Physics.

Hawking told the students that although he was very limited physically by his disability, his mind was "free to explore back to the origins of the universe and into black holes.'"

The show goes on for Stephen Hawking

"When you're recounting the drama of cosmic origins, the show must go on -- even if you're a quadriplegic recovering from a medical crisis.



Wednesday's appearance at the Paramount Theatre — presented by the Oregon-based Institute for Science, Engineering and Public Policy, or ISEPP — was the last of three scheduled stops on the Cambridge professor's U.S. lecture tour. Hawking, who suffers from a progressive neurodegenerative disease that has almost completely paralyzed him, was due to travel to Seattle from San Francisco. But when he was taken off his respirator Monday morning, "he basically flat-lined," said Terry Bristol, ISEPP's president and executive director.

"They had to resuscitate, and that panicked a few people," Bristol told the audience. "But he's been there before."

Once the crisis had passed, Hawking wanted to go ahead with the Seattle leg of the trip, but his medical caretakers — including his wife, Elaine — thought he should stay put awhile longer, Bristol said. So Hawking and his aides worked with Intel, ISEPP and the Paramount to set up a Web-based teleconferencing link from a Bay Area hotel.

Despite the teleconferenced video and the flat tone of Hawking's synthesized computer voice, his outspokenness and humor shone through as lively as ever. The highlight was a recap of Hawking's favorite answers to frequently asked questions — some of which drew so much applause from the Seattle crowd that Bristol, the master of ceremonies, occasionally had to repeat the answers. Some examples:

What did he think of "The Simpsons" TV show, which has had Hawking as an animated guest star? "It's the best thing on American TV."

What was his view of the Bush administration's limits on human embryonic stem-cell research: "America will be left behind if it doesn't change policy."

What did he think of the program to send American astronauts back to the moon? "Stupid," he answered. "Sending politicians would be much cheaper, because you don't have to bring them back."

How high is Hawking's IQ? The physicist replied that he didn't know. "People who boast about their IQ are losers," he said.
Which late personage would he rather meet, Isaac Newton or Marilyn Monroe? "Marilyn," Hawking said. "Newton seems to have been an unpleasant character.'"