Poor kid. He's a smart 12 year old who has some silly ideas, as smart 12 year olds often do, and now he'll never be able to live them down because some reporter wrote a fluff piece about him. Hopefully he'll grow up to be embarrassed by this, instead of turning into a crank.
His theories as quoted in the article don't seem to be very coherent -- I can't even tell if he's using the term "big bang" to mean the origin of the universe or a nova -- so I don't think there's much of a claim to be evaluated here.
Of course, it's very possible that the reporter butchered the quote. It's a human interest article and it's painfully obvious that the reporter parsed every word out of the kid's mouth as science-as-attire, with no attempt to understand the content.
Hopefully he'll grow up to be embarrassed by this, instead of turning into a crank.
I agree with this, but I'd bet this kid would be willing to drop his pet theory if he found it was wrong (if grudgingly). I really don't think this one article, or just being in the news mostly for his youth/intelligence combo will ruin him.
I thought this may be of interest to the LW community. Jacob Barnett is a 12-year old male who taught himself all of high school math (algebra through calculus), has a currently scored math IQ of 170 (for what that's worth) and is currently on track to become a researcher of astrophysics. His current major news worthy claim-to-fame (aside from being really young): The Big Bang Theory is currently incorrect (I believe the article states he has something about a lack of carbon in the model), and he's planning to develop a new theory.
I haven't learned anything serious in physics, so I have nothing to note on his claim. I realize the news article cited puts him claim fairly generally, so I'll ask this: Can someone explain how elements are generally modeled to have formed from the big bang? And is there anything that it Jacob may be missing in the current literature?