What's with all these keener high school kids making important scientific discoveries? When I was in high school, the science teachers made us all participate in the science fair, and everyone did lame experiments like making crystals (which we had to do in chemistry anyway) or growing plants under fluorescent lights. I think some kids just did library research on clouds, but maybe that was the elementary school science fair (in which, I might add, my best friend and I won second prize for our experiment on the effects of different kinds of soda pop on nails - yeah, that's right, we stuck a bunch of nails in various glasses of pop for a few hours to see what would happen). We weren't really discovering anything that real scientists didn't already know, and we certainly weren't winning thousands of dollars.

It's great that they're making important contributions to science. But I can't help but think this is just another example of kids trying to grow up too fast, and I wonder if some day they might look back and wish they'd spent their childhood goofing off, like kids are supposed to do.

Plus, you have to wonder: the kid is working in the lab of a former Nobel frickin' Prize winner, and no one thought that perhaps he had a little help on his amazing project?