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Michio Kaku

Michio Kaku Books

Physicist

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“Recent brain scans have shed light on how the brain simulates the future. These simulation are done mainly in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the CEO of the brain, using memories of the past. On one hand, simulations of the future may produce outcomes that are desirable and pleasurable, in which case the pleasure centers of the brain light up (in the nucleus accumbens and the hypothalamus). On the other hand, these outcomes may also have a downside to them, so the orbitofrontal cortex kicks in to warn us of possible dancers. There is a struggle, then, between different parts of the brain concerning the future, which may have desirable and undesirable outcomes. Ultimately it is the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex that mediates between these and makes the final decisions. (Some neurologists have pointed out that this struggle resembles, in a crude way, the dynamics between Freud's ego, id, and superego.)”

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Book:The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind
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“A hundred years ago, Auguste Comte, … a great philosopher, said that humans will never be able to visit the stars, that we will never know what stars are made out of, that that's the one thing that science will never ever understand, because they're so far away. And then, just a few years later, scientists took starlight, ran it through a prism, looked at the rainbow coming from the starlight, and said: "Hydrogen!" Just a few years after this very rational, very reasonable, very scientific prediction was made, that we'll never know what stars are made of.”

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Author:Michio Kaku
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“Inflation is continuous and eternal, with big bangs happening all the time, with universes sprouting from other universes. In this picture, universes can “bud” off into other universes, creating a “multiverse.” In this theory, spontaneous breaking may occur anywhere within our universe, allowing an entire universe to bud off our universe. It also means that our own universe might have budded from a previous universe. In the chaotic inflationary model, the multiverse is eternal, even if individual universes are not. Some universes may have a very large Omega, in which case they immediately vanish into a big crunch after their big bang. Some universes only have a tiny Omega and expand forever. Eventually, the multiverse becomes dominated by those universes that inflate by a huge amount. In retrospect, the idea of parallel universes is forced upon us.”

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Book:Parallel Worlds: A Journey through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos
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“Maybe somewhere telepaths walked the Earth, but I wasn't one of them. In the process, I began to realize that the wondrous exploits of telepaths were probably impossible--at least without outside assistance. But in the years that followed, I also slowly learned another lesson: to fathom the greatest secrets in the universe, one did not need telepathic or superhuman abilities. One just had to have an open, determined, and curious mind. In particular, in order to understand whether the fantastic devices of science fiction are possible, you have to immerse yourself in advanced physics. To understand the precise point when the possible becomes the impossible, you have to appreciate and understand the laws of physics.”

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Book:The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind
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“Our Sun is not Earth’s true “mother.” Although many peoples of Earth have worshipped the Sun as a god that gave birth to Earth, this is only partially correct. Although Earth was originally created from the Sun (as part of the ecliptic plane of debris and dust that circulated around the Sun 4.5 billion years ago), our Sun is barely hot enough to fuse hydrogen to helium. This means that our true “mother” sun was actually an unnamed star or collection of stars that died billions of years ago in a supernova, which then seeded nearby nebulae with the higher elements beyond iron that make up our body. Literally, our bodies are made of stardust, from stars that died billions of years ago.”

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Book:Parallel Worlds: A Journey through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos
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“So the future of the computer is to eventually enter stage IV, where it disappears and gets resurrected as a fashion statement. We will decorate our world with computers The very word computer will gradually disappear from the English language. In the future, the largest component of urban waste will not be paper but chips. The future of the computer is to disappear and become a utility, sold like electricity and water. Computer chips will gradually disappear as computation is done "in the clouds".”

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Book:Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100
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“The corollary to the Cave Man Principle is that if you want to predict the social interactions of humans in the future, simply imagine our social interactions 100,000 years ago and multiply by a billion. This means there will be a premium placed on gossip, social networking, and entertainment”

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Book:Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100
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“The mind reels when we realize that, according to this interpretation of quantum mechanics, all possible worlds coexist with us. Although wormholes might be necessary to reach such alternate worlds, these quantum realities exist in the very same room that we live in. They coexist with us wherever we go.”

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Book:Parallel Worlds: A Journey through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos
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“The advantage of this interpretation is that we can drop condition number three, the collapse of the wave function. Wave functions never collapse, they just continue to evolve, forever splitting into other wave functions, in a never-ending tree, with each branch representing an entire universe. The great advantage of the many worlds theory is that it is simpler than the Copenhagen interpretation: it requires no collapse of the wave function. The price we pay is that now we have universes that continually split into millions of branches.”

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Book:Parallel Worlds: A Journey through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos
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“In Einstein's equation, time is a river. It speeds up, meanders, and slows down. The new wrinkle is it can have whirlpools and fork into two rivers. So, if the river of time can be bent into a pretzel, create whirlpools and fork into two rivers, then time travel cannot be ruled out.”

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Book:Einstein's Cosmos: How Albert Einstein's Vision Transformed Our Understanding of Space and Time
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“To a physicist, beauty means symmetry and simplicity. If a theory is beautiful, this means it has a powerful symmetry that can explain a large body of data in the most compact, economical manner. More precisely, and equation is considered to be beautiful if it remains the same when we interchange its components among themselves.”

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Book:Parallel Worlds: A Journey through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos
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“For any reasonable value of Omega at the beginning of time, Einstein’s equations show that it should almost be zero today. For Omega to be so close to 1 so many billions of years after the big bang would require a miracle. This is what is called in cosmology the finetuning problem. God, or some creator, had to “choose” the value of Omega to within fantastic accuracy for Omega to be about 0.1 today. For Omega to be between 0.1 and 10 today, it means that Omega had to be 1.00000000000000 one second after the big bang. In other words, at the beginning of time the value of Omega had to be “chosen” to equal the number 1 to within one part in a hundred trillion, which is difficult to comprehend.”

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Book:Parallel Worlds: A Journey through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos
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“Think of trying to balance a pencil vertically on its tip. No matter how we try to balance the pencil, it usually falls down. In fact, it requires a fine-tuning of great precision to start the pencil balanced just right so it doesn’t fall over. Now try to balance the pencil on its tip so that it stays vertical not just for one second but for years! You see the enormous fine-tuning that is involved to get Omega to be 0.1 today. The slightest error in fine-tuning Omega would have created Omega vastly different from 1. So why is Omega so close to 1 day, when by rights it should be astronomically different?”

Omega
Book:Parallel Worlds: A Journey through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos
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“It from bit.” It’s an unorthodox theory, which starts with the assumption that information is at the root of all existence. When we look at the moon, a galaxy, or an atom, their essence, he claims, is in the information stored within them. But this information sprang into existence when the universe observed itself. He draws a circular diagram, representing the history of the universe. At the beginning of the universe, it sprang into being because it was observed. This means that “it” (matter in the universe) sprang into existence when information (“bit”) of the universe was observed. He calls this the “participatory universe”—the idea that the universe adapts to us in the same way that we adapt to the universe, that our very presence makes the universe possible.”

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Book:Parallel Worlds: A Journey through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos
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“We should try to leave the world a better place than when we entered it. As individuals, we can make a difference, whether it is to probe the secrets of Nature, to clean up the environment and work for peace and social justice, or to nurture the inquisitive, vibrant spirit of the young by being a mentor and a guide.”

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Author:Michio Kaku
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“But on the question of whether the robots will eventually take over, he {Rodney A. Brooks} says that this will probably not happen, for a variety of reasons. First, no one is going to accidentally build a robot that wants to rule the world. He says that creating a robot that can suddenly take over is like someone accidentally building a 747 jetliner. Plus, there will be plenty of time to stop this from happening. Before someone builds a "super-bad robot," someone has to build a "mildly bad robot," and before that a "not-so-bad robot.”

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Book:The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind
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“Beyond work and love, I would add two other ingredients that give meaning to life. First, to fulfill whatever talents we are born with. However blessed we are by fate with different abilities and strengths, we should try to develop them to the fullest, rather than allow them to atrophy and decay. We all know individuals who did not fulfill the promise they showed in childhood. Many of them became haunted by the image of what they might have become. Instead of blaming fate, I think we should accept ourselves as we are and try to fulfill whatever dreams are within our capability. Second, we should try to leave the world a better place than when we entered it. As individuals, we can make a difference, whether it is to probe the secrets of Nature, to clean up the environment and work for peace and social justice, or to nurture the inquisitive, vibrant spirit of the young by being a mentor and a guide.”

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Author:Michio Kaku
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“[On the practical applications of particle physics research with the Large Hadron Collider.] Sometimes the public says, 'What's in it for Numero Uno? Am I going to get better television reception? Am I going to get better Internet reception?' Well, in some sense, yeah. ... All the wonders of quantum physics were learned basically from looking at atom-smasher technology. ... But let me let you in on a secret: We physicists are not driven to do this because of better color television. ... That's a spin-off. We do this because we want to understand our role and our place in the universe.”

ScienceUniverseUnderstandingPhysicsQuantum PhysicsPublicBenefitParticle PhysicsLarge Hadron ColliderAtom Smasher
Author:Michio Kaku
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“Astronomers suspect that the Oort Cloud could extend as far as three light-years from our solar system. That is more than halfway to the nearest stars, the Centauri triple star system, which is slightly more than four light-years from Earth. If we assume that the Centauri star system is also surrounded by a sphere of comets, then there might be a continuous trail of comets connecting it to Earth. It may be possible to establish a series of refueling stations, outposts, and relay locations on a grand interstellar highway. Instead of leaping to the next star in one jump, we might cultivate the more modest goal of "comet hopping" to the Centauri system. This thoroughfare could become a cosmic Route 66.”

Science
Book:The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality and Our Destiny Beyond Earth
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“What I do for living, working on something called string theory which we think may answer the fundamental question: Are there other universes? Can you go through a black hole? Can you warp the fabric of space and time and meet your mother before you were born? These are all questions that in principle string theory should be able to answer.”

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Author:Michio Kaku
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“A human body can think thoughts, play a piano, kill germs, remove toxins, make a baby all at once. Once it's doing that your biological rhythms are actually mirroring the symphony of the universe because you have circadian rhythms, seasonal rhythms, tidal rhythms you know they mirror everything that is happening in the whole universe.”

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Author:Michio Kaku
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“What would happen if history could be rewritten as casually as erasing a blackboard? Our past would be like the shifting sands at the seashore, constantly blown this way or that by the slightest breeze. History would be constantly changing every time someone spun the dial of a time machine and blundered his or her way into the past. History, as we know it, would be impossible. It would cease to exist.”

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Book:Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the Tenth Dimension
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“Although humans have existed on this planet for perhaps 2 million years, the rapid climb to modern civilization within the last 200 years was possible due to the fact that the growth of scientific knowledge is exponential; that is, its rate of expansion is proportional to how much is already known. The more we know, the faster we can know more. For example, we have amassed more knowledge since World War II than all the knowledge amassed in our 2-million-year evolution on this planet. In fact, the amount of knowledge that our scientists gain doubles approximately every 10 to 20 years.”

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Author:Michio Kaku
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“Like music or art, mathematical equations can have a natural progression and logic that can evoke rare passions in a scientist. Although the lay public considers mathematical equations to be rather opaque, to a scientist an equation is very much like a movement in a larger symphony. Simplicity. Elegance. These are the qualities that have inspired some of the greatest artists to create their masterpieces, and they are precisely the same qualities that motivate scientists to search for the laws of nature. LIke a work of art or a haunting poem, equations have a beauty and rhythm all their own.”

ArtLawArtistPassionNaturalQualityMovementLogicScientistLaysInspiredSimplicityRhythmMathematicalWorks Of ArtMasterpieceEquationsEleganceHauntingLaws Of NatureSymphonyProgressionEvokeOpaqueMathematical Equations
Book:Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the Tenth Dimension
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“Eternal life does not violate the laws of physics. After all, we only die because of one word: "error." The longer we live, the more errors there are that are made by our bodies when they read our genes. That means cells get sluggish. The body doesn't function as well as it could, which is why the skin ages. Then organs eventually fail, so that's why we die.”

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Author:Michio Kaku
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“Well, Congress gave us a billion dollars to dig the hole, this gigantic hole. Bigger, much bigger than the hole in Geneva, Switzerland. Then they canceled the machine and gave us a second billion dollars to fill up the hole. Two billion dollars to dig a hole and fill it up. That is the wisdom of the United States Congress and it really makes you wonder: Is there intelligent life on the Earth? Certainly not in the United States Congress.”

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Author:Michio Kaku
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“Beyond work and love, I would add two other ingredients that give meaning to life. First, to fulfill whatever talents we are born with. However blessed we are by fate with different abilities and strengths, we should try to develop them to the fullest, rather than allow them to atrophy and decay. ... Second, we should try to leave the world a better place than when we entered it.”

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Author:Michio Kaku
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