Michio Kaku, commonly referred to as a “popularizer of science”, is the Henry Semat Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the co-founder of string field theory. He has written several books, including Parallel Worlds and Beyond Einstein, and his bestseller, Hyperspace, was voted one of the best science books of the year by the New York Times and the Washington Post. He is a frequent guest on national TV, and his nationally syndicated radio program is heard in 130 cities. He lives in New York City.

SF Signal had the opportunity to ask Dr. Kaku some questions about his work, science fiction, and his latest book, Physics of the Impossible…

SF Signal: In your book Hyperspace, you trek through complex higher dimensions and explained – in simple terms – how to conceive the six dimensions beyond Height, Width, Depth and Time. What is your personal philosophy on explaining science and using plain English to do so?

Michio Kaku: Einstein once said that if a theory could not be explained to a child, the theory was probably worthless. But this, I think he meant that great theories are not just a mass of equations, but are based on simple physical principles and pictures that even a child can understand. Thus, his theory is full of pictures, such as rockets, trains, elevators, even merry-go-rounds, that children can understand.

Hence, when I try to explain hyperspace or string theory to children, I use analogies that they can understand that summarize the essence of a physical theory.

For example, when explaining hyperspace, I mention that as a I child, I used to gaze for hours at the Japanese Tea Garden, watching the carp swim just beneath the lily pads, living in a two dimensional world. Their eyes point to the side, and they can only visualize 2 dimensions. Any carp scientist would scoff at the notion of a third dimension, since the universe was only what could be measured, and the universe was the pond. Then I imagined grabbing this fish scientist, and lifting him into hyperspace, the third dimension. What would he see? He would see being moving without fins. A new law of physics. Beings breathing without water. A new law of biology. Well, today, many physicists feel that we are the fish, living in 3 dimensions, unaware that there maybe up to 11 dimensions in our true “universe.”

SFS: Your book, Physics of the Impossible, deals with the science behind science fictional concepts. Can you tell us which ideas are the least and most likely to be realized?

MK: I call Class I impossibilities technologies which are possible on a time frame of decades to maybe a century. Remarkably, most of what we see in the movies falls in this category.

Invisibility is one technology that is coming extremely fast. Just two years ago, at Duke Univ., scientists were able to show that microwave radiation can wrap around an object and then reform, like water flowing around a boulder, so that the presence of the object has disappeared. Downstream from a boulder, you have no idea that there is a boulder upstream. This was done with a new substance called a “metamaterial” which can bend electromagnetic radiation in ways once thought totally impossible.

Just a few months ago, scientists at Cal Tech, Germany, and Ames Lab in Iowa were able to bend red and blue-green laser light in a similar way (but on a microscopic scale). I think within a decade, scientists should be able to make an object disappear if we shine one color on it.

After that, perhaps we can make it disappear under the three primary colors. After that, true visibility may be possible, but again on a scale of decades.

A Class II impossibility may take centuries to millennia, however, such as time travel. Apparently, there is no law of physics that prevents time travel. There are two problems, however. The first is that we need enormous amounts of energy, on the scale of a black hole, to open a gateway to another point in space and time. Second, we need to stabilize this portal or wormhole. For that, we need negative energy, which exists in nature but is extremely hard to produce in large quantities. (We need the equivalent of the mass of Jupiter converted to negative energy in order to stabilize a wormhole large enough to enter).

As a consequence, this technology, if possible at all, is for a very advanced civilization.

Stephen Hawking tried to show that time travel was, in fact, impossible. He said there are no tourists from the future, hence time travel does not exist. But perhaps the time travelers are invisible. Or perhaps they are so advanced that they have no interest in us. At any rate, about 10 years ago, Hawking admitted that he failed to find a proof that time travel is impossible. Now he says that time travel is possible, but not practical.

SFS: In the preface to your book, you state that the Flash Gordon serial sparked your interest in ‘impossible’ ideas. What other SF stories and/or shows also influenced your decision to become a theoretical physicist? Are there any current science fiction shows, movies or books that you like?

MK: I grew up with the old Flash Gordon series. (But very early in life I realized that I did not have blonde hair and muscles. So instead of seeing Flash as my role model, I saw more potential in the character of Dr. Zarkov, who, by the sheer force of his intellect, could create star ships and cities in the sky).

(George Lucas also grew up with Flash Gordon, and, as he admits, “stole” large portions of the series and incorporated them into the Star Wars saga.)

Later, I grew to love the Foundation series by Asimov, which is still my favorite. The idea of a civilization tens of thousands of years more advanced than ours forced me to widen my horizons of what is considered “impossible.” (Even today, when my physicist friends snicker when topic of UFOs are mentioned, I know that they believe the distances between stars is too great for any UFO to navigate. But that assumes that their civilization is only a century or so more advanced than ours. Once we accept the possibility of a civilization thousands to millions of years ahead of ours, then our attitude toward UFOs begins to change, since new laws of physics and engineering come into play.)

Today, Hollywood special effects have turned B-grade science fiction into multi-million dollar blockbusters. Personally, I like nothing better than to watch these movies on the silver screen (e.g. the Star Wars series, the Star Trek series, the Terminator series, etc. I’ve seen them all).

I also get lots of ideas e-mailed to me from science fiction movie producers. But sometimes, I think it’s possible to know too much physics, which might ruin the fun. Sometimes it’s better to let the imagination roam a bit and suspend the known laws of physics.

SFS: How likely is it that humanity will discover a “Grand Unified Theory of Everything?” If we do, what material impact will that have on human society?

MK: I personally think we already have it, but it is not in its final form.

String theory or M theory today is the leading (and in fact the only) candidate for a theory of everything. No other theory can make this claim. And this summer, we hope to fire up the Large Hadron Collider outside Geneva, Switzerland, which may produce a variety of particles predicted by string theory, such as sparticles (super particles) and mini-black holes. (Contrary to reports in the media, these mini-black holes are harmless, being sub-atomic particles which regularly hit the earth with no consequences.)

If string theory is proven to be correct, then it would represent the crowning achievement in the history of science, the culmination of 2000 years of investigation ever since the Greeks asked the question, what is the world made of?

However, it will have no impact on the average person. But eventually, it should answer some of the deepest questions concerning our universe, such as:

  • What happened before the big bang?
  • Is time travel really possible?
  • Can wormholes take us faster-than-light to distant galaxies?
  • Are there other parallel universes?

SFS: There is a movement in some SF circles called Mundane SF. The Mundanes believe that instead of focusing on the “impossible” ideas of science fiction (like FTL, aliens, interstellar societies, etc.), authors should instead focus on writing stories taking place in a near future Earth setting, using only believable technology. How do you respond to those holding that belief?

MK: Science fiction based on just believable technology is fine, since it forces us to conjure up strange and unusual circumstances involving mundane forms of technology. In this sense, it is more realistic than science fiction based on fantastic technologies.

However, personally, I like to dream, especially of technologies which stretch the imagination and probe the boundaries of what is possible.

When we envision future societies, it forces us question our own society, looking through a lens of advanced technologies which don’t exist today.

For example, in visualizing Asimov’s Foundation series, one is forced to imagine what might happen if our own civilization is multiplied by a few billion, so that quirks and peculiarities of our society are propelled thousands of years into the future, across billions of star systems. So imagining a civilization tens of thousands of years into the future is more than a mind-bending exercise in physics; it also forces us to ask how our own society, with all its faults and promise, will evolve into the future.

SFS: You’ve talked about the Kardashev civilization scale in other publications. Do you think humanity has a reasonable chance of becoming a full-fledged Type I society? Do you have any thoughts on what a Type III human society might look like?

MK: I see evidence of our historic transition from a Type 0 civilization to a Type I civilization. For example:

  • English is rapidly emerging as the most likely candidate for a planetary language.
  • The internet is an emerging Type I telephone system.
  • The EU, NAFTA, etc. are the seeds of a planetary economy.
  • A planetary culture is gradually emerging, based on youth culture (e.g. rock and roll, rap), fashion, movies.

But there is also a backlash against this historic transition. Anything this monumental is bound to create a counter force. These are the terrorists (who instinctively dislike a planetary civilization, which is necessarily multicultural, scientific, progressive, and tolerant). Also, we have the forces of chaos and destruction, such as nuclear proliferation and designer germs.

A Type III civilization, however, might be unrecognizable from our point of view. Think of walking down a country road, and meeting an ant hill. Do we go down to the ants and say, I bring you trinkets, I bring you beads, I bring you nuclear technology, take me to your leader? No.

Maybe we might even step on a few of the ants. Now imagine a 10 lane superhighway being built next to the ant hill. Would the ants even know what a 10 lane superhighway was? Could they communicate with the workers, or know their intentions? The greatest danger faced by the ants is not that the workers are going to conquer them, as in science fiction stories. The greatest danger is that they will pave us over and not even know it.

An encounter with a Type III civilization, I feel, with have nothing to do with the movies. First, they will not send Capt. Kirk and the Enterprise, since that is a mathematical waste of time, since there are 100 billion stars just in our galaxy. They will send self-replicating robot probes that can proliferate by the trillions by themselves. And, if we ever meet them personally, we might find that they have modified their biological bodies, both genetically and mechanically, in ways that we can barely understand, making them immortal and with superpowers. Remember, their energy source is about 10 billion x 10 billion times greater than ours. The distance between ants and us is very small compared to the distance between Type 0 and Type III.

SFS: In December of last year, Congress slashed the funding budget for the International Linear Collider and the NOVA experiment. What impact will this have on future research? Will the US fall behind the Europeans once the Large Hadron Collider becomes operational?

MK: Yes, there is a real danger that we will fall behind in basic research. The cancellation of the Supercollider in 1993 was the beginning of this disastrous trend. The center of gravity of high energy physics will inevitably move to Europe with the LHC.

Recently, I’ve been reading about the rise and fall of great civilization. A thousand years ago, if a Martian were to land on the earth, the Martian would look at the various civilizations, such as the great Chinese, Moslem, Indian civilizations. The Martian would observe that Europe was a net importer of technology, not a net producer, and that it was hopelessly mired in a dark age of religious fundamentalism and perpetual warfare. The Martian would conclude that the Chinese, Moslem, or Indian civilization would most likely become the dominant civilization on Earth.

So what happened?

Many historians have written that these great civilizations began to stagnate and decay scientifically. Their rulers closed off their empires from new ideas (even burning the boats in China) and allowed religious ideas to dominate. They became complacent and arrogant. Meanwhile, the new winds of the renaissance began to blow brightly in Europe with the waning of the Inquisition and the emergence of trade.

We should never forget this. Science is the engine of prosperity.

Politicians spend all their time trying to slice up the pie into smaller and smaller pieces. Or fighting over ever increasingly small pieces of the pie. Instead, they should be growing a bigger pie via science, which can generate entirely new industries and wealth.

Next time, when you watch the presidential debates, ask yourself a simple question: everyone is talking about jobs, but is anyone talking about the source of new jobs, which is science?

SFS: Extrasolar planets are being found on an almost regular basis. What do you think the chances are that we will discover an Earth-like planet in the next 20 years? How about discovering an alien species?

MK: The probability of finding earth-like planets is extremely good, since NASA is launching Kepler later this year (if all goes well). Kepler is designed to find up to 600 earth-like planets in space. Also, Paul Allen, Microsoft billionaire, donated around $25 million to create a battery of radio telescopes at Hat Creek, outside San Francisco, to listen in on alien conversations. These two developments will greatly accelerate our ability to find likely candidates for intelligent life in the universe.

Related posts:

  1. REVIEW: Hyperspace by Michio Kaku
  2. Kaku in Austin
  3. Old Isaac Asimov Interview
  4. INTERVIEW: John C. Wright
  5. Interview with Stuart Clark

Filed under: Interviews

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