Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel
by Michio Kaku
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Book Summary Information
Author: Michio KakuBrand: Baker and Taylor
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-04-07
ISBN: 0307278824
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Anchor
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780307278821
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel
Book Review: Is anything impossible?
Summary: 5 Stars
Is anything impossible?
Maybe not is the answer according to physicist Michio Kaku. In this short accessible work Kaku spends just as much time quoting from Star Trek and Twilight Zone episodes as he does from hard science in advancing the point that perhaps our only limitations are the ones we impose on ourselves.
Thematically Kaku divides his impossibles into three categories: 1) impossibles that may become possible in the next hundred years, 2) impossibles like time travel and traveling faster than the speed of light which may become possible by dint of future human achievement (albeit perhaps spaced out over the millenia) and finally 3) impossibles that seem to confound modern science as we understand it like perpetual motion machines and precognition.
I find it significant to say the least that Kaku includes teleportation and deep space travel among impossibilities of the first order. One thing that is exceedingly difficult to predict is how quickly a line of technological development will proceed once the first steps have been made.
In relation to deep space travel an easy example is the space program itself which has failed to venture manned missions past the Earth's orbit since 1972. As pointed out in Peter Ward's excellent Life as We Do Not Know It even repeat missions to the moon could provide invaluable information about the ubiquity of life in our solar system. The reason for this is because the moon has always been barren and hostile to the development of indigenous life. Yet, owing to its relatively big size it's basically magnetized detritus from other planets (including Mars and Venus) to its landscape over the past 4.3 or so billion years. The result: the moon today is sort of our own local natural history museum and worthy of repeat visits. Yet we haven't been back for reasons that not only relate to its desireablity as an exploratory destination but also plain stupid econmics.
Long story short: the speed of progress or the slowness of progress can result from many factors only some of which are susceptible to reasonable calculation by experts.
But dreamers can dream...and perhaps Kaku does so at his most inspiring when he discusses the possibility of time travel. More than perhaps any other scientific endeavor the question of the mechanics and possibility of time travel is most fascinating. Who wouldn't at least consider the chance to reverse the moving finger of time in its passage? Perhaps erasing past errors and opening up new possibilities? Though Kaku is quick to point out that Stephen Hawking has been unable to prove the impossility of time travel as a matter of science, he also failed to point out that Kip Thorne basically closed the door on time travel by wormholes in his book on the subject. Likewise, J Richard Gott allowed for the possibility of time travel but suggested that the phenomenon was perhaps limited to truly exotic conditions like prevailed when our universe was created. For reasons I have already expressed elsewhere I would tend to agree with Gott but I would like for Kaku to be right.
Similarly I also would like him to be right in his discussions of precognition and perpetual motion machines. As John Barrow pointed out in his great book Impossibilty The Limits of Science and the Science of Limits, even impossibilities are important for the reasons they state the things that can't be done...reasons that often have admittedly been more the product of our misunderstanding nature than in any inherent operation of nature.
In this way, this book is great science reading because it is front and center with the mission of science itself: to reach and surpass all limits except only those of the imagination.
More Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel reviews:
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Summary of Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel
Teleportation, time machines, force fields, and interstellar space ships?the stuff of science fiction or potentially attainable future technologies? Inspired by the fantastic worlds of Star Trek, Star Wars, and Back to the Future, renowned theoretical physicist and bestselling author Michio Kaku takes an informed, serious, and often surprising look at what our current understanding of the universe's physical laws may permit in the near and distant future.Entertaining, informative, and imaginative, Physics of the Impossible probes the very limits of human ingenuity and scientific possibility.Physics Books
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