Michio Kaku

My favourite person since Carl Sagan ..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnkE2yQPw6s

http://mkaku.org/

Fuck head

i was hoping this was going to be about some hot japanese chick.

i'm horny.

This guy is in deep doo-doo

I read his book "Hyperspace" when I was really young. I thought string theory was pretty cool back then, though now it's apparent how much of a joke it is in the physics world. And as far as time travel being possible I have to at that. He's a cool enough guy though.

Ha ha, I can see Hyperspace on my bookshelf from where I'm sitting. He's one of my favourite science writers, though I probably slightly prefer John D. Barrow for his concept books on Impossibility and Infinity and stuff like that.

And Kaku's GREAT but he's not the next Sagan. Because the next Sagan is clearly:

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 He is the best thing to happen to Horizon since... forever.

Yeah, I know, I'm such a physics groupie, it's disgusting.

from what i remember reading several years ago, it seemed like Hyperspace read like a sensationalized version of Brian Greene's books, involving some weird fascination with all of the science fiction-ey applications of string theory and whatever current hubbub was happening in theoretical physics

  On 2/7/2010 at 8:42 AM, KY said:

from what i remember reading several years ago, it seemed like Hyperspace read like a sensationalized version of Brian Greene's books, involving some weird fascination with all of the science fiction-ey applications of string theory and whatever current hubbub was happening in theoretical physics

You say this like it's a bad thing?

how to teleport

full episode

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLy0dvlAuHs

  On 2/6/2010 at 9:22 PM, essines said:

i was hoping this was going to be about some hot japanese chick.

 

i'm horny.

Was thinking the exact same thing.

  On 2/7/2010 at 8:42 AM, KY said:

from what i remember reading several years ago, it seemed like Hyperspace read like a sensationalized version of Brian Greene's books, involving some weird fascination with all of the science fiction-ey applications of string theory and whatever current hubbub was happening in theoretical physics

Actually Hyperspace was five years before Elegant Universe. But, if you replace "Brian Greene's books" with "A Brief History of Time", then I would agree with you.

  On 2/7/2010 at 5:14 PM, Rabid said:

  On 2/7/2010 at 8:42 AM, KY said:

from what i remember reading several years ago, it seemed like Hyperspace read like a sensationalized version of Brian Greene's books, involving some weird fascination with all of the science fiction-ey applications of string theory and whatever current hubbub was happening in theoretical physics

Actually Hyperspace was five years before Elegant Universe. But, if you replace "Brian Greene's books" with "A Brief History of Time", then I would agree with you.

I compare the Kaku and Greene in their excursions into string theory and physics beyond quantum mechanics, in which A Brief History of Time comfortably resides; but yeah, both comparisons are applicable. I'm just saying Kaku covers a lot of the principles Greene and Hawking write about, but in a much more sci fi fetishist way.

  On 2/7/2010 at 11:40 AM, Masonic Boom said:

  On 2/7/2010 at 8:42 AM, KY said:

from what i remember reading several years ago, it seemed like Hyperspace read like a sensationalized version of Brian Greene's books, involving some weird fascination with all of the science fiction-ey applications of string theory and whatever current hubbub was happening in theoretical physics

 

You say this like it's a bad thing?

Considering the applicability of a lot of current theoretical physics, no - we're still too stupid to test and apply a lot of these current theories, so sci-fi entertainment etc might still be one of the best applications of them.

  On 2/8/2010 at 12:11 AM, KY said:

  On 2/7/2010 at 11:40 AM, Masonic Boom said:

  On 2/7/2010 at 8:42 AM, KY said:

from what i remember reading several years ago, it seemed like Hyperspace read like a sensationalized version of Brian Greene's books, involving some weird fascination with all of the science fiction-ey applications of string theory and whatever current hubbub was happening in theoretical physics

 

You say this like it's a bad thing?

 

Considering the applicability of a lot of current theoretical physics, no - we're still too stupid to test and apply a lot of these current theories, so sci-fi entertainment etc might still be one of the best applications of them.

Exactly. If it popularises science, brings it into the popular imagination as something fun and interesting (not scary or threatening or cold or lifeless or inhuman) I think this is a good thing. The view of science within pop culture is constantly swinging from pole to pole, but at the moment I think that it's at quite a low point. So anything that makes it more accessible without dumbing it down or mystifying it into nonsense is to be encouraged.

The more I read on most of these theoretical physicists and their theories, the more I realise we, as a whole, really don't know shit, and we're just making it up as we go along... Half the time, you see them talking about their latest theory with that glassy eyed wonderment, and you have to think to yourself, "did these guys just head off to a cabin for a weekend and dose out on LSD?". Then they use an entire chaulkboard to explain their idea using "maths", which is really a bunch of symbols that they made up to explain a bunch of objects they made up to explain the theory they made up - usually ending with some sort of "problem", which enables them to continue "searching" and applying for grant money to solve it... Seriously though, everytime they need to explain something they just "create" whatever it is they need.

That said, I still find everything they do pretty interesting, and watch the science channel 24/7. Michio Kaku is pretty cool. ;) I should finish reading that kurzweil book.. the singularity.

i read a bit of his visions book, it's about the possible future of technology. very interesting but also very repetitive.

I personally recommend Parallel Worlds. It's about Parallel Worlds if you're into Parallel Worlds and shit.

can someone post a little shortlist of all these guys we're talking about? i see lots of pix and allusions, not many names. i only have read brief history of time, that black holes book by the goofy black guy someone post a picture of here, and i've watched lots of CS Cosmos. and i liked that string theory mini series on NOVA tho its very outdated by now (and the host was annoying, he is also an author i forget his name)

so: yr favorite new school physicists and whatever book you liked by them....maybe yr top 3?

author - title

i was gonna make this a thread in and of itself but as long as we're here....

thanks you smart motherfucks

  On 2/9/2010 at 4:59 AM, we_kill_soapscum said:

the goofy black guy

Neil deGrasse Tyson

OK, I'll try and hit some highlights of the popular science genre. But this is both physics and popular maths (I probably read more maths books coz I'm a mathematician)

Brian Greene - The Elegant Universe

Murray Gell-Mann - The Quark and the Jaguar

Roger Penrose - The Road To Reality

Michio Kaku - Hyperspace; Parallel Worlds; Physics of the Impossible

John D Barrow - Impossibility; The Book of Nothing; The Infinite Book; The Artful Universe

aaaaahhhh I think he's my favourite, I love everything he's written but he's maths more than physics (though really maths pwns physics as all physics is just maths at its core, but I would say that and start the whole maths vs. science: FITE!!! meme on another forum)

Brian Cox (the really handsome rock star looking dude I posted) is a physicist at the LHC who writes and presents a lot of science programmes on the BBC. I don't think he's written a book yet, but he's always on science programmes and documentaries. He did an amazing one about Time (where he totally debunked the 2012 Mayan Time Crisis theory which was quite fun) and a lot about the LHC, obviously. It is also a long-running joke that he did indeed used to be in D:ream back in the day. You'd expect a high powered physicist to play keyboards in some amazing IDM outfit but, no...

.. kaku annoys me .. he's so sure of the untestable orthodoxy of today's astro physics. "Yes we know this" "This is happening and that does that". "and it's the ONLY explanation, there is no room for debate"

'fuck you i won't do what you tell me' until you can prove it in an experiment, or with basic observation.

dark matter? - 'no it's there honest, it patches so many holes in our ideas', 'just cover your eyes and imagine it's there'

now there's not enough dark matter in their latest predictions - 'we'll work around that honest'

things further away than they should be making it seem like the universe is far older than big bang can account for - 'ok well now we can make light vary it's speed, yeah lets do that, oh and we'll have bits of the universe that are harder for it to traverse through and other that are expanding at a different rate'

but what about the fact that as more sophisticated telescopes come online and we can see further and deeper there are still fully formed galaxys out there - ' '

maggots

  On 2/9/2010 at 3:01 PM, delet... said:

.. kaku annoys me .. he's so sure of the untestable orthodoxy of today's astro physics. "Yes we know this" "This is happening and that does that". "and it's the ONLY explanation, there is no room for debate"

 

 

'fuck you i won't do what you tell me' until you can prove it in an experiment, or with basic observation.

 

 

i'll have to echo this sentiment. also his overconfidence that science can solve anything and everything has this air of smugness about it.

also string theory is going to be a fun novelty math exercise until it's backed by real evidence. you know like how real science is made, not in some academic circlejerk.

Oh.

So what's your theory on how to link quantum mechanics with special relativity?

i read in some science magazine that time travel is only possible back to the point that the time machine had been invented