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Subscribe to RSSNo one could ever accuse theoretical physicist Michio Kaku of neglecting the big picture: His scientific specialty, string field theory, tries to tie together the impossibly small and impossibly big phenomena of the universe. But he doesn't limit himself to that esoteric topic: Whether it's the debate over UFOs, or the worries about an atom-smashing doomsday, or last year's Gulf oil spill, or this month's earthquake and tsunami in Japan, you can rely on Kaku to get his scientific view across in language tailored for the talk-show crowd.
Kaku is a radio and TV host himself, on shows such as "Science Fantastic" and "Sci Fi Science," and in addition to his professorial duties at the City College of New York, he's found time to write a series of books looking ahead to the far future ("Physics of the Impossible") and the not-quite-so-far future ("Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century," published in 1998).
His latest book, "Physics of the Future," surveys the recent discoveries that could lead to breakthrough technologies between now and the year 2100 — ranging from artificial intelligence to invisibility cloaks. But will the future be as bright and shiny as Kaku expects?
Many of the past visions of the future look outdated or even laughable in retrospect. The projections for the next 50 to 100 years are all over the map: Experts on population and food policy are worrying about the potential meltdown of society in 2050 due to stretched resources, while inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil says the pace of progress will be so dizzying that predictions become useless beyond the year 2045.
Speaking of meltdowns, this month's earthquake and tsunami in Japan brought a fresh reminder that the future can get all fouled up, due to natural phenomena as well as human failings. Just before our interview about the book, Kaku was on MSNBC's "Jansing & Co." TV show, suggesting that the best way to deal with the crisis at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex was to cover up the whole place with sand and concrete, as was done 25 years ago at the Chernobyl site in Ukraine. Not exactly a bright and shiny idea ... but it provided the starting point for my Q&A with Kaku about the pitfalls of techno-prediction. Here's an edited transcript:
Doubleday
Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku looks beyond the flying-car visions of science fiction to project what life could be like in 2100.
Q: The news from Japan put a different spin on your book, I think. It highlights the idea that things can go wrong — that it's not a steady march of progress toward the year 2100. How do these events fit into what you wrote about in 'Physics of the Future'?
A: Well, I think what's happening in Japan actually vindicates the main thesis of "Physics of the Future." I’ve interviewed over 300 of the world’s top scientists for BBC television, Discovery Channel, Science Channel and National Public Radio. These are the visionaries — the people who look 20, 50, 100 years into the future. And looking at the big picture, they see that fission power is really a small blip of the energy picture. Oil prices are rising, but solar renewable energy prices are going down. The two curves will cross in about 10 years. Right now, solar is more expensive than oil or coal. But in 10 years’ time, the two curves should cross. That will initiate the renewable solar era.
Then, by midcentury, we're talking about fusion power coming online. Fusion power points up all the deficiencies of fission power. Fission power — splitting the atom — creates nuclear waste, tons and tons of it. And that's what we fear, because that drives the meltdown. The meltdown is caused by what's called decay heat, the heat of fission power. Nuclear waste ends up in your lungs, your hair, your backyard. Fusion power has almost no nuclear waste at all. There’s a little bit of radioactive steel, and helium gas, which is commercially valuable, in fact.
My book says, "Look at the big picture." We are going to have accidents with fission power. Fission power is unstable. In fact, my adviser, when I was in high school, was Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb. He was pro-nuclear, but he had a famous statement — that nuclear power does not belong on the surface of the earth, it belongs underground. If it were underground, then at Sendai in Japan, all we'd have to do today is put the manhole cover on it and walk away.
I think historians of science will look back and see fission power as a little blip on the energy scene, just like whale oil. Whale oil was useful. Whale oil did play a part in the industrialization of America, but we don't really depend on it. It's messy, it destroys whales … Same thing with fission power. It's unnatural. Nature does not use fission power. There's hardly anywhere in the universe where fission power is found. Fusion is the engine of the universe. I think by midcentury, when the ITER fusion reactor in France becomes operational and gets all the bugs out, we will be in the fusion era.
Q: But the Fukushima incident illustrates that there can be unanticipated issues that come up. It’s the same thing with fusion power — ITER is looking 30 or 40 years down the line, but fusion physicists were saying the same things 30 or 40 years ago. Sometimes nature is more difficult to get our arms around than we humans anticipate.
A: Right. The thesis of the book is that we're going to give the future our best shot. Not that we're going to get everything right; in fact, historians of the future may even snicker when they look at some of our predictions. But this book represents our best estimate, as made by Nobel laureates, directors of the major laboratories. This is their collective vision of how the future will progress.
In 1863, when Jules Verne predicted Paris in 1960, he gave it his best shot, drawing upon all the interviews he did with leading scientists, and he got most things right. He got glass skyscrapers, he got gasoline-fueled automobiles, he got the fax machine, he even got a version of the Internet right — because he had the best scientific advice of his time.
Futurism today is led by science-fiction writers, by sociologists, by historians. Now, I have nothing against them. I’m sure they do great work. But they’re not scientists. They’re clueless. So when they talked about having jetpacks, and vacations on Venus, and flying cars, we scientists would just shake our heads and say, "Oh, wait a minute … gimme a break. Vacations on Venus?" And sure enough, when we see the predictions of science-fiction writers a few years later, like "2001," we realize that Arthur C. Clarke was off. I think by 2101, we will have HAL. We will have a fully functional base on the moon. We will have a lot of the gizmos and gadgets you see in 2001. But Arthur C. Clarke was off by 100 years. Any scientist could have told him that.
Q: The book reminded me a little bit of what Ray Kurzweil has been talking about — but Kurzweil's argument is that the pace of innovation will accelerate so much that we'll hit the singularity by 2045, and we won’t be able to predict what happens after that. You go out to 2100 and beyond. I was curious what you thought about this idea of the singularity.
A: My view is, as you correctly pointed out, there are unanticipated things that happen. The biggest unanticipated thing, the trillion-dollar question mark, is the collapse of Moore's Law. Unfortunately, very few singularitarians talk about the fact that Moore's Law will collapse. Remember, the economy of the United States, the economy of the world, depends upon Moore's Law — and it's going to collapse. We're going to have a rust belt called Silicon Valley. We’re going to have mass unemployment in Silicon Valley unless we physicists figure out a bridge to the post-silicon era.
It's happened in the past: the transition from coal to oil, the transition from vacuum tubes to transistors. It's not so smooth, making the transition. Now, why do we have this exponential growth? Well, it's because we have chips, made with ultraviolet light, and you can add more and more complicated chips by using smaller and smaller wavelengths of ultraviolet light. That is the basis of the last 50 years of the multitrillion-dollar growth of the computer industry. But it can't last forever. Some people say that the last 50 years was the victory of bits over atoms. Well, sorry about that: Atoms are having their revenge.
MSNBC
Michio Kaku is a theoretical physicist at City College of New York.
I'm a physicist. That's my day job. I work with string theory. I’m very well aware that quantum theory says we're going to hit a brick wall in about 10 years. We don't know exactly when. As an aside, I spoke in Zurich to the physicists at IBM there, and they told me they can already see it. It's not 10 years, it's now, they said. But I say 10 years because we'll squeeze little tricks out of Moore's Law. We'll use X-rays, we’ll use gallium arsenide. … But eventually, atoms kill you.
We're going to be computing on atoms. The world record for a quantum computer calculation is 3 x 5 = 15. Kids can do that. Try that with five atoms. If I can get five atoms to show that 3 x 5 is 15 that’s a non-trivial thing. But it’s not a million atoms. That's why I say it's dangerous to just extend an exponential curve forever. If you look at the history of science, yeah, there are exponential curves, but there are breaks between the curves. You can't simply assume a nice exponential rise to the point where the robots take over.
And speaking of the robots taking over, I advocate two things. One, put a chip in their brains that shut them off when they get murderous thoughts. That is a fail-safe system, so they don't put us in zoos. Second, we should enhance ourselves. There's no reason why we cannot become smarter, more perfect, and maybe even live longer.
Q: The theoretical foundations for the revolution that led to nuclear fission and everything that it entails, including Fukushima, were laid about a century ago. Are there some innovative solutions to energy challenges, or other ways to master the forces of the universe, that may come out of the theoretical work that’s going on? Could we harness the extradimensional nature of the universe, or some of the phenomena that people still hope can be studied using the Large Hadron Collider?
A: The reason why I feel confident writing a book about the year 2100 is that the fundamental laws of physics are fairly well-established out to, let’s say, 20 trillion electron volts. There could be some surprises, but we’re pretty confident that there’s not going to be any sudden discoveries. Quantum theory works very well. Quantum theory is accurate to one part in 10 billion. It’s the most successful theory of all time. We don’t foresee any deviation in the low-energy realm below 20 trillion electron volts. Therefore there are going to be no surprises. Sorry about that.
That’s why I can write this book and not feel nervous. No one’s going to find a defect in quantum mechanics. We’ve looked and we haven’t found anything. No one’s going to suddenly find a new sudden source of fifth-force energy. We have the four fundamental forces and we understand them pretty well.
Matter, on the other hand, is where we find all sorts of tricks and gee-whiz things happening. That means nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is going to give us all sorts of gee-whiz stuff, things that will make your jaw hit the floor. But as far as basic physics, I see no shift.
The Large Hadron Collider may discover the presence of higher dimensions. I hope it does. Since 1969 I’ve been publishing papers in string theory about higher dimensions. A huge chunk of my career has been spent working in higher dimensions all the way up to 11. But we have to get real. We’re talking about the Planck energy. That’s my home. That is 10 to the 19 billion electron volts. That is a quadrillion times more powerful than the Large Hadron Collider.
One of the reasons for working in the realm of Planck energy is because it will answer these questions: Is time travel possible? Can we open gateways to other universes? Are there portals to other dimensions? What happened before the big bang? These are legitimate questions for string theory. No other theory can give you a credible answer to these questions, about time travel and warp speed, and higher dimensions. Unfortunately, string theory is not developed enough to give definitive answers, and that’s why I work on it.
The energy is so great it would have to be a Type III civilization, a galactic-scale civilization, to really play with the Planck energy. So when people ask, "Why don’t the aliens visit us?" I say it would have to be a Type 3 civilization before they could easily warp the fabric of spacetime like they do on "Star Trek." We might not even be very interesting to them. If you take a walk in the country and see an anthill, do you go down to the ants and say "I bring you trinkets, I bring you beads, I bring you nuclear energy, take me to your ant queen"? Or do you have a politically incorrect urge to step on them? If we ever do meet a Type 3 civilization that can harness these extra dimensions, I would hope that they don’t step on us.
Q: Speaking of that, in the book you talk about how we will be as gods in 2100. We will wield the sort of power that we once ascribed to divinity. Don’t you feel like there’s a little bit of human hubris in that kind of assertion?
A: I don’t think so, for the following reason: The distance between 1900 and today is actually rather small, compared to the distance that we will cover between now and 2100. It’s not going to be exponential progress. However, there will be periods of time when we have exponential growth, and then it flattens out. Therefore, the distance between now and 2100 is going to be huge, absolutely astronomical, in terms of knowledge, energy, nanotechnology, biotechnology, compared with how things were in the year 1900.
That’s why we would look like wizards and sorcerers if we met our grandparents. Imagine your grandfather: If you were to meet him with your rockets and GPS, and your iPads and iPods, he’d think of you as a wizard. So when you meet your grandkids or your great-grandkids, they will have nearly perfect bodies. They will be relatively ageless. They will manipulate objects with their minds. That’s what gods do. Gods wish things, and things happen. They will have things like Pegasus, winged life forms that we can only dream about. That’s well within the laws of physics, because we’ve planted the seeds for all these things.
What I’ve done in the book is to summarize this and tell people, "Hey, this is being done in the laboratory."
More visions of the future:
- Deep thinkers see how things will be in 2058
- Futurist Ray Kurzweil reaches for immortality
- Dude, where's my flying car and jetpack?
- Just say no ... to robosexual marriage?
Join the Cosmic Log community by clicking the "like" button on our Facebook page or by following msnbc.com science editor Alan Boyle as b0yle on Twitter. To learn more about Alan Boyle's book on Pluto and the search for planets, check out the website for "The Case for Pluto."
Leave a Comment:
the oil barons arent going to like this.
The Aging process is working really great on that sofa the professor is sitting on! He never sit on the other side of it because of that really big spring sticking out. Ahh painful Other than that he is very intelligent & how can I get that contact lens with the internet on it! xD
Think about the breakthroughs we could have if we diverted the billions in federal subsidies we give to the oil companies every year to fusion research. What the US spends currently on advanced energy research is pretty small and the republicans in the house are trying to stop that anyway.
With most of the elected officials paid off by the oil companies, the oil barons don't have anything to worry about for a long time.
They will keep the price of oil high enough that it hurts a little, but not high enough that we actually change and are forced to use something else.
Paid off by oil companies?! We are RUN by the oil companies. The Bush family are big oil...that's their source of wealth with the USVP being the BEST (former? doubtful) CEO of Haliburton from 2001 - 2008 hands down!
Indeed, that's what an oligopoly does. Just like the OPEC cartel. Both of these interests know that there are a number of alternatives just looming on the horizon, but as long as they keep the price of switching prohibitively highn (by keeping their prices lower), the market won't be incentivised to switch.
Fortunately, a few hiccups in the oil market over the past few decades and a couple of serious endeavors into greener technology is bringing the prices down anyway.
I'm curious to see how long big oil retains their grasp...at the very least it'll be for another 50 years before the US is no longer so oil dependent.
Oil is a finite thing. Once that runs out we will be forced toward a new direction. It's a shame the human race doesn't act until it must but that's the way it seems to go.
In the mean time I'm utilizing solar power, as always, in my garden. The fact that our universe is a solar powered universe must have somehow slipped by the 'great' minds and leaders . . . And just when monkey see monkey do would have been useful.
Hopefully we won't extinct ourselves before the glories of solar power blossom the planet in the hands of our species. We've got a long way before we catch up to nature's status quo.
@ Hope-295312
Technically (just splitting hairs here). Most life on Earth is solar powered either directly or indirectly. The universe is fusion and dark matter powered.
Fusion for the stars, dark matter for the universe's accelerating expansion.
@Seriously - It's actually dark energy that is accelerating the expansion of the universe. Dark matter creates gravity to keep the galaxies from falling apart.
What everyone needs to understand about Kaku is that he has a single-minded anti-nuclear agenda and he is more than willing to prostitute his credibility as a physicist in order to advance that agenda.
He will happily mislead and lie if it will get his face on TV.
Case in point, he is quoted in the above article saying:
As a physicist, he KNOWS that is a lie- Natural fission power happens right here on Earth- it's a large part of the reason that the Earth has a molten core. As a physicist, he is familiar with the NATURAL fission reactor that existed on Earth- the Oklo reactor-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor
Kaku has lied before- He lobbied to get the Cassini mission to Saturn stopped because it used RTGs to provide power- he made wild statements such as the RTGs contained enough plutonium to kill every human on Earth.
That was a lie, and he knew it was a lie- any student of physics could easily prove it was a lie- but he used his credentials as a scientist in order to sell his lies to the media.
As a physicist, I feel outrage that Kaku knowingly lies about the science in order to get his face and agenda on TV. He does no one any good selling lies as truth. He only does great harm.
He should be ashamed.
I'm not aware of any such statement by Dr. Kaku; I apologize if I missed it somewhere. I am aware of this statement on Cassini by Kaku, which can be found here:
http://southmovement.alphalink.com.au/antiwar/kaku.htm
I don't agree with Dr. Kaku's analysis, which assumes the worst-possible outcome short of flying monkeys at every step, but in this instance (where I have some personal knowledge) I don't feel that he extended his guesstimate to the ridiculous. He just pushed really really hard as far as the math would let him.
Like you I was surprised by Kaku's "fission not in nature" statement; if that's an accurate quote then I would ask Kaku to explain that further (I'm being generous here).
+1 on your post
Cheers! ~Michael (AFM*Radio / Astronomy.FM)
Michael,
The statement was made on a program where he appeared with Helen Caldicott to discuss the evils of radiation. I saw it on public access in New York. I remember it because it so outraged me, as a graduate student in physics, that I felt compelled to rebut his claims- including his claim that Cassini could easily use solar power- he makes a similar claim, albeit less extreme, in section IV of the article you linked to... the fact is solar was not a realistic option for Cassini and he knew it.
Thank goodness he was unsuccessful in his dishonest campaign - Cassini was an incredible success!
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110315.html
Reasonable people can disagree over the risks vs. benefits of nuclear power- But no reasonable person can feel its ok to lie to the public about those risks, one way or the other. And when the person telling the lies KNOWS BETTER THAN ANYONE that they are lies, that is unforgivable!
PS Thanks for your consistently well written contributions to this forum.
The vid you linked to; one of the most jaw-dropping completely magnificent WOW things ever from our space program.
I see your awesome Saturn video, and I raise you a Saturn pic (am very fond of this image):
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090111.html
(For those not familiar with the image I've linked to, be sure to read the caption so you can figure out "Where's Waldo")
Cheers! ~Michael (AFM*Radio / Astronomy.FM)
(a phone call took me away, so adding to my post above...)
Yes, Dr. Kaku should know that solar panels are not practical much past the orbit of Mars.
As I'm sure you know, ARRELL, due to its distance from the Sun Mars only receives about 50% of the sunlight that we get here on Earth, while Saturn gets only 1% of the sunlight we get here. Solar panels that are the size of a mattress in Earth's orbit, would need to be the size of a football field to deliver the same energy output at Saturn, and we can't send anything that large out there.
If we are going to explore the outer Solar System, we have to use nuclear power.
@ TReed,
Good show! I stand corrected ^_^
Ah Kaku, I like you but sometimes you seem more into publicity than science.
"Fission power — splitting the atom — creates nuclear waste, tons and tons of it. And that's what we fear, because that drives the meltdown. The meltdown is caused by what's called decay heat, the heat of fission power. Nuclear waste ends up in your lungs, your hair, your backyard. Fusion power has almost no nuclear waste at all."
I hope this is an artifact of English not being his first language, that (waste is) "driving the meltdown". And explaining it as caused by "decay heat" doesn't help anybody understand anything. It also is shockingly over simplified and lacking any context of the high hidden costs of pollution caused by coal and gas to deliver the equivalent amount of power to the world.
Someone with a sophisticated understanding of the issues might say: Even though nuclear fission as practiced today is wasteful and not very efficient, not to mention a popular target of political alarm-ism, it provides a very significant amount of energy to society. Fission understanding and technology has improved far beyond the time in the mid 50s when many of our reactors were designed. Reactors that solve issues with dangers of "the meltdown" and extract 99% more energy from uranium, consuming all of it as well as the plutonium and other actinides we now set aside as "waste".
Why we use such outdated technology and techniques that places our environment and energy supply in danger is a political question, not a science question.
I think he did ok on this point. Obviously you're a proponent of fission based power and that's great and all, but, regardless of how efficient fission can get, or how much of the actinides are consumed, there's still going to be considerable 'hot' waste to deal with.
So in your perfect world, if we could instantly replace all our coal plants with the 'best' fission based nuclear plants, how long before we have more waste than we can reasonably store safely? Less than 10 years according to some projections. Certainly not enough time to develope a new technology to process that wasste.
Also, the blocks against building these modern plants isn't just political, it's financial. I understand that most modern designs would initially require a 20 to 30 percent larger construction cost over head than current designs, just because there's not enough experience building the newer designs which means all the "snafus" typically encountered in building something "new" will be unexpected.
No, I say we invest money building a nation wide solar/wind power network. Primary arguments against solar and wind have always been, "What happens when the wind stops blowing or it gets cloudy"... Obviously the answer to that is, if you build it nation wide, chances are the wind is blowing some where, and it's not cloudy every where.
Just like government incentivised the building of networks of petroleum product pipelines, millions and millions of miles of it, the government will need to incentivise the building of wind/solar networks. Unfortunately that money should be taken from the petroleum incentives, and those guys have billions upon billions to invest in lobbyists and out right bribes to prent that from happening.
I hope it's an artifact of your lack of reading comprehension, but his explanation was fine for laymen, which is the intended audience. There was no "context" for the high hidden costs of coal and gas because the context was fission vs. fusion and the superiority of fusion as a comparative clean energy.
I'm not an expert on the design and construction, but the French "liquid thorium" reactors have been in operation for something like 10 years now with no accidents. I think they've likely worked out most of the possible "snafus" and we should seriously look to duplicating these newer designs here in the U.S.
Fusion power seems to always be 30 years in the future, and the joke, which was sort of alluded to in the article, is that it will always remain "30 years in the future".
Wind power is free and clean, but problematic in terms of large turbines, bird strikes and even seems to apparently confuse whales into beaching themselves when the turbines are located off shore.
Tidal power seems to be making some progress, but there's issues with seawater and corrosion.
Solar panels are great, about half the time, i.e. during the day, but we don't have the battery capacity to cover the rest and batteries are chemically messy anyway.
How about space based solar collection with microwave relay to ground stations? There's the understandable fear of a James Bond style villain taking over the transmitter... "Ziss is Doktor Doom! I haff taken over zee Space Based Power Array and eef you do not deeposit 500 Beellion Euros een my Sviss Bank Account I vill fry you all!!"... but that's just silliness.
My big problem is we use nuclear fission to drive STEAM engines. Will anyone ever devise a way of a more direct transfer of energy that isn't a 1700 technology ?
Kaku's anti-nuke sentiment is very strong and it shows in the misleading statements he makes.
"Fission power — splitting the atom — creates nuclear waste, tons and tons of it. And that's what we fear, because that drives the meltdown. The meltdown is caused by what's called decay heat, the heat of fission power. Nuclear waste ends up in your lungs, your hair, your backyard."
Most of that waste can be recycled for still more power. The reason it's all sitting around is that Jimmy Carter halted efforts to reprocess the waste based on fear of theft of fissionable materials.
The nuclear waste is going to end up in your hair or lungs only if we are irresponsible in the handling of it. Much of the excess background radiation created by man (in your backyard) is from nuclear testing in the 50's. Obviously not much containment was involved. It amounts to 2-3% of the natural background radiation.
We have not seriously pursued some better ideas for safer nuclear power like the liquid salt thorium cycle. That method does not require removal is large quantities of waste. Most of it is burned in the reactor. Read up on it. It's pretty interesting.
Solar and wind produce a minuscule part of our needs. Scaling it up to what we actually need in the future is going to be extremely expensive and perhaps altogether impractical.
Unless some major breakthrough occurs, it's unlikely we will see practical fusion power generation in the next 50 years. We've been working on it for over 50 years already. The way we are going about it (see ITER) is possibly impractical even it if does produce net energy.
So what's actually left to us is burn all the coal or improve the safety and efficiency of nuclear power. I'm for the later. I'll bet on what we know works, not wishes.
I am a proponent for some kinds of nuclear power, not so much what we have now. The work at University of Chicago's Argonne Laboratory leading to the Integral Fast Reactor and derived design work, I think shows the way. Charles Till was the point man there and has given talks on the topic, but never seems to get much attention. Here is a PBS Frontline interview transcript with him on his work that is pretty easy to read:
Charles Till on the IFR
It addresses most uninformed FUD issues people bring up. And it is important to note that in 2001 DOE asked some gigantic panel of scientists taken from a dozen or so institutions and colleges to evaluate for the best reactor designs, and after a year of evaluation the IFR came in at #1, so his statements are not "opinion".
I do not take offense to your position so please do not take offense when I say that giving a "laymen" explanation that is wrong doesn't help anybody even if it gives the illusion it does (i.e. the blue pill.) And with such heavy and important issues concerning the future health of our economy and environment, people should set aside a little time to find and understand the nuances. I recommend following the link above, Till gives a fairly "laymen" talk on his work.
As to context, Kaku clearly states pollution as an issue. And when comparing fission vs. fusion, you need to give a little detail about what kind of each (yes, there is different kinds of fusion), otherwise your just looking for attention, not improving people's understanding.
Sanescience
Great link on the IFR! Thanks!
What are your thoughts on Thorium reactors like an LFT?
What everyone needs to understand about Kaku is that he has a single-minded anti-nuclear agenda and he is more than willing to prostitute his credibility as a physicist in order to advance that agenda.
He will happily mislead and lie if it will get his face on TV.
Case in point, he is quoted in the above article saying:
As a physicist, he KNOWS that is a lie- Natural fission power happens right here on Earth- it's a large part of the reason that the Earth has a molten core. As a physicist, he is familiar with the NATURAL fission reactor that existed on Earth- the Oklo reactor-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor
Kaku has lied before- He lobbied to get the Cassini mission to Saturn stopped because it used RTGs to provide power- he made wild statements such as the RTGs contained enough plutonium to kill every human on Earth.
That was a lie, and he knew it was a lie- any student of physics could easily prove it was a lie- but he used his credentials as a scientist in order to sell his lies to the media.
As a physicist, I feel outrage that Kaku knowingly lies about the science in order to get his face and agenda on TV. He does no one any good selling lies as truth. He only does great harm.
He should be ashamed.
Sanescience - Lighten up on Michio Kaku. He explains it just fine, we get it. I know you're passionate, but chill.
"[Edward Teller] had a famous statement — that nuclear power does not belong on the surface of the earth, it belongs underground. If it were underground, then at Sendai in Japan, all we'd have to do today is put the manhole cover on it and walk away."
Well ... not exactly. There's a little thing called ground water to deal with. Radiative materials leeching into ground water would obviously be a serious problem.
That is also the case for above ground facilities that just bury their waste. Take Hanford Nuclear site for example. Leaking containers at Hanford are now a superfund site and it's a serious problem for us here in the Pacific Northwest (although it doesn't really get the news coverage I think it deserves).
The Hanford mess is a result of our production of 60,000 thousand nuclear weapons with little regard for much else. Madness. Perhaps our biggest problems are social. Fear, greed and ignorance triumph over sense. That has to stop is mankind is to succeed.
I agree with you TooMany.
Agreed, +1
It's too bad that inciting fear draws in a lot more votes than rational discourse
I still cringe at all the freedoms we lost when Uncle Sam decided to protect us in the War on Terror(tm), just like they have with the War on Drugs(tm).
Kaku is fun to listen to. As Sanescience points out Kaku is into publicity almost as much as he is science. But I have to point out something that Michio Kaku said that struck me as particularly odd for a guy like him to say.
This quote stuck me as odd because
1.) There are some very decent jetpacks out there. These probably aren't going to have mass implementation like the older futurists had hoped but they are at a good point today, and to me they are a feasible reality right now.
2.) okay, vacations on venus (or any other planet or moon at this point) is ridiculously out of reach. No matter how badly I would like to take one of these vacations, it's just not a reality at this point in time.
3.) Flying cars. Where do you start with this one. I think we should start by saying that yes the old view of what flying cars were going to be like is definitely a little crazy, and totally not going to happen. You talk to most people about flying cars and the number one response that comes back is "People can't drive the cars they have now, I don't want them flying!" But, I argue pretty often that a certain version of the dream is feasible and we are capable of doing it today. The caveat to this idea is human control, or rather lack thereof. I think the only way we are going to see flying (or perhaps we'll be limited to floating) cars is to take people out of the driver seat. I've seen some excellent things coming out of places like MIT and the work they are doing with computer systems driving cars (and more importantly groups of cars) and I think these kind of systems are going to be a necessity for the feasibility of the "flying cars".
I should say that my realistic side only sees floating cars as being probable. I think flying cars could be done, but for cost and safety purposes I think we'll probably keep these vehicles within a few meters of the ground. Also, a big hurdle to this whole question is how it will be powered. And that is a huge hurdle. In order to get over that one we will truly need to free ourselves from our dependence on fossil fuels. but the energy debate is a long and difficult debate and I'd rather just focus on what's probable once we have the large power sources.
I'd settle for a Luke Skywalker style "landspeeder"!
@ mob_barley
Agreed! I think that Michio Kaku isn't giving enough credence to the fact that it wasn't that the futurists couldn't predict the technological innovations, so much as they couldn't predict the politics that would effect the course of public investment in R&D and deployment.
We would have nuclear powered cars, jets, rockets and spacecraft RIGHT NOW! The problem is that these technologies, while definitely feasible, are EXTREMELY dangerous and the average Joe cannot be trusted to operate it responsibly, not to mention all of the threats such technology could cause in terms of national security.
We have the technology to make flying cars and jet packs, it's just not worth it, again, like you noted, they're dangerous and the efficiency/convenience they bring is minuscule compared to the price they could cause in damages/havoc.
Arthur C. Clark was not terribly off in terms of 2001 Space Odyssey, he just didn't anticipate that the Space Race would end and the US would become complacent with investment into space exploration after the fall of the USSR. The space vessels in the series are not terribly advanced beyond what we have the ability to produce, and HAL was probably the only thing that was too far outside of current capability...had the US kept the Apollo-level funding in NASA up to present day, we probably would have a couple of VASIMR craft chugging through the solar system and a moonbase
None of it is impossible by today's standards, it's just incredibly expensive. Take into account the slowdown in progress due to budget cuts in a number of areas rather than whether the technology itself is there at all. ITER may be another example.
A C Clarke got the commuication satellite in the correct timeframe.
@ Mike-428331
Indeed! and I think it was primarily due to the fact that comms satellites have a huge commercial value.
I think that in 60-70 years, we will eventually start mining the asteroid belt to feed our insatiable appetite for expansion and resources. I expect the media to act dumbfounded when they hear that most of the equipment that is used in such operations was stuff that has been around since the early 1980's through early 2000's. It's just that the taxpayers have to fund at least 90% of the steps and investment to get the private sector to invest anything at all.
The major disparity here is that the private sector has a payback period ranging at most 10 years ahead...most only take on ventures that have a 5 year ROI. Taxpayers on the other hand aren't looking for a direct ROI, they focus on public economic good and positive externalities...those have an investment cycle that spans decades, much like our freeway, rail, fiber optic, GPS-systems, aquaducts, etc. Additionally, the taxpayer funds projects that benefit the profitability/efficiency of those that utilize it...the private sector isn't in the game of helping its competition, which means that a lot of projects are off the table for that very reason!
We built the ISS, we have and even utilized VASIMR engines in space. We could build intersolar system ships if we had the budget and intestinal fortitude to launch a nuclear submarine-style reactor into orbit. But we won't, and that's what's really stopping us...it's not that we can't, the technology is there, the right scientists are in place to know what tech to pool together. We just don't have the budget
Yes. And I'm not sure what you mean by "we"...do you mean the US? There is no way the vision of A C Clarke could even begin to happen without a global force. The ISS is global but made possible by NASA. No one else had a vision made real of re-useable space craft other than the US ..and most oddly, by the Nixon Administration. Materials science and computer science makes all the other stuff possible. Much lighter and durable materials such as carbon composites are almost old technology.
While Michio Kaku is a great voice for science, he is a publicity hound DELUXE. You need someone eloquent and w/o concern for topic, he your man.
He's kinda restricted by his need to explain 11 demensional spacetime to people who have problems balancing their checkbook. At least he doesnt sound as flowery as Sagan.
@bs detector - Hey, don't you be dissing on Sagan. Sagan rocks. What you call flowery I call eloquence.
[sigh] we miss uncle carl.
Michael@Astonomy.FM clued me in to this masterpiece. You will all certainly love it as I know I have. This song kicks backside! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc
Given the choice of listening to Michio or someone else talking about what type of ammo will kill an illegal immigrant quickest? Yep, give me science any day. The reality is we have little choice but to tolerate ignorance and blind hatred, but a breather for a little quantum physics daydreaming is so refreshing once in a while..
I went back and read Heinlein's 'A door into summer'. It was hugely funny because of how far off the predictions were.
I'm getting close to 60 years old and the computer/internet developement has been the most impressive thing I've seen. I don't hold out much hope for space travel because it's just too dangerous, at least for the next 20 years or so.
I've enjoyed the advances but I'm starting to lose my grip. I think it's the phones. My wife and I cut the land line and just use cell phones (got the idea from articles about younger people). We are keeping up but just barely. I stiill don't have high definition TV. My eyesight doesn't justify it.
I'm still not sure fusion is even possible. We had that fake 'cold' fusion a few years back and everybody go so excited. Bummer.
I look at those writers less a predictors and more like suggestors. How close them come relies more on the success of the inventors they inspired.
bs detector hit it spot on in that comment. The sci-fi folks are very much closer to the suggesters and inspiration for the next generation. Kaku is also right that the better you understand the science the closer your sci-fi will reflect the reality that comes out of the sci-fi, but we need all the generations to dream very big so the innovators can create big realizations of those dreams. Perhaps we won't have Jetsons style transportation but there is at least one guy that is doing something like it. Innovation chasing the dream. http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/58822-flying-cars-are-here-at-last
fascinating
I am a fan of Michio Kaku and do appreciate the work he does, and the publicity he creates. It brings interest in science and physics to the general population and may interest the younger generation to follow science.
I'm going to have to pick up this book (what can I say, publicity works). It is important to have the application of technology grounded in reality, but at the same time we also need capable people who approach these far out conceptions with the attitude, "we should keep reaching for the ideal." Those are the ones that bring the dreams that capture our imagination into actual existence, not to mention all of the bi-product breakthroughs and discoveries that happen when the experiments give you unexpected results.
I think he's got some blinders on, like anyone else — for example, why the heck is he not signed up for cryonics (or not admitting it if he is)? — but most of what he says is quite reasonable.
And while he's taking pains not to follow Kurzweil, the details of what he says are pretty darn close. He agrees that the progress made this century will dwarf the progress made last century. And Kurzweil never claimed that exponential progress is smooth; he's quite explicit it about it being a bunch of little S-shaped curves (as each technology reaches its limits, and then is replaced by some new technology) added together. Yes, our current approach to chip technology is reaching its limit. Already new technologies are in the wings (look up "memristor" for example). There's no reason to think that, overall, Moore's law won't more or less continue, just as it did over previous technology generations (transistor chips, transistors, vacuum tubes, mechanical calculators).
I like Kurzweil's work, but it is definitely "out there" in my opinion. I can't imagine what the world would be like with such fantastic integration of computers, nanotech, and biology/biotech. It's difficult for me to wrap my brain around what kind of person it would take to "download their brain" into the machines of tomorrow. And this is coming from someone who has long since dreamed of getting rid of my lousy skeletal structure for something more robust (I had hip surgery when I was 14 years old). I would happily upgrade to something new but it would not be an easy decision. Downloading my whole "self" into a computer would certainly be a huge decision.
I prefer "uploading" rather than "downloading" — but whatever you call it, when everybody else is doing it, and the alternative is death, I imagine you'll have no trouble coming to the right decision. (And by "computer" I hope you mean "custom engineering artificial brain inside a sensitive yet strong artificial body.")
However, that's only one aspect of the future... the whole point of Kurzweil's work is that, given the exponential pace of progress, us trying to imagine what life will be like 50 years from now would be like folks 500 years ago trying to imagine the cell phones, iPods, and blogs of today. The biggest changes are probably going to be things we haven't even dreamt of yet.
There's an inherent assumption that Dr Kaku makes about computing that is incorrect. Advancements in computing technologies have indeed come from increasing microprocessor speed. However, another major driving technology has been the fact that software engineering is getting better. We might have huge computing power, but we don't yet know how to use most of it. If you are using Windows, I can easily demonstrate right now. Hit ALT-CTRL-DEL and then select "Task Manager." click on "Performance" tab in the window that comes up. Look at your CPU usage. Unless you have a virus, you will find that you are using 2-10% of your CPU. Advances in chip speed aren't going to change anything here. We already can't use most of the hardware we already have.
Professor Kurzweil believes that in some sort of magical way, we will achieve a singularity and somehow it will all work. Artificial intelligence is the fusion of computer science...it's always 10-20 years in the future.
I believe you are correct Byron. But, with that example about monitoring the cpu usage I think it's kind of a misnomer. If you do the example just as you say you'll see it (probably) as you are only running the couple programs you are using along with whatever you have you computer doing in the background. So, it's not quite the same as monitoring CPU usage while doing something more labor intensive for your machine like running the cool new computer game that is essentially a system hog. Play Civilization 5 with a huge map and play it long into the modern or advanced eras and even a slick machine will bog down (with all the graphics set to the highest quality).
But your point is valid. Human beings don't utilize these machines in a way that will maximize their potential. I think the point Kurzweil's group is making is that we will program machines that will then program better machines and that's where the magic happens. I'm no computer whiz so I'll leave that discussion to you guys that know what you're talking about.
Your entire example is flawed though. It's the equivalent of telling someone to take a look at a world class runner sitting on the couch tapping his foot and then saying "See, that's a world class runner--but look at him, he's only using 1 percent of his running ability right now therefore human beings are as yet incapable of running efficiently."
The fact that my computer right this moment is only using 10% of the CPU, is not proof that there aren't programs that make use of nearly all of it. Believe me, researchers absolutely are capable of using all of a computer's resources.
As for Professor Kurzweil, he absolutely does not believe that we will magically advance. He extrapolates his beliefs by looking at the pace at which we've advanced in the past and by looking at what is being researched currently. There's nothing magical about it. That doesn't mean his predictions will all turn out true, but it does mean that he has a solid foundation on which to base those predictions.
Advances towards AI are constantly being made. All you need to do to get a very basic feel for this is look at a video game made 20 years ago and compare the AI to a game made today. And that's just video games. The recent Jeopardy match is a better example of how intelligent computers have become. The way that computer figured out the syntax of those 'answers' to figure out the 'question' is far beyond anything that could have been achieved even just a few years ago.
Now that doesn't make those computers 'sentient', but it does suggest a growing ability to solve complicated problems. There are many different fields of AI, but at some point they will converge.
At the same time researchers are learning more and more about how the brain works. There's still a TON we don't know, but it's not hard to believe that this research will also play into the creation of AI.
I won't say we're 20 years away from true artificial intelligence, but clearly we're going to get there at some point unless we hit a major road block.
Current trends in AI are still based on bayesian statistics and neural nets. These mimic some aspects of human intelligence and are very useful in complex problems, but it is still not intelligence. Watson falls into this category, it has to use extremely massive parallel paradigm to get the speeds needed for human eqivalence. Watson's true benefit is the language interface to break down the question syntax sequence. The trick is to develop a means for reasoning at the human level. I do not believe that current computer structure is able to acheive this, even with massively parallel computers and grids, because of one flaw. All computers are based on a linear bus design in the microchip and this means all data is in the form of a stream, a 1 dimensional input. The biggest, exciting work is with computer architecture is with quantum computing. And when this architecture gets to the level of maturity as of our current computers, then there would be significant gains in true AI.
I do agree that software engineering is slowly improving the software side of the equation, but the discouraging aspect is that college applicants in computer science and software engineering programs are diminishing in the US. Yes, it's hard and yes, students are afraid they won't find jobs due to computer outsourcing. If the US doesn't think this isn't part of national security, then the US will lose it's lead in technology. Countires like Japan, China and Russia have very healthy research programs in this area. Riken Brain Institute is doing some phenomonal work in brain and AI research. The closest that we have is the Allen Brain Institute, which leans more towards brain research than AI.
Even if processor speeds don't increase, there is another way to increase computing power, and that is to use multiple processors operating in parallel. We've long been using special graphics processors, and "multi-core" processors are also becoming common. All the top supercomputers are massively parallel, their individual processors aren't much faster, but they have a lot of them working together.
So even if physics limits increases in processor speed - and that appears to be happening - the computing industry will simply move in another direction.
Hmm. When I was in engineering school in the '70s the plan was to have fusion reactors available by 2020. Which was a good thing because the world was going to freeze over by 2050.
I hadn't ever heard that. Was that "freeze over" thing a popular belief? Was it nuclear winter? please explain.
Mob - I believe that climatologist's back then thought that we might be entering a new ice age. There were some nasty winters back then. I live in West Virginia and we had several occasions in the '70's when the rivers would be frozen for weeks and barges full of salt couldn't move, they were stuck in the Ohio river.
Thank you for the explanation TReed.
So the cosmic background is at 4 degrees Kelvin. The energy is arriving here 13 billion years later thanks to it's distance. So why isn't it billions of degrees like it was supposed to be then? Oops!
Simple physics. When a gas is compressed, the temperature rises, when it expands the temperature cools. The universe has been expanding for a very long time and to an enormous degree, so much so that the average overall temperature is just 4 degrees kelvin. Granted, there are lots of hot spots left, but that is a result of localized gravitational compression and nuclear fusion.
If you take relativity into a black hole, you find that once a singularity has formed, it cannot get any larger bacause the space time distortion slows time to nothing by definition. You can't get to it if you going slower and slower the closer you get. Any additional mass that passes the event horizon is strewn throughout the effectively increasing space inside. (as time slows, space is getting effectively bigger)
So what you have would look very much like our universe with everything accelerating away from everything else in a relativistic way with no need for a Big Bang. WOW too simple.
Sadly, my money for 2100 is on extinction. With the increasing technology we have been destroying the very basis for our lives at a faster and faster rate.
@Softdude - The problem with your premise is that a black hole or the singularity is such that our physics falls apart, which is why it is called a singularity. Relativity is about events on a frame reference. Time dilation is at near light speed from the point of view of the observer, a person in the object going at near the speed of light wouldn't know the difference. Space inflation is nowhere near realativistic, the only time time the universe was relativistic was in the first billionths of a second and then it wasn't truly relativistic because the four fundamental forces were still combined as one at that time, based on the theory. Which means that light does not exist yet and hence, is not a speed limit.
If radiation causes embrittlement in the pipes at a nuclear plant, what does it do to carbohydrates and protein? Cleaving DNA is the basis for inserting genes, might it be the way to create new viruses by making random chunks out of our food?
Radiation might alter existing viruses and bacteria, but it isn't going to turn our food into viruses!
TReed - That is exactly what I refute. Our physics is alive and well and so is relativity, You are stuck with the outside view of the Black Hole which would seem to defy that. Time has stopped at the singularity's surface, nothing can arrive there. It would also be retreating into space of it's own creation at a rate that would eventually produce a space large enough to fit our universe.
I call it a singularity for clarity, not because I agree with your definition. And what about the comic background? Do you have an answer for that one?
Comic...... Now was that a Freudian slip or what?
The current theory for the cosmic microwave background radiation is that it is from the tremendous heat from the inital moments of the Big Bang in which the universe is still very small. The interesting discovery from from the WMAP satellite was the uniformity of the temprature changes. Think of the edge of the universe a photograph of the tempratures at the beginning. Then this photograph is stretched to the size of the current universe. Check out map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/bb_tests_cmb.html. This might help.
You say the singularity surface. Are referring to the event horizon or the actual singularity? The event horizon is the point at which any observer can no longer observe. You might want to look at Hawking's radiation - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation. This might help some. An inital problem was a loss of information as the particles fall past the event horizon. In physics, information has to be maintained, it's called entropy. He later resolved this problem by saying that the event horizon miantains the information as being smeared at the event horizon thus maintaining entropy.
"It would also be retreating into space of it's own creation at a rate that would eventually produce a space large enough to fit our universe". So you are proposing that a black hole creates it's own space? Interesting since general relativity predicted black holes dur to the fact that the immense gravity prevents light from escaping and that space is extremely curved upon itself near the singularity. But a thought, since black holes move through space, does the space flex back to its orginal shape after the black hole moves on. Einstein would say yes, but is there any fluctuations in spacetime at the quantum level? There have been suggestions that a black hole opens up onto another universe, but you would first have to have a multiverse, from string theory. Then there has to be a mechanism of connecting these universes at the singularity. What would the physics be in the other universe? Could we understand the other physics through our knowledge of our physics?
What I have heard is that the material out that far got there in a few billionths of a second and you seem to confirm this. The question is that if it is 13 billion ago that we are seeing, why isn't it hot still? A super-nuclear explosion would likely create an internal area of rarefied gas as a nuclear one does (I would expect) which would mean most of the mass is out where we can't see it.
I mean the surface of the actual singularity. Yes, a point has no area (or surface) but I don't agree with that model. Relative to an observer on that surface the universe would have disappeared as no light would be getting there either. The size remains constant relative to itself. Sounds absurd but there is not other frame of reference available. The point is what is really absurd. it totally ignores the obvious relativistic situation besides not being achievable.
I heard about Hawking's radiation from the electronic voice of the man himself. It would be expected that the universe would maintain equilibrium somehow - an interesting theory. The nature of the pattern on the event horizion was holographic if I remember correctly.
Space flexing? sounds like the old "ether" theory. Emptyness has no shape or structure.
Gravitational collapse implies a discontinuity as would be required to stop the transmission of light. Space has curved into a circle. There is no way in or out. The field eminating from the mass, gravity maybe, still gets through. The character of the mass is still a real part of our universe. The holographic representation at the event horizon is a kind of 2 dimensional remnant of the original mass. Due to the acceleration to light speed, the original equivilent energy may be radiated back into our space as Hawking's radiation. That is how I understand it.
Electrons rammed through lucite or plexiglass at near light speed are going faster than light in plexiglass and emit cones of electromagnetic radiation like the waves of a sonic boom from a supersonic aircraft as they are annihilated.
The misconception of the Big Bang theory is thinking it was an explosion. It's not. It is a extremely fast expansion of space. There is no material at this time. The four fundamental forces start as one combined force. To use the analogy of a balloon, when the balloon is at its smallest the energy at the beginning is imprinted onto the surface of the balloon. As the balloon expands over the billions of years, that energy imprint is stretched, which causes the temperature to appear cooler. The temperature of the space within the universe is not an accurate representation of the early universe, the galaxies that came later started creating energy that slowed the cooling down and is holding it relative steady, its at an equilibrium.
The Hawking radiation comes from the particle anti-particle that are created spontaneously from the space. Normally they would annihilate each other as quickly as the are created. But near the event horizon, an occasional particle is pulled across the event horizon, leaving its counterpart to be seen by us.
Even with electrons travelling through any medium, they can never go faster then the speed of light. Time dilation prevents it.
The event horizon is a temporal discontinuity in your definition too and that is because the space and time within is no longer defined by the space it occupies in this universe. What you would see if you could, is an ever shrinking singularity with objects that approach it getting ever smaller but proportionally accelerating. And as you say, the inside observer would not sense the contraction. They would however see everything accelerating away.
Remember, relativity is a paradox. The shrinking objects might be accelerating proportional to their size but to the observer on one it would seem the opposite. No energy is necessary for the seeming acceleration either, so you can forget about dark energy too. Dark matter almost certainly exsts as it obeys current physics.
Yes I know it is hard to wrap your mind around a temporal distortion like this one, but try it for a minute. The visualization is not that difficult if you remember the rules of relativity. What is true depends on your frame of reference.
Interesting, what part of relativity is a paradox? Are saying that an object actually shrinks at relativistic speeds? Or are talking about the spaghettification of an object with respect of the observer? This is where the observer sees an object get longer and thinner the closer the object is to the speed of light. Your last statement is the truth. But I don't have a problem visulizing the event horizon and math would help you visualize it. If you are aware, then you would agree that the Einstein and Ricci tensor is critical in understanding the exact nature of the curvature of the space near the event horizon and the singularity and the differences of these two.
Oh, and particle theory! If you threw enough mirrors on the floor, you would begin to be able to classify the shards. With the exact same problem too; they would be of all sizes. Lightnig bolts, cresent moons, stars and all sorts of shapes would appear. What a novel idea that matter might shatter if you hit it hard enough. Just because the math works, it doesn't dictate reality. If I had the math, I probably wouldn't have the vision to see these things as the structure would get in the way. Like english speakers being more creative with the free form language rules. You can say just about anything you can imagine in english.
And of course, I admit that I may be imagining all this rather than it being fact. Any responsible person will admit to that.
M K is a facinating person..a real David Suzuki of physics/science and society.
Book sales...ok. I people get to read his book. He is interesting but, gotta chime right on in on the moores law thing....not even funny, first, three companies are racing to put out the ldl or pdl extreme uv light source, basically discs spin in molten Tin and a laser vaporizes the tin along an edgepoint where the two discs are put cm apart, while 20000 amps of current collapse the conductive vapour, creating a pinched plasma...really cool, unfathomable technique, illustrative of the unperdictable turn physics often takes, the plasma is then magnetically guided to make the next generation of chips via lithography...I can see this track holding moores law for a few more iterations...in the meantime, there are even small wavelengths heading down the pike, restate as a couple more itereations of moores law...at some point photonics is going to reign for several iterations of moores law..heck I was sitting in an intel seminar and posisted the question that they flip the si die over and print another cpu...they did not do that, they now print several on one side though..sun puts almost 128 on one side...three d chips are also migrating our way...still, note the space station is running on 386sx controllers just fine. This race of moores is both good and distractive, I see a day when darn near everything has some sort of embedded mcu or cpu in it, most likely with at least dsl (linux), for the purpose of being "smart"....don't need a lot of mflops, just enough to sense and communicate in a local network...if they do this I know the price of light bulbs will rise, but it need not rise that much, economics is the factor, failing to double computing capacity every two years will not sink world of tech...honestly, we coulda just slowed down about a decade ago and still be right where we are now!!..for instance, almost every new hd flat screen bought today has some derivative of the cost of crt production factored in, in other words factorys were still paying licensing fees for crt patents when the world switched over to flat panels....Kaku seems like a nice guy, not too extreme thankfully, but I felt pandered too when the media popped him on to explain the japanese nuclear crisis, will they get NPR's famous astronomer to explain a close situation in africa? It sort of detracted from the credibility as I saw it unfold...I felt he was scripted to tell us all was going to be better....I found a lot of truth on other media outlets though, like south koreas for instance, and yes even on cosmic log...americans are smart, and savvy, I think as a whole they play that off to see what the heck the next expert is gonna try and schmooze them with, in the bars and classrooms, and bus stations and wallmart aisles, they collectively outwit the newsmedia.
String theory is one of my pet peeves....We try like heck to make experiment to prove or disprove theories, we never accept anything as PURE fact till we can see it, even then we can be a bit skeptical...that is great...string theory is one of those things were we have been asked to believe in something because the math looks good, when pressed on possible experiments of the physical type, string theorists get oddly defensive...I will leave it at that for now. In the meantime Kurzwiel is closer to the future, perhaps not on the singuarity issue, but more so on the speed of change, He is a big AI proponent...and absolutely correct...parrallel programming is still a decade away from coming of age, but you can bet programmers like me and many many others see beyond bayesion filters and sad little models of nural nets...so much so that a warning is in order, shore up the constitution now!!!...it will be too late later. A robots bill of rights might as well be defined now, for one asimov had a lot of it right. For two, survival of the fittest is universal. I will drop that line of reasoning for now. In the meantime, there are a lot of physicists, I wish they would interview a lot more on the japan issue. One thing is for sure, if you ask enough experts you will get the answer you want, but america is able to average it all out, and most of us understand radiation better than anyone wants to admit. Onto fission/fusion..first fission is A very important process in the natural progression of earth and it's life, from the heat it has generated in the soil to the mutations it has caused in the dna. It serves many other unrecognized purposes and it's role in the core may very well be misunderstood. Live may exist beyond jupiter thanks to fission. I would not give up on cold fusion yet, we have much to learn, we already learned to watch out for palladium hustlers dumping alchol into the experiments, cold fusion may not be what it sounds like. Hot fusion is here, but we can't really get a good grip on the control diagram. I for one have been struggling with the theories on a good way to handle the nuetron genertion, which also exists in fission reactors, BY THE WAY. Nuetrons are no where near as benign as we may be led to believe. Release of radiaton is bad, the lack of real discussion of the actual daugther products is a shame of the reporting scene, I suspected the farmers issue before they released the press, here in PA they really downplayed the Krypton, but it hung low to the ground where the cows ingested it. We are much better off with the truth than with being scmoozed, and when we recall, we recall well. I can't wait till japan can move this whole thing forward. We may need nuclear, but in that vein, we need honest safety. Storing waste on site may not be wise. Thorium reactors seem neat, but if a small truck can cart it away, what's a tidal wave going to do. Common sense is difficult, but at least we can gauge it against what we can see.