Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel 1st Edition by Michio Kaku (PDF)

Description

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 Impossibleprobes the very limits of human ingenuity and scientific possibility.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This book went through different science ideas that were interesting and partly theoretical. It was a true joy to read/listen. It also gave ideas for writing science fiction.

⭐The book is very interesting, and seller responded to every question I had.

⭐So how long do we have to wait for Star Trek like teleporters, Back to the Future hover boards or giant Death Star like planet destroying lasers? How about Terminator type intelligent robots, reproducing nano-bots and trips to other star systems? Will we ever be able to go back in time or slip into an alternate universe? Michio Kaku combines popular science fiction and current theoretical physics to speculate on how, if and when we can expect to see these kinds of fantastic technologies. This book is a ton of fun. It’s fascinating to read how future scientists might construct a working force field or a feasible starship. The author answers a few questions that I’ve long wondered about, for instance, how does one store anti-matter if it’s annihilated the moment it comes into contact with matter.This is exactly the kind of book that got me back into reading several years ago, a pop science book on the future of technology. It’s an easy read with no mind numbing formulas or diagram, written for the total layman. I have read literally dozens of popular science books in the last decade and this is one of the better ones. The big problem with these kinds of books is that physics hasn’t had a major new breakthrough since well before I was born and these books can get rather repetitive Sure there have been lots of minor advancements but the main problem of physics, the elusive Grand Unifying Theory remains unsolved.One portion of the book that troubled me was a discussion on string theory as the most likely solution to the unification of relativity and the special model. Read `The Trouble with Physics’ by Lee Smolin to see how shaky the foundation of string theory really is. Michio writes, `one major criticism of string theory is that it is untestable’. Actually the much bigger problem is that it’s unfalsifiable which puts it dangerously close to pseudoscience. Another criticism he mentions is that by putting string theory at such a high priority in physics other avenues of thinking are squeezed out. To this Michio just smiles accepting this as a natural occurrence in research but I would argue that this kind of attitude may be one of the reasons physics has been practically paralyzed for decades.The author writes that, “The coming years of physics could be the most exciting of all, as we explore the universe with a new generation of particle accelerators, space based gravity detectors and new technologies” My suspicion is that the coming years of physics will generally be exciting only particle physicists and astronomers not the general public. Books like `The Physics of Impossible’ are enjoyable to read but if you peruse one every couple of years you can probably keep up with advancements in the latest massive science experiments and particle discoveries.

⭐When the author appeared at a convention I attended last year I was surprised not to have heard of him as he was listed as a NY Times best seller. I was impressed enough with his talk to order a couple of his books, this one among them.He divides phenomena into 3 levels of the impossible. Class I impossibilities are those that are “impossible today but that do not violate the known laws of physics.” Examples would include teleportation, antimatter engines and “certain forms of telepathy, psychokinesis and invisibility.”Class II phenomena include those that “sit at the very edge of our understanding of the physical world” and include time machines, travel through wormholes and hyperspace travel.The final category, III, includes “technologies that violate the known laws of physics” and include precognition and perpetual motion machines.I thoroughly enjoyed the references to Star Wars movies, Star Trek episodes and various pieces of well known science fiction literature.If you are the type who enjoys mind benders like “… the true secret of anti-matter: it’s just ordinary matter going backward in time” and who can get excited about the LISA program scheduled for next year which “consists of 3 satellites circling the sun, arranged in a triangle, each connected by laser beams 3 million miles long …orbiting the sun about 30 million miles from earth … able to detect vibrations to within one part in a billion trillion, about 1/100th the size of an atom” in search of gravity waves, then this is probably a book you will enjoy. And nary a math equation anywhere! I had a good time with it.

⭐Dr. Michio Kaku is one of the premier authors of physics books in recent memory. It seems that physicists are getting a lot of publicity and for good reason. The forward advancement of tech and knowledge put us on the brink of many a great discovery’s in the near future, and this book details them in amazing technical detail. From force fields to leaving our own physical universe to start over in one of the many other Multiverses.If you are a Science Fiction fan, this book is right up your alley. Not to say that it deals with subjects that are not possible, but it shows us how the impossible might come to be. Everything we take for granted at present was once somebody’s absurd and crazy idea so don’t write anything off. Now where was my Flux Capacitor?In the end, this book left me captivated and wanting more to read about. The book is written well and is easily understood by anyone. Michio Kaku is an amazing physicist with an even greater imagination. This to me seperates him from a lot of the others. I love the subjects he tackles and how he puts them into context.Even as a lowly level 0 civilization we can come to appreciate the imagination and forward advancement of humanity if we just look deeper into ourselves and the future. All it takes is a little imagination and working together to achieve the impossible =)

⭐I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I bought this book. On the one hand I was hoping that it wouldn’t be too complicated to understand, but I was also concerned that it might veer into the kind of sensationalist, populist theorising that subjects like time travel and starships tend to attract.Both of these concerns were unfounded. Although each chapter is based around an element of science fiction (invisibility, force fields, etc.) it’s taken as the basis for discussing a wide variety of developments in modern day physics. As a result you don’t just come out of the book with an understanding of the plausibility of science fiction, but with a broad knowledge of many other aspects of physics as well. Overall, this principle works really well: draw people in with a fantastical topic, pique their interest and then use the opportunity to explain something (e.g. room temperature superconductors) that many people might never have read about in isolation.The only negative for me was the style of writing. It’s not difficult to understand, but there are a few sloppy, badly structured sections that will probably annoy some readers. I don’t think this is enough to take anything away from the book as a whole, though, so I think it’s definitely worthy of five stars.

⭐This is the first time that I’ve bought a Michio Kaku book, although I’ve enjoyed the TV programmes that he has created over the last few years. When I heard him being interviewed about this new book, I knew immediately that it would be right up my street, and I have not been dissappointed.Kaku is a real physicist, and it’s nice to see that he’s also well versed in popular culture. He takes examples of technologies from popular fantasy and science fiction (like Star Trek, Harry Potter and Back to the Future) and analyzes the physics, categorizing each thing into three levels of impossibility. He covers faster than light travel, death rays, invisibility, time travel, and many other things that SciFi writers have come to rely on.A very entertaining book, and really a must for anyone that enjoys reading about physics.

⭐Prof. Michio Kaku is a familiar face to anyone who watches the Discovery Science Channel. Famous for his mixture of clever analogies and witty observations, he excels at making the more difficult concepts of modern Physics seem both entertaining and accessible. In ‘Physics of the Impossible’ he brings these considerable skills to bear in exploring a range of concepts which might seem more at home amid the writings of Isaac Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke than in any science text book. What he reveals is that many ideas, scoffed at as pure fancy by previous generations, are now considered to be far closer to reality than one might think.Kaku’ s writing style is lively and engaging, if a little repetitive, and he takes great pains to arm the non-expert reader (myself included) with just enough technical vocabulary to navigate the strange world of quarks and neutrinos, positions and super-strings. However, I must confess, despite his best efforts, I often struggled to get my head around some of the more exotic and mind-bending theories he uses to put his points across. His selection of topics is clearly designed to appeal to those familiar with the mainstays of science fiction; teleportation, hyperspace, wormholes and time-travel, to name but a few. He intelligently groups these subjects into three categories of ascending ‘ impossibility’, denoting how far modern science is from making them reality. In an equally smart manner, he frequently cross references potential solutions to these problems, thus showing that no technology or theory exits as an island. If one lesson can be learned from this well-worked and highly readable book it is this; in the twisted realm of theoretical physics, even impossibility is relative.

⭐An excellent read. I only understood about 25% on my first read but I go back to it every now and again and gradually absorb a little more. If possible future technological advances is your bag then I highly recommend this book.

⭐Have seen Michio Kaku on several science shows, and always find him an excellent watch.When I saw this, I snapped it up – very interesting subject matter, and great to see a superb intellect figure out exactly how reasonable future technology advances might be.Most of the chapters are excellent, and very informative. However, I felt as the book went out, it started to drift a bit, some ideas feeling like padding, and a couple of chapters being a bit rambling.But overall a very good effort, and a interesting read.

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