#562: Dr. Michio Kaku — Exploring Time Travel, the Beauty of Physics, Parallel Universes, the Mind of God, String Theory, Lessons from Einstein, and More

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A cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal mentoskeleton. No Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferris Show. My guest today is Dr. Michio Kaku. You can find him on Twitter at Michio Kaku. He is a professor of theoretical physics at the City College of New York, co-founder of Stringfield Theory, and the author of several widely acclaimed science books, including Beyond Einstein. The future of humanity, the future of the mind

Hyper space. Physics of the Future, Physics of the Impossible, and his latest bestseller, The God Equation subtitle The Quest for a Theory of Everything. So we will have no shortage of things to discuss. He is the science correspondence for CBS This Morning, the host of the radio programs Science Fantastic and Exploration, and a host of several science TV specials for the BBC and the Discovery and Science channels. We will link to all of his social Including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter in the show notes, but you can find them quite easily at Michioka in most cases. And uh Doctor Kaku, welcome to the show. Thank you for taking the time.

Yeah. Glad to be on. Yeah. Thought I would Start. by rolling the clock back to your childhood. And my understanding is you did not come from

A wealthy family, far from it. But That you Certainly found time to build things. And I was wondering if there were any notable examples or examples that come to mind that you could share.

With the audience. Well, you're right. Ever since I was a child I knew that my parents were locked up During World War Two In a relocation camp in California. Their assays were frozen.

They were penniless when they were released from jail. And just because they were, you know, Japanese Americans, even though they were citizens They were both citizens of the United States. They were both born in California, for God's sake. So when I was a child I realized that if I was to do anything in this world, I would have to do it myself.

So when I was eight years old. Something happened which completely changed my life. I still remember. Everyone was talking about the fact that A great scientist had just died, but

And on the evening paper all they showed was a picture of his desk. That's it. Just a picture of his desk with an open book. And the caption said The greatest scientists of our time could not finish the

This book. Well, I was fascinated by this story. Why couldn't he finish it? I mean he could ask his mother, right? You could go to the library.

I mean he could just look it up. What was so hard that That a great scientist could not finish that book. Well, I went in the library and over the years I began to find out this man's name was

Albert Einstein. And that book That book was to be the theory of Everything. The God equation.

An equation perhaps no more than one inch long. That would allow us to quote Read the mind of God. Well, I was hooked. I had to know what was this unified field theory.

The theory of Everything. That was supposed to summarize all the laws of nature into Such a compact form. So when I was in high school

I said to myself, this is it. I want to be part of this great search for the theory of everything. So I went to my mom and I said, Mom Can I have permission to build an atom smasher in the garage? A two point three million electron volume electron accelerator in the garage.

She kinda stared at me. And said, Sure. Why not? And don't forget to take out the garbage. Well, I took out the garbage.

And I got four hundred pounds of transformer steel. twenty two miles of copper wire. So much wire that we had to wind it on the football field in my high school. And the Adventure consumes six kilowatts of power. All the energy that my house had

Finally it was ready. I plugged it in. I heard this huge crackling sound as six kilowatts of energy surged from Through my capacitor bank. And then I heard this pop pop pop sound as I blew out all the fuses in the house.

And the whole house is plunged in darkness. My poor mom, you know, she come home from a hard day's work. And then she'd say to herself Why couldn't I have a son who plays baseball? Why can't he play basketball?

And for God's sake, why can't you find a nice Japanese girlfriend? Why does he build these machines in the garage? Well Yeah, because of these machines I went to the National Science Fair I won grand prize.

And I met the physicist who built the atomic bomb. I met Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb. And he offered me a scholarship. That if I could get into Harvard He would fund it.

Well, I got into Harvard and yes. True to form. A finance. A scholarship. So I could go and fulfill my dream.

Well, when I graduated from Harvard He offered me a job. A job at Los Alamos Labs, Livermore Labs, designing Hydrogen warheads. But you see

I had a different Scenario. You see For me, the hydrogen bomb Was Puni.

It was not powerful enough. I wanted to work at the biggest explosion in the universe. The Big Bang. That is the God equation. Set into motion.

The expansion of the universe itself. Now that's for me. So I respectfully declined this very generous offer. But I said to myself, I want to work. On the theory of everything.

An equation no more than one inch long that will allow us to summarize All the laws of the universe are into one compact form. I said to myself That's for me.

I must ask, how did your patron, this person who paid your way through Harvard, respond when you declined? His job offer. Well He the war in Vietnam was going full blast.

He knew that a lot of his Young recruits. Could not get a job because they were gonna go into the military. And that's what I did.

My draft board pretty much told me that I would go to Vietnam. And so I basically volunteered to go into the military. Hoping to be part of Signal Corps. That is, I figured I could use some of my physics education. In order to support telecommunication of our troops.

Unfortunately, they put me in infantry. I went to Fort Benning, Georgia. Or I learn how to How to go through machine gun fire. I went to Fort Lewis

Washington, where I learned to fire machine guns. In fact, I fired the entire United States Army's infantry's A whole slew of weapons. fielded by the United States infantry. I I fired them all. So I said to myself, yeah.

I have to serve my country. What can I do? Was there a conflict in your heart or mind having seen how your Parents were treated in internment camps.

Yeah. Serving This country. Upset. Or any hesitation. I'm just wondering emotionally if there was anything there.

That's worth discussing. Not really, because I realized that what had happened during the war Well, let's face it, the United States was at war. And as a consequence, in wartime people do strange things. And however, my parents' attitude was that

Well, first of all We have to make sure that it doesn't happen again. that if the war clouds start to Rise again. We have to make sure that That walking up a huge

sectors of the population, one hundred thousand Japanese Americans were locked up. That it wouldn't happen again. But my parents also believe that you shouldn't have a chip on your shoulder. You shouldn't hold it against the country because the country was, you know

Very kind and generous. Made my education possible. And so you shouldn't hold a grudge. And the thing to do is to Contribute.

Contribute to society. That's what I decided to do. to contribute to society not have a chip on my shoulder And do good. You've

really in in some respects, I mean you've Created many careers for yourself, but you've combined Technical skill. and fluency with

communication and I want to focus for a second on the technical side of things because you mentioned that you asked your mom if you could build an atom smasher. And I think for a lot of a lot of people listening, they wouldn't immediately know what an atom smasher is. Were your parents technical? Did they have technics? No. They barely got out of grade school with an education in And as a consequence they They didn't have a clue as to what I was doing. They just knew that it sounded very scientific and it sounded important and so they

Said, go for it. They were very encouraging. They said, Go for it. Go as far as you can go. Was there anything that sparked that initial Curiosity in the sciences.

Well There was this mystery, you know, curiosity is one of the great drivers of human behavior. Curiosity coupled with passion. Those I think are the two great ingredients that Allow people to rise above poverty and

Rise above hardship, curiosity and passion. So I had a curiosity. I had to know what was in that book. Now today of course I can read that book. I know exactly all the different Incorrect.

avenues that Einstein was looking at in a desperate search Which you fail, ultimately. To create a theory of everything. So curiosity is one thing that drove me, but also you have to have a passion. Curiosity by itself is not enough. You have to be able to pay your dues.

You have to be able to sit down, learn the math. Lear the physics. Get up to a PhD so that you could become a professor. And so you have to have a passion that takes you all the way to the top. I've read in preparation for this conversation that you were fascinated with Isaac Asimov's foundation trilogy.

as a child. I don't know if that's true. Please fact check me if if that's incorrect. Did any particular sci fi stand out? to you as impactful or cultivating that passion and curiosity. Well, yes, you see, when I was eight years old

I want it to be like Einstein. But on Saturday mornings I used to watch TV And I used to watch Flash Gordon on TV. And once again I was hooked. I mean starships.

Rocket ships, invisibility shields, cities underwater, cities in the sky. What's there not to love with Flash Gordon? But then over the years I began to realize that the two passions of my life, that is physics on one hand, And the future, on the other were more or less

The same thing. That if you understood physics You understood what is possible. What is plausible And what is simply impossible.

So when I read science fiction, I begin to realize that if you have a background in physics You can sort of put things into place. You know when certain technologies are gonna go to fruition. You know, when certain technologies will never happen And it allows you to see into the future. So those are the two things that I do. On one hand I work on the unified field theory.

The the the God equation, the theory of everything. But I'm also a futurist. That as I look to see what trends will take us and Into the next five, ten. Hundred years, thousand years into the future.

And so watching Flash Gordon. really impressed upon me that if you know physics You know the outlines of the future. Not totally, of course,'cause we make mistakes. But you know what is possible, but it's plausible.

And what is impossible. I have many questions to follow up. That answer. And uh we're going to also veer into trends and a few related questions and I'll ask you about physics of the future. But first I wanted to go back to Harvard for a moment. And

To ask you. If it's true that for a stint at least you studied philosophy. And if so, if you could Describe that experience. Well, that was very practical.

I knew that he had to have plan B. If plan A doesn't work out, what are you gonna do for plan B? You see, for Einstein, and I studied his life very carefully, in fact even wrote a biography of Einstein. I realized that well he made enemies of his faculty. He would cut classes a lot.

Because he knew the material already. He was way ahead of everyone. But he cut class. The professors hated that. So He got horrible. Letters of recommendation. So he had to go to plan B.

Which is become a menial worker. He apply for a job selling life insurance. Can you imagine opening the door one day and there's Albert Einstein trying to sell you life insurance? And he finally got a job as a low level clerk at the Platin office in Bern, Switzerland. From which you could launch the greatest revolution of modern times.

Relativity, which gives us the atomic bomb. It was just Computer technology, lasers Gives us the power of the sun, in fact. And so he had plan B.

And take a very a low level clerical job. Well, I had to have plan B too. So I said to myself, why not learn computer technology? Computers were just beginning to surface. And Stanford University was not too far away.

When I grew up there if I saw apple orchards and alfalfa fields and farm workers But yeah, Stafford was slowly rising. And you can learn how to program computers. And so I said to myself. That's what I'm gonna do for plan B. But

I was also interested in philosophy. But I still remember a quote from Einstein. And that philosophy, he said, is sort of like honey. That at first It's delicious and tastes great.

But then you realize There's nothing really there. It's not Gonna show you the future. It just tastes good. And so he decided that well, yes, he will learn philosophy.

It'll guide him to a degree. But it's not gonna pioneer new branches of science. Philosophy is how you sort of like look at the entire terrain. Uh physics. So yeah, Einstein was a philosopher.

But he realized he could not make a living doing philosophy. No, do you think that there are Certain branches of philosophy or types of philosophical

Questioning or thought exercises that will become more practical in the sense that, for instance, if we look at the trolley problem, And autonomous cars sort of programming machines. to behave in certain ways if they have to choose between hitting, say four people in their eighties versus two school children on the other side of the road or something like that. Are there types of philosophy or branches of philosophy that one might view as more practical.

More interesting than others, at least from your perspective? There are two areas of philosophy that I found interesting. One is epistemology, that is a theory of knowledge. What is true What is false and what is knowable? And that gives us unto the question of God. That is, is God knowable? Can you prove the existence of God?

So I was fascinated by that question. Can you prove or disprove the existence of God? And then I began to realize that there are certain things outside of science. Science is what is testable. Reproducible.

And falsifiable. But certain things are beyond that. It cannot be tested. They cannot be reproduced. Uh for example the existence of God.

So I think that a thousand years from now People will still be debating whether or not God exists because it's not a provable statement. Like for example the unicorn. Can you prove or disprove the existence of unicorns? And the answer is no.

Because if you say unicorns don't exist Maybe somewhere in a cave. Some place where we've never explored before. There's a unicorn. So it is impossible to disprove

The non existence of unicorns. And the same thing with God. God is also not a provable statement. So a thousand years from now we'll still be debating the existence of God because there's no proof. No definitive proof one way or the other.

That can prove or disprove the existence of God. Another example. I was at a party once where somebody came up to me and said that she was Cleopatra. She was the reincarnation of Cleopatra.

Well, I got into a conversation, asked her some simple questions about the history Oh Cleopatra. And she got all the answers wrong. And I said to myself, Uh huh. She's not really Cleopatra at all. But then she came back at me and left me floored.

She said The history books A wrong. Why do I know that? Because I am the reincarnation of Cleopatra. You can't believe the history books. And I was stumped.

At that point I realized That that's a statement that's not provable. Therefore it is outside the boundary of science. Do angels exist? Well, maybe.

Maybe not. But it's outside the boundaries of what science can test. Because if you say there are no such thing as angels Maybe they just are in a place that you haven't looked. So that was one area that I found interesting. Epistemology, the limits of what is testable

What is reproducible? And what is falsifiable. The other thing that was interesting to me was the question of Human thought. Is it possible to build a robot?

that can think like a human. And then I read about the work of Alan Turing. the founder of artificial intelligence theory, the guy who helped to win World War Two By breaking the German code. And sadly enough, even though he was a hero

It was top secret because the British had to keep Code breaking s secret. And he basically committed suicide. Or the end of his life. There was a police raid.

And the founder of artificial intelligence theory Turned out to be gay. And he was put on trial. He was forced to take hormones And he went crazy and he committed suicide.

But anyway, the point I'm raising is If you have a robot It acts like a human. Talks like a human. Then for all intents and purposes, it is indistinguishable from a human

And therefore. Is A human. Now that really set me into motion because It was a very concrete test that you could make.

As to whether or not Something is human. In other words If it looks like a duck. Quacks like it, duck.

And Waddles like a duck. Maybe it is a doc. Maybe it is indistinguishable. A doc. If you hold to that philosophy.

Then you come to the realization that one day we will create humans Out of the laboratory. Because it'll be asymptotically indistinguishable From a human. Now, right now it's pretty easy to tell that something is a robot.

You ask it a simple question, it gets the answer wrong. So a bingo. You know that it's fake. But one day. It'll be so close to us.

That it will be indistinguishable from us. In which case, maybe artificial intelligence is really possible. Here's another example. Science is getting to the point where we can digitize Everything known about you.

For example, all of Einstein's papers, lectures, notes Can be digitized. And I would love to talk to Einstein. I'd love to sit down. And talk to a robot.

That has digitized all of Einstein's memoirs and video tapes and what have you, everything that's known. And so then that becomes At some point Indistinguished

Reminstein himself. And so in other words, it may be possible that that the soul The soul of a human. Might be digitized. Because we're getting closer and closer

to creating things that are indistinguishable From people. In other words, this gives us digital immortality. You can live forever. Of course, as a computer program.

But You can live forever. Because Your memories, your personalities will allow you to talk to your great great great great grandkids And your great, great, great, great grandkids will be able to talk

To you. Because Your computer program is indistinguishable. From who you are. So these are philosophical questions that I think are actually quite interesting.

How do you think of burden of proof in the sense that while it may be impossible to prove the non existence of unicorns. The sort of current expanse of human exploration has of yet not turned up any unicorns. So in terms of of choosing what to believe or not believe, and I know some scientists will say, I believe in the data, right? And that's their kind of

Stock response. But reality seems to be, at least in real life Messy around the corners. How do you think of burden? Of proof.

Unicorns or something like Time travel. Well First of all, if you take a look at Detectives.

Are detectives scientists? Detectives have data. But you see, scientists like to create experiments. They like to redo the experiment a many, many, many times. So that something is reproducible.

Falsifiable. And testable on Demand A detective? is in a situation where the crime has been committed.

You cannot recreate the crime. You can approximate the crime. But you cannot recreate the crime. It's not testable. May not be falsifiable. But is it a science? Well then you have to realize that most of physics

It's a detective story. That the big bang Happened thirteen point eight billion years ago. It happened in the past. It was the crime. And so you begin to realize that

All of S Is in some sense Not testable. is you cannot recreate the big bang. You cannot

Uh test aspects of the big bang. You only have the remnants. of what happened after the Big Bang thirteen point eight billion years ago. And as a consequence you have to be a little bit humble. Humble realizing that there are limits to what we can do in the laboratory.

Because we cannot recreate cosmic events. Like the creation of the earth. The creation of the sun And the creation of the universe. But we do what we can.

With the physics that we are given. Now you mentioned something else. What was that again? That the That push the boundaries of what we can do. I guess the underlying question was just around how you think of burden of proof. And the part of the reason that term came to mind is and I know we're jumping around and that's okay. In an interview from two thousand three in Scientific American, you had said About ten years ago, meaning nineteen ninety three, if you were a serious physicist talking about time travel

you'd be laughed at of the scientific establishment. So I wanted to ask you what had happened post nineteen ninety three that had made that. Less the case. And it it seemed At least I have a line here and please. Fact check this. You know, originally the burden of proof was on physicists to prove that time travel was possible. Now the burden of proof is on physicists to prove there must be a law forbidding

time travel and I found that very interesting and I was just wondering if you could Kind of expand on. How you think about wrapping one's head around something like time travel and whether it is possible or impossible. Well it used to be, of course, uh that we have a giggle factor in physics that if you talk about uh higher dimensions, you talk about time travel

Most physicists would simply giggle. And obviously would roll up in the heavens and they'd shake their head. Well, they don't do that anymore. Physicists like Stephen Hawking ha have taken these things very seriously. You see, after the war Einstein's roommate at the Institute for Advanced Study, he had an office, right?

Next to Einstein. Kurt Girdle. found the first solution of Einstein's equations which allowed for time travel. Time travel. In other words, if the universe rotated

If the universe were rotated and then you rotated around the universe and came back You could come back Yesterday. You can come back before you left. Which of course is time travel.

Now Einstein of course was horrified by this. He said in his memoirs that That we can eliminate this possibility for physical reasons. I e The universe expanded.

The universe did not spin. If universe spun Then time travel would be commonplace. Well since then We have found hundreds of solutions of Einstein's equations in which time travel and

Is A possibility. For example, if I have a black hole Or something similar to a black hole, a very dense star, and it rotates. And it rotates.

It does not collapse to a dot. It collapses to a ring. A ring. And if you fall through the ring You wind up in a parallel universe.

These are legitimate solutions of Einstein's equations. Found in nineteen sixty three, in fact, by Mathematician Roy Kerr. And it means that we have to take it seriously. And then Stephen Hawking jumped into the game.

And he came up with the chronology protection hypothesis. And that is There must be a law of physics. Preventing time travel. Okay, that was a challenge.

It challenged the world of physics. Define the law That once and for all would disprove the existence of a time machine. Well what happened?

Nobody could find such a law. And so Hawking was forced to admit That well, maybe time travel is possible. Because there's no law preventing it. Well now we have wormholes.

In fact, string theory, which is what I do for a living It's full of Wormholes. You can't move in string theory without Bumping into a wormhole someplace. And a wormhole is the looking glass of Alice.

Alice stuck her hand through the looking glass. And her hand wound up on the other end of forever. Yeah, Wonderland. Well, that looking glass is the black hole. A spinning black hole.

Collapse is not to a dot, but to a ring. That ring is the looking glass of Alice. So that if you stick your hand through the looking glass You wind up In another

Parallel universe. And this gives us therefore a new way of looking at the Big Bang. Einstein said that the universe is a bubble. A bubble of some sort and it's expanding. That's called the Big Bang Theory.

However, string theory says there are other Bubbles out there. In fact, there's a bubble bath A bubble bath of universes. And when these universes collide

Well, that gives you the big bang. But when these universes split in half That could also be the big bang. And so we realize that there's a multiverse of universes out there.

Some of which Make time travel possible. Now And the next question that people often ask me Yeah.

If there's this Bubble bath of universes, parallel universes. Then is Elvis Presley still alive in one of these parallel universes? And the answer is Possibly yes.

That if you are dead in one universe You are not necessarily dead in a twin universe. that people who have perished in one universe May it keep on living in another universe. Now this sounds crazy, right?

But it goes by a name. Quantum physics. We physicists. Telling people that some of their loved ones could still be alive in another parallel universe. We tell them.

Get used to it. This is called quantum physics. Now of course to visit these parallel universes would require technology far beyond anything we can muster. So don't think you can visit Elvis any time soon. But it does mean that well, yeah, these universes are possible.

Yeah. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Wealth Front. Did you know if you missed ten of the best performing days after the two thousand eight crisis, you would have missed out on fifty percent five zero percent of your returns. Don't miss out on the best days in the market. Stay invested in a long-term automated investment portfolio. Wealthfront pioneered the automated investing movement, sometimes referred to as RoboAdvising, and they currently oversee$20 billion of assets for their clients. Wealthfront can help you diversify your portfolio, minimize fees, and lower your taxes. Takes about three minutes to sign up, and then Wealthfront will build you a globally diversified portfolio of ETFs based on your risk appetite and manage it for you at an incredibly low cost. Wealthfront software constantly monitors your portfolio day in and day out, so you don't have to.

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I I want to Double click on time. Let's talk a bit more about time. And actually before we get to time. Because if that's it. Understandably pretty

Big subject. Could you Just define what you mean by parallel universe. Well take two sheets of paper And put them side by side. So that they are parallel to each other.

And then get a pencil and just stick a pencil right through both sheets of paper. That pencil is the wormhole. It's a gateway. The gateway connecting two separate universes. And guess who came up with this idea?

It was Einstein himself in nineteen thirty five. In nineteen thirty five, Einstein was playing with black holes. Mathematically, of course. And realize that if you took two black holes and stuck them together back The back.

If you fell into one funnel. You would go blasting out the other funnel. So today we call them wormholes or in this case. White holes. A black hole is this ultimate vacuum cleaner.

Everything gets sucked into this vacuum cleaner called the black hole. But where does that stuff go? We're not sure. But in one theory is blown off the other end. As a white hole.

And so this white hole is connected to the black hole. Through this gateway. And the gateway is a wormhole. And this gateway in turn may be a passageway to another universe. A passageway to a distant point in your same universe

Or perhaps even a gateway into the past. And so time travel Can no longer be totally ruled out. It's something that we physicists actually study now. I am

Looking at the cover. of one of my books and the the cover is The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli. who is an Italian physicist. I think he does a lot of work in quantum gravity from recalling correctly. And In one of his presentations, video presentation, I remember

Him holding Two different Hand watches. One above his head and one Gaula.

By his waist and Saying something to the effect, and I'm paraphrasing here because I'm I'm I'm not technical. I don't have any physics jobs, but he said that effectively time unfolds at different speeds. at these Different heights. due to different gravitational effects and so on.

I'm curious if there are any statements Or characteristics of time that you can Can mention. That might be

Counterintuitive or seem otherworldly to people who are listening. Just because I think you're in a better position than I am, certainly. Well, most people think that time beats at the same rate. So that one hour on the earth is one hour on the moon. is one hour in out of space. But that's not true.

It turns out that if you were in a rocket ship orbiting the earth like in a GPS satellite Time can actually Slow down a bit. Or actually speed up depending upon how fast you are moving. So when you use your cell phone to calculate where you are located on the earth

That cell phone has to calculate Einstein's theory. The general theory and the special theory of relativity They calculate exactly what time it is. Because it depends on how fast you move. In general, the faster you move, the slower time beats.

So twins One of our astronauts was a twin Went into outer space. When the twin came back. Most people assume that they were still the same age.

Nope. The twin that went into outer space is actually younger. Slightly younger by a fraction of a second. Then his twin on the earth. Now on the moon.

Time be faster on the moon. So if I have a clock on the moon It beast a little bit faster than a clock on the planet Earth. A clock on Jupiter would be a little bit slower. Then a clock on the earth.

And this is not science fiction. We measure this. In fact We use it for the GPS system. So when a Pentagon general fights a war The war depends on Einstein's theory of generativity and special relativity, or else the troops

Wind up too late to fight that war. Because their clocks are all wrong. So Newton, of course. Thought that time was like an arrow. One second on the earth.

Is one second on the moon. Is one second throughout The universe. Twelve o'clock is twelve o'clock everywhere in the universe. Einstein comes along and says, Not so fast.

Time. Is a river. It's a river that can speed up And slow down. So that time be faster on the moon.

Than it does on the earth. Time in out of space on a rocket ship is slower than time on the earth. A clock on Jupiter be slower than a clock. On the earth. And we measure it.

That's why we have the GPS system. And then we can even go one step beyond that. The river of time Can have whirlpools. Whirlpools in the river of time and can fork.

Fork. Into two rivers, And that allows us to resolve the time travel paradoxes. When you go backwards in time and meet yourself as a child And you kill yourself as a child.

How can you survive as an adult? But he just committed suicide. In the past. This is the grandfather paradox. How can you still be alive if you killed your ancestors?

Well, there's a way around it. And that is if the river of time forks into two rivers And in one river, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at Ford Theater. He died. But if the river of time forks

And you jump stream. And you're now on this other river. You can save Abraham Lincoln from being assassinated at the Ford Theater, but You've saved somebody else's Abraham Lincoln. A parallel

Abraham Lincoln. Because the quantum theory allows for parallel universes. Now the quantum theory allows for parallel electrons. Electrons can be two places at the same time. And how do we use that? In lasers.

That's how lasers work. That's how transistors work. Anything quantum mechanical. Is based on the simple idea That an electron can be two places at the same time. Now if electrons can do it.

Why not people? Well for that matter, why not the universe? So at this point you may say to yourself, This is weird. Well Get used to it.

It's called physics. And for for those interested, at least one pair of twins. who were studied extensively, to my knowledge, Scott Kelly. and his brother Mark Kelly. I had Scott actually astronaut Scott Kelly on on this podcast for people who are interested in

in digging into that further. I wanted to ask you next about Consciousness and your views of consciousness because you could, as you mentioned, have someone who Looks and quacks like a human, let's just say, and passes the Turing test. Is convincingly human from the outside.

Looking. in effectively or looking at How do you think about Consciousness. Yourself.

If you do at all. There are many ways of thinking about consciousness. Let's take a look at the human brain. There's something called the Connectome project. Which is just as Earthshaking as a genome project.

The genome project, of course, sequenced our genes. And change the face of medicine. You cannot go to the doctor's office without at some point Bumping into an application of the Genome Project. It's changed everything.

Criminals can now be caught because of the Genome Project. Well, there's another project out there just as powerful. It is called the Connect Own Project. And it wants to map The human brain.

Every single cell In a map. Of the entire human brain. Now we've already mapped the brain of a fruit fly, believe it or not. A fruit fly has about a hundred thousand neurons.

These hundred thousand neurons can be sliced and diced. And put on a computer. And we have a map. A roadmap of every single neuron In the brain.

Uh a fruit fly. And therefore in principle If you were to replace every neuron with a transistor You could create A working model

Of the brain. Of an insect. Now the next question is Well, what about going up to a mouse? What about going up to a rat?

And then going up to a rabbit. And then going up to a Dog or a cat? Well Is it possible that we could slice and dice their brain so that we would have a roadmap?

Of every single neuron in the brain of a dog. Well What's to prevent it? I'm a physicist. And I realized that there's nothing in the laws of physics preventing us from

From Creating a roadmap of the brain. Of a dog. And if that's possible. Then why not the brain of a human?

A human has a hundred billion neurons in it. That's the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy, a hundred billion. Each neuron in turn is connected to ten thousand other Neurons. To create this vast jungle.

of connections. Call the human brain. Can we Have a map of the human brain? Neuron for neuron?

And the answer is yes. When will it happen? Well, let's be honest. It may take a hundred years. For us to be able to create the Connect On project.

But it is certainly possible. In which case It may be possible to create a twin. A twin of the human brain. Neuron for neuron.

That is identical to that of a human. And then the big question is Is it Conscious. Well, of course, we can debate that question till we're blue in the face. But like I said, as Alan Turing, the father of artificial intelligence once said.

that if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, maybe it is indistinguishable from a duck. So that could be Digital. Consciousness. Do you think that

It would be I don't wanna say as simple because of course it wouldn't necessarily be simple as recreating This Neuron map. Or sort of

in some ways mechanical model. of the brain and then switching it on and that that would in some way create what we experience as consciousness? Or could there be other forces involved? Do you think there are other forces or elements involved that would make it more difficult than that. Well, actually I have a definition of consciousness. Uh the problem with consciousness is that everyone has their own pet definition or no definition at all.

And We're basically debating ghosts because there's no definition. But you see, I have a definition of consciousness that I Laid out in my bestseller the future of the mind Because as a physicist we're you know, we're fascinated by the human brain.

My definition of consciousness is The sum total of all the feedback loops necessary to create a model. A model of yourself. In space and time. in society.

So by that definition, the simplest level of consciousness is a thermostat. A thermostat has a feedback loop. One feedback loop. And it creates a model of itself.

In temperature. It regulates the temperature in a room. So I say that a thermostat has one unit of consciousness. And then let's take a plant. Let's take a a plant in your backyard. I say that has maybe ten units of consciousness.

Is conscious of its temperature. Moisture Direction of the sun. Oxygen. Carbon dioxide content.

A few sensors That give you maybe ten. Feedback loops. And that is the consciousness of a plant. So I think that a plant is also conscious. But let's go up the scale.

The next level of consciousness is a reptile. A reptile has an understanding of space But not much more. It has to understand where the food is located. Where his potential mates are

Where his enemies are So it has to be able to create Feedback loops. Then understand space. Its location in space

I call that level one. Level one consciousness is the thousands of neurons Necessary to create A representation of space for a reptile. That's called the reptilian brain.

Then the center of the brain, because the brain evolves from the back to the front. The back of the brain is the reptilian brain. The center of the brain evolved later. And that's the monkey brain. The limbic.

System. And that governs consciousness in society. That is your role. In society. Who's Top Dog?

Who's the leader of the pack? Who's the guy who's the fall guy in society? How do you defer to these people? Consciousness of a social type. You have to understand your

Place in society. Just like a reptile is consciousness. The size where it is physically located. Then the big question is What is human consciousness?

What feedback loops Does the human brain give a human That differs From Monkeys?

The fur's from reptiles. That is the key question, of which I have an answer. The front part of your brain is what distinguishes us from the animals. And what does that brain do? It creates a model of yourself that

In time. It is a time machine. It daydreams, it imagines worlds that don't exist. Let's do an experiment that tests my theory. Let's go to a your dog tonight in your house.

And teach your dog the meaning of tomorrow. Such a simple concept. Such a simple thing. Teach your dog the meaning of tomorrow. Well, your dog understands space. That's the reptilian brain, the back of your brain. Your dog understands society that is a society of dogs

That's the center of the brain. But the front of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, is not well developed. In dogs. Dogs do not daydream, to the best of our knowledge. They have no understanding of time other than where food is.

Because it was not necessary. It was not necessary for a dog to understand a daydream. Why does a dog have to daydream, for God's sake? And a bear, it understands when to hibernate. But that's automatic. It's reflex.

that governs the time behavior of most animals. Now humans on the other hand, what do we do We constantly daydream. We can't help it. We're constantly imagining What am I gonna do tomorrow?

Oh, what am I gonna do to meet Sally tomorrow? Where's the best path to go? It's constantly creating alternate worlds. Of consciousness. So I say that there are three levels of consciousness.

There is Location, geometric consciousness. Consciousness of space, spatial consciousness. That is the reptile. Then there is social consciousness.

Have a monkey. Of a wolf in a wolp. And then there is temporal consciousness. Which is what humans do. And that is my definition of human consciousness.

Human consciousness is a sum total of all feedback loops Of a human. Assessing its place in time Essentially the future. Constantly daydreaming about what can I do in the future.

Thank you for that definition. I'm very happy you took the time. To do that. And it can help prevent a lot of disagreements if people at first agree on terms or definition of the terms because it varies so tremendously. And I'm I'm going to use that as a segue to the word God, but

I know another scientist whose basic question for test of consciousness, although this is a much more elaborate conversation, is in effect, are you aware that you are aware? So the point being not that that that is useful or accurate, but that Definitions can differ. Yeah. Well, I have a definition. I have a definition of self awareness. Some people say consciousness is self awareness. Well then what is self awareness, right? What is consciousness is your ability to

Instigate all these feedback loops To create a model. A model of yourself in space In society. And in time. And if you think about it.

Every thought Every thought that goes through your mind Does this Every thought in your mind. Is constantly creating a picture of yourself.

In space. In time and in society. In fact I tell people if you want to disprove my theory All you have to do Is create a chain of thinking

There is not Part of the feedback loops that I mentioned. Concerning space. Time and society. Three levels of consciousness. If you can think of a thought A thought that is outside the domain of these three

Levels of consciousness. Then you can disprove my theory. Well, I'm I'm not gonna attempt to do that, but I do wanna ask you

About Einstein, since certainly you're more qualified than I on all things Einstein. Although I did take Mandarin language classes. inside a classroom where Einstein Once taught, that's about as close as I get to in any way being close and uh being familiar with Einstein. The theory of everything that he tried to accomplish, the quote that I have in front of me.

Is that it would allow him to quote read the mind of God, end quote. What do you think? Einstein. might have meant or did mean by God in this instance. Was it glimpsing the source code of everything that would allow you to

have perfect predictive powers. What did he mean by reading the mind of God? Well Einstein wrote prolifically about the question of God. In fact the God letter A letter that he just dashed off one day years ago to a friend about God. It sold for millions of dollars. Shock everyone. Because everyone wanted to know what was Einstein's thoughts about God. Well basically it's very simple.

He rejected the idea of a personal God, the God that you pray to that gives you. Christmas presents, smites the Philistines. He did not believe in a personal God. But he believed in the goddess Spinoza. That is the God of harmony.

Elegance. Beauty, simplicity The universe could have been ugly. The universe could have been random. The universe could have been chaotic.

But it's not. The universe is gorgeous. The universe is rather simple. On a sheet of paper. You can write down the theory of almost everything.

You can write down Einstein's equations. And the quantum standard model of hundreds of subatomic particles It's ugly as hell, but hey. It works at low energies. But on a sheet of paper.

The low energy universe can be summarized by one sheet of paper. It didn't have to be that way. And so Einstein thought of himself as a young child entering a library for the first time. This huge gigantic library And here's this little boy marveling at all these books.

And all he could do was open the first book, chapter one, verse one. And read the first Page. And so Einstein had a very definite Opinion.

About How We as human beings live in an ordered Gorgeous. Simple world.

And then Galileo was also asked that question. Galileo said that the purpose of science. is to determine how the heavens go. That's the purpose of science. The purpose of revision

Is to determine How to go to heaven. So in other words. Religion is about ethics. How to go to heaven.

While science is about natural law. How the heavens go. So as long as you keep these two domains separate. They're actually complimentary. There's no problem at all.

The problem occurs When people in the natural sciences begin to Pontificate about Ethics. And when people who are religious begin to pontificate about natural law.

That's when we get into trouble. If you use and I you've used it, but I don't know. If you normally do in the course of this conversation, you've mentioned the word God. Does that have a personal meaning to you? Well, yes, when I was a child I realized that my parents were Buddhists.

And in Buddhism The universe had no beginning, no end. There's just timeless Nirvana. That's the essence of one aspect of Buddhism. But they put me in a Sunday school, a Presbyterian Sunday school. So hi read the Bible.

I learned all the parables and all the stories. And of course there is Genesis chapter one verse one when the God sets the universe into motion. So the universe had a beginning. So I've had these two contradictory ideas in my head. Either the universe had a beginning.

Or it didn't. No two ways around it, right? Wrong. Now we can meld these two ideas into one theory. The multiverse theory.

You see, our universe had a beginning. Our universe had a genesis. It had a moment Of the big bang. But

Big bang are happening all the time. Because the Big Bang is a quantum event. Meaning that it can happen again. And again. And again.

Creating a bubble bath. of universes. And so The what is the universe expanding into if we have this larger arena? Called

The bubble bath. This empty arena is hyperspace. A hyperspace of string theory. So string theory allows you to meld these two diametrically closed theories Into one theory.

That our universe had a beginning. A big bang. But In a multiverse We have a bubble bath.

A bubble bath of universe is being born all the time, even as we speak. That is the essence of the quantum principle. If there's a probability of it happening, it could happen if you wait long enough. I know. Nothing about strength theory, I'm embarrassed to say. Fortunately, we are talking, and so I feel like I can ask you anything and everything about it.

My layman's understanding is that string theory is controversial. Is that an accurate statement? Are there Proponents and detractors and controversy. Around

strength theory or is is that not the case? Oh sure. In fact that's shows you how healthy science is that in science truth comes out of incorrect debate with untruth. And so good thing we have controversies, but let's Break down the controversies. Some people say that the theory of everything

Is not Testable directly. That is you cannot create a laboratory. That will Test the theory of everything.

Because string theory is a theory of universes. Every solution of string theory is a universe. And so to test this theory you have to be God. To create a baby universe in a laboratory. That's a direct proof of string theory.

Well, I think that misses the whole point. You see, science is not done directly. Most of science is done indirectly. How do we know that the sun is made out of hydrogen? How do we know what's inside a DNA molecule?

How do we know what's inside a proton? É mesmo. We've never been to the sun. But how do we know these things? As we look for echoes.

Echoes from the sun called sunlight. We look for echoes from Life called DNA. So in other words, we have indirect Proof of these things.

And in my book, The God Equation, I give five. Five indirect proof of string theory. The first indirect proof is Well, it happened just A month ago outside Chicago.

At Fermi Laboratory, outside Chicago They found a crack. The first crack in the standard model of particles. As I mentioned, the standard model is an ugly theory. But it works at low energies, you cannot deny

that the universe obeys the laws of the standard model. The quantum theory. But Eventually it must fail. Because the theory is so ugly.

that only a mother could love it. It has thirty six quarks and anti quarks. Three identical Generations of particles. twenty free parameters that you can adjust any way you want.

It's horrible. But it works. So we found the first crack. Meaning that there's a fifth force out there beyond gravity, beyond the nuclear force, a fifth force out there. Which could be

The next octave Of a vibrating string. String theory may give you the next Theory beyond The standard model.

Next. Lisa Is a satellite. That the European Space Agency is funding Which will give us baby pictures.

Baby pictures of the infant universe. It's a gravity wave detector in outer space. That'll pick up gravity waves from the instant of creation. Giving us baby pictures. Baby pictures of the infant universe as is coming out of the womb.

And Maybe. Just maybe. We'll find evidence. Of an umbilical cord.

An umbilical cord connecting our infant universe as it emerges from the womb To a parent universe. in the multiverse of universes. That's well within the cards. As the European space agency and NASA

Launch Lisa. Into orbit. In the coming years. Next. We have Dark Matter.

What is the universe made of? Well, Adams, right? Wrong. Most of the universe is not made of atoms. Most of the universe is made out of dark matter and we're clueless. Clueless to understand what is dark matter.

It holds the galaxy together, is invisible. That's why it's so hard to prove. But No one's been able to determine what it is. String theory predicts

What dark matter is. It again is the next octave. The next octave of the vibrating string is Dark matter. Which makes up most

Of the invisible universe. Then next. The Japanese, the Chinese, and the Europeans. or laying the groundwork for the next generation of atom smashers. Much bigger than the one that I built.

When I was in high school And we hope to find evidence of the fifth force by creating Particles. That are only seen Beyond.

The standard model. And then the fifth testable way to prove the theory is to look for deviations from Newton's laws of gravity. Laws is based on the idea of the inverse square law. If you double the distance away from a star

Gravity goes down by a factor of four. But why four? Why not eight? Why not sixteen? Because we live in a three dimensional world.

The world is three dimensional. But string theory says nope. The world. Is eleven dimensional. And we are a three dimensional bubble.

A three dimensional bubble floating in a much larger eleven dimensional Nirvana. So what is Nirvana? Nirvana is eleven dimensional hyperspace. And what is our universe? A bubble.

A three dimensional bubble floating in Nirvana, which is expanding. And that's called the Big Bang Theory. Anyway, so we're looking for deviations from Newton's laws of gravity. Which could then clinch.

The existence of these higher dimensions. So these are five experimental ways. That we can test string theory. So let's say Flashing forward.

That the God equation Is I don't know if the correct term would be solved for, but That we arrive at the answer.

The quest for a theory of everything. comes to an end. What are the possible applications? Because I I'm sure that there are people listening just to step into their shoes who are saying, this is incredibly fascinating. I could listen to this and explore this. for many, many more hours. But I'm worried that in twenty or thirty or fifty years due to climate change, we will not have the luxury Uh Pursuing

These types of questions. What are some of the applications? What are the uh the outcomes? Well, some of the greatest philosophical questions of all time. What happened before creation? Is time travel possible?

cannot be answered using the standard model. Einstein's equations break down at the instant of the big bang. At the center of a black hole. All the interesting questions, well, they break down. At the point where string theory starts.

This is called the Planck energy. Ten to the nineteen billion electron volts. That's the energy of the big bang. And Einstein's equations fail at that point. That's where string theory comes in.

For example, what happened before the big bang? If string theory is correct and there's a multiverse We now can say what happened before the big bang. The big bang was the collision. Or the splitting of universes.

And we hope to get pictures. Pictures. Verifying this picture. But with Lisa, a satellite to be launched into Ahar's space, With funding from the European Space Agency and from NASA.

And so that's one application is to define what happened before creation. Is there really a multiverse? And what's on the other side of a black hole? Well, most theories say that a black hole is a dot. A dot of infinite density. Anything falling into this dot will die.

But that's the old picture. We don't believe in that anymore. Because these black holes are all spinning. Spinning rapidly. And a spinning black hole collapses to a ring. Not a dot at all, but a ring.

And if you fall through the ring You wind up in Alice's looking glass. The ring is a wormhole. But are wormholes stable? If you watch Star Trek

You realize that one of the problems with wormholes is that sometimes they collapse on you. So you're halfway Through the wormhole and whoops. It collapses on you and cuts you in half. Well, the stability of wormholes

Can be calculated with string theory. String theory is a theory of everything, including wormholes. And we should be able to calculate the stability. Of these wormholes. And then time travel.

Is time travel possible? Well, as I mentioned, Einstein's equations do allow for time travel, but how stable are they? That is, when you enter the time machine, will it blow up? Hawking thought so. Hawking redid the calculation. show that time travel is possible in Einstein's equations, but

And this is a huge but As soon as you enter the time machine, it blows up. Well, it blows up because Again, I've quantum corrections. But string theory allows you to calculate

these quantum corrections, not speculate about them. He speculated that they were infinite. But maybe they're finite. In which case you can go backwards in time. And Visit yourself.

As a child. And then perhaps the greatest application of all Is the fact That the universe He's dying.

Physics is the ultimate death warrant for our universe. Physics says the law of thermodynamics says the second law says that in a closed system, everything must eventually rust. Okay. Fall apart.

And die. In other words. Trillions of years from now. The universe will consist of dead black holes. Dead neutron stars.

And temp the temperature will be near absolute zero. And we'll all freeze to death. This is called the big freeze. And it seems that the laws of physic are a death warrant for the universe. But you see

There's a loophole here. In a closed system. The universe must die. But you see, maybe the universe is not a closed system. Maybe there are wormholes, which means that the universe is an open system.

And the second law of thermodynamics does not apply. or open system. And so what do we do? Trillions of years from now we'll be so advanced. That we'll be able to play with the Planck energy.

Create wormholes to order and create a lifeboat. An interdimensional lifeboat that we can flee into And go to another younger, warmer universe. And start all over again.

In which case We'll have yet another universe to mess up. We've already messed up this universe. So we'll have yet another universe to mess up. We'll have two universes to mess up. Compliments of string theory.

You've mentioned the phrase, you know, the the next octave and terminology that seems to in some way echo of music. You Used play, maybe still play. The trumpet.

Does music Information Or act as a compliment to Any of your thinking around physics or inside of physics? Well, I live in Manhattan where playing the trumpet is impossible.

I guess all of a sudden you have everyone within fifty feet of you complaining. About your trumpet playing. And so I had to give up playing the trumpet, unfortunately. It's a sacrifice of of living in Manhattan. But you see, there's a joke. The joke is that you put four mathematicians together

And with you again? A string quartet. Yeah. Einstein played the violin. Many great physicists were also violinists. Because there's a certain order.

Out of the chaos comes something beautiful. And to a physicist, what is beauty? Beauty to a physicist is symmetry. There's a symmetry in music. For example, the simplest symmetry is a rubber ball.

You rotate the ball And it remains the same. Why is a kaleidoscope beautiful? A kaleidoscope is beautiful because you rotate it. And it turns into itself.

Why is an ice crystal beautiful? Because you rotate an ice crystal by sixty degrees. And it rotates into itself. So that's what beauty is. that if I rearrange the components of an object, it remains the same.

Now you can apply that to music and you can apply that to physics. When you apply that to physics, it means that I have an equation I rotate his components. In a certain precise way. And it rotates into itself.

That's called symmetry. Now the ultimate symmetry would take the universe Just like the prongs of an ice crystal. Rotate all the prongs. So that the universe rotates into itself.

That Is string theory. String theory is the only theory that has a symmetry called super symmetry. That if you rotate all the particles of a vibrating string It rotates into itself.

Just like a kaleidoscope. Just like a An ice crystal. Rotates into itself. That is beautiful.

It's so beautiful, in fact. That if Einstein had never been born. I repeat. If Einstein had never been born We would have discovered

Gravity theory anyway as the lowest octave of the string. The lowest octave of string theory. Is relativity. This is amazing. I mean think about it. If I had ever been never been born We would have discovered general activity anyway.

It's nothing but the lowest set of music. Musical notes on a vibrating string. But strength theory, of course, goes farther. He goes beyond that to the next octave. Well we have new forces.

New particles emerging. And we think that's where dark matter Comes in. Dark matter being this thing that That holes.

The galaxy together. And I have a challenge for young people out there. For you young people out there listening to this interview. If you ever discover the God equation and figure out the mystery of dark matter Then I give you a word of advice. What should you do?

First of all. Tell me first. Tell me first and we'll split the paper, we'll split the Nobel Prize. And we'll both be considered the next Einstein.

I like it. All right, so everybody take note out there. As you're working on this. I would love to ask you About Your decision and I and maybe it was a set of decisions, or maybe it came about

in in some emergent way organically to to really be public facing. And to Teach and explain. science, physic, these concepts that might otherwise not enter

The sort of awareness of the general public. And I had read an interview With you. where you mentioned a name, and I don't know how to pronounce this last name. Is it George Gamal? G A M O W. Gamal. Yeah. Gamo.

I suppose now it seems is recognized as one of the great cosmologists of the last hundred years. But could you speak to If it's still the case, why you think he probably didn't win the Nobel Prize? Well The Big Bang was a controversial theory for many years, especially back in the thirties and forties.

And people wanted proof. You know, show me the beef. What's the proof that there was this explosion out there? And then George Gamov And his students had this idea. that if there was a big bang, it was very hot.

And it exploded. But it cooled down. And we should be able to measure that temperature even today. It should be the temperature of outer space. The temperature of outer space is

Should be the embers. The afterglow Of creation itself. Which is a measurable quantity. Well, they did the calculation.

And they came out with the fact that the universe today Should be about five degrees above absolute zero. Okay. Which is awfully close. So the real value, which is two point seven

Degrees Kelvin. So you realize that they came awfully close to calculating the experimental proof of the big bang itself. Unfortunately, they did their work so early. that it would take a few more decades before we could begin to measure the temperature of outer space

And show that the Radiation of the Big Bang is still with us today. Believe it or not, if you get a transistor radio. And you tune it between frequencies and you get this static. The static, we've all heard that static, right?

A certain amount of that static comes from Jupiter. Jupiter actually gives you a lot of the static on radio. And also The big bang itself. This is amazing.

When you listen to the static on a radio You're listening to Genesis. The Big Bang itself is still reverberating throughout the universe. The temperature is in the microwave range.

And it is, as predicted, about two point seven degrees above absolute zero in Kelvin. And it was George Gamov who had this Brilliant idea. Which unfortunately he never won the Nobel Prize for.

But it shows you with the power of the imagination. And George Gamov, by the way, was also a cartoonist. And he loved to write children's books. In fact, that's when a lot of kids first get interested in cosmology and By reading the books of George Gamov

And he illustrated them himself because he was an amateur cartoonist. That was the impetus for my asking the question because it seems like his colleagues judged him somewhat harshly, or some of them, for Or no, I shouldn't say they judged him harshly, but they're they believed that his writing the of these children's books had an adverse effect on his scientific reputation. I suppose much like some felt Carl Sagan had sort of sullied itself By being on television.

And my understanding is he was denied admission to the National Academy of Sciences. So it seems like There's tremendous value and it's of great service to engage with the public, but at least there used to be certain Risks as a scientist in doing so. Have those risks largely disappeared? Or how did you think about making that decision for yourself? Well, there are definite risks because I'm a research physicist. I'm not a popularizer as as that's not what I do for a living. What I do for a living is work on string theory. But there was a turning point. That turning point came in the nineteen nineties when The physics community was backing the Supica Lider.

The super collider was this machine outside Dallas, Texas. Costing billions of dollars. And in the last days of hearings One congressman asked a physicist Cool.

Will we find God with your machine? If so, I will vote for it. Well, the poor guy didn't know what to say, so he basically said We're gonna find the Higgs boson. Well, you could hear the jaws hit the floor of the United States Congress. Billions of dollars for another goddamn subatomic particle.

Well the role was taken. And it was canceled. And since we physicists have racked our brains. Saying to ourselves What should we have said?

The next time someone asks you, Are we gonna find God with your machine? If so, I will vote for it. Well, I would have said this. I would have said God. By whatever signs or symbols you ascribe to the deity This machine, the super collider.

will take us as humanly possible to his greatest achievements. Genesis. This is a Genesis machine. It will recreate on a small scale. The greatest event in the history of the universe.

It's birth. Unfortunately, we said Higgs boson and she was castle. But the moral of the story is That unless you engage the public They're not gonna give you tax money to do your research, і during the Cold War. We physicists had to say just one word to the United States Congress to get our next atom smher.

All we had to do is say Russia And then Congress will whip out the checkbook and say, How much? Well, those days are gone. We physicists have to sing for our supper now.

We can't just go to Congress and assume they're gonna fund our next Adam Smasher. I mean, come on, give me a break. It's the European Union. Which built the large Hajron Collider, and we were more or less bystanders. as the Europeans took the lead in physics. So the Mecca

The the uh Vatican uh physics is now In Geneva, Switzerland. Not in Dallas, Texas. Because we didn't know how to answer that question. Will we find God with your machine?

But there's there's another reason why I got interested in popularizing science. When I was eight years old, as I mentioned, I was fascinated by this book. That Einstein couldn't finish. So I went to the library. 'Cause I knew there was gonna be lots of stuff in that book. Things about the fourth dimension.

About anti matter. About Wormholes and higher dimensions. I went to the library and I found Nothing.

Absolutely nothing. Yeah, a few primaries about relativity, but nothing about the fourth dimension. Nothing about space warps. Nothing about hyperdrive. Nothing. And then I said to myself, When I grow up

And I become a theoretical physicist. I wanna write books For myself. For myself as an eight year old kid. I wanna be able to explain the most advanced concepts to an eight year old child.

Because that's How old I was When I got hooked. On Physics.

And today, sure enough, eight year old kids email me. And they say that yes, my books are the first introduction they've had. The things that normally they see in a science fiction movie. But of course it's real science. Not science fiction that they hunger for.

Because once you put down a science fiction book, you realize It's entertainment. I mean, give me a break. It's entertainment. It's not the universe at all. But when you learn physics.

You learn that some of the things that you find in science fiction are in fact The cutting edge of physics. In fact, my favorite quote from Arthur C Clarke Is that Any sufficiently advanced technology is

is indistinguishable from Magic. That is a great quote. So I wanna I wanna actually use a another quote from a science fiction author. to frame a question. And so this quote, which is often used and abused in all sorts of ways, but it's from William Gibson, or more accurately, I think it is actually pulled from Neuromancer, but it may be a William Gibson quote, which is along the lines of the future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed. And Just a few more questions left on my side. For the physics of the future, you interviewed three hundred or so of the world's top scientists, many of them Nobel laureates.

About their vision for the next twenty to a hundred years in a whole variety of fields, computers, robotics, biotech, space travel, and so on. So here we are in twenty twenty one. Are there any examples in your mind that you're particularly excited about? Of

Samples of the future being here right now. That are going to be more widespread. Or known, say ten years, twenty years from now. Well, in that book I anticipated w of course Moore's Law. That computer power doubles every uh eighteen months.

And that's an exponential increase in computer power. Not linear. See our brain is linear. When we talk about the future, we talk linearly in terms of five years, ten years, twenty years As if it's a straight line. But if it's exponential, it could blow up.

It can just blow up and That's what's happening in my books. When I write about these things. Many people say to me, Oh, come on, give me a break. This is not gonna happen. I mean, this is just science fiction. Well

Bingo. A few years later, it happens. And then people come up to me and they say How did you do that? How did you do that?

And it's actually rather simple. I interview the people who are working on these technologies. They're well aware of Morris Law. And as a consequence, their time frame is much different from the average person's time frame. Look at the Genome Project.

When the GM project was first proposed. Scientists could only sequence maybe one gene at a time. It was Painful one gene at a time. And the idea of sequencing three billion base pairs Was just out of the question.

In fact, I I gave a talk in Frankfurt, Germany once. I'll still remember that. A scientist stood up and said, Your predictions are All wrong. There's no way The human genome?

Completely sequenced by twenty twenty. Come on, it's not gonna happen. And he just ranted and raved because he said, I sequence these genes. I know how long it takes to sequence one gene. Well guess what?

Even before twenty twenty We sequence the entire genome. And now You can do it for a few hundred bucks. I mean who would have thought?

Because our brain is linear. It is not exponential. But what drives a lot of these technologies is computer power, which obeys Moore's Law, which is exponential. If we look back, this is gonna come back to science instead of science fiction, but right now for fun, I am reading a bunch of Heinlein because I haven't done I haven't read any Robert Heinlein in a long time. I'm reading Time Enough for Love. And Lazarus Long is one of the main characters, as he is in many

of Heinlein's novels. And it's incredible for when this book was written. How Prescient in some ways he was with respect to technology, but There are a couple of misses.

they're still using pens and paper for just about everything. So I I think maybe twenty, thirty years ago, people would have predicted flying cars. We don't have flying cars, but Perhaps they wouldn't have seen. The internet. And drones and certainly some of the medical technologies and advances in neuroscience.

Are there any particular predictions or trends that you would like to or could mention that you think are sort of paving the way for an exciting future in the next Five to ten or to even twenty years, but not a thousand years.

A lot of the breakthroughs are going to be happening with the human brain. The human brain is a was a black Box for generations and generations. We didn't know what the hell was happening in the brain. We knew it was important. But it was just magic the way the brain did things. Now of course we're picking apart the brain with MRI machines.

We can actually extract images You if you think about a presence face. we can actually extract that image out of the living brain using MRI machines. Which is incredible. In fact, memories.

Memories can now be taken from the brain, the brain of mice, let's be fair about it. But now the brain of monkeys, we can actually take Memories. Simple memories. And put them on the internet. So that other monkeys can enjoy these memories. Next will be Alzheimer's patients.

Alzheimer's patients will have a memory chip so that when you push a button Then memories come flooding into their mind. Reminding them of who they are, where they live. So they don't wander the streets endlessly. unaware of who they are and where they're going.

And so that is gonna be this huge process by which we create Brain net. Brainnet is the future of the internet. The internet is digital. But why does it have to be digital? It's so clumsy. Why can't it be neural?

Because that's how the brain works. And so we're gonna have Brain net. Where memories Emotions.

Feelings are sent to On the internet. And think about that. What is television? What are the movies? It's nothing but a two dimensional flat screen with sound. That's it. How primitive!

In the future we'll have the internet of emotions and feelings So that we'll send feelings on the internet and who wants to see a movie anymore where you can't feel What the actors and actresses are feeling. And so uh think of teenagers. Teenagers as well love it because they put a happy face at the end of every sentence.

In the future they just put the memory. The sensation at the end of every sentence So this will change the way humans interact with each other. And it also means that we'll be able to feel the suffering of other people. When you read that certain people are suffering, we say to ourselves, Oh, come on. Give me a break. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, sure.

But if you could really feel what they're feeling. you can begin to realize that some people's sufferings are are genuine. Not fake at all. So we'll be able to put ourselves in other people's shoes. So in the same way that the invention of the telephone

Opened up Human interactions on a new scale. The internet, of course, made it numerically possible to communicate around the world. But now We'll be able to dream about feelings.

And emotions. And this will replace the movies. It'll replace television. It will be the way humans communicate with each other. In the future.

Not digitally. But with neurons. What a future it will be. Doctor Caki, you've been so generous with your time. Your latest Best seller and you have many bestsellers. Your latest is the God equation.

The subtitle is The Quest for a Theory of Everything. Is that where you would suggest people start? You have Certainly a spectrum of books. that you've published, you do a lot of work in many different areas in many different types of media. Would you suggest people start with the God equation? Is there another book of yours you'd pair with it? Well it depends on which way you want to go. Uh the God equation will be a very good introduction to what I do for a living. And that is the theory of everything.

Which is the crowning achievement once we get it. Of two thousand years of science. But if you're interested in science fiction, you can get a copy of my book, Physics of the Impossible. Where I break down Time travel, ray guns.

Buying cars. Everything you see on the silver screen. I break down In physics of the impossible But if you are interested in the quantum applications of all this

Get a copy of my book, Parallel Worlds. Where I talk about what the quantum means. And how that's gonna ch how it already is changing the way we view the universe. Einstein and Newton were wrong about this. The universe really is probabilistic.

Which means that electrons can be two places at the same time. Which means that maybe people Can also be two places at the same time. So that's my book, Parallel Worlds. But just go to the uh internet.

My Internet website is mcaku dot org MKAKU. And on Facebook I have about four and a half million fans on Facebook. Wonderful. We will link to all of those. Certainly people can find you at mkaku.org.

on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, they can find you Michio Kaku. Easy to find, and we'll link to all of those at Tim.blog forward slash podcast in the show notes for everyone. Is there anything else before we wrap up that you would like to say to my audience any closing comments or any requests that you would like to make of listeners or anything at all? Uh no, I think pretty much we've covered everything. By the way, my favorite Einstein quote is that if a theory cannot be explained to a child Then the theory is probably worthless. Meaning that

All grey theories are based on simple Principle. Which are pictoral. Principles that even a child can visualize Newton's laws can be summarized by billiard balls bumping into each other.

Einstein used clocks and meter sticks to illustrate his principles. General Nativity can be explained in terms of bed sheets. And so We realize that if a child can understand it It's because it is explained pictorially

And because it's based on principles rather than memorization of details. What you're gonna forget anyway. That is a great place to to wrap up and a great place to end. And I think you do an excellent job of Not just popularizing.

Science But taking complex subjects and reducing them to principles and painting pictures in a way that enable people to understand. So I thank you. for your work. And I also thank you for the time. This has been incredible fun. So thank you very much. Yep, and my other motto is if it ain't fun, don't do it. That's a great pairing. That is an exceptional pairing. Thank you so much, Dr. Kaka. I really appreciate it. Okay. My pleasure.

Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. but you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend. Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page. that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. Kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me. by my friends including a lot of podcast guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out,

Just go to Tim.blog slash Friday. Type that into your browser. Tim.blog slash Friday. Drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time what I would take if I could only take one supplement. I've been asked this for years. The answer is invariably AG1 by Athletic Greens. I view it as all in one nutritional insurance. So you can cover your bases. If you're traveling, if you're just busy. You're not sure if your meals are where they should be. It covers your bases. I've recommended it since the four hour body, which was God, eons ago, 2010, and I did not get paid to do so. With approximately 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food source ingredients, you'll be hard pressed to find a more nutrient dense formula on the market.

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