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Physics of the Impossible

4.09  ·  Rating details ·  37,586 ratings  ·  1,460 reviews
A fascinating exploration of the science of the impossible—from death rays and force fields to invisibility cloaks—revealing to what extent such technologies might be achievable decades or millennia into the future.

One hundred years ago, scientists would have said that lasers, televisions, and the atomic bomb were beyond the realm of physical possibility. In Physics of the
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Hardcover, 329 pages
Published March 11th 2008 by Doubleday Books
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Average rating 4.09  · 
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 ·  37,586 ratings  ·  1,460 reviews


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Mario the lone bookwolf
ENGLISH

Understandable and neutral, the bow spans from possible to fantastic.

To gild the skills of a highly regarded and successful scientist by cultivating such an accessible and entertaining writing culture that is second to none in the current non-fiction field is at least as much a part of Kaku as the co-founding of string theory. If not a bit more, because the awakening of enthusiasm of others for the miracles around us is considered to be almost even higher than the important, but for most
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Orhan Pelinkovic
Aug 06, 2020 rated it really liked it
While reading this book, I was thinking to myself, this book can easily be converted into a script for a television show. It's written in a form as if it was prepared in advance for a narrator to recite it on a stage set. Sure enough, a TV series was produced based on the Physics of the Impossible a year after the book's release.

Michio Kaku, who governs so well with all the complexities of modern physics, very briefly, but effectively, introduces the development of several branches of physics, s
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Servius  Heiner
Mar 30, 2008 rated it really liked it
Shelves: science
This book is standard Michio Kaku. He starts off discussing the three classes of impossibilities. (Understand that much of what you would think of as impossible is not really impossible. In order to be proven impossible it must break a law of physics, there is not much that does.)

“Class 1 Impossibilities: These are technologies that are impossible today but that do not violate the known laws of physics. So they might be possible in this century, or perhaps the next, in modified form. They includ
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Felicia
Dec 02, 2009 rated it it was amazing
Looking for something substantive? Look for this author, his books are so interesting and engrossing. Here he dissects all the Sci-Fi tropes and explains how each of them is impossible, or what the hell it would take to make it a reality. I learned quite a lot and it was not too jumbled for a non-scientist like me to read.
Simon Clark
Jan 22, 2017 rated it really liked it
Shelves: physics-books
When I was a schoolkid I studied physics in part because - like many physics students - I wanted to know how to build the cool stuff in science fiction. The death star. Lightsabers. Warp drive. This is the stuff of Kaku's riotous introduction to modern physics and if I'd read it when I was in school it would have blown my goddamn mind.

I went into this book anticipating that I wouldn't learn all of that much - after all I have a masters degree in physics and read widely before studying at univers
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Trevor
Aug 09, 2009 rated it really liked it
Shelves: science
There is no denying that this is an interesting book and one that presented many of the problems of physics in a way that is comprehensive, comprehensible and engaging. I think other people (people with a greater interest in science fiction, particularly) will find this book even more interesting than I did and more accessible than your standard pop science book on physics. I hadn’t realised I knew quite so little about science fiction – I hadn’t ever really thought about the fact that I hadn’t ...more
John Stevens
Mar 06, 2009 rated it it was amazing
Dr. Michio Kaku is perhaps the or one of the most brilliant minds in theoretical physics living today. I've seen him present several concepts and theories on the Discovery Channel.
I am a man who truly appreciates the marvel of theoretical physics. The stuff of Albert Einstein. Although I have some education along these lines and have watched and read quite a lot, I still find it very difficult to follow.
In this book/audio book, Dr. Kaku takes us on a journey into all of those "sci-fi sciences"
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Muhammad
How often do you wonder about The Future? Can you conceive of the technologies people are going to use in the next millennium? Or is it at all conceivable? Is the ever growing ‘Technology Monster’ finally going to define or explain ‘every’ phenomenon around us some time in the far future? What about super intelligent extraterrestrials? Do they really exist? Are they going to invade us like the Hollywood ones? Can humans use psychokinesis in their regular lives as Jean Grey does in the X-Men comi ...more
Bettie


Description: A fascinating exploration of the science of the impossible—from death rays and force fields to invisibility cloaks—revealing to what extent such technologies might be achievable decades or millennia into the future.

One hundred years ago, scientists would have said that lasers, televisions, and the atomic bomb were beyond the realm of physical possibility. In Physics of the Impossible, the renowned physicist Michio Kaku explores to what extent the technologies and devices of science
...more
Kara Babcock
I was never promised a flying car.

What I mean to say is that my generation was never the generation of flying cars. We grew up knowing better. It’s been seventy years since we started breaking open atomic nuclei to harness their incredible capacity for destruction and creation, and we are still sucking fossilized plants from the bowels of the Earth and lighting it on fire as fuel. My parents grew up watching men go to the moon. I grew up watching NASA’s budget bleeding out on the table, their sh
...more
Julian Worker
Dec 31, 2020 rated it it was amazing
This books shows a wonderful science writer at work. I don't take Michio Kaku for granted any longer having recently tried to read another science book, written by a less skilled writer, and found it to be slow progress.

This book is a joy. It explains all the scientific details clearly and simply, outlining why some of the impossibilites are more impossible than others. The writer refers back to leading figures of the past such as Newton, Maxwell, and Faraday as well as 20th-Century scientists s
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Doug
Apr 23, 2008 rated it it was amazing
Great introduction to current issues in Physics - without the pain of complex equations. Also, fun as the author esplores the plausibility of the physics in the Star Trek, Star Wars, and Time travel movies and books.
Riju Ganguly
Jul 01, 2020 rated it it was amazing  ·  review of another edition
Best thing about this book is that it covers EVERYTHING that comes to our mind while we are speculating about the future, but not in a dystopic manner.
Worst thing about this book is that it's FULL of Physics!
Now, don't get me wrong. The title fairly screams at us. And I was joking.
This is truly an amazing book. I have been one of the hardened admirers of Kaku ever since reading his absolutely awesome book 'Hyperspace'. This book only enhanced his reputation, as far as I'm concerned.
In the inimit
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owilkumowa
Feb 22, 2019 rated it it was amazing
Shelves: nonfiction, science
If school textbooks were written by Michio Kaku, half of the kids would grow up to be engineers.
Eric
Jun 28, 2008 rated it it was amazing
While I really liked this book, a lot, it felt incomplete to me in that much of the math and science behind these concepts is not very in depth. Sure, it's not a text book, but I would have liked to have seen equations or at least references to something that could explain the math.

Also, while there is a TARDIS on the cover, there is no TARDIS, and no mention of Doctor Who at all in the book. I felt slightly cheated, but not enough to not give it a five star rating.

Oh, and the other quibble. V
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Huda
Nov 22, 2014 rated it it was amazing  ·  review of another edition
Shelves: favorites
i love love love this book.

There, I had to say that first before I get anything else out.

Searching for the right person to talk to me about science has proven difficult, and I probably didn't even know it was difficult to connect to an author on this subject before I got to know Michio Kaku.

In Physics of the Impossible, readers will explore possibilities of sci-fi features in real-time. So they would be questions like: how close are we to building a force field? Is invisibility actually possib
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Fred Forbes
Oct 26, 2013 rated it really liked it
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, psychok
...more
Judyta Szacillo
Mar 18, 2015 rated it really liked it
Shelves: natural-sciences
After a five-star impression that the Author had left me with his "Parallel Worlds", I couldn't give this book more than a four. I liked it very much, but I didn't feel that interested in all those ray guns, death stars and light sabres. The second and the third part of the book were more like "Parallel Worlds", exploring the very edge of theoretical physics and its impact on our understanding of the reality - and these parts I liked much better. I can't say I've understood everything, but even ...more
Mohamedridha Alaskari محمد رضا العسكري
There's no denying in the scientific researches. Kaku encouraged for free thinking, "thinking out of the box!"

I believe teleportation is the most interesting matter in this book. Hence it doesn't matter what's your beliefs bit you need to bear in mind that everything is possible if not at the current time it going to be happening in the future. Whether you like it or not. Thank you Kaku
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Gorab
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
This was a mind bending fascinating read!
The book is well structured into 3 classes of impossibilities.

Class 1:
The kind of possibilities that does not breaks any physical laws, but seems difficult to achieve in near future.
Examples: Invisibility, Teleportation, Telepathy, Death Stars, Antimatter and Antiuniverse - all of them possible as they adhere to the scientific laws that we know of today.

Class 2:
Deals with the stuff that is speculative - as in beyond our current realm of understandi
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Gendou
Jan 23, 2010 rated it did not like it
Notice that I filed this one under fiction. Kaku is a HACK. This whole book is an exercise in misunderstanding the word "impossible". There is no scientific value to this book. It is a fanciful weave of outright scientific untruth, confusing metaphors, and semantic diarrhea. DO NOT READ THIS BOOK! ...more
Aya
Jun 23, 2019 rated it it was amazing
This book is a must read. it explains whether the phenomenon happening in sci-fi are impossible or not with our current knowledge of physics. Its explaining physics in a fun way
Jenny williams
Dec 03, 2012 rated it it was amazing
I love Michio Kaku's approach, theories and views. I follow his website from time to time to see what different discoveries he makes every day. Physics Of The Impossible is a novel that requires some background knowledge and understanding of physics to truly get what he is saying. This book had example after example after example of all of the different things they said we would NEVER be able to do as a human race and just a decade or so later we are doing far more than what scientists said was ...more
Ashley Reid
Absolutely loved this, but unfortunately had to gloss over some of the waffly parts as I too much uni reading to do at the time.

I will probably re-read this book at some point though because I enjoyed most of it, and the parts I skipped over may be worth revisiting when I'm in a better mood.
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Terence
Michio Kaku is nothing if not optimistic. Is there anything currently in the realm of SF that we cannot do (in some fashion), eventually? Apparently not. Even perpetual motion and precognition may be possible with a better understanding of our universe (or multiverse). In Physics of the Impossible, Kaku, theoretical physicist and one of the developers of string theory, looks at some of the common technologies found in SF and discusses – in a very general and user-friendly way – whether or not th ...more
Robert Day
Mar 04, 2015 rated it it was amazing  ·  review of another edition
Shelves: knowledge
I don't have a TV.

That used to be a radical statement, but now that everything (yes - everything!) is on the Internet, people don't fuss so much.

Thing is though - I don't know people - unless they appear in movies or in the ads that clog up websites.

Which brings us to Michio Kaku.

Without my knowledge, he has sneaked into the world and done stuff like this: he is a futurist, populariser of science, and theoretical physicist, as well as a bestselling author and the host of two radio programs. He i
...more
Claudia
May 19, 2013 rated it really liked it  ·  review of another edition
Shelves: science, physics
Nothing is imposible :)
Kimberly
What do I think? What do I not think? Why should I think anything if Stephen Hawking can "change his mind" and make a total about-face on there being a theory of everything. My take on this book is that this is, in part, a tongue-in-cheek attempt by a physicist with a profound sense of humor to try to explain "everything" even when he discusses the debates about theories and the arguments amongst physicists themselves as to the "truth" of our universe. The best parts of this book are where the a ...more
Petra
Feb 01, 2014 rated it really liked it
Theories have four stages of acceptance:
i. this is worthless nonsense;
ii. this is interesting, but perverse;
iii. this is true, but quite unimportant;
iv. I always said so.
—J. B. S. HALDANE, 1963

This is book basically deals with the concept of "Impossibility", and arrive at the conclusion that impossibility is a relative concept. Throughout history, notable scientists labeled things impossible, only to be realized in a relatively short time. For example :one of the most prominent scientist of
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(Arabic: ميشيو كاكو
Russian: Митио Каку
Chinese: 加來道雄
Japanese: ミチオ・カク)


Dr. Michio Kaku is an American theoretical physicist at the City College of New York , best-selling author, a futurist, and a communicator and popularizer of science. He has written several books about physics and related topics of science.

He has written two New York Times Best Sellers, Physics of the Impossible (2008) and Physic
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