Quantum Supremacy: How the Quantum Computer Revolution Will Change Everything

by Michio Kaku

“It is not that machines are going to replace chemists. It’s that the chemists who use machines will replace those that don’t.”

“I propose to consider the question: Can machines think?”

is the brain a Turing machine of some sort?

no definitive test or benchmark for consciousness.

objects do not really exist unless you observe them. The philosophy can be summarized as “To be is to be perceived.”

“Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced.”

prove yourself wrong as soon as possible.” In other words, swallow your pride and admit that what you are doing may be a dead end, and prove it as soon as possible so you can move on to the next idea.

The hard part is now to complete the final step and find a cheap way to combine hydrogen with CO2 to create fuel. This is difficult because CO2 is a remarkably stable molecule. Harvard chemist Daniel Nocera thinks he has found a viable way to accomplish this. He uses a bacterium, Ralstonia eutropha, which can combine hydrogen with CO2 to create fuel and biomass, with an efficiency of 11 percent. Nocera says, “We did a complete artificial photosynthesis that’s 10 to 100 times better than nature….It’s not a chemistry problem, necessarily, anymore. It’s not even a technology problem.” To him, the big problem has now been solved. Now, it’s a question of economics, that is, whether industry and government will get behind recycling CO2 given its cost.

The Fountain of Youth, instead of being a fabled wellspring of eternal life, might turn out to be a quantum computer.

But a higher metabolism rate also means a higher oxidation rate, which builds up errors in our organs.

if you eat 30 percent fewer calories, you can live roughly 30 percent longer, depending on the animal being studied.

that eating less reduces your oxidation rate, thereby slowing the aging process.

He replied that the earth sits in the middle of a “cosmic shooting gallery,” so it was only a matter of time before one day we are confronted with a giant asteroid that might destroy the earth. That’s why, he told me, we have to become a “two-planet species.” That is our destiny. We should explore outer space, he said, not just to discover new worlds, but to find another safe haven in the heavens.

you can imagine a strange planet, there is probably one like it out there.

embarrassingly, we don’t know what dark matter is made of. It is apparently made of a substance never seen before, something that lies outside the Standard Model of subatomic particles.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”