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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Michio Kaku
Read between
February 19 - March 14, 2021
In other words, our destiny is to become the gods that we once feared and worshipped. Science will give us the means by which we can shape the universe in our image. The question is whether we will have the wisdom of Solomon to accompany this vast celestial power.
The Nazi Party offered him the dream of a lifetime: directorship of a massive project to build the rocket of the future, with a nearly unlimited budget, employing the cream of German science. Von Braun claimed that being offered membership in the Nazi Party and even the SS was a rite of passage for government workers rather than a reflection of his politics. But when you make a deal with the devil, the devil always asks for more.
(Since space is at a premium, astronauts have historically been small people. Yuri Gagarin, for example, was only five feet two inches tall.)
This plan is not without risk, as NASA fears that even slight perturbations in the orbit of Bennu might cause it to hit
the Earth on its next pass. (If it does strike the Earth, it would do so with the force of a thousand Hiroshima bombs.)
Concerning!
Another question often raised by children is why space probes aren’t destroyed when they go through the asteroid belt. In the movie Star Wars, our heroes are almost hit by the huge chunks of rock flying around. While the Hollywood portrayal is thrilling, fortunately, it does not truly represent the density of the asteroid belt, which is mainly an empty vacuum with occasional rocks passing by. Future miners and settlers who brave outer space in search of new lands will, for the most part, find the asteroid belt relatively easy to navigate.
I honestly never thought about the relative density of asteroids in the asteroid belt before... of course this makes sense given the vastness of space but I definitely did imagine it differently!
(A further consequence of weightlessness that wasn’t taken seriously until recently is damage to the optic nerve. In the past, astronauts noted that their eyesight deteriorated after long missions in space. Detailed scans of their eyes show that their optic nerves are often inflamed, probably due to pressure from the fluid of the eye.)
On the day before Halloween in 1938, Orson Welles took excerpts from the novel to create a series of short, dramatic, realistic radio broadcasts. The program was presented as if the Earth was actually being invaded by hostile Martians. Some people began to panic, hearing updates on the invasion—how the armed forces had been overwhelmed by death rays, and how the Martians were converging on New York City in giant tripods. Rumors from terrified listeners spread rapidly across the country. In the aftermath of this chaos, the major media vowed never again to broadcast a hoax as if it were real.
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Isn’t this just an urban legend?
In fact, a new Martian Olympics may emerge, including radical sports that are not physically possible on Earth and don’t even exist yet.
Neat!
A prime tourist attraction will be the Red Planet’s two giant polar ice caps, which feature two kinds of ice and differ in composition from those on the Earth. One type of ice cap is made of frozen water. These are a permanent fixture on the landscape and remain roughly the same for much of the Martian year. The other variety consists of dry ice, or frozen carbon dioxide, and they expand or contract depending on the season. In the summer, the dry ice vaporizes and disappears, leaving only the ice caps composed of water. As a result, the appearance of the polar ice caps will vary during the
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But balloons and blimps could be a viable means of transportation, in spite of the low temperature and low atmospheric pressure. They could explore the Martian terrain at much closer distances than orbiters, yet still cover vast areas of the surface. One day, fleets of balloons and blimps may be a regular sight over the geologic wonders there.
The cores of the planets farther from the sun contained ice, which was plentiful at that distance, as well as rock. Ice acts as a glue, so cores with ice could grow to be ten times larger than cores made only of rock. Their gravity became so strong that they could capture much of the hydrogen gas that remained in the early solar plane. The larger they grew, the more gas they attracted, until they exhausted all the hydrogen in their neighborhood.
Jupiter is surrounded by a huge, deadly band of radiation, which is the source of much of the static you hear on the radio and TV. (A small fraction of that static comes from the Big Bang itself.)
This is important because it may be that only solar systems with circular planetary orbits like ours are conducive to life.
(According to many dermatologists, the one ingredient in all these “anti-aging” potions that actually works is moisturizer.)
A farmer in a poor country does a simple calculus: every child makes him richer. Children work in the fields and cost very little to raise. Room and board on a farm are almost free. But when you move to the city, the calculus flips the other way. Every child makes you poorer. Your child goes to school, not the fields. Your child has to be fed from the grocery store, which is expensive. Your kid has to live in an apartment, which costs money. So a peasant, once he becomes more urban, wants two kids, not ten.
Studies of numerous nations have found a distinct pattern: the birthrate falls dramatically as a nation industrializes, urbanizes, and educates young girls.
Critics claim that only the rich and powerful will be able to benefit from this technology. Francis Fukuyama of Stanford has warned that transhumanism is “among the world’s most dangerous ideas,” arguing that if the DNA of our descendants is altered, it will likely change human behavior, create more inequality, and hence undermine democracy.
Our basic personality has not changed much since we first emerged as modern humans two hundred thousand years ago. Although today we have nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, our fundamental desires have remained the same.
When Louise Brown, the world’s first test tube baby, was born in 1978, the technology that made it possible was denounced by many clergymen and columnists, who believed that we were playing God. Today there are more than five million test tube babies in the world; your spouse or best friend may be one.
(One problem we give our Ph.D. students is to calculate the probability that some of your waves spread out to Mars and that one day you will get out of bed and wake up on the Red Planet.)
Okay but what’s the answer? How worried should I be?
If you had a supermicroscope, you would see that it is not a particle at all but a vibrating string. The electron appears to be a point particle only because the string is so tiny.
God I know that this is a leading theory in physics and I know people smarter than me buy into it so I’m sure it’s valid but it does sound so fake.
The universe is a symphony of strings, physics represents the harmonies of these notes, and the “mind of God” that Einstein chased after for so many decades is cosmic music resonating through hyperspace.
(In fact, helium was not found on Earth first. In 1868, scientists discovered evidence of a strange new element when analyzing sunlight during an eclipse, which was christened “helium,” meaning “metal from the sun.” It wasn’t until 1895 that direct evidence of helium was discovered on the Earth, when scientists realized it was a gas and not a metal.)
About four billion years from now, it will collide with Andromeda, the nearest spiral galaxy.
But if the expansion of the universe is happening and things are getting further away, how is this happening?
As it gets colder and colder, intelligent beings will adjust and think slower and slower, according to physicist Freeman Dyson. Eventually, a simple thought may take millions of years, but these beings will never notice because all other beings will think slower as well. It would be possible to have intelligent conversations between these beings, even if it takes millions of years. So from this point of view, everything would seem normal.
Wild!
