Quotes from Michio Kaku

Either this guy's a total idiot, or he's the biggest genius to hit physics in years!

I once wrote a biography of Albert Einstein, called Einstein's Cosmos, and had to delve into the minute details of his private life. I had known that Einstein's youngest son was afflicted with schizophrenia, but did not realize the enormous emotional toll that it had taken on the great scientist's life.

I. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. II. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. III. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. —ARTHUR C. CLARKE'S THREE LAWS

Our eyes also fool us into thinking we can see depth. The retinas of our eyes are two-dimensional, but because we have two eyes separated by a few inches, the left and right brain merge these two images, giving us the false sense of a third dimension.

In my field, physics, I see that most of us are engage in physics not for the money but for the sheer joy of discovery an innovation.

But if I make an observation, what is to determine which state I am in? This means that someone else has to observe me to collapse my wave function.

Historically, with each new scientific discovery, a new model of the brain has emerged. One of the earliest models of the brain was the "homunculus," a little man who lived inside the brain and made all the decisions. This picture was not very helpful, since it did not explain what was happening in the brain of the homunculus.

I sometimes think about how easy it is for a nation to slip into complacency and ruin after decades of basking in the sun. Since science is the engine of prosperity, nations that turn their backs on science and technology eventually enter a downward spiral.

I concluded that, unhappily, I'd been born into a world dominated by a rampaging monster called 'law' that was both all-powerful and all-stupid

The handsome and the beautiful may earn the admiration of society, but all the wondrous inventions of the future are a by-product of the unsung, anonymous scientists.

My own emotional feeling is that life has a purpose—ultimately, I'd guess that the purpose it has is the purpose that we've given it and not a purpose that came out of any cosmic design.

Using MRI scans, scientists can now read thoughts circulating in our brains. Scientists can also insert a chip into the brain of a patient who is totally paralyzed and connect it to a computer, so that through thought alone that patient can surf the web, read and write e-mails, play video games, control their wheelchair, operate household appliances, and manipulate mechanical arms. In fact, such patients can do anything a normal person can do via a computer.

For the ten-dimensional universe, however, there are apparemtly millions of ways in which to curl up. To calculate which state the ten-dimensional universe prefers, we need to solve the field theory of strings using the theory of phase transitions, the most difficult problem in quantum theory.

And Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, said in 1943, "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.

My feeling is that in religion there are very serious things, like the existence of God and the brotherhood of man, that are serious truths that we will one day learn to appreciate in perhaps a different language on a different scale... So I think there are real truths there, and in the sense the majesty of the universe is meaningful, and we do owe honor and awe to its Creator.

The Fate of the Earth, points

he was able to estimate the size of the nucleus of the atom. It was one hundred thousand times smaller than the atom itself.

One reason why childhood lasts so long is because there is so much subtle information to absorb about human society and the natural world.

A man said to the universe: "Sir, I exist!" "However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me a sense of obligation.

Scientists can also insert a chip into the brain of a patient who is totally paralyzed and connect it to a computer, so that through thought alone that patient can surf the web, read and write e-mails, play video games, control their wheelchair, operate household appliances, and manipulate mechanical arms. In fact, such patients can do anything a normal person can do via a computer.

The olfactory sensors of dogs, he said, had evolved over millions of years to be able to detect a handful of molecules, and that kind of sensitivity is extremely difficult to match, even with our most finely tuned sensors. It's likely that we will continue to rely on dogs at airports for the foreseeable future.

By 2020, the flat panel displays will likely come in a variety of forms. They will be miniaturized to work as wristwatch screens and may be added to eyeglasses or key chains. Eventually, they will become so cheap they will be everywhere: on the backs of airplane seats, in photo albums, in elevators, on notepads, on billboards, on the sides of buses and trains. They may one day be as common as paper.

The lesson here is that it is very dangerous to bet against the future.

First is Epsilon, which equals 0.007, which is the relative amount of hydrogen that converts to helium via fusion in the big bang.