Quotes from Michio Kaku

It is also possible to carve atomic devices using electron beams. For example, scientists at Cornell University have made the world's smallest guitar, one that is twenty times smaller than a human hair, carved out of crystalline silicon. It has six strings, each one hundred atoms thick, and the strings can be plucked using an atomic force microscope. (This guitar will actually play music, but the frequencies it produces are well above the range of the human ear.)

One consequence of this formulation is that a physical principle that unites many smaller physical theories must autoomatically unite many seemingly unrelated branches of mathematics. This is precisely what string theory accomplishes. In fact, of all physical theories, string theory unites by far the largest number of branches of mathematics into a single coherent picture. Perhaps one of the by-products of the physicists' quest for unification will be the unification of mathematics as well.

Atomic machines are actually found in nature. Cells can swim freely in water because they can wiggle tiny hairs. But when one analyzes the joint between the hair and the cell, one sees that it is actually an atomic machine that allows the hair to move in all directions. So one key to developing nanotechnology is to copy nature, which mastered the art of atomic machines billions of years ago.)

The problem is that while twenty-first-century physics fell accidentally into the twentieth century, twenty-first-century mathematics hasn't been invented yet. It seems that we may have to wait for twenty-first-century mathematics before we can make any progress, or the current generation of physicists must invent twenty-first-century mathematics on their own.

But Planck would always reassure Einstein. He would write, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because the opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

By the year 2020 or 2030, all this will finally culminate in personalized DNA codes. Gilbert claims, "You'll be able to go to a drugstore and get your own DNA sequence on a CD, which you can then analyze at home on your Macintosh.

There isn't an equation that can confirm something as self-evident (to us humans) as "muggy weather is uncomfortable" or "mothers are older than their daughters." There has been some progress made in translating this sort of information into mathematical logic, but to catalog the common sense of a four-year-old child would require hundreds of millions of lines of computer code. As Voltaire once said, "Common sense is not so common.

Some people seek meaning in life through personal gain, through personal relationships, or through personal experiences. However, it seems to me that being blessed with the intellect to divine the ultimate secrets of nature gives meaning enough to life.

How wonderful that we have met with paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress. —NIELS BOHR

As the great biologist Thomas H. Huxley said in 1863, "The question of all questions for humanity, the problem which lies behind all others and is more interesting than any of them, is that of the determination of man's place in Nature and his relation to the Cosmos.

A quantum theory of gravity that unites it with the other forces is the Holy Grail of physics.

Since the speed of light squared (c^2) is an astronomically large number, a small amount of matter can release a vast amount of energy. Locked within the smallest particles of matter is a storehouse of energy, more than 1 million times the energy released in a chemical explosion. Matter, in some sense, can be seen as an almost inexhaustible storehouse of energy; that is, matter is condensed energy.

Commenting on the importance of Maxwell's equations, Einstein wrote that they are the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton.

The mind of man is capable of anything Ã¢â'¬Â¦ because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. —JOSEPH CONRAD

The brain, like it or not, is a machine. Scientists have come to that conclusion, not because they are mechanistic killjoys, but because they have amassed evidence that every aspect of consciousness can be tied to the brain. —STEVEN PINKER

The right hemisphere controls sensory attention and body image; the left hemisphere controls skilled movements and some aspects of language.

The key point is now this: If the wave function of a particle vibrates along this surface, it will inherit this SU(N) symmetry. Thus the mysterious SU(N) symmetries arising in subatomic physics can now be seen as by-products of vibrating hyperspace! In other words ,we now have an explanation for the origin of the mysterious symmetries of wood: They are really the hidden symmetries coming from marble.

Liquid water is the universal solvent, the mixing bowl where the first DNA probably got off the ground. If liquid-water oceans are found on these planets, it could alter our understanding of life in the universe. Journalists in search of a scandal say, "Follow the money," but astronomers searching for life in space say, "Follow the water.

For example, it takes the entire planet Earth to attract a feather to the floor, but we can counteract Earth's gravity by lifting the feather with a finger. The action of our finger can counteract the gravity of an entire planet that weighs over six trillion trillion kilograms.

Such thinking is sheer speculation, but the laws of physics allow for the possibility of opening a hole in space by concentrating enough energy at a single point, until we access the space-time foam and wormholes emerge connecting our universe to a baby universe.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

According to Einstein, there is no gravitational pull. The earth warps the space-time continuum around our bodies, so space itself pushes us down to the floor. Thus, it is the presence of matter that warps space around it, giving us the illusion that there is a gravitational force pulling on neighboring objects.

Tachyons travel faster than light and have imaginary mass; it's not clear if they fall up or down under gravity. They, too, have not been found in the laboratory.)

Clearly, invisibility is a property that arises at the atomic level, via Maxwell's equations, and hence would be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to duplicate using ordinary means. To make Harry Potter invisible, one would have to liquefy him, boil him to create steam, crystallize him, heat him again, and then cool him, all of which would be quite difficult to accomplish, even for a wizard.