Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku, Anchor (2009)

It is not a stretch to say that Michio Kaku is singularly responsible for my undergraduate major in Physics. Back in 2004, the shiny cover on the front of Parallel Worlds led me to promptly purchase the book as I walked into a bookstore in Concord, NC. Inside those pages were a rich description of the fascinating world theoretical physicists think we live in, which is far different from the world we’re told we have in the high school physics of colliding billiard balls. Fast forward to 2009 and I’m at a bookstore in Sioux Falls, SD on my way to Vancouver, BC to begin my graduate school career at the University of British Columbia working towards a MASc in Materials Engineering (once again, inspired by Kaku’s work). My eyes are drawn to a copy of Physics of the Impossible and I have no choice but to purchase it right away. While reading at the campsites on the way out to Vancouver I received tremendous excitement and validation of my choice to begin deeply researching the “material world”.

Kaku has a way of capturing the wonder of cutting edge science in a way that few other scientists can. His ability to take outlandish concepts and explain the physics behind them is absolutely a gift that falls far outside the realm of the public perception of physics. Physics of the Impossible is no exception to this reputation. In this book, Kaku takes the technologies of science fiction and explains which mechanisms of modern science could put them into real world practice. He begins by classifying these technologies into impossibilities that could actualize under our current understandings (Class 1), impossibilities that could be realized over hundreds or thousands of years (Class 2) and impossibilities that could only occur with major revolutions in our understanding of physics (Class 3). Surprisingly, there are very few Class 3 impossibilities, a testament to the truly bizarre nature of theoretical physics.

Class 1 impossibilities include using the Meissner Effect (magnets that levitate over superconductors) to build force fields, invisibility using metamaterials (which recently saw breakthroughs in a German lab), teleportation, telepathy, UFOs, telekinesis and more. Class 2 impossibilities include travel to parallel universes, time travel and others. Class 3 impossibilities encompass perpetual motion machines and precognition.

However, while I’m captured by Kaku’s imagination, I’m a little weary of the ability for humans to harness these physical phenomena into controllable technologies without tremendous financial resources that result from tremendous energy inputs. During the most recent round of evaporation of financial complexity that began with $147/barrel oil in 2008, could the fabrication of spaceships and planet destroying beams be supported by the social structures so deeply dependent on readily available energy dense ancient sunlight? Kaku mentions that the energy requirements of several of the technologies are far beyond our current abilities but doesn’t address this question head on. I would think because a discussion of that magnitude is worth a book in its own right. Technologists and scientists rarely look at the result of social technologies and systems on the pattern of scientific development, only looking in the direction of scientific development and its impacts on society. Maybe we can leave those discussions to economists and engineers.

A cursory interest in the fringe sciences should make this an absolute great read for you. No other scientific author can inspire the sense of wonder that Kaku distills into all of his written works and public talks.