Kaku - Physics of the future: the inventions that will transform our lives

PROFESSOR OF THEORETICAL PHYSICS
CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

HOW SCIENCE WILL SHAPE HUMAN DESTINY AND OUR DAILY LIVES BY THE YEAR 2100

ALLEN LANE

an imprint of

PENGUIN BOOKS

ALLEN LANE

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First published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York 2011

First published in Great Britain by Allen Lane 2011

Copyright Michio Kaku, 2011

All rights reserved

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-193139-5

To my loving wife, Shizue,

and my daughters, Michelle and Alyson

I would like to thank those individuals who have worked tirelessly to make this book a success. First, I would like to thank my editors, Roger Scholl, who guided so many of my previous books and came up with the idea for a challenging book like this, and also Edward Kastenmeier, who has patiently made countless suggestions and revisions to this book that have greatly strengthened and enhanced its presentation. I would also like to thank Stuart Krichevsky, my agent for so many years, who has always encouraged me to take on newer and more exciting challenges.

And, of course, I would like to thank the more than three hundred scientists I interviewed or had discussions with concerning science. I would like to apologize for dragging a TV camera crew from BBC- TV or the Discovery and Science channels into their laboratories and thrusting a microphone and TV camera in front of their faces. This might have disrupted their research, but I hope that the final product was worth it.

I would like to thank some of these pioneers and trailblazers:

Eric Chivian, Nobel laureate, Center for Health and the Global Environment, Harvard Medical School

Peter Doherty, Nobel laureate, St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital

Gerald Edelman, Nobel laureate, Scripps Research Institute

Murray Gell-Mann, Nobel laureate, Santa Fe Institute and Caltech

Walter Gilbert, Nobel laureate, Harvard University

David Gross, Nobel laureate, Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics

the late Henry Kendall, Nobel laureate, MIT

Leon Lederman, Nobel laureate, Illinois Institute of Technology

Yoichiro Nambu, Nobel laureate, University of Chicago

Henry Pollack, Nobel laureate, University of Michigan

Joseph Rotblat, Nobel laureate, St. Bartholomews Hospital

Steven Weinberg, Nobel laureate, University of Texas at Austin

Frank Wilczek, Nobel laureate, MIT

Amir Aczel, author of Uranium Wars

Buzz Aldrin, former NASA astronaut, second man to walk on the moon

Geoff Andersen, research associate, United States Air Force Academy, author of The Telescope

Jay Barbree, NBC news correspondent, coauthor of Moon Shot

John Barrow, physicist, University of Cambridge, author of Impossibility

Marcia Bartusiak, author of Einsteins Unfinished Symphony

Jim Bell, professor of astronomy, Cornell University

Jeffrey Bennet, author of Beyond UFOs

Bob Berman, astronomer, author of Secrets of the Night Sky

Leslie Biesecker, chief of Genetic Disease Research Branch, National Institutes of Health

Piers Bizony, science writer, author of How to Build Your Own Spaceship

Michael Blaese, former National Institutes of Health scientist

Alex Boese, founder of Museum of Hoaxes

Nick Bostrom, transhumanist, University of Oxford

Lt. Col. Robert Bowman, Institute for Space and Security Studies

Lawrence Brody, chief of the Genome Technology Branch, National Institutes of Health

Rodney Brooks, former director, MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

Lester Brown, founder of Earth Policy Institute

Michael Brown, professor of astronomy, Caltech

James Canton, founder of Institute for Global Futures, author of The Extreme Future

Arthur Caplan, director, Center for Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania

Fritjof Capra, author of The Science of Leonardo

Sean Carroll, cosmologist, Caltech

Andrew Chaikin, author of A Man on the Moon

Leroy Chiao, former NASA astronaut

George Church, director, Center for Computational Genetics, Harvard Medical School

Thomas Cochran, physicist, Natural Resources Defense Council

Christopher Cokinos, science writer, author of The Fallen Sky

Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health

Vicki Colvin, director of Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology, Rice University

Neil Comins, author of The Hazards of Space Travel

Steve Cook, director of Space Technologies, Dynetics, former NASA spokesperson

Christine Cosgrove, author of Normal at Any Cost

Steve Cousins, president and CEO, Willow Garage

Brian Cox, physicist, University of Manchester, BBC science host

Phillip Coyle, former assistant secretary of defense, U.S. Defense Department

Daniel Crevier, author of AI: The Tumultuous History of the Search for Artificial Intelligence, CEO of Coreco

Ken Croswell, astronomer, author of Magnificent Universe

Steven Cummer, computer science, Duke University

Mark Cutkosky, mechanical engineering, Stanford University

Paul Davies, physicist, author of Superforce

Aubrey de Gray, Chief Science Officer, SENS Foundation

the late Michael Dertouzos, former director, Laboratory for Computer Science, MIT

Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize winner, professor of geography, UCLA

Mariette DiChristina, editor in chief, Scientific American

Peter Dilworth, former MIT AI Lab scientist

John Donoghue, creator of BrainGate, Brown University

Ann Druyan, widow of Carl Sagan, Cosmos Studios

Freeman Dyson, emeritus professor of physics, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

Jonathan Ellis, physicist, CERN

Daniel Fairbanks, author of Relics of Eden

Timothy Ferris, emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley, author of Coming of Age in the Milky Way

Maria Finitzo, filmmaker, Peabody Award winner, Mapping Stem Cell Research