Category: Science & Technology

In a sense, all science starts as science fiction -- in ideas that don't yet have the substance of fact. "What if?" is where both begin, and they move on through the culture in tandem in a mutually encouraging way.

In his bouncy new series Sci-Fi Science: Physics of the Impossible premiering tonight on the Science Channel, self-described "theoretical physicist and science-fiction fan" Michio Kaku seeks to construct scientifically plausible if not currently practicable models for some of the cornerstones of speculative fiction, from making a light saber to traveling at warp speed to working out how to blow up the world.

Taking off from his 2008 bestseller, Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration of the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel this is a show for those of us who can't necessarily do the math but can grasp the metaphors.

You might not understand, for instance, what it means to say (as Wikipedia does) that string field theory -- which Kaku co-formulated -- works "by finding a collection of vertices for joining and splitting strings, as well as string propagators, that give a Feynman diagram-like expansion for string scattering amplitudes." (I know what all those words mean individually but not in that order.)

But it isn't hard to picture the universe as made up of vibrations, because we all vibrate or have cellphones that do; or to picture parallel worlds, because we all dream; or to grasp the fundamentals of teleportation, because we have all seen "Star Trek"; or hyperspace, because we know about freeways; or wormholes, because we've played Chutes and Ladders...MORE...
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Purchase a copy of Dr. Kaku's book here