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Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel (Paperback)

by Michio Kaku (Author)

4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

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Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimens ion by Michio Kaku
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Product Details

Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Anchor; Reprint edition (April 7 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307278824
ISBN-13: 978-0307278821
Product Dimensions: 20.1 x 13 x 2.3 cm
Shipping Weight: 273 g

Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #4,952 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
Popular in these categories:
#29 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Physics
#32 in Books > Science > Physics

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Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

In this latest effort to popularize the sciences, City University of New York professor and media star Kaku (Hyperspace) ponders topics that many people regard as impossible, ranging from psychokinesis and telepathy to time travel and teleportation. His Class I impossibilities include force fields, telepathy and antiuniverses, which don't violate the known laws of science and may become realities in the next century. Those in Class II await realization farther in the future and include faster-than-light travel and discovery of parallel universes. Kaku discusses only perpetual motion machines and precognition in Class III, things that aren't possible according to our current understanding of science. He explains how what many consider to be flights of fancy are being made tangible by recent scientific discoveries ranging from rudimentary advances in teleportation to the creation of small quantities of antimatter and transmissions faster than the speed of light. Science and science fiction buffs can easily follow Kaku's explanations as he shows that in the wonderful worlds of science, impossible things are happening every day. (Mar. 11)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

“[Kaku explores] what we still do not quite understand, those grey areas that are surely the most fascinating part of physics.”
—New Scientist

“Kaku's latest book aims to explain exactly why some visions of the future may eventually be realized while others are likely to remain beyond the bounds of possibility. . . . Science fiction often explores such questions; science falls silent at this point. Kaku's work helps to fill a void.”
—The Economist

“A fascinating exploration of the interface between science and science fiction, extremely well researched, lively, and tremendously entertaining.”
—Fritjof Capra, author of The Tao of Physics and The Science of Leonardo

“Mighty few theoretical physicists would bother expounding some of these possible impossibilities, and Kaku is to be congratulated for doing so. . . . [He gets] the juices of future physicists flowing.”
—Los Angeles Times

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Inside This Book (Learn More)

Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index

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Customer Reviews

6 Reviews

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4.3 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wherein "impossible" sometimes only means "quite difficult"!, Nov 27 2008

By	Paul Weiss (Dundas, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel (Hardcover)

What do Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Lawrence Krauss Clifford Pickover, Brian Greene, Douglas Hofstadter and Michio Kaku have in common? Aside from being respected physicists, scientists, mathematicians and theoreticians, they also have the uncanny ability to write at a level that we mere mortals can understand. Happily this allows our workaday world of common non-scientists to participate in at least a rudimentary understanding of the esoteric mysteries of the universe that are fascinating in the extreme and so bizarre as to outstrip the most obtuse imaginings of fiction writers.

Michio Kaku takes us on a grand tour of the modern world of physics by grouping topics that either were or are still considered impossible into three large classes - first, those items that don't appear to violate the currently known laws of science and having been considered as impossibilities in times past are either now realities or are verging on reality as technology and experimentation makes progress with such blinding speed; second, items that also don't appear to break the rules as we know them but await the development of technology that is likely centuries or millennia beyond whatever skills we might even envisage at this point in history; and, finally, those things that our current knowledge of scientific law would suggest are genuinely impossible.

Kaku treats the eager science loving reader with a generous and formidable list of topics - force fields, telekinesis and ESP, faster-than-light travel, time travel, parallel universes, perpetual motion, telepathy, phaser weaponry, precognition, antimatter, negative matter, hyperspace travel, extraterrestrials and much more. His writing style is at once down to earth, scientifically correct without being either esoteric or condescending, and even witty and humorous as he regales us with amusing tales of the correspondence between science and the astonishingly prescient writers of the science fiction genre. As you might well imagine, the brilliant writers and creators of the Star Trek series come up in Kaku's discussion on more than one occasion.

Brilliant, informative and entertaining! Highly recommended. But Class III impossibilities being forever impossible? If I learned anything from this book, I don't think I'll ever say "never" again. Who knows? Stay tuned!

Paul Weiss

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Degrees of Scientific Impossibility, Sep 24 2008

By	G. Poirier (Orleans, ON, Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel (Hardcover)

Will something that is impossible now eventually become possible? In order to answer this question, the author has divided various potentially outrageous ideas into three levels of impossibility, based on current and expected future technological capabilities and the known laws of physics: Class I impossibilities, occupying over 60% of the book, Class II impossibilities and Class III impossibilities. The higher the class level, the more impossible (or farther in the future) the possible realization of the idea is perceived to be. In progressing along these classes, the author goes from practical nuts-and-bolts solutions to various problems that may be possible in a matter of decades to centuries (Type I), to dreams whose realizations may never happen according current very abstract ideas that are at the very forefront of scientific thinking and thus very far removed from our everyday experience (Type III). The writing style is clear, friendly, authoritative and quite engaging. The book contains no diagrams whatsoever. In most cases, they are not really essential because of the author's excellent ability to express complex ideas into clearly understandable prose. However, in a few cases, diagrams would have been quite welcome. Technical terms are clearly explained as they occur so that anyone could read this book and learn a great deal from it. However, science buffs would probably appreciate it the most.

On a more technical note, on a couple of occasions the author has pointed out that when an electron and an antielectron (positron) meet, they annihilate producing "gamma rays at an energy of 1.02 million electron volts or more" (p. 184) and "annihilate one another and create a gamma ray" (p. 278). The first statement can be misleading while the second one is incorrect and is likely a misprint. When an electron and a positron meet in free space, they annihilate producing two gamma rays (not one) of energy 0.511 million electron volts each (or more, depending on their relative kinetic energies when they meet); the total gamma ray energy released being (at least) 1.02 million electron volts. Production of two gamma rays is essential to conserve momentum, i.e., total momentum before the collision must equal total momentum after the collision, which is impossible if only one annihilation gamma ray is produced.

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3.0 out of 5 stars Too sci-fi, Oct 23 2009

By	George Smith "Curious George" (Crossfield, Alberta) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

For me, this was more speculative than technical, leaving me feeling that almost anyone could have written it. I prefer reading material about more current applications and research than this book provides. The author certainly knows his physics and makes the information easy to digest for those who want to be working in physics over the next 60 years. I wish I had such information when I was in high school in 1944.

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