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To a physicist, we have the 'I' word, the I-word is 'impossible.' That's dangerous.

Michio Kaku

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Michio Kaku
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: January 24
Futurist
Non-Fiction Writer
Physicist
Radio Personality
Science Communicator
Science Writer
Theoretical Physicist
University Teacher
San Jose
California
Physicist
Dangerous
Impossible
Word

More quotes by Michio Kaku

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No matter how beautiful the theory, one irritating fact can dismiss the entire formulism, so it has to be proven.
Michio Kaku
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What we usually consider as impossible are simply engineering problems... there's no law of physics preventing them.
Michio Kaku
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Language and emotions are too easily misread. For example, laughing can mean many things: laughing with you or at you. Does that laugh reflect joy, anger, or that s/he's about to fire you? Too many jobs require complex feelings, pattern recognition, common sense, and the human touch.
Michio Kaku
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I used to watch the old 'Flash Gordon' series on TV, and it was thrilling to rocket to the planet Mongo every week. But after a while, I figured out that although Flash got the girl and all the accolades, it was really Dr. Zarkov who made the series work. Without Dr. Zarkov, there could be no Flash Gordon.
Michio Kaku
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If you take a look at the most fantastic schemes that are considered impossible: teleportation, warp drive, parallel universes, other dimensions, artificial intelligence, ray guns, you realize that they can be possible if we advance technology a little bit.
Michio Kaku
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In the future, I can imagine that we will genetically modify ourselves using the genes that have doubled our life span since we were chimpanzees.
Michio Kaku
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Growing new organs of the body as they wear out, extending the human lifespan? What's not to like? Then in the last phase of this transition people begin to realize, hey, I thought of it already - this is something that everyone can enjoy.
Michio Kaku
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They basically ask their engineers to volunteer some probability figures, then they take the average. This is not science. This is voodoo.
Michio Kaku
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Sooner or later, we will face a catastrophic threat from space. Of all the possible threats, only a gigantic asteroid hit can destroy the entire planet. If we prepare now, we better our odds of survival. The dinosaurs never knew what hit them.
Michio Kaku
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An event horizon, or the point of no return, is only a byproduct of the bending of space. However, electricity and magnetism, by themselves, have no event horizon. It gets complicated, however, if a black hole has charge, and then this new solution does have an event horizon.
Michio Kaku
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A hydrogen bomb, for me, was puny compared to the Big Bang - the creation of the universe. That's what I really wanted to work on - the nature of the universe itself, and that's what I do for a living.
Michio Kaku
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Combining quantum entanglement with wormholes yields mind boggling results about black holes. But I don't trust them until we have a theory of everything which can combine quantum effects with general relativity. i.e. we need to have a full blown string theory resolve this sticky question.
Michio Kaku
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The most complex object in the known universe: brain, only uses 20 watts of power. It would require a nuclear power plant to energize a computer the size of a city block to mimic your brain, and your brain does it with just 20 watts. So if someone calls you a dim bulb, that's a compliment.
Michio Kaku
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We believe that black holes collapse to rings hitting very fast. If you follow through the ring you don't die. The mathematics says you fall straight through, perhaps to another universe.
Michio Kaku
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Math is discovered. To be invented requires an inventor, but math exists outside of humanity. But ultimately, the laws of the universe will be reduced down to a single equation, perhaps no more than one inch long. But leaves the final question, where did that one inch equation come from?
Michio Kaku
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To understand the difficulty of predicting the next 100 years, we have to appreciate the difficulty that the people of 1900 had in predicting the world of 2000.
Michio Kaku
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We can summarize electricity, magnetism and gravity into equations one inch long, and that's the power of field theory. And so I said to myself: I will create a field theory of strings. And when I did it one day, it was incredible, realizing that on a sheet of paper I can write down an equation which summarized almost all physical knowledge.
Michio Kaku
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One problem with politics is that it is a zero sum game, i.e. politicians argue how to cut the pie smaller and smaller, by reshuffling pieces of the pie. I think this is destructive. Instead, we should be creating a bigger pie, i.e. funding the science that is the source of all our prosperity. Science is not a zero sum game.
Michio Kaku
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When I get bored, or get stuck on an equation, I like to go ice skating, but it makes you forget your problem. Then you can tackle the problem with a fresh new insight. Einstein liked to play the violin to relax. Every physicist likes to have a past time. Mine is ice skating.
Michio Kaku
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[T]he yeoman's work in any science, and especially physics, is done by the experimentalist, who must keep the theoreticians honest.
Michio Kaku