Black Holes, Big Bangs & Quantum Theory - Michio Kaku | Modern Wisdom Podcast 323

1. 0:00 – 0:22

   Intro

   1. MKMichio Kaku0:00

      But what happened before the Big Bang? What happened before creation? Is there a white hole on the other end of a black hole? Can time go backwards? Are there other dimensions? Are there other parallel universes out there? Is there a multiverse of universes? These are all questions that are beyond our present understanding. (rocket taking off)

   2. CWChris Williamson0:21

      What is the problem

2. 0:22 – 5:53

   Finding the Mind of God

   1. CWChris Williamson0:22

      that you're trying to solve with a Theory of Everything?

   2. MKMichio Kaku0:25

      Well, I first encountered the problem when I was eight years old. A great scientist had just died. It was in all the newspapers, and all they did was, uh, publish a picture of his desk. That's all they did, publish a picture of his desk. And on that desk was a book that was opened, and the caption said, "The greatest scientist of our time could not finish that book." Well, (laughs) I was stunned. What? Why didn't he ask his mother? Why didn't he simply treat it as a homework problem? What? He couldn't finish it? So I went to the library, and I found out this man's name was Albert Einstein, and that book was the Unified Field Theory, the Theory of Everything, an equation no more than perhaps one inch long that would allow us to, quote, "Read the mind of God." Well, I was hooked. (laughs) I had to know what was in that book, what was so hard. So when I was about 17 years of age, I wanted to be part of this great revolution. I went to my mom, and I said, "Mom, can I have permission to build an atom smasher in the garage, a 2.3 million electron volt betatron particle accelerator in the garage?" And my mom said, "Sure, why not? And don't forget to take out the garbage." Well, I took out the garbage. I got 400 pounds of transformer steel, 22 miles of copper wire, and I built a six-kilowatt, two million electron volt betatron accelerator in the garage. Now, every time I plugged it in, I would (laughs) blow out all the circuit breakers in the house. So my poor mom, she must have said, "Why couldn't I have a son who plays baseball? Maybe if I bought him a basketball. And for God's sake, why can't he find a nice Japanese girlfriend? Why does he have to build these machines in the garage?" Well, I went to a national science fair, and I met an atomic scientist there, Dr. Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb. And he offered me a scholarship, a scholarship to Harvard, so I, I took it. And then when I graduated from Harvard, he offered me a job, and that job was to design hydrogen warheads, to be part of Los Alamos and Livermore National Laboratories. Well, I respectfully and graciously declined that very generous and kind offer because I wanted to work on even bigger explosion. I wanted to work on something even more powerful than a hydrogen bomb, and that is the Big Bang, the creation of the universe. I wanted to find the God equation, the equation that set the Big Bang into motion, that created the Big Bang, that caused the bang to happen. You see, we just know that there was a bang. That's all we know. (laughs) That's all we know. There was a bang. We don't know why it banged, how it banged. We don't know anything about the bang other than the fact that there was an expanding universe. Anyway, so I said to myself, "That's what I wanna work on rather than designing hydrogen warheads."

   3. CWChris Williamson3:38

      Why has this equation proved so difficult to discover?

   4. MKMichio Kaku3:43

      Well, because it wants to find a single paradigm, a single principle, a single theme that explains the entire diversity and richness of the universe. Now, the Greeks thought they had it. Democritus thought it was atoms, but Pythagoras said, "No, no, no, no. It's music." Only music has the richness to explain the diversity of all the forms we see in Mother Nature. Pythagoras saw a lyre string one day. He plucked it, and the longer the string, the lower the note. And then he went by a blacksmith shop, and they were making swords. The longer the sword, the lower the sound it made. And then he said, "Aha. Mathematics. The mathematics of resonances can explain music." And he was right. (laughs) Pythagoras is the founder of our understanding of the mathemat- em- the mathematical basis of music. Well, today, we think that music of subatomic particles explains the entire universe. Now, let me explain. If I have a super microscope and I look at an electron, most people would say the electron is a dot, but, you see, we don't think so. We think that it's actually a rubber band, and it vibrates. When it vibrates one way from a distance, we call it an electron. You twang it, it vibrates another way, and we call it a neutrino. You twang it another way, it becomes a quark. You twang it enough time, it becomes all this zoo, this zoo of subatomic particles that we see. So physics is the harmonies, just like Pythagoras thought. Physics is the harmonies you can write on vibrating strings. Chemistry is the melodies you can play on interacting strings. The universe is a symphony of strings. And then what is the mind of God? The mind of God is cosmic music resonating through hyperspace. That is the mind of God.

3. 5:53 – 11:40

   The Standard Model & Quantum Theory

   1. CWChris Williamson5:53

      Why are we struggling to get from where we are now, where we have standard model and we have quantum theory, what, why don't those two things just nicely slot together?

   2. MKMichio Kaku6:06

      Well, all of biology can be explained in the language of chemistry. All of chemistry can be explained in the language of physics. All of physics, in turn, can be explained, as you pointed out, with relativity, the theory of the big, black holes, Big Bangs, and the theory of the small, that is, quantum theory, the theory of lasers and transistors, the internet. This conversation is made possible because of the quantum theory. Now, the problem is, why should God have two hands (laughs) , a left hand and a right hand, and they don't like each other? They're based on different mathematics, different principles, different concepts. Relativity is based on smooth surfaces, trampoline nets, for example, smooth surfaces, while the quantum theory is based on chopping things up, chopping things up into particles. They're opposites in almost every sense of the word. So, how do you combine it? Well, the greatest minds of our time have tried to combine it and have failed until recently. Now we realize the unifying principle between smooth surfaces and chopped-up surfaces is music. The lowest octave of the string gives you all of Einstein's theory and the standard model of particles. That, to me, is amazing. For free. If Einstein had never been born, for free, we would've discovered all of general relativity. It's nothing but the lowest note, the lowest octave of a tiny vibrating string. To me, this is absolutely stunning. For free, we get the entire universe. And there are higher resonances. These higher octaves, we think could be dark matter, could explain what we see in the Big Bang. So these higher notes also exist, and we think that most of the universe is made out of dark matter, which is invisible, but we think is the photino, which is a higher vibration of the photon.

   3. CWChris Williamson8:11

      Does there has to be... D- Is there inevitably an equation of everything? I- Is it possible for the universe to have differing theories of big and small and that just be the way it is?

   4. MKMichio Kaku8:23

      Well, to me, it's absolutely amazing that on one sheet of paper, (laughs) on one sheet of paper, you can write down Einstein's equation, that's half an inch, and then the standard model, which is really ugly, clumsy. It's a theory that only a mother could love, but it works. What can I say? It works. I like to think of the standard model with quarks and leptons and Yang-Mills particles, this zoo. I like to think of it like taking an aardvark, a platypus, and a whale, Scotch taping it together and declaring that to be nature's finest evolutionary achievement, the end product of millions of years of painful evolution on the planet Earth. Look, the standard model has 36 quarks and antiquarks, 23 parameters, three identical generation of particles. It's so ugly that only a mother could love it. But it works. It worked. At the low energy realm, it works. Until last month. Last month, headlines around the world in physics, in physics laboratories when they found a crack, the first crack in 50 years in the standard model. So the standard model works at low energies up to 14 trillion electron volts, the energy of the Large Hadron Collider. But there's a new theory out there, we think, a higher theory, a fifth force, a fifth force, and we think that it could be the force of the string. But we'll wait and see. Of course, this result is very new, but it's shaken the world of physics, because for 50 years, we've been (laughs) stuck with this ugly theory called the standard model. But you cannot argue with the fact that it works-

   5. CWChris Williamson10:07

      Can you sink-

   6. MKMichio Kaku10:07

      ... at low energies.

   7. CWChris Williamson10:08

      Can you sink more into that recent discovery, explain what it was that was found and the implications?

   8. MKMichio Kaku10:14

      Well, every... Uh, well, there are three generations of identical particles in the standard model, which is bizarre. Why should Mother Nature have a redundancy of three? Anyway, the electron has two partners. One of them is called the muon. It weighs 200 times more than the electron, but otherwise is pre- pretty much identical to the electron. Now, the electron has spin, so it's like a magnet. It has magnetic properties. So does the muon. By the way, the muon is found in cosmic rays. Right now, muons are going through your body. A lot of cosmic rays are in the form of muons going right through your body. Even as I speak, you're being irradiated by cosmic rays, uh, in outer space. Anyway, the point is that the muon also has magnetic properties, but the standard model says they should be identical, identical to the electron, but they're not. Two groups have now verified the fact that the muon has a differing magnetic moment than predicted by the standard model. So this gigantic foundation that we've built has this huge crack in it, meaning that (laughs) there's a higher theory out there, a higher theory. And we think this higher theory is mediated by another particle. This other particle, in turn, creates a force, a fifth force, and we think it could be the next octave, the next vibration of the string, though, of course, time will tell. But that is big news.

4. 11:40 – 14:39

   The Theory of Everything Past & Future

   1. MKMichio Kaku11:41

   2. CWChris Williamson11:41

      It seems to me like there's constantly progressing understandings of what we know about everything. But a theory of everything would only explain everything that we know right now. Surely, then we would perhaps discover more about the universe and then need to then theoretically describe them more that we found. How do you know that this theory of everything is going to be the one, the only, the final, no more, said and done, draw a line under it?

   3. MKMichio Kaku12:05

      Well, let's take a look at the next layer of unsolved problems. We have Einstein's theory. We have the quantum theory. But what happened before the Big Bang? What happened before creation?... is there a white hole on the other end of a black hole? Can time go backwards? Are there other dimensions? Are there other, uh, parallel universes out there? Is there a multiverse of universes? These are all questions that are beyond our present understanding and cannot be resolved using the standard model and general relativity, but string theory can resolve all of 'em. String theory takes you before the Big Bang. It takes you to the other side of a black hole. It takes you to other dimensions, other universes. A new picture is emerging. This picture given t- given to us by Einstein is that the universe is a bubble, we live on the skin of the bubble, and the bubble's expanding. That's called the Big Bang theory. String theory says there are other bubbles out there. There's a multiverse of bubbles, bubbles that collide with other bubbles giving a bigger bubble, or bubbles that cut in half, giving you two smaller bubbles. In fact, Stephen Hawking called it the spacetime foam, that space itself is foamy at the subatomic level, and these bubbles can become entire universes. And so string theory says there was a world before the Big Bang. The Big Bang is just our universe, but there are other universes being created even as we speak. Even as we speak, universes are being created. And so string takes... s- string theory takes you way beyond Einstein's theory, and there are gateways, gateways between bubbles called wormholes, which, by the way, was actually first introduced by Einstein himself in 1935. The creator of the Einstein-Rosen bridge is Albert Einstein. (laughs) And so there are bridges between our universe and other universes. So then the next question that I get by email is, "Is Elvis Presley still alive in another parallel universe?" And the answer is, well, probably yes. Probably, there is another parallel universe. We can't, of course, enter that universe easily, but there probably are other universes where The King is still belting out hits after hits after hits.

   4. CWChris Williamson14:33

      One thing that I've been-

   5. MKMichio Kaku14:34

      So this takes you way beyond relativity. That's the point I'm making.

   6. CWChris Williamson14:37

      Yes. Yes. I understand.

5. 14:39 – 18:51

   FOMO About Future Discoveries

   1. CWChris Williamson14:40

      One thing that I've been considering, given how much time you've dedicated to string field theory and mathematics and physics over your career, how do you deal with the pain of not being around for future discoveries?

   2. MKMichio Kaku14:55

      Well, there's a universality to physics that you can appreciate at any age. When I write down an equation, I like to think that on the other side of the galaxy, there's also an alien that's writing down the same (laughs) equation in different notations, and that, to me, is absolutely stunning, a revelation, the fact that you could be on another universe, another galaxy and yet discover the same equations. Now, would they discover and appreciate the work of Shakespeare, the work of Hemingway, the work of James Joyce? Well, maybe if the aliens studied English really, really hard, but for the most part, these are cultural artifacts. Not to say that they are not relevant. I think they're very relevant, relevant to the human experience, but that's it, relevant to the human experience. If you are not a human or you don't speak English, you can't appreciate Shakespeare, but physics is universal. It's a language that you could be of any age, anywhere, and appreciate that this is a universal theory that we're talking about.

   3. CWChris Williamson16:03

      And that doesn't make you feel... Do you have FOMO about the future developments? I know that I do. I think about how cool-

   4. MKMichio Kaku16:10

      D- Do I have what?

   5. CWChris Williamson16:11

      FOMO. (laughs)

   6. MKMichio Kaku16:12

      Do I have what?

   7. CWChris Williamson16:13

      FOMO, fear of missing out.

   8. MKMichio Kaku16:15

      Oh.

   9. CWChris Williamson16:15

      So, the desire to want to be here when we do get the Theory of Everything, or when we can transport ourselves on laser beams across the galaxy. I get that. I wondered whether you did.

   10. MKMichio Kaku16:28

       Yeah, well, you know, there's a scene in Back to the Future where Doc Brown says he's alw- he's always wanted to see beyond his years. In other words, he's always wanted to see the future even after he's gone, okay? And now (laughs) he has a time machine where he can do that. But, you see, look at it this way. We are now witnessing the greatest transition in the history of humanity. Humanity, for the most part, for thousands of years, lived in a swamp, the swamp of witchcraft, sorcery. Science is only 300 years old, and we are privileged to be alive with this exponential explosion of knowledge. In other words, if I were to pick a decade, if I were to p- uh, p- pick an era where I would like to have been born, this is the cusp, the cusp of this curve. Um-

   11. CWChris Williamson17:21

       You think we're at the hockey stick, the inflection point right now?

   12. MKMichio Kaku17:24

       Yeah. So I think further up, of course, we'll have even greater wonders, but, you know, you only... you only see these wondrous things for the first time once. For the first time once, you th- learn about atoms, you learn about relativity, you learn about the quantum theory. You don't learn about the quantum theory twice. It's discovered once. You only learn about it once. We live through that era once, so we are privileged to be alive, I think, to be at the cusp of some of the greatest revolutions in human history. I like to think that the decade is the smallest unit of history. Anything smaller than a decade is a random fluctuation. But then if you look at the decades gone by, the last few decades have been absolutely staggering in terms of what we know about the universe. So again, if I were to choose which decade to live in, I think I would choose these decades because they represent the... the hockey stick, the inflection point where we just are... just taking off with regards to understanding things.

   13. CWChris Williamson18:24

       ... it's a good reason to be grateful.

   14. MKMichio Kaku18:24

       You realize that, you realize that our grandparents, our grandparents, if they were to see us today, they would think of us as being sorcerers. "What? You can talk to someone instantly on the other side of the world and visit them in 14 hours with an airplane?" (laughs) That's unheard of for our grandparents, right? And our grandchildren would probably, we would probably think of them as gods. But the inflection point is now.

6. 18:51 – 20:45

   What is Pure Mathematics?

   1. MKMichio Kaku18:52

   2. CWChris Williamson18:52

      What do you consider mathematics to be? Is it universal? Is it some sort of underlying fundamental nature of how the, how reality exists?

   3. MKMichio Kaku19:04

      I think it's more than that. People sometimes ask me, "Well, where did the universe come from?" Well, it came from the Big Bang. "Where did the Big Bang come from?" Well, it came from the God equation. The solution to the God equation is the Big Bang. And then they say, "Well, where did the God equation come from? Huh? Huh?" And you keep on going, "Where did that come from? Where did that come from" And then you eventually have to deal with the question of pure mathematics. You see, I personally think that the God equation exists and it's unique. It's unique because it is the only mathematically consistent theory. Now, the, the amazing thing about string theory is that it's only mathematically consistent in 10 and 11 dimensions. In four, five, six dimensions, it's not consistent. If you have a five-dimensional string theory, you can prove that two plus two is five. Now, obviously, two plus two is not five, but there, there it is, a proof, a mathematical proof. If you start with string theory in five dimensions, two plus two is five. In other words, what I'm saying is something simple. String theory is, because it's the only self-consistent, mathematically consistent universe, it is unique. Why? Because as soon as you deviate slightly from string theory, you have divergences, it blows up, and anomalies, symmetries get broken. So as soon as you deviate the slightest, mathematically, from string theory, boom, all hell breaks loose. In other words, the universe is because it is the only mathematically consistent universe. All other universes, two plus two equals five. Ours is the only universe where math makes

7. 20:45 – 22:37

   Explaining String Theory to a Child

   1. MKMichio Kaku20:45

      sense.

   2. CWChris Williamson20:46

      Einstein said that if you can't explain a theory to a child, it's probably worthless. Do you think that string theory fits that criteria?

   3. MKMichio Kaku20:55

      Yeah. You know, when, when children are born, we're born scientists. We wanna know where we came from, why the stars shine. We wanna know everything. And then we hit the greatest killer of scientists known to science. The greatest killer of scientists known to science is, well, public education when you're around 13, 14, 15 years of age. At that point, it's all memorization, just memorization. We lose young, bright scientists by the millions every day because they're forced to learn things that they know are totally irrelevant. Boring. So how should you teach it? The way Einstein thought, using things that children understand. That is, principles, concepts, things that stay with you 'cause they're pictorial, they have a picture. Take a look at Newton's laws of motion. It's all about balls hitting other balls, balls circulating around other balls. Look at Einstein's theory of relativity. It's all about meter sticks, levers, pulleys, uh, stopwatches. It's about things you can touch, things you can measure. And what is string theory? Music. So the point I'm raising is something simple. These are things that children can understand. Children can understand that, oh yeah, that's how Newton's laws work, forces act over balls that bump into each other. You can under- understand Einstein when you realize that space and time is a fabric. These are all pictorial. And then string theory says everything is reduced to music. Children can understand that. So that's why I think that all great theories are pictorial, conceptual, with a principle, and all the useless theories are just pure mathematics.

   4. CWChris Williamson22:36

      (laughs)

8. 22:37 – 30:54

   Reaching Higher Dimensions

   1. CWChris Williamson22:37

      Yeah. Have you got any thought experiments that we can do to explain how we get into a higher dimension, what a higher dimension might look like? I know look is probably the wrong word to use here, but how can people envision us getting out of three and into four or more dimensions?

   2. MKMichio Kaku22:57

      Well, when I was a child, I used to go to the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco, and there's a pond there with carp swimming in two dimensions. I used to stare at them for hours. They could go left/right, forward/backward, but up, up into the third dimension, is beyond their understanding. There is no up in their world. And then I imagined there was a scientist fish. A scientist fish would say, "Bah, humbug. There's no third dimension. What you see is what there is. What you see is the pond. The pond is two-dimensional. That's it. End of story. There's no third dimension." And then I imagine grabbing the fish, lifting the scientist fish into the third dimension. What would the scientist fish see? He would see beings moving without fins, a new law of physics, beings breathing without water, a new law of biology. Now, why I'm telling you this is that many physicists, not all, everybody, but many physicists believe that we are the fish. We spend all our life in three dimensions, going forward/backward, left/right, up/down, but anyone who dares talk about a higher dimension, a fourth, fifth, sixth dimension, is considered a crackpot, a crazy, a mystic, (laughs) a magician. But actually, we think that the universe is probably 10 or 11-dimensional. Why?... because we have four fundamental forces, gravity, electromagnetism, and the two nuclear forces. In three dimensions, they don't fit together. Like a jigsaw puzzle, you try to put the equations together, and they don't fit. Einstein spent 30 years trying to push gravity and electricity and magnetism into one theory, and he failed. So, I like to think of it this way. In hyperspace, there's enough room, enough room to fit all the four forces into one theory. I like to think of it this way. At the beginning of time, there was a crystal, a beautiful, gorgeous crystal that was three-dimensional, but it had a flaw. And it had a flaw in it, and it cracked, and it shattered all the pieces onto a sheet of paper. On that sheet of paper lived Flatlanders. Flatlanders saw this shower of pieces of crystal landing all over their world, and they said, "Let's put it together." So after many, many hours and years of work, the Flatlanders finally assembled the pieces into two chunks. One chunk, they called relativity. The other chunk, they called quantum theory, but they didn't fit. In two dimensions, it didn't fit, and so they were frustrated. And then one day, a Flatlander had this outrageous, heretical, preposterous idea. Why didn't you lift, lift one of these pieces into the third dimension and turn it around and put the two pieces together, and it would fit just perfectly? Well, the Flatlanders laughed and laughed. They said, "What?" (laughs) "There is no third dimension. It's a figment of some imagination or, or some science fiction novel. There's no third dimension." But in a computer, in a computer, they could lift one piece, turn it around in the third dimension, and the crystal fit perfectly. In other words, what I'm saying is something very simple. In hyperspace, there's enough room to fit all the jigsaw pieces together to create one jewel. That is, the super force that created the Big Bang.

   3. CWChris Williamson26:36

      The original Flatland book, when I read that, I really, really enjoyed it. It feels a little bit like Plato's Allegory of the Cave.

   4. MKMichio Kaku26:45

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson26:45

      You know, where you have the heretics, you have this unknown banished insight about the world that's not supposed to be, it's not supposed to be seen, it's not supposed to be spoken about. I, uh, I think you can get it for free online. It's downloadable at PDF. Anyone that's interested in the original Flatland story, it's- it's really, really interesting. Um-

   6. MKMichio Kaku27:05

      And also, I should point out that artists have been fascinated by this 'cause it's a new way of seeing reality. Salvador Dali was fascinated by the fourth dimension. He went to Brown University, and actually buttonholed friends of mine, Thomas Banashow, mathematician. He wanted to know everything about the fourth dimension. So if I take a hypercube... Well, let's say I take a box, a cardboard box, unravel it. If I unravel a cardboard box, what do I get? A cross. Well, if I take a hypercube and unravel a hypercube, I get a three-dimensional cross, a tesseract. And so Salvador La- Dali painted Jesus Christ crucified in the fourth dimension. It is one of his great paintings, Hypercubicus Crucifixion. Google it, and you'll see Jesus Christ crucified on a four-dimensional unraveled hypercube. And what is a signature image of Salvador Dali? Melted clocks. Melted clocks was his way of representing the fourth dimension, the fourth dimension of time in his canvas, in his works of art. So you see, artists have been fascinated by these higher dimensions because higher dimensions represent a sliver, a sliver of a higher reality. Also, if you saw the movie, uh, Interstellar with Matthew McConaughey, at the end of the movie, he winds up on string theory. At the end of the movie, Matthew McConaughey is floating, floating inside a hypercube. Why? 'Cause that was Hollywood's attempt to have Matthew McConaughey float in the 11th dimension. And of course, it's very difficult to do- do that-

   7. CWChris Williamson28:44

      (laughs)

   8. MKMichio Kaku28:44

      ... in a two-dimensional screen, but that's as close as Hollywood could get. And so they have Matthew McConaughey floating in a hypercube in the final scenes of the movie.

   9. CWChris Williamson28:55

      That's the most Dali thing that I've ever heard, arriving at some poor mathematician's office and, uh, bothering him until he gets his answer. I, uh, I recently gave a, a TEDx Talk, and I did a lot of research about Dali for it.

   10. MKMichio Kaku29:08

       Mm-hmm.

   11. CWChris Williamson29:08

       Did you know that his parents thought he was the reincarnation of his dead brother who had been born nine months before that with the same name? So they gave birth-

   12. MKMichio Kaku29:18

       Oh, really? (laughs)

   13. CWChris Williamson29:18

       ... to someone called Dali, and this child died sadly, and then the new Dali was born, and he believed and they believed that he was the reincarnation of his dead sort of infant brother. Which, I mean, when, when that's how your life begins, it probably makes a fair bit of sense that the rest of it's going to be non- non-typical, to say the least.

   14. MKMichio Kaku29:44

       Also, um, when you take a look at Picasso, cubism. Cubism, in some sense, is also based on the concept of the fourth dimension because you're talking about the, the fact that you're looking at an object through a different lens, and the lens is the lens of the fourth dimension. And so cubism also was inspired, uh, by the fourth dimension. And around the year 1900, around the year 1900, a lot of, uh, Christian theologians had a problem. Telescopes were becoming more powerful. They looked in the heavens, and they asked the question, "Where is heaven?" Everywhere they looked, they couldn't see heaven. And so that left clergymen with a problem. For generations, they were saying that heaven is up there, but now telescopes became popular, and there was no up there. And so where did heaven go? Hyperspace.And that's why theologians, Christian theologians at the turn of the century, wrote treaties, treaties about higher dimensions, 'cause that is where heaven is located.

   15. CWChris Williamson30:47

       It's the hyperspace of the gaps going on there, isn't it?

   16. MKMichio Kaku30:50

       Hyperspace, that's right. (laughs)

   17. CWChris Williamson30:52

       Hyperspace of the gaps.

   18. MKMichio Kaku30:52

       That's where, (laughs) that's where it all

9. 30:54 – 35:10

   Why Does The Planck Scale Exist?

   1. MKMichio Kaku30:54

      takes place.

   2. CWChris Williamson30:55

      Why do you think the Planck scale exists? Why is there a smallest measurement of anything?

   3. MKMichio Kaku31:03

      Well, the Greeks asked that question, "What is the smallest interval?" Zeno had that famous paradox, that to go across a river, you have to go through the halfway point. To go through the halfway point, you have to go to the quarter point, the eighth point. Well, how many points are there when you cross a river? An infinite number. So if it takes a infinite amount of time to go through an infinite number of points, then nothing can move. Nothing can move, because to move, you have to go through an infinite number of points, which takes an infinite amount of time, therefore nothing can move. (laughs) And of course, it was calculus, the coming of calculus that finally got around that. But now physicists are coming back to that again. What is the shortest distance possible? And we think the shortest distance is the Planck length, the shortest time is the Planck time, the shortest energy is the Planck energy. Now, what is that? The Planck energy is 10 to the 19 billion electron volts. That is a quadrillion times more powerful than the Large Hadron Collider outside Geneva, Switzerland. In other words, it is the Big Bang. It is the energy content of the smallest distance, which we think is the Big Bang itself. And then the question is, how do we make sense of the fact that there is a smallest distance, okay? Well, this is where string theory comes in. People want to know how big is the string, right? If a string vibrates and it's an electron, vibrates another way, it's a neutrino. Well, (laughs) how big is it? It is the Planck length. So, in other words, there is a shortest distance. The shortest distance is given by string theory.

   4. CWChris Williamson32:47

      And is that because it's a building block? Is it right to think of it like that, like a fundamental smallest pixel size of existence?

   5. MKMichio Kaku32:55

      You can... In, in string theory, you cannot go smaller than the Planck length. In fact, when you, when you even try to get smaller than the Planck length, another universe opens up which is the opposite of our universe.

   6. CWChris Williamson33:07

      (laughs) Oh, God.

   7. MKMichio Kaku33:07

      Uh, so another universe open. So, in other words, it's the reflection of our universe-

   8. CWChris Williamson33:12

      Right.

   9. MKMichio Kaku33:13

      ... when you go inside a string. So, in other words, you cannot get smaller than a string, that's the point I'm making. So I'm not saying that string theory is correct. I'm saying that if it is correct, it means that there is a smallest distance. Oh, and also, let me answer another question. People often say, "Well, let's say I don't like string theory. Give me an alternative."

   10. CWChris Williamson33:31

       (laughs)

   11. MKMichio Kaku33:32

       Well, there is none. Now, that doesn't mean string theory is correct, but it has no alternatives. You see, a unified field theory has to satisfy cre- three criteria. Three criteria, you solve it, and you become the next Einstein. First, you have to include relativity. Second, the standard model with electrons, quarks, neutrons, protons. And third, it has to be mathematically consistent. String theory satisfies all three. No other theory can make that claim. Let me repeat that again. (laughs) People have tried. For 100 years, people have tried. But no other theory can satisfy these three criteria. So, if one of your listeners ever finds that one-inch equation that satisfies everything, more powerful than string theory, what should you do?

   12. CWChris Williamson34:20

       Email you. (laughs)

   13. MKMichio Kaku34:21

       You should tell me, tell me first. And we'll split the Nobel Prize money together. We'll go down in history, you and me-

   14. CWChris Williamson34:29

       (laughs)

   15. MKMichio Kaku34:29

       ... if you're gonna find that one-inch equation. Now, string theory can be summarized by an equation an inch and a half long. That's my equation. That's called string field theory. However, now there are membranes, which is a spoiler. We now realize that strings can coexist with membranes. And so we want a field theory of strings and membranes. So far, we don't have that. Sorry about that. So, that's where we're stuck right now, but that's a mathematical problem. So I think that some young enterprising kid out there could mathematically solve it-

   16. CWChris Williamson34:59

       Do-

   17. MKMichio Kaku34:59

       ... and tell me first.

   18. CWChris Williamson35:01

       ... uh, w- I will make sure that some sort of contact detail, like a- you need like a 911 SOS, "I've got it" line available 24 hours a day and manned.

10. 35:10 – 36:40

    Planck’s Attempt to Assassinate Hitler

    1. CWChris Williamson35:10

       One of the maddest things that I learned, so your new book, The God Equation, one of the craziest (laughs) things that I learned was a single sentence in there, and it's that Max Planck's son tried to assassinate Hitler?

    2. MKMichio Kaku35:22

       Yeah. That's right. Isn't that amazing?

    3. CWChris Williamson35:24

       What on earth is that?

    4. MKMichio Kaku35:26

       Well, Planck was a very, in some sense, mild, conventional person. He followed the rules, and he stumbled upon the quantum theory, (laughs) one of the greatest theories of all time, sort of by accident. And when Hitler rose to power, he actually visited Hitler and tried to argue with Hitler. But Hitler just blew his top and said that, "Jews, I can't tolerate Jewish physicists." And Planck was saying, "You're destroying physics. All the Jewish physicists are leaving, are leaving Germany." He didn't care. And so, Planck was ever the gentleman. The irony is, he led a tragedy of his l- a tragedy that his son was tortured, tortured by the Nazis 'cause his son tried to assassinate Hitler. And so, um, Planck lived through World War II, but it was a life of tragedy, in some sense, tragedy of war, uh, even though he himself was not a revolutionary. He was, uh, a very mild, very polite kind of person. He didn't like controversy. I mean, he didn't like, uh, to get in the middle of a heated argument. But, um, his own son tried to assassinate Hitler. That's right.

    5. CWChris Williamson36:37

       Crazy. Absolutely crazy.

11. 36:40 – 39:55

    Why Do We Have Super-voids?

    1. CWChris Williamson36:41

       Why do you think we have supervoids? I've been learning about the boo- boo- Boötes Supervoid, which is this huge, big hole, essentially, in the visible universe. Have you got any idea why we have these massive voids?

    2. MKMichio Kaku36:58

       Oh, you mean in the, uh, ma- cosmic microwave background?

    3. CWChris Williamson37:01

       I think, it's to do with- m- more to do with the mapping of galaxies, that there are these big chunks where you would expect this uniform- uniformity of distribution between the galaxies, and we have these supervoids where there are large swaths of space and very, very few galaxies, which is not what should be predicted, right? You should have that uniformity.

    4. MKMichio Kaku37:23

       Yeah, there are two kinds of voids. One, the void that you mentioned is the void when you look at on a galactic scale, uh, that the- the density of galaxies is not totally uniform. The other gap is when you look at the cosmic background radiation, which should be totally uniform, it is basically a baby picture of the shockwave that gave birth to the Big Bang, the cosmic microwave background. That also has a gap in it. And we're not talking about cosmic gaps in the structure of the universe itself. Some people think these are evidence of an umbilical cord, an umbilical cord connecting our infant universe to a parent universe. So you see, we need to launch a satellite, called LISA, which may answer many of these questions. LISA is a laser interferometry space antenna. The European Space Agency and NASA is backing it. It'll detect gravity waves from the instant of creation, not 400,000 years after the Big Bang. No, the instant of the Big Bang. It's gonna give us baby pictures. We're gonna get baby pictures from the infant universe, and maybe, just maybe, we'll find evidence of an umbilical cord, an umbilical cord connecting our baby universe to a parent universe. If that's true, there has to be a birthmark. We have a belly button, so what we- what we could be looking at is the belly button of the universe.

    5. CWChris Williamson38:53

       (laughs)

    6. MKMichio Kaku38:55

       Now again, this is where we have to have a new theory. The old theory simply says there was a bang. It doesn't say why it banged, it doesn't say how it banged. The Big Bang Theory just says there was a bang, okay? However, string theory should also say how it banged, why it banged, and therefore, if there's an umbilical cord, there should be some scar left behind. And some people think that could be the origin of these gaps. But again, that's just a theory.

    7. CWChris Williamson39:24

       I suppose if you're talking about the foam and the bubbles, the intersecting bubbles and the fissioning bubbles as well, as those were to pull apart, I imagine that that final moment as well would also potentially be a reason for that.

    8. MKMichio Kaku39:37

       Or the collision of universes too. Universes can collide, and if so, there should be a remnant, a scar in our universe. And how would we find it? We would find it in the density of galaxies and the density of the microwave background radiation. That's where the scar would be.

    9. CWChris Williamson39:54

       How

12. 39:55 – 43:49

    LISA Preparatory Science Program

    1. CWChris Williamson39:55

       big is this?

    2. MKMichio Kaku39:55

       It's a scar of cosmic scale.

    3. CWChris Williamson39:56

       How big's this LISA thing? How's it gonna work?

    4. MKMichio Kaku40:00

       Uh, LISA is about a million miles across. Think of three satellites connected by laser beams making a triangle. The triangle picks up vibrations from the incident of the Big Bang and jiggles- jiggles these three satellites. That causes an interference pattern which can be photographed. And so, by looking at interference patterns, we can then detect the, uh, uh, g- get a baby picture of the infant universe as it's being born. Now take a look at LIGO. LIGO d- does the same thing, except these detectors are separated by a few miles. Now we're talking about going to outer space, where detectors can be separated by millions of miles, not just a few miles like in LIGO, but millions of miles, giving us a sensitivity to understand the instant of creation. You see, LIGO is a gravity wave detector. Gravity waves go right through the haze of the original Big Bang, microwaves do not. Therefore, when you look at the cosmic microwave background, what you get? A haze. That's all it is. You get ripples on the haze, but it's a haze. No structures. You don't get a feeling of what happened at the incident of the Big Bang. That's where LISA comes in. It's gonna give us baby pictures of the instant of creation. So some people say that we're not gonna be able to prove string theory. That's not correct. There are many ways of proving string theory. One is by going to LISA, finding out what happened at the incident of the Big Bang. Another one is finding out about dark matter. What is dark matter? It could be the next octave, the next octave of the string. And what about cracks in the standard model? Is there a fifth force? Well, maybe. Just last month, we found evidence of a fifth force. And four, um, the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Europeans are now proposing the successor to the Large Hadron Collider, which may be powerful enough to reveal, uh, the next octave of the string. And lastly, higher dimensions can be measured by looking at deviations from the inverse square law. When you're in high school, you learn that if you double the distance between you and the star, gravity goes down by four. Why? 'Cause two times two is four. It goes down by the square. Why the square? Why not the cube? Why not the quartic, the quintic, the septet? Because space is three-dimensional. When you're in your living room, if space has a higher dimension, the inverse square law should be violated at small distances.Now, people have never done that. They've never really looked at deviations from the inverse square law in your living room. But that's the next set of experiments. Was Isaac Newton correct not on a galactic scale-

    5. CWChris Williamson42:50

       (laughs)

    6. MKMichio Kaku42:50

       ... but on the scale of your living room? That could be evidence of a, of a, of a higher dimension in your living room.

    7. CWChris Williamson42:58

       Do you know where they're planning on putting LISA? Is it going to be in between us and Mars? Have you got... Do they have to reserve some spatial-

    8. MKMichio Kaku43:06

       It'll be orbiting the sun. It won't orbit the Earth, it'll orbit the sun.

    9. CWChris Williamson43:11

       Okay.

    10. MKMichio Kaku43:11

        And it'll, it'll be three satellites launched into outer space, connected by laser beams, and it'll be orbiting the sun rather than orbiting the Earth, 'cause it is really a detector for the ages, for the universe itself, with nothing to do with the Earth at all. So it'll be orbiting the sun. Now, the funding was approved, but it's been delayed. But Google it, LISA, and you'll see that, um, it's gone through several incarnations, but the thrust of it is to get baby pictures of the instant of creation and also what happens when black holes collide. These generate gravity waves.

13. 43:49 – 44:47

    New Super Hadron Collider Location

    1. MKMichio Kaku43:49

    2. CWChris Williamson43:49

       Where are they going to put this new version, this new Super Hadron Collider? Where's that going to be? Have you got any idea of the location of that?

    3. MKMichio Kaku43:56

       Well, the Japanese have proposed, uh, Japan as the place for it, uh, called the ILC, International Linear Collider in Japan. But if, Japan has w- the highest number of (laughs) earthquakes-

    4. CWChris Williamson44:09

       (laughs)

    5. MKMichio Kaku44:09

       ... in the world, so you have to be a little bit careful there. Uh, that's like putting SLAC, uh, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center near the San Andreas Fault in California. (laughs) The, they had to put the accelerator on rollers to compensate for earthquakes that periodically ripple through California. (laughs) The same thing probably with the Japanese accelerator. They'll probably have to put it on rollers to realign it every time there's an earthquake.

    6. CWChris Williamson44:40

       That is very funny that you have to account for the fact that the Earth's going to move as you're desperately trying to detect something from a couple of billion years

14. 44:47 – 50:39

    Why We Aren’t In a Big Simulation

    1. CWChris Williamson44:47

       ago. I know that you're not-

    2. MKMichio Kaku44:49

       Yeah.

    3. CWChris Williamson44:49

       ... a believer, or at least you are a skeptic of whether or not we're living in a simulation. I wondered whether you could explain your justification for that.

    4. MKMichio Kaku44:57

       Yeah, very simply, um, what is the smallest object that can realistically model the weather? Let's say I, I take, um, uh, a fishbowl of air. What is the smallest object that can mathematically model that? Well, of course, Newton's laws of motion say that there's lots of trillions of atoms, you have to mimic the motion of each of these atoms, and you begin to realize that no computer on the Earth can do that. The smallest object that can model the weather is the weather itself. Anything smaller would violate the, the universal gas law of the simpler properties of gases. And so that's just a pure gas, not trying to simulate us, (laughs) trying to simulate reality. And then add the quantum theory. The quantum theory makes it a lot worse.

    5. CWChris Williamson45:46

       (laughs)

    6. MKMichio Kaku45:46

       Not just that you have trillions of possibilities, you now have infinite possibilities with the quantum theory. And so that's why I'm saying that the people who believe in the simulation theory don't understand quantum mechanics, that even Newtonian mechanics makes it impossible to simulate reality, and quantum mechanics (laughs) makes it even worse, 'cause you have to take into all possible universes in your simulation as well. For example, when you look in a mirror, you're not really looking at yourself when you look in a mirror. You're looking at yourself as you were about a billionth of a second ago, 'cause that's what it takes for light to go from you to the mirror and back, about a billionth of a second. And it's even worse, because you are a wave. You co-exist with an infinite number of waves, and some of these waves drift off even while you're talking to somebody. Some of these wa- waves wind up on Mars tomorrow. In fact, for our PhD students, we give them the question, "What is the probability that you'll wind up on Mars tomorrow?" It's calculable. Use the Heisenberg uncertainty Principle, and you find out that you have to wait longer than the lifetime of the universe to wind up on Mars tomorrow. But it's calculable. If you could w- if you could live longer than the lifetime of the universe, then one of your versions of you will wind up on Mars tomorrow. So with simulation theory, it gets worse. And that's just the quantum theory of you. To simulate a city, uh, a metropolis with people in it just boggles the imagination as to what's required quantum mechanically. So in other words, we do not live in a video game where somebody pushes the play button and here we are moving. There's no play button for the universe. Uh, science is based on things that are testable, falsifiable, reproducible. The simulation theory is not testable, not falsifiable, and not reproducible, so it doesn't qualify as a science. Now, that doesn't mean that it's not interesting, it just means that it's outside the boundary of science. It's sort of like God. Uh, can you prove or disprove the existence of God? I don't think so. It's outside of science. Like, can you disprove the existence of unicorns? No, you cannot disprove the existence of unicorns, 'cause no matter how good you are at searching through the Earth, maybe there's a unicorn hiding someplace. So you can never disprove the existence of unicorns, so you can never disprove the existence of God, and you can never disprove the simulation theory, which means it's not a science. But it's fun to ask, and it's fun to think about.

    7. CWChris Williamson48:32

       It is, yeah.

    8. MKMichio Kaku48:32

       But it's like thinking about God, it's not a measurable, testable quantity. Let me give you another example, reincarnation. You mentioned reincarnation before. I was at a party once and, uh, a woman said that she's Cleopatra.... the reincarnation of Cleopatra. So I asked her some simple questions, and she got them all wrong about Cleopatra. But then she said, "That doesn't matter. I am Cleopatra, and all the history books are wrong." At that point, she stopped me cold. Cold, she stopped me. And I said, "She's right." If she is Cleopatra, all the history books are wrong. (laughs) So how can I disprove her? And I realized that this is beyond science. You cannot disprove that. You cannot disprove the existence of unicorns. You cannot disprove the existence of clairvoyance, I mean, of, of, uh, reincarnation as well.

    9. CWChris Williamson49:30

       Is there a, a term for that particular type of bias? Is it just unfalsifiability?

    10. MKMichio Kaku49:36

        Uh, yeah. It's outside the boundary of physics. It's metaphysics. Metaphysics is what is beyond physics, and physics, of course, is based on things that are testable, reproducible, falsifiable. That's how we know that when you jump off a building, gravity is going to take you to the floor. (laughs) You're not going to float if you jump off a building, right? So that's physics, but that's not reincarnation. Uh, angels. How do you disprove the existence of angels? You can't. They're things that are outside the boundaries of science 'cause science is only based on testability, reproducibility, falsifiability. Angels are not quantifiable, they're not testable, and they're outside the boundaries of science. That doesn't mean they exist. It doesn't mean they don't exist, either. It just means science says nothing about them.

    11. CWChris Williamson50:25

        It feels like that unfalsifiability paradigm that you've just explained there is being used by a lot of people at the moment, a lot of people in 2021 to explain all manner of, of things. One, and,

15. 50:39 – 57:40

    Ethics of Long-term Space Experiments

    1. CWChris Williamson50:39

       uh, you've talked a lot about futurism and considering our potential descendants' behavior as we move forward. Have you considered the ethics about somebody deciding that they're going to board a long-traveling ship? So you're going to spend... You, as a human, are going to decide that you will volunteer to travel to Alpha Centauri, and it's going to take 10,000 years, let's say, at some particular speed. Have you considered the ethics of that person making that decision and essentially cursing or blessing their children to be born, live, and die on a, a ship?

    2. MKMichio Kaku51:25

       Well, that question has many parts to it. I'm trying to figure out (laughs) which part you want me to address.

    3. CWChris Williamson51:30

       Just have you considered the ethics of whether or not, what it would be like for somebody to make that decision, about whether or not it is even an ethical decision to be made? Like, should we, should we be permitting people to make that sort of a decision for unborn humans yet? I'm aware that it's not something that we need to be concerned about just yet, but given the fact that it is something we need to do at some point...

    4. MKMichio Kaku51:54

       Well, there are many facets to that. Um, first of all, first of all, the dinosaurs did not have a space program. That's why they're not here today. They couldn't leave the Earth, so when an asteroid came, it wiped them out. Sorry about that. They had no space program. We do have a space program. So when we're hit by an asteroid one day, some people may say, "Well, we have a space program. Let's go to Alpha Centauri. Let's go there because the alternative is to go the way of the dinosaurs." Then I think it's perfectly ethical to say, "Well, yeah, we have the rocket ship. Let's go to colonize a new planet. We just discovered a nice planet, a doppelganger of the Earth orbiting Alpha Centauri or Proxima Centauri, so let's go there, even if it takes, you know, many, many years to do that." So I think it's an ethical decision that, you know, we need, we need to have plan B. We need to have an insurance policy so that humanity can survive even if the dinosaurs didn't survive 'cause they didn't have a space program. You know, one of the most depressing passages in the English language was written by Bertrand Russell, the famous mathematician, who said that for all the greatness of humans, for all the tears that we've shed, for all the bravery that we've exhibited and heroism, it's all for nothing, absolutely nothing, because when the sun dies, the Earth will die with it. And it's the law of physics, inescapable. The sun will die, and we will die with it. Well, that was written in the 1930s. Today, we laugh at that 'cause, well, look, that's the way the dinosaurs went. We don't have to go that way. We have rocket ships, and so it becomes a- an ethical question. Do we want to exercise that option of going into a rocket ship and leaving the Earth so we don't have to die when the sun dies? In fact, I think the universe is gonna die. The second law of thermodynamics says that in a closed system, everything eventually decays, rots, dies. That's the second law of thermodynamics. Physics has a death warrant for humanity, that we will necessarily have to die. But you see, there's a flaw, a flaw in the second law of thermodynamics. I said in a closed system, things necessarily decay and die. What happens if there's an open system, an open system where you can have a wormhole and escape to another universe which is warmer? So leaving the universe is an option that we have to think about trillions of years from now when the universe gets very cold, when the universe consists of black holes, dead neutron stars, and nuclear debris.... of leaving the universe, 'cause we will have the energy to bend the fabric of spacetime. We'll have the Planck energy, and maybe we'll find a loophole in the second law of thermodynamics by building a dimensional lifeboat and sailing to another universe, another universe which is warmer and younger, and we can mess up that universe as well.

    5. CWChris Williamson55:18

       (laughs)

    6. MKMichio Kaku55:19

       So we'll have two universes to mess up. So I think it is an ethical decision, but if the alternative is the second law of thermodynamics, which is death, then I think it's an option that we have to think about.

    7. CWChris Williamson55:32

       In the face of complete annihilation, it does make a lot of sense. And you're right as well, the... No matter what timescale you decide to look on as it stretches further and further out into the future, the, the outcomes are just increasingly grave. We need to get off Earth. Okay, we need to get out of the Milky Way. Okay, we need to get out of... And so on and so on.

    8. MKMichio Kaku55:50

       Out of the universe-

    9. CWChris Williamson55:51

       Yeah, precisely.

    10. MKMichio Kaku55:52

        ... yeah, at some point. That's where The God Equation comes in. The God Equation is perhaps the only way to leave the universe, is to master the Planck energy. By the way, let me just end one, one last note. If I have a microwave oven, and I heat up water, the microwave oven will eventually boil the water. If I crank it up some more, the water itself will ionize, and you'll have a bunch of ions. You crank it up even hotter, then the ions fall apart into nucleons and protons and neutrons. You crank it up more, and it turns into a quark gas, a gas of quarks. You turn it up more, and then what happens? You just keep on turning it up, turning it up. At some point, space becomes unstable. It begins to boil. Space begins to boil. Just like water, when you heat it up, water begins to boil. What is the point at which that happens? The Planck energy. At the Planck energy, you turn it up, bubbles begin to form. And what are these bubbles? Wormholes. Wormholes to other universes, right in your microwave oven. What is the energy? The Planck energy, an energy qui- quadrillion times more powerful than the Large Hadron Collider. But it's a number you can write on a sheet of paper. It's a number that an advanced civilization, millions of years more advanced than us, may play with. If they become masters of the Planck energy, then they can boil space and create gateways to other universes.

    11. CWChris Williamson57:32

        Michio Kaku, ladies and gentlemen. The God Equation: A Quest for a Theory of Everything will be linked in the show notes below. Where should people go if they want

16. 57:40 – 58:05

    Where to Find Michio Kaku

    1. CWChris Williamson57:40

       to keep in touch with the rest of your work as well?

    2. MKMichio Kaku57:43

       Oh, also my website. You can go to my website, mkaku.org, M-K-A-K-U dot org.

    3. CWChris Williamson57:49

       Fantastic. Thank you. Catch you later on. Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few months, and don't forget to subscribe. It makes me very happy indeed. Peace.

Episode duration: 58:10